A Noteworthy Occasion?

The Yankees have for the first time this season ascended to the lead in the division, on the wings of a less than impressive 13-10 record. (As of this posting Red Sox Network, ESPN, continue to list the Sox in first place despite the higher winning percentage of the "2nd" place Yankees. Those guys are such wankers.) I guess this speaks to the parity in the division. While I remain utterly unimpressed with the Jays, whose pitching is not nearly as good as advertised, either at the bottom of the rotation or in the bullpen, the Rays are better than I can ever remember them and the Orioles are certainly better than the dismal predictions. I also think it speaks to the comparative weakness of the AL East. The Yankees lost almost half their games in just 2 series against AL West teams and the Sox got their lunch handed to them by the Indians. And nobody's played the real beast in this league, the White Sox.

Nobody's really talking about this, but the Yankees starting pitching has been pretty amazing. Another grteat start from Mussina today (and he's the biggest surprise of the season so far), Chacon and Wang have both been good in their last couple, Johnson's still winning ugly (actually, look at the guy; he's always winning ugly), and Small just came off the DL. This represents their one chance to make the playoffs in my view. They're unlikely to slug their way there if they have to rely too much on their middle relief to keep games in hand.

Getting to first place though doesn't mean Torre is any more tolerable as a manager. Faced with the necessity of replacing the injured Sheffield, he put Williams in right instead of Crosby. Williams promptly dropped his batting average to 217, while sporting the weakest arm in right field of anyone, I would venture to say, in modern baseball history. Certainly when Damon and Williams are out there together, they represent the only center-right combo ever where neither could reach the cut-off man in the air.

Looking Ahead

Not much to say after a 17-6 win, except that with Bernie hitting 228, its time to end the DH experiment. Bubba is hitting 221 with a lot less at bats and you put him in the field, he's immediately the best or second best defensive player on the team. Bernie is done. they knew it last year, and if BGW believes, correctly, that torre sentimentalizes over Tanyon Sturtze, well Bernie would be the archetype.

My post today is on the upcoming return of Johnny Damon to Fenway. Much was made among the chowderheads about his perfidy in going to the Yankees. His breach of loyalty to Red Sox nation has been much vilified, and of course Red Sox network, otherwise known as ESPN, has linked this traumatic leavetaking to the general absence of player fealty that characterizes the free agent era. Instead of fans and players bonded in mutual tribalism we are told we have a one way adhesion of fans to the teams that more or less disregard them.

I think this analysis is, in essence, inaccurate. What is going on under free agency (in which the front office no less than the players) is not a quantitative difference in loyalty so much as an assymetry in the kinds of loyalty that fans and players feel. Actually it is players who have loyalty to the team, defined as the 25 or so guys they are playing alonside on a daily basis. What they don't have loyalty to is the franchise. The fans on the other hand have no loyalty to the team; when the front office is able to move 5-6 guys in the offseason, 20% or more of the team and replace them with better players, the fans are typically content (look at the chowderheads this year salivating over Beckett and Crisp, apologizing for Loretta and Lowell, supporting Taveras and Riske etc.). That's because fan's loyalty, like that of the front office, is to the franchise. When the chowderheads decry Damon's betrayal of the team, it should be noted that the front office, in their prioritizing of the franchise, had already let Martinez and Lowe go, cut Embree, let Kapler, Todd Walker and Bellhorn go, traded Bip Roberts, replaced Cabrera with Renteria and Renteria with Gonzalez, traded Mirabelli for Loretta, unaccountably let Mueller go, and quite sensibly got rid of that overrated asshole Millar, whose only virtue seemed to be that his name sounded cool when pronounced in parodic Bostonese. Well, you get the idea. There really weren't very many people left from that championship team for Damon to remain loyal to: Ortiz, yes, Varitek, sure, Timlin, Manny, but he always wanted out anyway, and Schilling, whom everybody in baseball quite justifiably loathes.

So while that line about Damon looking like Jesus, acting like Judas, and throwing like Mary is witty enough, the only part of it that's true, particularly these days, is that he throws like Mary--which is to say like Bernie.

As I was saying...

Wrong Stuff managed to keep his era exactly at 7.20, by giving up four runs, all earned, in five innings. But Torre wasn't satisfied with starting a minor league talent. He relieved him with the egregious Mr. Proctor, who soon gave up the home run that put the game out of reach. Just to rub salt in his own fans' wounds, Torre topped things off by going to his other disaster, Sturtze, who gave up 2 runs in a single inning. I'm surprised slow-Joe doesn't bring Allan Embree back just for fun. They are saying that he regards Wright as his fifth starter until Pavano returns (from witness protection presumably), meaning that Aaron Small, the team itself and we fans are all out of luck.

Meanwhile the Yankees didn't exactly cover them selves with glory at the plate either. Granted, Halladay is a really fine pitcher, but the Yankees had runners in scoring position six times during the game and failed to plate or even advance one of them. What's more their 0-6 rsp was festooned with two double plays. I mean its the classic pattern. But of course with Jared on the mound, I'm sure everyone felt they had to hit one out every at bat. You will remember I said there'd be a heartburn tonight (heartburn tonight, with no win in sight, cause we're stuck with Jared Wright). If I can see these things coming, why can't the man being paid millions of George's dollars to avoid them.

The Wrong Stuff (there's gonna a be a heartburn tonight, a heartburn tonight I know)

Well the Yankees won last night by scratching out 4 runs on 5 hits, 3 of them by Jeter, who basically carried them on his back. He's hitting 408 as April ends and for anyone who wished to keep him in the leadoff spot, I think this is proof positive thast hitting second suits him best. Like everyone else though I thought Damon would transform this offense, make it more speed oriented, allow them to grind out runs more. That hasn't happened in part because Damon hasn't been all that good. He's still hitting in the 270's and they need to get somethin ovcer 300 out of him. Chacon was great, even survining the revenance of Williams in center. When you rest Damon, play Bubba you mook!

Oooh, oooh, I'm status quo Joe, I'm status quo Joe, I have so much trouble doing what I don't already know. Even when my players get so old they really start to blow, I'll play them in defense of the dear old status quo.

Before we get too happy about winning that series however let it be noted that the Yankees will surely lose once again tonight. Torre insists on starting Jared (Wrong stuff) Wright against Roy Halladay, which makes the Yankees the Christians to Toronto's lions. In 2 starts so far Wright has managed to complete five innings of work. That's right he's not eligible for a quality start even if you combine his 2 outings. In those 5 innings he has given up 11 hits and 8 runs. His era is 7.20 and this after a terrible spring where he did not give a single good performance. So the question is how bad does this guy have to be before slow-Joe gets it: he's not major league material and except for one year under the wizard Mazzone he never fucking was. He's slated for another start against Tampa next week but after what Toronto will do to him tonight and the fact that Aaron Small will be back on the team Monday or Tuesday, one can pray Torre somehow casts his eye back through the miasma of his own stupidity and remembers that last year the best win-loss starter in baseball was 10--0 and played (when Torre let him) on his team. By the by, Small did his rehab diligence in AAA last night and gave his typical performance, 7 innings 2 runs. You know the other 4 starters have been, in aggregate, better than anyone expected, if Torre would just go with those who have been successful in the 5th slot there might be room for hope.

Say you ain't that slow, Joe!

I just had to relay Torre's comment on last night's game. As I was calling for a public apology for their disgraceful play, Torre was actually saying, "I guess this was one of those games you're not supposed to win...We did all the right things and the wrong things happened. Sometimes there are games like that. There's no explaining them." The Yankees did all the right things? Like batting o72 with men in scoring position, leaving the bases loaded twice, killing a potential rally by running their way into a double play, failing to throw runners out or block home plate, striking out looking not once but twice, arod, with men on base. What right things did they do? If Torre can't recognize how badly his team wasted a good pitching performance and the 14 walks they were handed, how in the world can he even begin to get things fixed? No, how can't he recognize it in the first place? He must be the only reasonably knowledgable person acquainted with this game that can't explain the Yankees losing. The tougher thing is to explain the way the Yankees are playing. Though in Torre's case he might begin by looking in the mirror.

Are you listening to your so-called manager George? Have you forgotten Lou Piniella's phone number along with where you put your car keys?

And the Team is not that good either

BGW comments that I failed to mention the part defensive lapses, particularly on the part of Posada, played in last night's "pathetic" loss. Duly noted. I think Posada is just a miserable defensive catcher. Anybody can fail tot hrow out runners (see Mike Piazza), but his refusal to block the plate is galling. The strictures on the Yanks's defense remind me that to say this is an immensely talented team badly coached is not the same as saying it is a great or even a good team badly coached. As Bill Parcells says, after all the excuses you are what your record says you are, and the Yankees record says what they are at this point an utterly mediocre team. Teams that can't play much defense and can't hit when it counts will be mediocre whatever their pitching and batting statistics say overall.

BGW goes on to argue that the Yankees have only one player on the entire team that is above average defensively, Arod, while as we all know Giambi, Cano, Posada, Sheffield, Matsui and Williams are below to well below average. I would only disagree on 2 counts. One, Bubba is clearly an above average fielder who they need to be playing on a platoon basis. Two, I think BGW's position that Jeter is merely average owing to his limited range is a little harsh. Jeter is quite dependable on the routine plays; he is one of the best shortstops in baseball at making the double play pivot; he throws well from the hole; he is, to my mind, the single best relay man in baseball, regardless of position; he is also, to my mind, the best infielder in baseball, regardless of position, at making plays on balls in the air; finally he is a great all around defensive ballplayer in the clutch. And he has limited range on groundballs. I don't know if on balance this means he should have won either or both of his gold gloves--I don't know how they judge those things anyway--but I do think it makes him a plainly above average shortstop.

the worst coached team in baseball

It's hard to think otherwise. With all of this talent, the Yankees are still a 500 team, and that is with their pitching at a fairly high level. The 2 games of this homestand are archetypal. They win the first with another great outing from Mussina and a lot of hitting. The outcome is never in doubt. Then they get a close one and, appearances notwithstanding, the outcome is never in doubt. You just know they're going to lose, no matter how hard they have to work at it. And tonight they had to work really hard. The Rays walked 14 batters for heaven's sake. The Yankees left 16 men on base. Sixteen! On one for thirteen hitting with men in scoring position. That's right they batted something like .072 with men in scoring position. This is a lineup, remember, with 6 or so of the best hitters in baseball. But wait, there's more! In the sixth inning the runners on second and third both got tagged out on a grounder to third. I mean you can't make this stuff up. Even slow Joe was roused from his perpetual slumber when that happened to ask what the hell was going on. Well Joe, you moron, what's going on is that you have taken a team of all stars and coached them into playing like slow pitch softball amateurs. Under your expert guidance, they're less Babe Ruth than Babe Ruth League.

But at this point, I have to admit, the fault is not yours alone. George fired Billy Martin on 4 separate occasions. He was right to do so every single time. But Billy on his drunkest day, and we're talking blackout drunk here, we're talking fistfights with salesmen in elevators drunk,we're talking the kind of drunk that ultimately killed him in a single vehicle accident, on his drunkest day he never so badly ruined a class of talent this high. (Which just goes to bear out Samuel Johnson's famous anecdote. You, Joe, meet Billy Martin on an especially obnoxious bender. You're drunk! you exclaim. To which Billy replies, yes, but in the morning I'll be sober, sort of, and you'll still be slow.) Why George is letting you keep your job and blow his considerable investment is beyond me. Your continued tenure is by far the most compelling testimony yet that the rumors of his Alzheimer's are, if anything, understated.

Seven innings, two runs, three hits. Wang's line. When you're the new murderer's row, you've got to win every single time you get pitching like that. But with 14 walks to boot, losing is inexcusable for any major league team Especially at home! Jeez, the Royals would have won this one. When the Red Sox got the same number of walks from Baltimore, on the road, they scored 15 runs, without a hit from Manny. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Torre and the team owe their fans a public apology for this game. And the fans owe it to the team to boycott them until George remembers who he is and fires Torre's ass. Now, more than ever, JOE MUST GO!

Theee Yankees Win, Theee Yankees Win (a series)

At last the Yankees have taken two in a row and a series against someone other than the Royals. Johnson showed he's not arm damaged after all and Posada even caught the game, got a hit and a walk, stayed over 300, and generally maintained his trade value. We're at least a starter away, provided we can't get Clemens. Will Posada yield us one?

Phillips by the way looks to be a disaster at the plate and I don't see how he improves the defense as much replacing Giambi at first as Crosby would replacing anyone you like in the outfield. It's Torre's damn loyalty to Williams; he can sit him down but not in favor of another outfielder/DH. Guest blogger BGW's meditation on Torre's sentimentality is highly apropos here. If he insists on DHing Giambi--and G's performance today provews he doesn't need to be in the field for his head to stay in the game--why not bring up Eric Duncan. I'm sure he'll hit alot better than .125.

Mutiny anyone?

Kelly Stinnett caught Chacon today. I haven't heard Posada is hurt, so I'm wondering is this another pitcher who prefers to be handled by Kelly Stinnett, or maybe prefers a catcher who can actually gun down would be basestealers. Note Chacon had his first good outing of the season. Johnson pitches tomorrrow so presumably (or is it hopefully) that means Jorge sits again. Maybe they'll keep winning with good starting pitching and the staff will stage a coup de Kelly. If they're going to sit Posada, though, they ought to trade him. By the by, the Yankees first run came thanks to a Stinnett sacrifice bunt, which is just another thing he can do that Posada can't.

I've said here before I thought the Red Sox looked awfully good so far. But I also have said I didn't understand the Arroyo for Pena trade. I mean who trades a number three starter for a number five outfielder. The trade made evn less sense because evryone should have known, from his offseason and his spring, that Wells was pretty much done. Since Foulke also seems, predictably, to be done so far as closing is concerned, the Sox find themselves down at least one starter, and this before either Beckett or Schilling takes a hiatus.

If that trade was self-evidently stupid, another trade that seemed brilliant at the time may be coming back to haunt the boy-genius as well. Granted on paper, getting Loretta for Mirabelli seems like stealing, and the Padres have hardlyly benefited from the exchange. But Loretta looks like he's a less consistent hitter with a more pop than Graffanino and a comparable glove. In other words, he's not really an upgrade over what they already had. Meanwhile, Josh Bard, the new designated catcher for Wakefield is just terrible. By April 20, he had as many passed balls as Mirabelli had all last year, and they have been costly at that. In addition, Mirabelli could spell Varitek every fifth day without too much of an offensive drop-off. Bard ain't hitting his weight. It's nice to know that even "smart" deals can turn out badly since Cashman doesn't make many.

Redialing Mr. Steinbrenner

I've heard some talk about how the Yankees' start this year is considerably better than last year's 11-19 and thus no casue for concern, let alone action. Two points. First and most obvious, last year didn't turn out so well. Struggling heroically to make the playoffs is not necessarily the best plan for winning the playoffs. Second and more important, last year the Yankees really struggled in every phase of the game. The pitching was below expectation, the hitting was weak, the fielding was as always egregious. This year Jouhnson has pitched to expectations, Mussina has considerably exceeded them. Chacon has been off, but he's still 1-1; only Wang has dissapointed. Meanwhile everybody is hitting. Jeter's at .351, Arod's over 300, as is Williams, Posada, Sheffield and Cano. Giambi's near the lead league in both on base and slugging percentage. Damon's under 300 but his obp is fine. And they are still losing with stunning regularity. A slump is a slump and it is bound to put your situational hitting down the crapper. But when the team is statistically on fire and the situational hitting is still down the crapper, you have one of those situations that defies sabremetric rationality and makes baseball the compelling game it is--i.e. there is a small, undecidable gap between achieving, even as a team, and winning. You can occasionally do the later without doing the former (see the 1996 Yankees) and you can certainly do the former without doing the latter (see the Yankees today). In baseball, you see, there are winners and there are losers.

It's time for the Yankees to confront what they are fast becoming.

Calling Mr. Steinbrenner

I don't know about you, but I think George is being entirely too patient with this team. After tonight's classic bungle he should be firing some people and looking to trade others. The Yankees have not won a single series that didn't involve the Royals and they have yet to win two games in a row that didn't involve the Royals. If they didn't have that three game series with the Royals they might well be rivalling those Royals for the worst record in baseball. Form those blissfully unaware of what happened tonight against the Orioles, in yet another series they seem destined to lose, the Yankees killed their own rallies every way possible. They hit into two double plays, they struck out twice to leave the bases loaded without scoring, including the bottom of the ninth when Matsui looked at strike three. They left two men on on two other occasions, and altogether went 4 for 15 with men on in scoring position. At the end of this Arod, who hit into one of the double plays and struck out to kill another rally, proclaimed that the O's had"deserved to win." I don't know about that but the Yankees certainly deserved to lose. Losers usually do. And any team that has most everyone batting at or over 300 (Jeter, Williams, Posada, Sheffield, Matsui, Cano), not to mention Giambi's 1200 ops, and yet has a losing record for want of offense, well it's hard to find an apter designation for them. What's worse everyone sympathized with Matsui at the end because, in Jeter's words, "nobody expects a slider in that situation. I'm sorry bases loaded, two outs, 3-2 count and down a run in the bottom of the ninth, you see the ball and hit the ball; you don't guess pitches; you don't leave your bat on your shoulder on a pitch down broadway; and you don't make excuses. you admit you suck, which the Yankees certainly do right now, and you get better immediately; or you lose your jobs--beginning with old status quo Joe, cause as Travis Tritt'll tell you the status quo ain't working anymore.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Relief!
The dominant emotion, as the Yankees finally won a close game, but did so without playing the sort of solid fundamental baseball normally required to prevail in such contest. Sheffield ran around a pop fly early on and played it into a hit; Matsui failed to pursue a pop fly aggressively a couple innings later and played it into a hit; on the next batter, Sheffield and Damon both ran around a fly pop and played that into a hit and putting Mussina in a jam, from which the Jays only run came. Three of the first five hits Mussina gave up were on outfield misplays of pop-ups. I mean they looked terrible out there. What's more the Yankees winning run came by way of a baserunning error on the part of Posada. So they were lucky too. Finally they left the bases loaded without scoring any runs not once but twice. Situational hitting remains unbelievably weak for a lineup so statistically strong.Finally there was a doozy of an error by none other than Torre himself. With runners on second and third, two outs, he calls for a double steal, which Jeter and Sheffield successfully execute. The only problem was that the play freed Lilly to intentionally walk Arod, who has killed him historically (he hit a homer in his next at bat) and pitch to Giambi lefty to lefty. Lilly's breaking stuff makes him murder on lefthand hitters and sure enough Giambi struck out to end the inning harmlessly. The double steal in effect saved Lilly's bacon. Oh, they would have pitched carefully to Arod in any event but they would have pitched to him, if only to avoid the chance of a bouncing curveball wild pitch with a man on third. I know I've been harping on slow-Joe to play some small ball. but leave it to him to pick the precise worst moment to do so.They only won because for the fourth straight time Mussina was strong. He's opounding the strike zone more than last year nibbling less and looks to be in better overall shape. Last year he'd flag every time in the fifth. This year he's been carrying through to the 7th or 8th.It looks like Chacon has been sent to the bullpen, which makes some sense if Torre plans on starting small and Pavano in the immediate future. but if this is a move designed to put Jared Wright in the starting rotation, well then the dittoheads that still think Torre is a good manager will have lost any excuse for their misjudgment.

Bully Ball

From the score of last night's game, it certainly looks like the Yankees pitching, and Johnson in particular, posed a challenge the Yankee bats, though potent, could not overcome. That's what the boys at ESPN, like John Kruk, would say. But the familiar pattern of the game indicates that there is something still more disturbing than undependable pitching at work. The Yanks jump out with some runs early and then when the other team strikes back, they go into an offensive shell, lose their aggreessiveness, and ultimately lose the game. Oh yeah and they also hit into a doub le play at a key juncture to kill a rally--last night Arod was the offending party. The only player on the team who kept any pressure on the Jays after the first inning was Jeter, who kept hitting and walking throught the game. I have written in the past that the Yankees have not won any one run or even close games and that might be seen as an effect of thier supposedly weak pitching. But all in all the pitching has been okay and what is really telling is that the Yankees haven't won any close high scoring games either, no 9-8 or 7-6 thrillers. The Red Sox, having won three 2-1 game turn around on patriot's day and win a game 7-6 with a come from behind walk-off homer in the ninth. Last night they lost a 1-0 lead in the seventh and down 2-1 stormed back to take the lead 4-2. When the Rays caught up 4-4 in the eighth, the Sox put up three more to win. Low or high scoring, with arms or bats, the Sox are fighting to win games.

The Yankees on the other hand seem to be playing bully ball; they'll try to beat you up right away, but if a team shows any fight, gets the game close, the Yankees have been backing down. They don't grind to victories when grinding is calle for, and the Sox have been doing nothing else. There is no sabremetric calculus for the difference I'm describing. It's the difference between winners and losers. Right now, with the exception of Derek Jeter and perhaps Johnny Damon, the Yankees are a bunch of losers.

Note: Stinnett threw out two runners trying to steal last night; the only two who attempted. It's not too latre to get value, overvalue, for Jorge. Sheffield dropped a fly ball in right last night while Williams went hitless. Let's get Sheff in the DH slot and Crosby in rightfield.

Now for a case of ersatz activism

I have come to associate Jesse Jackson with geo-political ambulance chasing, which, like its more conventional cognates, is sometimes a good thing and sometimes not so much. But the news reports I have read and heard on the Duke rape case seem to indicate that Jackson has promised to pay the alleged victim's college costs in full, whether or not her accusations turn out to be true. The italicized words here reflect the exact phraseology of the reports. Take a look.

/Push Coalition to Pay Alleged Rape Victim's Tuition Regardless of Whether or Not the Charges She Is Alleging against the Duke Lacrosse Team are True

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said yesterday that his Rainbow/Push Coalition will pay the college tuition of a black woman who told police she was raped by white members of Duke University's men's lacrosse team - no matter the outcome of the case. "I can't wait ... to talk with her and have prayer with her, because our organization is committed, when she's physically and emotionally able ... to provide for her the scholarship money to finish school so she will never ... again have to stoop that low to survive," he said from Chicago in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. When asked, Jackson also said that his group will pay for the woman's tuition even if her story proves false. Attorneys for the lacrosse players have strongly denied that any sexual assault took place at the March 13 party, citing DNA tests performed on all 46 of the team's white members that failed to match any samples taken from the woman./

Source: Winston Salem Journal

Weirdly, no outrage has been expressed in any centrist or left-leaning quarter, at least none that I've encountered, over Jackson's proposed largesse. But think about it. Jackson is not insisting that the charges are true, which of course they may very well be. I see nothing wrong in expressing a belief in the accuser's veracity, even if the evidence is at best incomplete. Nor do I worry about Jackson jumping over the whole presumption of innocence thing. That is his perfect right to do, since he is playing not in a court of law, but in the court of public opinion. But he is doing something quite different, if the AP report is accurate. He willfully makes a point of concedng the possibility that the accusations are untrue, just so he can diminish to the point of negligibility the importance of the distinction between a true and false charge. Huh? If the charges are false, as he allows might be, shouldn't the accuser incur some sort of opprobrium if not actual punishment for trying to inflict extended jail terms on those who didn't commit the crime alleged? I would have no problem with Jackson saying, "we extend this offer even if the charges can never proven in court or elsewhere." That a sexual assault goes unproven, after all, does not mean it never happened. But if charges are actually shown to be mendacious, as he contemplates, should the person levelling them really be rewarded for having done so? And is promising such a reward in the event of perjured charges, given the racial context in which all of this occurs, any less a form of pernicious tribalism than assuming the charges against the Scottsboro boys were true just because a white accuser said so? Let us be clear, the ancillary, post facto evidence demonstrates the vile nature of certain if not all of the lacrosse players and serves to enhance the credibility of the indictments handed down today. But that is not relevant to Jackson's gambit. Neither the despicability of the accused nor the likelihood of their guilt can justify openly discounting the importance of whether or not a charge of sexual assault against them is accurate. Let us remember, false accusations of rape, particularly ones that become as public as this one would be were such untruthfulness revealed, ultimately operate to the benefit of future date-rapists, whose claims of innocence garner a certain cheap, unwarranted credibility in the public mind from the precedents they cite.

False charges of rape, like rape itself, cannot be mitigated in the name of group solidarity, whether racial or gendered. Because what group in the end stands to benefit from rape being excused or false arrest being condoned. None that I can see. Jackson has crossed a line here. It is one thing to chase ambulances. It is quite another to act with calculated indifference as to whether the ambulance is saving victims or creating them.

a brief look at the bottom of the barrel

In the universe of the ersatz, there is no more representative profession than journalism, whose exponents contrive to sanctify their virtually universal ignorance as neutrality, objectivity, or in Foxspeak, fairness. And in the world of ersatz journalism, there is no more archetypal figure than Bill O'Reilly, who lacks the phony gravitas of a Ted Koppel, the pseudo-intelligence of a Lesley Stahl, the lame wit of a Rush Limbaugh, the blow dried vacuity of a Brian Williams, or even the mock-earnestness of a Wolf Blitzer. What O'Reilly does affect as a kind of zirconium surrogate for such empty respectability is chutzpah, which he has coming out of the kazoo (wherever that happens to be). Tonight he put on a special display of that chutpah as only, I would venture to say, O'Reilly can do it. He ripped the "radical left wing publication, The New Yorker," for slandering him. What had the perniciously elite magazine done? Had it the bad grace to insist, correctly, that more intelligence resides in its worst cartoon than in the entire O'Reilly archive? No, it reported that O'Reilly had accused the pro-immigration marchers of intimidation. Scoffing, O'Reilly then ran the offending clip, in which he actually said, "these marchers are intimidating our politicians from doing the right thing." That's right he had the nerve to proclaim as "ridiculous" the translation from the gerund to the noun form. It doesn't get ballsier than that: to refute the charge against him, he quotes himself to the very effect on which the charge is based. For O'Reilly, journalism is like Texas hold 'em. It doesn't matter if you've got the cards (the truth in this case); all that matters is that you bluff as aggressively and consistently as possible. He is the Phil Ivy of his profession--except, you know, that Ivy is kind of cool and O'Reilly's a perfect wanker.

close is what counts

As welcome a development as Wang's 7 inning-one er performance was, Sunday's win continued a rather disturbing trend. The Yankees win half their games by blow-out and lose all the close ones. They have scored no less than 9 runs, I believe, in each of their wins, but they have also lost every single close game they have been in. This goes to Joe Torre's vaunted clubhouse leadership. Even those of us who have given up on Torre as a field tactician have sometimes nurtured a belief in his motivational skills. But so far the 2006 Yankees have demonstrated an inability to grind out one run games on the road, which means they have been wasting good starts (by both Mussina and Johnson), something that is probably in limited supply. The greatest Yankee team in history (1998) attained that status by winning all the close ones, a practice that prepares you for the playoffs, where the situation itself makes things tight. A team that finds ways to lose regular season games they might win finds ways to lose playoff series they should win. The most infamous such series in Yankees history (2004 Red Sox) came about precisely because the Yankees could win the blow outs, but as soon as the series tightened the least bit (up 2 late innings game 4), they proved utterly incapable of closing the deal. It's never too early to start worrying about such things, and since Torre's only calling card as a big league manager these days is personnel maximization, he should be doing exactly that.

P.S. The Sox won 7-6 with two runs in the bottom of the ninth for their fourth 1 run win (against no 1 run losses) of the season. They're playing Yankee baseball and we're not.

another blown opportunity

Having wasted solid work from Mussina last night, the Yankees lost another game they should have won tonight. I mean anytime you have the lead in the ninth, two outs, and Rivera on the mound you expect to win. There was some bad luck, a questionable call and a weak performance from Mo to blame for this loss, but the real reason the Yankees have found last place once again is Torre's unaccountable decision to start the hopeless Jaret Wright, who gave up 4 runs in no time flat and put the Yankees behind the eight ball. I can't understand why this guy is even in the major leagues anymore, let alone starting games against Johann Santana. If the Yankees need a fifth starter to tide them over until Small and /or Pavano are ready, bring someone up from Columbus. Wright did not get anyone out all spring; already had a lousy relief appearance; and now this. Can't anyone in this organization evaluate talent; it is obvious to all of us on the outside that this clown just plain sucks.

The Sentimentalization of Tanyon Sturtze (guest blogger BGW)

The Sentimentalization of Tanyon Sturtze

I’ve only one extended point to make about today’s win over KC. Leading 4-1 in the top of the 8th—a save situation that one fully expects to see Rivera in for the 9th—Torre elects to bring Tanyon Sturtze in the pitch the 8th. Let me remind you that Kyle Farnsworth, the set up guy for Rivera the Yankees went out and signed this offseason, is available to pitch. That is, the guy who is supposed to pitch in the 8th as the bridge to Rivera is standing in the bullpen, while Sturtze is on the mound in a relatively close game. He promptly gave up a solo hr to the first batter he faced, before retiring the next three batters. No harm no foul right, especially considering that the Yankees went on to score 5 more runs in the bottom half of the inning?

Wrong. Lots of harm here. Sturtze in the 8th? What the fuck? Now, I like Sturtze. I root for him—it’s easy and natural to root for the underdog, even if you’re a Yankee fan. This is a guy who just a few years ago was a joke starter (4-18 in 2002) on what was then the biggest joke team in baseball, the Devil Rays. The Yanks plucked him out of obscurity because of an injury plagued staff mid season in 04. He did a better than expected job occasionally for the team that year, although he did still post an era of close to 6. He became emotionally invested in the team during the A-Rod-Varitek brawl—he was the starting pitcher that day, and in a parallel to Varitek’s cheap, punk sucker punch of A-Rod, Sturtze was attacked from beyond by bible-belt hick Trot Nixon, who, when Sturtze was on his back pinned to the ground, jumped on him and began punching him. Sturtze was bleeding from the face and had to leave the game shortly after. The high point of his career no doubt came later that year, in the ill fated game four of the ALCS again against the Red Sox; with El Duque out after 5 innings, and the team clinging to a one run lead, Torre went with Sturtze over Flash Gordon to pitch 2 full innings, in which he was not just good, but electric. He overpowered the potent Sox lineup and got the requisite 6 outs. So, there’s reason to be sympathetic to him.

But we all know that, over the long term, Sturtze is the epitome of sports mediocrity. This is a guy with obviously enough talent to get major league hitters out sometimes. But just as often, he is wild and or gets lit up in a big, big way. He is not consistent and not reliable. He seems physically uncomfortable on the mound, constantly fidgeting. At best, Sturtze should be the guy the team brings in when they are down 8 runs in the 4th to eat up innings; or maybe to pitch the 9th when they are up 8 runs.

Torre, apparently, likes him. As a person. And as broadcaster John Sterling said today “Sturtze would run through a brick wall for Torre.” But surely this cannot be the criteria for who gets the call in big situations. That Sturtze wants to succeed is beside the point. That Torre wants him to is also beside the point. After the hr today, Torre took the rare step of going out to the mound himself, not to yank him, but to give him a pep talk. That’s a kind thing to do, but also a sign of Torre’s fatal lack of savvy. Sterling and Waldman kept saying, “Well, the Yankees are going to need Sturzte this year.” The Yankees NEED Damon to get on base. They NEED Johnson to be dominant every 5 days. They NEED 100 RBI from A-Rod, Sheff, Matusi and Giambi. They don’t NEED Tanyon Sturtze, whose job can be filled by any number of middling level middle relief guys. To me, this move today was worse than bringing Proctor in a tie game on the road with Rivera rested and ready. That had some (wrong) logic about rain and needing to save your closer when you’re on the road in extras, etc. This was purely about sentiment. The sentiment that gave an ineffectual Mike Mussina two starts against the Angels in the ADLS when Chacon was clearly the better pitcher. The sentiment that gave Kevin Brown the ball in game 7 against the Red Sox in 04. The sentiment that kept Bernie in CF so many times last year and the year before, even with Kenny Lofton on the bench, and that now occasionally puts Bernie in right field. The sentiment that prevents winning a championship.

Twin yuck!

It is tempting to suggest that now that the Yankees are back facing major league pitching again, they have resumed their losing ways. But in fact Scott Baker doesn't really count as major league pitching (lifetime record 3-4). He is certainly the very bottom of the Twins rotation and should not be able, on his best night, to hold the Yankees to a single run. Tomorrow we get Santann and the prospect of a losing streak. Wasted was another good outing from Mussina, who has been very consistent this year, even as the Yankees give him very little support. Two of his three strong performances have resulted in losses. And this time, it was the best of the Yankee hitters that lost the game. Jeter came up with runners on second and third, one out, and failed to get the job done and Sheffield followed by ending the inning. Later on Posada got himself thrown out at the plate on a fly to right, just to remove all doubt that he is the slowest man on the planet.

Meanwhile Boston won their third 2-1 game of the year behind the fat man, who struck Ichiro out with men on second and third, one out, to protect that lead in the seventh. His fastball is barely hitting ninety, and is often closer to 85, so we'll have to see how long this dominance can last. But for now, hate him as I do (and I think he's the biggest putz not just in baseball but in all of sport), I have to admit this is impressive. Especially sinse the Sox offensive fall off is even steeper than I had foreseen.

blue, red and green

Although a sweep of the Royals at the stadium does nothing to allay my doubts about the Yankees pitching or Torre's handling thereof, I might have jumped the gun a bit on the Red Sox and their prospects. with two bad starts from Clement, a blow out start for Wells, and Wakefield's inconsistency, there rotation looks as top heavy and limited as the Yanks. And with Seanez and Foulke both looking awful and Tavarex being a fucking psycho, their bridge to Papelbon doesn't look much steadier than the Yanks' bridge to Rivera. Actually the two teams look a little like one another, with the Red Sox having the edge in defense, the Yankees in offense.

I must further concede that Williams may not be quite as bad as I have been assuming, though better pitching alone will provide the necessary test.

It also occured to me today than any forecast of how the season will turn out is inevitably clouded by the new ban on greenies. A common crutch for many, but by no means all major leaguers, greenies, or rather the enforced absence thereof, will really come into play in July, August and September for those players that habitually relied on them to get through the long season. their production is likely to fall off, while those who did not use them will likely see their productiveness increase as the median level of competition declines. since we or at least I don't know who took and who avoided amphetimines, it is impossible to predict which players and which teams will experience a late season melt down or renaissance. Transparency has never been quite so lacking as this year. I suspect the impact of greenies was much greater if less conspicuous than the impact of steroids.

Another Hall of Fame

In other Hall of Fame news, Geno Auriema is to be inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame. It is hard to imagine a more deserving choice. To assess how deserving, one need only compare him to his chief rival, Pat Summitt, of Tennessee. Summitt has won a bushelload of championships, but all of them came before the other universities in the country, spearheaded by Auriema and UCONN, started getting serious about women's basketball. Since that time Auriema and UCONN have won 5 championships and Summitt and Tennessee, despite their huge historical momentum, haven't won any. While it is not the case, as some might imagine, that Tennessee has not won anything since they lost one Debbie Hawhee to graduation, it is pretty close to that. Now the one advantage that Summitt has maintained, despite her losing ways, superior recruitment, is apparently eroding as well. Auriema just signed the number one high school prospect in the nation, leaving one to wonder if Summitt will ever win it all again. My guess is no, she's as done as Trish ver dere at Stanford. Congratulations Geno, and as for you Tennessee fans out there, take comfort in the fact that Summitt is not just overrated but transcendently so, rather like the chief object of our blog-spleen, Mr. Torre.

what we learned today

On the theory that one can learn as much from laughers as from losses, I would like to wake Torre from his perennial slumber over there in the home dugout and suggest some actual managing he might do.

1. Platoon Bernie Williams. For whatever reason Williams is in his declining years a much better righthanded than lefthanded batter. Okay, he's totally pathetic as a lefthander. Today he struck out on a 49 foot curveball. He can still hit lefties though. When righthanders pitch, sit Williams, make Sheffield, Damon or Matsui the DH, and play Crosby in the field. He hits much better than Williams against righties and of course he fields much better and throws much better than any of the outfielders on the team. I was wrong in telling BGW Torre would never subject Williams to the embarrassment of playing right with his rag arm. He did today and the Royals ran on him at will. He didn't cover any ground over there either.

2. More controversially, platoon Robinson Cano. Cano may be a better hitter than Cairo, but against lefthanders it's a push. Plus Cairo is a much more reliable second baseman. When he's in the lineup, the Yankees have a pretty decent infield overall.

3. Change the batting order against left and right handers. Gary Sheffield is nobody's idea of a number 3 hitter against righthanders. He hit 266 last year against righties and has done even worse this year. Matsui should bat third against righties and Sheffield should bat 6. Cano should bat 7 and Posada 8.


Against righties the lineup should be

Damon
Jeter
Matsui
Rodriguez
Giambi
Sheffield
Cano
Posada
Crosby

Against lefties

Damon
Jeter
Sheffield
Rodriguez
Giambi
Matsui
Posada
Williams
Cairo

That's all for now. You had to like the performance of the bull pen today, three innings no runs and not even any Rivera. You see what can happen when you avoid Sturze and Proctor.

In the Hall addendum

In my posting on the Hall of Fame, I forgot to share the single most egregious example of debased standards brought about by sportswriters' and fans' obsession with meaningless career numbers. I actually heard Joe Buck refer to Craig Biggio's inexorable march to the Hall of Fame. Craig Biggio! That this career mediocrity should be mentioned in the same sentence as the Hall without the mediation of a negative is itself a disgrace. That he should be perceived as on a march to the Hall that does not involve some physical pilgrimage for charity is sheer lunacy. But that the march should be understood as inexorable is a thoroughly demoralizing insult to the institution itself and to whatever level of excellence it can still claim to represent.

Of course the sentiment was expressed by the very avatar of generational degeneration, a man who secured his job on the considerable virtues of his father's broadcasting career and then proceeded to gild those virtues by contrast with his own self-satisfied mastery of conventional wisdom, of all things that are simultaneous obvious, orthodox and incorrect. Of course if Peter Gammons can worm his way into the Hall on the basis of sycophancy posing as analysis, I'm sure Joe Buck too is on an inexorable, if intolerable, march of his own.

For Openers

It's always nice to win the home opener as the Yankees did today. But it would have been a happier day if they didn't struggle so much in doing so against the Royals of all sacrificial lambs. Down 7-4, they put up a 5 run eighth, capped by Jeter's two-out, three run blast over the left field wall. Three more of their runs came on a single shot by Giambi back in the first, so the over dependence on the home run ball continues. But the bad news really came from the mound. In his second appearance, Wang was once again really bad, and given how weak the Royals line-up is, this is a scary augur indeed. They really need Wang to win 12-15 this year and at the moment he looks closer to doing that in Columbus. The bullpen broke down again as well. After a terrible spring, and coming off some post season arm trouble, Sturze looked terrible again, giving up 2 runs in two-thirds of an inning and needing Myers to bail him out lest it get a lot worse. Right now the bridge to Rivera, who got his first save today, looks as shaky as ever. They needed to go to Procter again(or at least they chose to in preference to Farnsworth or Villone), and while they dodged a bullet this time, he and Sturze are bound to make for a lot of agite if we need to rely on them for middle relief. I'm not sure you can blame Torre for this. It doesn't seem like the entire Yankees braintrust (irony!) knows how to build a bullpen. Boston got another great game out of Beckett today, and while Foulke got lit up again and their offense isn't up to recent standards, their overall pitching advantage makes them look much the better team to me., especially with Papelbon so impressive in three straight outings.

On the positive side, the Yankees committed no errors in the field, though Bernie did get doubled off second on a pop-up with the bases loaded, killing a rally. Is it too much to ask a veteran ballplayer whose physical skills have so dramatically eroded to avoid bonehead mental mistakes?

One last concern. Sheffield was terrible again today, o for 5 with a strikeout looking. He's really done very little this season and one wonders if the steriods investigation is going to dog him. He's hitting 207 and giambi is hitting 211 (though he does draw all those walks). Are we looking at 2 holes in the order where strengths were last year? And if so, won't that mean the offense will be even lesslikely to overcome our pitching woes?

Everybody Loves Joe

Why? Why? Why? BGW rightly presses the question as to why the press so loves their Joe.

An overdetermined phenomenon to be sure. But I would begin to speculate by rehearsing the old saw about why the Washington Press corps loved Reagan in spite of themselves, while they hated Nixon despite a greater degree of ideological proximity. The answer, as one wag had it, was that Reagan always let them feel smarter than he was and Nixon always made them feel stupider. Joe's hyper-banal press conferences always leave his questioners with the sense that there but for bad luck go they--a middling baseball mind excelling in nothing but a sense of authenticity. Joe never comes off smart--because he isn't--but he knows how to pass off his scuffed leather charm as some sort of unemphatic and therefore deep wisdom. Those world championships in turn reassure the sportswriters that they are not being "had," that Torre is every bit as bright as one needs to be, which is thankfully no brighter than they, to manage at the highest level. The popularity of Torre has something to do with the peculiar populism of baseball, which manages to feed off, even as it questions, its reputation as a thinking man's game.

you can't lose em all

The Yankees went off as they will on occasion, winning a game easily and padding their statistics misleadingly. But there were a couple of good signs in ths game and they should be noted. First of all, Mussina had his second straight good outing, which makes four in a row from the top of the rotation. Had they just won those four games, which they should have, they'd be in good shape right now. Second, Cairo laid down a successful sac bunt early in the game and Damon stole a base early in the game, so maybe they'll stop sitting on their hands so much. as for Posada's big day, it makes for a golden opportunity. Trade him now; his value is likely deceptively high.

My proposal for today: when Aaron Small gets healthy, put him back into the rotation. At 10-0 from last year, he should at least be given the chance to fail. What's more, he is crafty enough to be a decent if not outstanding starter, especially if the Yanks hit like they're supposed to. But his stuff is not sufficiently dominating to make him a particularly effective reliever. They might want to send Chacon to the bullpen. Part of his value lies in his versatility, and he has the kind of stuff that could really shut things down mid-game. They need someone like that. You can always bring him back into the rotation when and if Dotel is ready to go. Torre's refusal to trust Small instances another one of his manifold flaws: his addiction to the familiar and the famous (calling Kevin Brown, Bernie Williams, Allan Embry). He's not just a false icon, he's a bit of an iconicity-fucker.

another disgrace

The Yankees and their idiot manager make me right so often I want to puke.

Tonight Giambi comes up in the top of the ninth, the Yanks down 3-1, on yet another pathetic hitting performance (3 hits to that point). Figgins is halfway between third and short and announcer John Sterling concedes that if Giambi could lay a bunt down (he bluffed one on the first pitch) he would be sure to secure a hit. "But what if he can't bunt," Steling opined, "then what? then you've wasted an at bat if he bunts it back to the pitcher or something." That must have been what slow-Joe was thinking too, because Giambi proceeds to hit away. He smacks a hard one hopper to Adam Kennedy, shifted into short right, who throws Giambi out. "Tough luck," the moronic Sterling exclaims, "if it hadn't been for the shift that would have been a hit." Well it's not tough luck. Giambi should have bunted, and if he can't bunt, that's unacceptable. Get him out there in the mornings to practice bunting till his fucking hands bleed. He's paid 15 mill a year, he has to be able to master a modest skill like bunting, particularly when its vital to his success as a hitter. You're not going to get Adam Kennedy out of short right, unless you force Figgins to play his position, and he'll only do that if he's conceding Giambi first base otherwise. I know Ted Williams insisted on hitting into the shift, with monumental effectiveness, but not to belabor the obvious, Jason Giambi is no Ted Williams.

Now I happen to believe Giambi can in fact bunt. I've seen him do it successfully. And if that is the case, then there is no reason that he doesn't pick up the free base down two in the ninth. I mean if their going to let you bring the tying run to the plate in the ninth you do it, particularly with noone out. No questions asked. Even slow-Joe should be able to think that one through. Speaking of tying runs, the next batter, Matsui, jacks one out of the park, putting the Yankees down 3-2, which was the final score. In other words, Gambi's failure to take the free base, which is to say Torre's failure to direct him to do so, cost the Yankees the game. If I'm Steinbrenner, the last out of the evening would also be the last out of Joe's reign of error.

The next batter after Matsui was Posada, who was dh-ing with Stinnett catching Johnson. Can somebody tell me why you would ever let a lame hitter like Jorge DH. I mean Andy Phillips, Miguel Cairo, Bubba Crosby, they all in their way have a greater upside than a slow, inconsistent, strikeout and double play specialist like Posada (he struck out in the ninth by the way, on a bad pitch, to complete a collar for the evening--big surprise). When Cano subsequently got a hit, Torre brought out Bernie from his night of rest just to make damn sure the Yankees would lose their fourth in a row. Bernie, as we all would predict, hit a nubber back to Frankie Rodriguez, and the greatest franchise on earth slipped yet again into the slough of defeat.

Torre always takes early season defeats casually. It's a long season, he pontificates, with the spurious sagacity of which he is a past master. It seems that he has yet to grasp the fungibility of all regular season games. In the past few years, the Yankees inability to win in April has required them to grind out lots of pressure games in September, which has resulted in flat tired performances in October. Torre's laissez faire early season attitude is a playoff handicap, one the Yankees are not good enough defensively, in the bullpen, or as situational hitters, to overcome.

I'm having a hard time seeing how they win this season. It's not that they're 1-4. It's that a pattern is repeating itself that we have all seen before. They don't hit good pitching and since their own pitching is okay but not great (note: the Red Sox have already won two 2-1 games this season), they almost always lose to teams like the A's, the Angels, the White Sox, teams that bring high quality starters to the party. They are also the teams you face in the playoffs.

the irony, the irony

Before the season, everyone I know, myself included, was saying how the Yankees finally have their tablesetters in place and now they are really going to score. Well, the table setters (Damon and Jeter) are the only ones hitting a lick (Matsui excepted) and the LOB statistics are looking awfully familiar. Torre should be proactive for once in his all-too-inert career. Sit Williams down, he looks exhausted already. Make Giambi the DH (for now) and bring up Eric Duncan to play first. Move Matsui up into the three spot and put Sheffield down in sixth. You have to have somebody batting behind Giambi so he can do what he does best, post-steriods, which is draw walks. Get Posada down into the ninth slot. He ain't hitting and he's not about to start, at least not with any consistency. They really shoulld try and deal him, preferably for a solid middle reliever. They also ought to start sniffing around to see if they can pick up a DH, just in case Giambi is off the HGH. One run against LA's fourth starter. To paraphrase Yogi: it gets ugly early around here.

A Joe Less Deserving than Shoeless

Gary Gillette, psuedo-sports journalist (are there any other kind?), writes in USA Today: "Joe Torre will go down as one of the greatest managers of all time, whether he wins another world series or not." Actually I doubt old Joe will ever rank with John McGraw or Connie Mack or Joe McCarthy or Miller Huggins or Casey Stengel or Walter Alston or Whitey Herzog or Leo Durocher or even Billy Martin, when it comes to field generalship. If Torre makes the Hall and with it the managerial pantheon--and I suppose he will--it will be based on the perception that he, like Phil Jackson of Bulls/Lakers fame, performed the at once delicate but onerous task of handling enormous talent and equally enormous egos without significant melt down or implosion. I hold this mode of canonization highly suspect. Why is it when a team plays poorly because they are either unmotivated or just plain untalented, sportswriters rue the inevitable firing of the manager as an unjust expediency--"They only fired him because they can't fire the players." But when a manager like Torre is fortunate enough to preside over an enormously skilled and motivated team, he gets substantial credit for their achievements. If managers are to reach the Hall of Fame, it should be because they show themselves master tacticians, brilliant handlers of personnel--starters, bullpens, pinch hitters--not because they happen to draw the best team. Joe Torre had, I freely admit, one Hall of Fame year, 1996, when he piloted a team that had no business winning a world championship to the promised land through a simply brilliant deployment of his bullpen and an equally inspired use of his bench. He also brought small ball back to the Yankees that season and then promptly forgot about through the fat years, 1998-2000, and back into the lean.

When Torre does take his underearned place in the Hall, however, it won't be for 1996 in particular but for the dynasty of the late 90's, which it will doubtless be noted, to his credit, had no superstars or, if we're being honest, one or two. Yes, the absence of superstars on the Dynasty teams will undoubtedly redound to Torre's glory, separating him in the vulgar minds of the sportswriting public from the whole Phil Jackson phenomenon. But superstars or not, the Yankees of those years were simply overloaded with talent at every position, throughout the starting rotation and deep into the bullpen. Their aggregate talent was much higher than say the world champion Braves of 1957, who had four hall of famers or the 1967 Orioles, who had three, or the 1980 Phillies, who also had three, or even the early seventies dynasty A's, who have three and counting. On the greatest of the Yankee teams, 1998, only two future hall of famers played, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, Boggs having departed and Clemens having not yet arrived. But Joe Torre was not in any way responsible for "squeezing" talent out of the likes of Paul O'Neill, Bernie Williams, Tino, Pettite, David Cone, Knoblach, Brosius, Nelson, and Boomer. These were all quite gifted players, sub Hall to be sure, but in their numbers an incredibly formidable crew to have at one's disposal. And if Torre didn't make these guys great--Paul O'Neill won a batting title before Torre came on board; Cone was an ace for other teams; Tino was great as a Mariner and Knoblach had his best years in Minnesota--then the fact that none of them will ever be in the Hall, should give one pause as to whether Torre should ascend these particular heights on their efforts. This is an instance of what we might call managerial surplus value--the middle-manger securing the profits from the efforts on the floor, or field. If you beleive Torre had more to do with the dynasty than Paul O'Neill, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettite or David Cone--more to do with 1998 than David Wells--than you probably believe he belongs in the Hall. But if you believe they, who will never be in Cooperstown, and by rights should not be there, were more instrumental to those dynastic achievements than the man who sat and watched, then you should reject the conventional wisdom of conventional minds like Gillette, Gammons and Phillips, and reject his candidacy outright.

In the Hall?

The Baseball Hall of Fame has been undergoing a steady devaluation over the last twenty years, though the signs date back to the fateful moment they let Rabbit Maranville in. Part of this devaluation has been the lowest common denominator effect: whoever is the weakest member sets a new (low) standard for admission on the reasoning that "well, we let Phil Niekro in" so we have to let Don Sutton in," or vice versa. Part of it is the longetivity effect. In the search for objective indices of greatness, people gravitate to talsimanic numbers like 500 homers or 300 hits or 300 wins. As players are able to extend their careers, thanks to watered down competition brought on by expansion, increased role playing, the DH, steriods, greenies and other performance enhancing substances, and better conditioning, those same numbers signify excellence less securely than ever and yet are relied upon no less staunchly. So we have Robin Yount and Eddie Murray and Phil Niekro and Don Sutton and Tony Perez and we would have had Rafael Palmiero (thank god he got caught). Finally there is the sympathy effect for well-beloved but hardly transcendent ballplayers like Kirby Puckett, who no more deserves to be in the Hall dead than he did when alive.

The first question shouldn't be who we let in, but who we should take out. There should be a buyer's remorse clause on Hall passes, so when we make an error based on longetivity (Paul Molitor) or popularity (Phil Rizzuto) or temporary insanity (Mazeroski), we can correct. Sorry, buddy, it's not that you are no longer one of the all-time greats, but that you never really were. The key to letting new people in should be utter dominance over a five year span or utter dominance over a 2-3 year span with near dominance over another 8-12 years. Would you pay eagerly to see a player at his height is far more important than whether that player would inevitably be there if you showed up at the ballpark during a given 20 year period. Ichiro Suzuki is already a hall of fame ballplayer to my mind if he retires tomorrow and Eddie Murray will never be, even if he straps it on and plays another ten tedious years. Numbers should be focused on in single season doses; career aggregates should be regarded with suspicion. Bert Blyleven is upset because they won't let him in the Hall, even though he only fell 13 wins short of the three hundred that would certainly have punched his ticket. For my money, he could have gone 310-320 and still not deserved admission. Who cares how many games he won over an overly long career? Did any team that needed a win feel utterly demoralized that they had to face him? Of course not. Pedro Martinez and his 198 wins deserves the Hall far more even if his toe, as seems increasingly likely, puts an end to his career this season. Sandy Koufax was the greatest pitcher in baseball history over a five year span, and as a result, he was the greatest pitcher in baseball history (with the possible exceptions of Lefty Grove and Christy Mathewson). Warren Spahn was great over a much longer span than Koufax and was certainly one of the greatest ever, but he didn't have the meridian Koufax did and so he simply doesn't live on in collective memory with quite the same lustre. The Hall is about collective memory and memory eternalizes the peaks of a career, making them all, in effect, that matters.

The Baseball Hall of Fame is the ultimate icon factory and so it is important to address its general conditions of operation before looking at why Joe Torre, the ultimate false icon, shoud be kept out. We will take up slow-Joe's disqualifications for glory next time.

deja-phooey all over again

Well yankee fans, did the game last night remind you of anything? Like all of last year! The Yankees get a few runs, sit on the lead while the opposition pecks away at the starter in the middle innings and then blows the bullpen to kingdom come before the Sandman gets a chance to put them to sleep. Why do the yankees lose so many games like these? The obvious answer is that their bullpen still stinks, even after all the huff and puffing during the hot stove league. But I would proffer another explanation, at least as relevant as their bull pen woes. They play lousy fundamental baseball, and for that, blame accrues to the manager.

First of all, the Yankees need to win a lot of come from behind games because they are the world's worst frontrunners. If they build an early lead they typically go into a shell and try to hang on, a strategy which only magnifies the weakness of their relievers. They don't get runners over and so they don't scratch out additional runs in the middle innings to take pressure off the pitching. Most of them either will not or cannot bunt, and since most of them are older power hitters this inevitably means a lot of rally killing double plays. Exactly what is Torre doing in Florida each February and March? He should have all of these guys training to bunt for at least one full day and then an hour every day after that. John Kruk says major leaguge ballplayers don't really need spring training and so spend most of their time partying. But if the expectation was that they had to know how to make every skill play, respond defensively to every situation etc., they would find that they needed the work every day out there. Hit and run is something else the Yankees don't try very often or do very well. Nor do they move runners often enough by giving themselves up. They'd rather wait for the three run homer. But that is just lazy man's baseball, which serves you much better against weaker teams whose pitching is prone to give up the bomb than stronger ones. The Yankees are a terrible situational hitting team in part because Torre doesn't require them to do the little and relatively easy things (like bunting) that increase the odds of success. He hasn't created a culture of urgency around getting each man in scoring position home and so when the playoffs roll around, they don't, and they lose.

The other side of fundamental baseball of course is defense, and the Yankees really should be much better defensively than they are. Hitting is an art; defense is a science. By sheer repetition in practice, a major league ballplayer will come to make all the routine plays. And if the Yankees did no more than that, improved in just the measure that daily workouts would ennable, they could win 5 more games a season. They're is no point in riding a slumping artist; but Torre should be yanking people off the field, mid-inning, for botched plays, and he should be instituting strenous, mandatory practice regimes to make sure the routine plays are made, the right base is thrown to, the cut-off man is in place. He cannot leave Robinson Cano, who had yet another bad error last night, to be the second coming of Alphonso Soriano. When it comes to defense, Torre needs to use the considerable moral capital he has accrued from being the most overrated manger in the game and kick some ass. He might want to start by telling Posada you either block the plate in the Bronx or you're going to be doing it in Columbus.

Torre is the one that always claims it's pitching that counts; we win with our pitching, he says. On that philosophy, you are necessarily envisioning a lot of low run games. If you're scoring at will, after all, it's not really about your pitching. But it is precisely in the low run game that manufacturing opportunies, pushing across the odd run, matters most. The Yankees draw a lot of walks. That too is central to their philosophy. But if you're going to take walks in low run games, it really would realy help to learn how to score without getting hits. It is also in low run games that you cannot afford to give runs away, as Torre blithely watched Bernie Williams do all last season. You cannot have a pitching first philosophy and tolerate the woeful defense the Yankees play as an obstacle to be overcome. To do so is to become a hitting first team, like the Yankees of the 1980's, and we all know how many world championships they won. But without admitting it, without acting on it, just by being the unimaginative, push button manager he is, Torre has de facto adopted a hitting first philosophy, and Cashman has built him just the team to ennact it--right up to the first round of the playoffs.

The Yankees haven't won a world championship since gradually losing the sound fundamental heart of the team--Girardi to trade, Knoblach to insanity, O'Neill and Broscius to retirement, Bernie and Tino to age and decrepitude. Those guys, those teams, have come to be mytholigized by Yankee fans, surrounded by a dewy aura of magic, moralized as men of nerve, mettle, intestinal fortitude, clutchness--warriors to use George's favorite overheated term. But the truth is they just played the game right, by Spalding guide standards. If they had magic and mettle, it was the magic and mettle of sound fundamentals.

And the Yankess would stillhave won it all in 2002 if only, with the bases loaded in the top of the ninth up 2-1 in games on the Marlins, and the score tied, Torre had told Aaron Boone to squeeze bunt. Mariano would have closed it and we wouldn't have looked back.

The Order of Things

Huston Street is a great closer but he is an especially tough nut for righthanders. Which brings us to the Yankees batting order. After letting Damon get into scoring position, Street should have had to face Matsui before getting out of the inning. He did not. Why? Because when Torre is not mishandling the bullpen, he's busy failing to maximize the potential of his line-up. The Damon deal gave the Yankees a unique opportunity to put a line up out there that is not only tough top to bottom but is also proofmagainst all platoon specialist relievers. Properly set, the batting order would offer no chance to face to men from the same side of the plate in a row. Here is what the order should look like. Damon (L), Jeter (R), Matsui (L), Rodriguez (R), Giambi (L), Sheffield (R), Cano (L), Williams (B), Posada (B). you would lose the wraparound thing with Cano but it would be more than worth it to get him, rather than Posada, an extra AB every once in a while. Now torre is a guy who in particular situations worries the right/left match-ups. So why doesn't he act on those concerns in the line-up as a whole. Another mystery form the worst field manager ever to secure a reputation for excellence.

Coming Posts: 1. Why Torre no more belongs in the Hall of Fame than Theo Epstein's personal lavatory attendant (oh you say Peter Gammons is in the Hall? Hmmm.)
2. Whatever happened to sound fundamental baseball in the Bronx; or why is Torre channelling Ralph Houk instead of Billy Martin?

here we bleeping go again

Because not even joe torre--the world's worst manager of the world's greatest sports organization--can screw up a 15-2 opening day win, I was goping to devote my first blog entry to an argument of why Joe-Slow does not deserve to go to the hall of fame for his managerial career. But now that will have to wait as fresh evidence for the argument comes pouring in on just the second night of the season.

No sentence beginning with the words, Now pitching Scott Proctor, can end well if you're a Yankee fan. We all know that. We claim no special wisdom in this insight. We have been subjected time and again to the sad fact that Proctor simply cannot get ANYBODY OUT at the big league level. The only question is why a man who gets paid millions of dollars to analyze and deploy talent, a man pronounced a genius by sportswriters as overrated as he is (Mr. Gammons?), why he should prove not just foolish, not just stupid, but positively ineducable! I mean how many times does Proctor have to stink up the joint before Torree say no mas--or at least nothing but mop up. The reason the Yankees always have bullpen problems, even with the greatest reliever in the history of the game, is that torre is in charge of handling the damn thing.

Now tonight you have a tie game in the home park of one of the few teams in the AL that is the Yankees' equal this year. Mussina has delivered a decent outing, the kind he is usually going to get a W for, and you've just missed Sandman-time by a few feet in right field on Damon's blast. Remember you suffered all last summer with the non-existent bridge to Gordon-Rivera and one of the leakiest planks was none other than the egregious Proctor. You spent the offseason improving your bullpen and you've just seen some of the fruits of that effort in inning 8, with a strong showing by Farnsworth. He could come back out for the ninth of course or you could go to Villone, whom you picked up in your rebuilding effort, or even Myers for that matter as lefties are on-deck for the A's. You might even go Mariano and hope to get a multi-run tenth. anything but Proctor, a man weighed down by his infant daughter's sickness, meaning he is, even less likely to be effective than usual (alright, alright zero is zero) How, how, how under these circumstances, with the chances for a highly satisfying early season victory at hand, can Torre even think about bringing this unfortunate Bozo out to the mound? How can such a decision be seen as in any way rational, let alone sound. Hmmm.

Oh Jeez, call John Dowd, Mr Commissioner, he's fucking betting on the A's!!

Actually that would have made pretty good evidence in a Pete Rose trial. "Well Mr. Dowd, what real proof do you have that Pete Rose bet on baseball" "Well beyond the betting slips, I can conclusively show that in a close ballgame, with a well rested bullpen, he chose to pitch SCOTT PROCTOR." "Ah! Mr. Rose you are excused..from baseball...for life."