Don’t look now, but after having his baseball obituary written in advance, Derek Jeter has been showing signs of life lately. In fact, he’s been downright hot since coming back from the disabled list after straining his calf. Hitting just .244/.324/.324 after the game in which he strained the calf, Jeter entered last night’s game hitting .283/.344/.370, thanks to a .348/.416/.472 performance in his last 103 plate appearances, and had a wRC+ of 100, or exactly league average. That’s not bad at all at this point, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t think Jeter had it in him. This is one of those times I’m quite happy to have been wrong.
Of course, the question now is whether or not it will last. Jeter did talk about adjusting his swing during him time off in Tampa in the HBO documentary about his march to 3,000 hits, so maybe there is something to this, something that will make it somewhat sustainable. Or maybe it’s just a statistical blip that won’t hold up much longer. Either way, it’s a very pleasant surprise and quite fun to watch.
New York opened their series in Kansas City with a win, but the Royals took the early lead on Tuesday. The Yankees battled back and in the end, they won a seesaw battle 9-7, landing them back in sole possession of first place in the AL East.
Ivan Nova got two quick outs to start the bottom of the first, but got into some trouble afterwards. Billy Butler singled to center and Eric Hosmer followed with a RBI double. Jeff Francoeur grounded a single up the middle, plating another run for the Royals and giving them an early 2-0 lead.
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Scranton was blanked 2-0 by Durham:
Matt Carson broke put up the first run of the game with a leadoff solo homer in the top of the third. John Jaso reached in the fourth, on an error by Chris Dickerson, and scored on a double by Dan Johnson. Scranton was unable to score, despite outhitting the Bulls 6-5. Jordan Parraz was the only Yankee to pick up multiple hits, going 2-4 with a double. Adam Warren went five innings and gave up two runs (one earned) on three hits and a walk. He struck out eight hitters in the Scranton 2-0 loss. D.J. Mitchell pitched a perfect inning in relief. Oh yeah, and some guy named Alex Rodriguez went 1-3 with a single.
Trenton lost their first game of a doubleheader against Erie 6-0:
The Thunder put together almost no offense against Erie, who took a 3-0 lead in the third. They added a couple more runs in the fifth and another in the sixth, taking a 6-0 win in the seven-inning game. Austin Romine, fresh off the DL, went 1-2 and picked up a walk. Shaffer Hall went five innings and gave up five runs on eight hits and three walks.
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A rather odd debate has broken out on Twitter about the Little League World Series, prompted by this article over whether or not ESPN exploits the free labor of Little League World Series players. I generally come down hard on the pro-labor side of things, but in this case the proposition seems downright silly to me.
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Back in June, a lot of people were upset by the selection of Dante Bichette Jr. by the Yankees with their first pick in the draft. I wasn’t exactly happy with it, but I was willing to allow that Bichette was the guy the Yankees wanted, and he wasn’t as bad as some were making him out to be. My concern was more that the Yankees had passed on much more talented players do to signability reasons, namely outfielder Josh Bell who was unanimously regarded as a top 15-20 talent and the best high school hitter in the draft. However, Bell was committed to Texas, and had indicated to teams that he didn’t intend to sign.
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Interesting tweet from Jon Heyman yesterday:
Jesus Montero will likely be a sept 1 callup. due to injuries, he could still make postseason roster, tho.
It’s been assumed that Montero will be a September call up for awhile now, so this is nothing surprising. Still, I don’t really get the logic of the move, or more specifically why he couldn’t have come up sooner. But good to hear he’ll probably be getting some playing time this year, and even better news if he’s eligible for the playoff roster.
I’ve been a pretty big Brian Cashman defender during my blogging tenure, and even to the extent I’ve become much less enamored with the front office over the past couple of months it’s more because I worry their perspective has gotten distorted by time, and less that I don’t think Cashman is good at his job. But if he honestly believes this garbage, then I’d fire him yesterday if it was my decision, because the only way to respond to that is to note that he’s completely and totally lost touch with reality.
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With the Red Sox off on Monday, the Yankees started their road trip looking to get back into first place in the AL East. The Bombers offense did its job and Russell Martin gunned down three Royals’ runners trying to steal, as the Yankees beat Kansas City 7-4.
New York drew first blood in the top of the second. Nick Swisher got things rolling with a single to center. Jorge Posada worked a walk and Brett Gardner singled in the first run of the game with a two-out grounder to center. Derek Jeter lined a hit to center plating Posada to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. They had a chance to make it bigger, when the Bombers loaded the bases with a walk to Granderson, but when a pitch got passed the Royals’ catcher, Salvador Perez, Gardner tried to score. Instead, Perez dove across the plate and was able to just tag out the Yankees’ speedy outfielder to end the inning and the threat.
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Triple-A Scranton’s doubleheader was rained out, and all of Double-A and High-A had scheduled days off. Thus, only Low-A and the GCL Yankees played, and both lost.
Once again, A.J. Burnett wasn’t very good tonight in Kansas City. He wasn’t downright awful, but he wasn’t good. The final line says it all: 3 runs and 10 hits allowed with 1 walk and 2 strikeouts in 5.2 innings pitched. A.J. just didn’t have his good stuff at all, and he got knocked around by the Royals. It wasn’t even an issue of command, as Burnett threw 71.5% of his pitches for strikes, he just didn’t have a lot of movement on this night, and the Royals made him pay for it.
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For some reason it occurred to me today that I joined this blog last August, though I couldn’t remember the day. So I went and looked, and lo and behold, my first post on August 4th, so I actually missed my blogging anniversary by almost two weeks (thankfully I didn’t forget my wedding anniversary, which falls on the same day). So pardon me a bit of navel-gazing for a bit to mark the occasion.
The weird thing about hitting the year mark is that it certainly feels like it’s been longer than that, which I imagine is because a lot of things have changed here over the last 12 months. There are many more contributors to the site now than there were last August, and it’s been an honor and a privilege to write alongside each one of them. There’s been a big change over at Sweetspot we’ve all been involved in as well, and it’s just generally amazing how much you notice things changing when you cover a baseball team like this on a daily basis for a year. This time last year, I could scarcely imagine that Andy Pettitte would be retired, Rafael Soriano would be a Yankee and Cliff Lee a Philly, and Curtis Granderson would be one of the best players in baseball. Yet here we are.
But most of all, there are more of you now. More readers, more commenters, more interaction on Twitter, etc. It’s not something that really registers often, but it’s rather surreal that in a little over a years time I’ve gone from a frequent commenter on a handful of blogs and a loudmouth on Twitter to a blogger who actually has their opinions about my favorite sport read by other people and has written feature pieces for ESPN.com.
So what I’d really like to say today is: Thank you. Thank you to all of you who read this site everyday and send me tweets and emails. Without your readership and your comments, this would be much less fun than it is. Thank you to Dave and the rest of the ESPN crew for the opportunity to write over at Sweetspot, and everything else they’ve done for us. Thank you to each and every one of the IIATMS contributors for the effort they’ve put into the site and the excellent material it’s produced. And thank you to Jason, for asking me to join the site last August and for putting up with me for over a year now. Here’s to many more years as good as the past one, and go Yankees!
When you see a column is written by Kevin Kernan, you know it’s not going to be any good. When it starts out this way, you know it’s going to be even worse than usual:
This year is different. This year, the Yankees are promising to go all out down the stretch and not play any wild card games.
It’s about time. But this all comes with a “healthy” catch.
Even though facing Justin Verlander twice in a five-game series may be the prize for winning the AL East, taking the division remains the goal, as it should.
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Last October, Bruce Bochy looked like the man with the golden touch. Nearly ever lineup change he made in the 2010 postseason turned out marvelously, and the Giants romped their way to the World Series title. It was an impressive, surprising, accomplishment, and many people, a lot of whom should have known better, lined up to herald the job Bochy did.
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