While we got some relatively good news about Michael Pineda, who was diagnosed with some shoulder tendonitis, the news was not good for Cesar Cabral. The lefty reliever has a stress fracture on his pitching elbow and has his arm in a splint. He will head to the DL and there seems to be no real plan going forward as of yet.

To push the mind away from the Michael Pineda situation, which I admit has me vexed this morning, I decided to play GM for a day. And those thoughts swirl around guys like Dewayne Wise, Justin Maxwell, Doug Bernier, Eric Chavez and Raul Ibanez. Yes, my mind always comes back to Raul Ibanez. Having both Ibanez and Chavez on the roster causes a redundancy that limits some of the Yankees’ options. You really do not need Chavez to back up first base because Mark Teixeira will should play 155 games there. If something were to happen to Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees would call on Eduardo Nunez. Meanwhile, Ibanez is strictly a designated hitter who can supposedly play the outfield. Okay, I get that he has hit two homers in the last week or so, but Ibanez has looked ancient this spring. Should the Yankees continue this little experiment knowing that Ibanez couldn’t push his on-base percentage beyond .300 last season AND should never, ever play the outfield?

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The results are in on Michael Pineda‘s sore shoulder, and the decision Joe Girardi had called one of the most difficult decisions of his managerial tenure has taken care of itself in the way no one wanted it to: Pineda will start the season on the 15 day disabled list with shoulder tendonitis. As undesirable as that may be in a vacuum, Girardi is probably right to call it “great news,” as the rest of the MRI means there’s no structural damage and no rotator cuff issues, injuries that would have been much more severe and worrying for his long term prognosis. The diagnosis could also explain why his fastball has lacked zip so far this spring. In a way, this is arguably the best possible conclusion to Pineda’s difficult first spring with the Yankees.

With Pineda sidelined, the composition of the Opening Day roster has obviously been settled, and the Yankees will start the season with a rotation of C.C. Sabathia, Hiroki Kuroda, Phil Hughes, Ivan Nova, and Freddy Garcia.

You know how us cooler head types have been saying that Michael Pineda‘s struggle to find his fastball velocity Phil Hughes” href=”http://itsaboutthemoney.net/archives/2012/03/26/michael-pineda-is-not-phil-hughes/” target=”_blank”>wasn’t exactly like Phil Hughes’ similar problems in 2011? It might be time to re-think that. Pineda was, frankly, awful in the three innings he pitched in Friday night against Philadelphia. He may have been unlucky at a few key points, but the Phillies’ hitters were hitting him hard from the outset, his fastball command was non-existent, and he was unable to push the fastball above 92-93 MPH when he needed to dial it up and put a hitter away. To make matters worse, an apparently emotional Pineda confessed after the game that he was experiencing soreness at the back of his pitching shoulder.

A shoulder problem would certainly explain a lot of Pineda’s issues this spring, from the lack of ability to push his fastball up at times to over-compensating with his body, which had him unable to locate the fastball much at all last night. Of course, the possibility that Pineda has been lying to his coaches and trainers about how his arm feels is troubling, not so much because of anything it says about him (the Yankees decided to insist he needed to pitch his way on to the team, after all), but for the possibility that it’s an issue that hasn’t gotten better, or may have even gotten worse if Pineda aggravated it.

We’ll obviously know more when the team results of the MRI come back, but for now it looks like the rotation decision has been made in the worst possible manner, and it seems like Pineda is a good bet to open the season either on the disabled list or in High-A Tampa following this development.

At the very end of a very long spring game between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies, Yankee announcer, Ken Singleton, mentioned that Cesar Cabral will have an MRI in the morning due to a sore elbow. Cabral pitched in the game earlier in the evening. Cabral has been in a battle with Clay Rapada for the second lefty in the bullpen and has had a good spring. Much interest will be on that MRI center in the morning with Cabral and Michael Pineda on the schedule.

During the broadcast of the game tonight between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies, the Yankees’ announcers stated that Michael Pineda felt some soreness in the back of his shoulder before his outing but did not tell the coaching staff until after he was finished pitching. The news makes sense because Pineda never looked comfortable and was completely ineffective during his less than three full innings of work. As David Cone mentioned during the broadcast, Pineda was displaying bad body language on the mound and now we know why. Cone kept mentioning during Pineda’s innings that Pineda was “getting around the ball” with his fastball. Cone felt this interfered with Pineda’s velocity and location. If Pineda was in discomfort, those would be symptoms. The Yankees have to hope this is nothing serious and simply spring fatigue. If not, then the rotation questions just might have been answered.

Robinson Cano is now the nexus of the New York Yankees. The second baseman has been given the keys to the third slot in the Yankees’ batting order acknowledging that he is the key and best hitter in the Yankees’ lineup. Recent telecasts by ESPN gushed on and on about how Jim Leyland loves Cano and thinks he is one of the brightest stars on the planet. Old ESPN broadcasts featured Joe Morgan, the old Hall of Fame second baseman, raving about the guy. But how good is Robinson Cano really? We keep hearing that one day he will win the batting title. Will that ever happen? Does it matter? And looming in the background of all of this is the knowledge that the Yankees will soon have to decide how much to pay Cano to keep him playing for the Yankees in light of the $189 million cap the sons of Steinbrenner keep talking about for 2014.

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Freddy Garcia must have one mighty good looking fastball in his side sessions:

Pineda hit 94 a couple of times in his last outing but for the most part has lived in the 90-91 MPH range, a good neighborhood for, say, Freddy Garcia, a pitcher used to getting outs on his off-speed stuff…

90-91 would be good velocity for Freddy Garcia? Well I should certainly say so…considering that Garcia averaged just 87.2 MPH on the pitch in 2011, and hasn’t cracked the 90 MPH mark since 2005. To be fair, however, I did have to go to an extremely obscure place on the internet to find that information, so I can completely understand why someone who gets paid to watch/cover baseball could easily make that kind of mistake.

I know I should be writing something about the $2.15 billion deal for the sale of the Dodgers out of bankruptcy to a buyer group featuring Earvin “Magic” Johnson. But the words won’t come.

$2.15 billion? $2,150,000 followed by another comma and three more zeros?

The reaction to this proposed sale (and it IS proposed; the deal must be approved by the Bankruptcy Court and Major League Baseball) is largely positive. Molly Knight likes it. Josh Fisher likes it. Maury Brown likes it.

As a Los Angeles resident, a Yankees fan living 5 miles from Dodger Stadium, I guess I should be happy too. But honestly, the deal leaves me at a loss for words.

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Best news of the day? Only one more week until Opening Day! Here’s some less exciting, but still worthy of your attention, items for this Friday morning:

• Andy Pettitte might make his spring debut by starting the final game of the exhibition schedule against the Mets, if he’s ready.
• Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Alex Rodriguez is looking to get back to form and have a monster season. I’m not entirely sure that someone didn’t mix up their 2012 Spring Training notebook with their 2011 version, honestly, because this sounds exactly like what A-Rod said last year. On the bright side, he was looking awfully good early in the year before a string of injuries limited him to just 99 games that were much less productive than we’ve all come to expect from A-Rod.
• Nick Swisher has been getting work in at the minor league complex as he tries to work out the groin injury that’s been bothering him recently. He could be back in a big league game, either as a DH or playing right field, today. Curtis Granderson was in last night’s lineup, which is obviously good news for his elbow. [Jennings]
• On the other hand, Corban Joseph has been shut down with a shoulder injury.
• Great news everyone: it’s Michael Pineda Day! Be sure to get your licks in early.

Justin Maxwell has had a whopper of a spring thus far, and though it probably won’t help his chances of making the Opening Day roster in the Bronx, it may land him a shot at the big leagues somewhere else. Yesterday, George King reported that both the Astros and the Orioles were interested in Maxwell, though neither have apparently inquired about him Brian Cashman. Baltimore and Houston are quite possibly the two worst teams in baseball heading into the 2012 season, so taking a flyer on a young player like Maxwell might make some sense if they can acquire him cheaply. The Yankees, on the other hand, already have a proven fourth outfielder/lefty masher in Andruw Jones on their bench, so there isn’t an obvious place for Maxwell to play right away, but he’s also out of options, so he would have to clear waivers before he couldd be assigned to the minor leagues.

The Seattle Mariners and the Oakland Athletics are the two best teams in baseball right now, according to their records. This is a fact. But that doesn’t keep it from being complete nonsense either. The Mariners beat the A’s 1-3 Wednesday morning (evening in Japan, midday in Spain) in 11 innings, in a game that said a lot more about how awesome Japanese fans are than about the two sides that actually, you know, played. And today, the A’s struck back, pulling off a 4-1 win in only 9 innings.

These games were played at around 6:00 AM EST, which is why you probably didn’t watch them. But you know who did? This guy. Here are my thoughts, conveniently presented in bullet-point form. I’ll try to work the Yankees in there as much as possible, I promise.

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