Good morning Yankee fans. It’s Tuesday March 12, 2013 and here are some news and notes for you.
The Yankees are traveling to Charlotte Sports Park to take on the Tampa Bay Rays this afternoon. Right hander Ivan Nova gets the start.
Here’s the lineup:
Eduardo Nunez SS
Jayson Nix 3B
Travis Hafner DH
Juan Rivera 1B
Francisco Cervelli C
Melky Mesa CF
Thomas Neal LF
Zoilo Almonte RF
Corban Joseph 2B
Also making the trip to Port Charlotte: Bobby Wilson, Dan Johnson, Walter Ibarra, Gil Velazquez, Ronnier Mustelier, and Slade Heathcott and relievers Brett Marshall, Matt Tracy, and Josh Spence.
According to Chad Jennings of the Lohud Yankees blog, Larry Rothschild doesn’t want to go public with Phil Hughes‘ throwing schedule. Rothschild wants Hughes to focus on one thing at a time and he also gave another explanation as to why he hasn’t revealed much.
“It just slipped my mind,” Rothschild said. “You know, when you get older, some of that stuff (starts to go).”
More pitching news, and it’s the good kind, Michael Pineda had a 35-pitch bullpen session which included sliders. It was the first he had thrown sliders off a mound. He said he felt great afterward. Now, we wait to find out he feels tomorrow. Hopefully he won’t wake up with his shoulder detached from his body.
CC Sabathia is also scheduled to throw a bullpen session today along with Vidal Nuno, Mark Montgomery, Adam Warren and David Phelps.
So now that Mariano Rivera has announced that the 2013 season will be his last, lots of articles have been written about him. They range from Joe Posnanski telling Goose Gossage to stop talking about Mo to Lance Rinker of Beyond the Box Score writing about how Mo is not the greatest reliever of all-time.
I’ll let you read the latter and come to your own conclusions.
Rivera said he wishes former owner George M. Steinbrenner III were still alive. And speaking of that, Craig Calcaterra of Hardball Talk did one of my favorite things this morning, he teased Joel Sherman of the New York Post for writing a “If George Were Still Alive,” column and he called it Great Moments in ‘What Would George Do’. Those types of columns and that particular “war cry” always amuses me. He’s not alive, he won’t be alive again so just stop already.
With the race for the starting catching position still to close to call in my opinion I think Cervelli needs to start to make a statement sooner rather then later. His defense has shown some serious improvement in these early ST games. Now it's time to start of show some offense and give Cashman and Girardi reasons to make him the starter. Just my opinion.
The game just started and Nunez has already made a throwing error. So what else is new.
Again the Yankees pitchers (Nova and Marshall) through 7 innings have looked very good today especially Marshall. I know it's early and only a very small sample size but so far this spring the Yankee pitchers have looked very, very good. And that's a good thing.
Errors, errors, and more errors 3 more today through 8 innings that makes 23 so far this spring. That's embarrassing.
The Yankees won today and once again the pitchers did NOT allow an earned run. The Rays did score one run on an error but that was it. The ball now goes back in Phelps hands to keep the pressure on Nova after Nova's nice outing today. Trying to be objective though I think Phelps has a very slight lead in the competition for the starting job.
Who is Spence going to push out if he keeps posting shut outs