The Yankees made what looked like a very minor move on Saturday, acquiring Reid Brignac from the Rockies for $75,000. Brignac is likely just a stop gap until Eduardo Nunez returns, but he does offer some tools that could keep him on the roster for a while.
For those that read daily, you probably know that I’m not a fan of Jayson Nix. No matter what he’s done in recent days, Nix currently has a 61 wRC+, which isn’t far off from his career 72 wRC+. Even if you fall in the camp that believes his bat is secondary to his glove, we still run into problems. The only infield position where Nix saves runs is second base, and Robinson Cano isn’t going anywhere. Though I hate using defensive metrics without a huge sample size, UZR/150 gives him a career -18.5 at short stop, and RZR a .767 (average is .824 for short stops), and his third base is rated just below average at -0.8, with a .698 RZR. (average is .685 for third base)
Much like Nix, Brignac isn’t a great defensive player either. His metrics at shortstop and second base are right around league average, and his third base has been below average. He also owns a career 60 wRC+, so again we’re thinking that we have a player with little bat and no value with the glove. However, Brignac is just 27 years old with just 769 major league plate appearances under his belt. In his 3,000+ minor league plate appearances, the infielder owns a .771 OPS and appeared on Baseball America’s top 100 prospects list 4 times, the last being in 2010.
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Gardner 8
Cano 4
Hafner 0
Overbay 3
Granderson 7
Adams 5
Suzuki 9
Brignac 6
Romine 2
Sabathia 1
Four words: Lyle Overbay cleanup hitter.
Look who is on his way back:
Felt good to get my first AB’s since March. 1-2 with a double and a walk, I’ll take it. #Yankees in first place, I’ll take that too!
This is good news.
Mark Teixeira was originally hoping to be back by May 1, then June 1 but now it looks like his return date will be closer to that June 1 deadline.
Tonight
CC Sabathia (4-3, 3.19) vs Freddy Garcia (0-2, 5.51)
Tomorrow
Phil Hughes (2-3, 5.88) vs Miguel Gonzalez (2-2, 4.58)
Wednesday night
Hiroki Kuroda (6-2, 1.99) vs Jason Hammel (5-2, 5.72)
The Yankees and the Orioles have only played three times this season so far with the Yanks taking two out of three in the Bronx last month. Included in that series was the complete game shutout by Kuroda on April 14.
Mariano Rivera is so consistently good that he at times gets over looked on blogs such as this one. A writer is probably more inclined to write a Mo post if he’s seeing a bad stretch of play than if he’s being his usual dominant self. I try to do at least one Mariano appreciation post a year, but this year is a little different. Mariano missed most of last year with an injury. This is his swan song season (and unlike other athletes you know he means it). For a time his unreal stretch of play was getting somewhat overlooked, but now that he gotten off to a perfect start in save opportunities to start the season the media hype surrounding his play has picked up. The saves are shiny and nice to have, but to admire them is to overlook all that Rivera is doing. Let’s take a closer look.
Every now and then here at SNY.tv, I am able to get down from my soapbox and put on my journalist hat. The other day MLBPA Executive Director, Michael Weiner was so kind as to give myself and IIATMS about an hour of his time to sit down and chat about as the title would indicate, the evolution of the game during his tenure at the Players’ Association with of course, a couple of Yankees questions peppered in there. This is part one of that interview:
If you ask him whether he ever dreamed of working in sports let alone as the head of the most powerful players’ union in all of professional sports, Michael Weiner would tell you that all he wanted to do coming out of Harvard Law was work in Labor Law for a union not necessarily in sports. However, as fate would have it the New Jersey-native and life-long Yankee fan found his way to the Major League Baseball Players Association in 1988 where he has obviously remained for the better part of 25 years.
Coincidentally, Weiner’s tenure with the union has also spanned one of the most trans-formative and at times tumultuous eras for the game of baseball. 25 years ago if you were to tell anyone worth their salt in terms of knowledge of labor relations in sports that in 2013 baseball, with their Supreme Court-granted anti-trust exemption would have the most stable, peaceful, and amicable collective bargaining relationship in all of sports, they would call you crazy. However, that is exactly what has happened, the other three major professional sports leagues have endured protracted lockouts over the last 2/3 years and baseball on the other hand agreed to a new CBA even before the previous had expired.
When asked to explain the seemingly dramatic change in terms of the labor relations dynamics among the players and the owners, Weiner had this to offer:
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I predicted that the New York Yankees would go 5-3 last week. They went 4-3 and it would have been 5-3 if the game yesterday had not been rained out. The postponement was the second time this year that was problematic. Earlier in the season, the Yankees lost two games to the weather against the Indians. At the time, the Indians were playing awful and their pitching was a mess. It was the perfect time for the Yankees to catch them. Instead, those two games were made up after the Indians had time to regroup and start rolling. The result was a split of those two games. Yesterday could have concluded a second sweep of the Blue Jays at a time when the Blue Jays are really floundering. Will history repeat itself? As a team, you want to catch a team when they are down. The opportunity was lost.
So we enter a new week and the Yankees are back out on the road. They start the week in Baltimore and finish in their own personal house of horrors in St. Petersberg, Florida. This is going to be a very interesting week. Here is a preview of the week to come.
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With Derek Jeter around, the #2 spot in the lineup was never a problem. Just pencil him in there and fill in behind him or pencil him into the leadoff spot and just plunk somebody in behind him. The loss of Jeter, paired with the injury or free agent losses of a few other guys, has left the #2 spot in order an absolute dead zone this year. Of all the issues the platoon-heavy and injury-shortened roster has caused in 40+ games, the biggest and consistently most noticeable is the gap in the 2nd spot and the problems on the back end of that get caused by Robinson Cano hitting there.
Cano has spent the bulk of his time hitting 2nd this season, and in 94 ABs there he’s posted a .362/.406/.681 slash with 16 XBH, 16 R, and 22 RBI. The 77 non-Cano ABs from the 2nd spot have resulted in just 14 total hits (3 for XB), 7 R, and 4 RBI. Those results aren’t surprising when you consider that it’s been the Nixes, Ichiros, and (yeesh) Franciscos of the world occupying the spot, nor is the frustration that comes with having to watch those guys hit there. Based on some recent roster additions, there might be some upgrade options available and opportunities to bump Cano back down and lengthen the lineup a bit. Options like …
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I was supposed to be at today’s game but I didn’t feel like sitting in a rainy Yankee Stadium while the powers that be do the ‘will they or won’t they?’ game.
If the game is played, here are the lineups:
BLUE JAYS
Cabrera DH
Bautista RF
Encarnacion 1B
DeRosa 2B
Lawrie 3B
Izturis SS
Rasmus CF
Bonifacio LF
Blanco C
Dickey P
YANKEES
Granderson CF
Cano 2B
Wells LF
Hafner DH
Overbay 1B
Nix 3B
Ichiro RF
Brignac SS
Romine C
Sabathia P
Reid Brignac is making his Yankees debut, if the rain doesn’t wash away the day.
Go Yankees!
UPDATE (12:34 P.M.) The game has been postponed.
If you want to make this into an open thread where we discuss current events, other baseball games or exchange recipes, feel free.
IIATMS MASTHEAD
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Jason Rosenberg, Larry Koestler,
Moshe Mandel, Brien Jackson
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Michael Eder, Stacey Gotsulias, Matt Imbrogno
Writers
Tamar Chalker, William Tasker, EJ Fagan, Mike Jaggers-Radolf, Brad Vietrogoski, Domenic Lanza
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