WHERE ARE WE?

As the Yankees now seem assured of playing October ball and entering the playoffs as baseball's hottest team, I thought we might pause and look at the three problem areas this team has had for the past couple of years, to see if any improvement has been made.

Bullpen: JOBA, JOBA, JOBA. And frankly not much else. Vizcaino has been better the second half of the season, but Ramirez is unreliable at best, and really seems to have a weakness for the long ball. Farnsworth is so bad, I don't think they should even put him on the postseason roster. His is a uniquely flammable combination of ineffective wildness (he throws alot of 4 pitch walks) and grooved fastballs ripe for the hitting. I think Bruney and Britton are both better bets, and they are both pretty awful. Villone is adequate for a batter or two. Veras is either very good or dreadful--you know which right away; unfortunately Joe doesn't.

The real weakness in the bullpen is the starting pitching, which is either too old (Clemens), too contact averse (Mussina, Wang), or too wild (Hughes) to give the bullpen any kind of break. If the starters could consistently go 7-8, Joba, Vizcaino and Mo would make for a pretty awesome pen. But those other guys will have to pitch sometimes, and when they do we will probably lose. The relievers give even a good tactician a very narrow marign for error. Slow Joe can no more walk that line than Dumbo the Elephant can cross the big top on a suspended skein of dental floss.

Situational Hitting

There has been improvement here, both because of slight upticks in the performance of Damon and Matsui, a huge uptick in the performance of Mankiewitz and because Jason Giambi is one of the best pinchhitters in baseball right now. The last is not really that surprising: he was always willing to take alot of pitches, not fearing to wait for the one that would define his night, and that is a good mindset for a pinchhitter.If you combine this improvement with the implosion of Scot Shields, I think you actually have to give the Yankees a shot against the Angels this year.

Defense

Cabrera is the best defensive center fielder the Yankees have seen since Mickey Mantle, or at least Mickey Rivers. Mankiewicz has been hitting well enough to keep the first base job, which is a giant improvement over Giambi. Jeter's sliding back into the erratic play of the spring and Cano has regressed some at second, though he still turns a mean DP. Posada is not where he was last year in terms of nailing runners, but he's not too bad. Has had some butterfingers lately. We need Damon's coverage with Matsui's arm in left. Overall, you'd have to say this team is not going to win a WC with its defense, but it may have risen to a leveel of adequacy where it need not lose one either.


Torre

He still stinks.

I saw him interviewed yesterday and he was talking about how the season turned around when he started playing Melky. Hey Joe, that happened last year too, but you were too stupid to play him every day in April and May. If you had, the yankees would probably be up a game or two at this point instead of down two. Moreover, Torre's prejudice against youth continues and may well cost the Yankees the title. Quick, who on the available evidence is the best starter on this team. Right now it is probably Ian Kennedy. He's certainly no worse than 2, three at the outside. But Joe's misplaced sense of seniority is such that Kennedy's not even going to be in the rotation come the playoffs and probably slots in behind Hughes (whom he has outperformed) simply because he came up a few months later.
No Torre is still Torre. There's a difference between old school and old fool and he never learned it (which by the way is the definition of the latter).

A POEM OF THE TIME(S)

I woke up this moring and this ditty came more or less rushing into my head. Without bragging on it too much, let me just say, as a literature professor, that the attentive will find multiple allusions to major poets and some prosodic and structural grace notes.


2004: A Race Oddity; or
The Chowderhead's Song

When Manny, being Manny,
is on his late September holiday
and I am forced to watch the spectacle
of my beloved Dice-K
issuing walks and gopher balls
because, they say, he's hit the wall,
I need not pine, I need not chafe,
but go into my mental safe
and retrieve the memory of 2004
When three down, we won four
in a row, say no more,
I need say no more
(which is good, cause I got nothing more to say)
We are the dogs, that was our day.
Our one and only little day.


When Curt throws fastballs ready-to-launch,
Fatter than his own considerable paunch,
When his blog entries blow
harder than any pitch he'll throw,
And when he finds time for a thousand
explanations and justifications, and worse,
That a single Yankee homer will reverse,
Well, then, I too can wave the bloody sock
And remember Two Thousand and Four,
When he was our very own Rock
of Gibraltar, or Plymouth,
or whatever bulbous legend he'd like to claim
to talk himself into the Hall of Fame.
Say no more doughboy,
You need say no more
(Cause even we're sick of what you have to say)
How you stole the credit from Pedro
and Derek Lowe,
So you could have your day.
Your one and only little day.


When Bucky fucking Dent comes back
As Aaron fucking Boone,
And McNamara's blunder
In leaving in Bill Buckner
Comes back as Grady Little's boner
In leaving in our Pedro,
When I must needs endure that litany,
That endless fucking litany
Of what it means to be a Yankee,
Of the 40 pennants and 26 Rings
Enough to stuff small countries
Full of bling,
I can still drag it out once more,
Like some recalcitrant old whore,
The ghost of Two Thousand Four
(Like some Republican
with Two Thousand One)
When Manny still seemed a holy fool
And Curt was a little less the Tool
Before the HGH gave David Ortiz
Jason Giambi's broken knees
And Papelbon was still a gleam
In Jeter and AROD's late inning eyes
And Theo still seemed youthfully wise,
Before he shipped Arroyo off for Willy Mo
And Gabbard for Gag-me
Treating our franchise
Like his fantasy team.
Before that immortal trio
Of Cabrera to Renterria to Julio.

But now I'll say no more.
Now, really, I need say no more.
(Which is good cause there's so much more to say
Of Red Sox losers before and since that day)
Of how Goose Gossage made us ill
And Jason Veritek's declining skills.
But I can still reflect upon that day,
That glorious day, Two Thousand Four,
Before it slips completely away,
When we won four
To lift Babe's curse
And finally, finally freed ourselves--
Of the ability to speak of anything else.

THE MARATHON ASIDE,

the most important thing that happened to the Yankees tonight was probably that Cleveland won, LA lost and now they are tied for the second best record in the league. While the Yankees seem to me unlikely to catch the Red Sox, though the latter are one of the most overrated teams in recent memory, they now have a pretty good chance of avoiding the Angels in the opening series (a non-consummation devoutly to be wished).



As for the game itself, a win is a win but that's about the only thing you could say for it (oh, and of course Boston really does suck!). Everything that is wrong with the Yankees was fully on display. The situational hitting was terrible; they left a boatload of guys on against Dice-K, who true to form gave out 4 free passes in addition to several hits. They let him off the hook in the first with the bases jammed and then Jeter swung at ball 4 in the dirt in the sixth, when the walk would have brought in a run, closing the lead to 5-3. Last but not least, when Dice-K began his typical meltdown in the 4th, giving up a lasar double to Posada and a long triple to Matsui, with noone out, Cano and Cabrera saved his ass by repeatedly going out of the zone, just when he was doing his best to mix in some walks with the blasts.



But of course the situational hitting was nothing compared to the glovework. Giambi's miscues were preposterous. The grounder was inexcusable and the dropped throw from Abreu was worse. But the truth is he should have also picked the throw from Jeter in the first, and if he had any sort of an arm, he would have gotten the picked-off Ellsbury on the way to second. Giambi homered for one run, but gave away three. God do I miss andy Phillips. With a ground ball pitcher like Pettite ( or Wang) you need a first baseman who can play the position. I'm not sure I wouldn't have gone with Betamint. Posada was almost as bad by the way. He had two passed balls, he should have had an advancing Pedroia at second, and he seemed out of synch all night. Finally there was good ol' Joe's mismanagement of the bullpen. Can anyone tell me why Sean Henn was in a game that was not already over one way or the other. Now that Veras and Bruney have returned and Vizcaino seems healthy, why is Henn even allowed to dress?



No, the win tonight was more about Boston's troubles than the Yankees' prowess. Oki-Doki is just that with his opponents at this point. I don't think he's tired--he hasn't pitched all that much--but he's becoming familiar. And you know in Japan, where he was really familiar, much weaker hitters were making him look less than sensational the past couple of years. I think he's a novelty act whose novelty is wearing off. As for Papelbon, he's still great, but both Jeter and AROD have shown an abilty to deal with his heater, Jeter by fighting it off (remember game four of the 2006 massacre), Arod by jumping it (remember the GW homer earlier this year). As for Dice-K, his performance, his best in weeks, was vintage Jared Wright: get through 5+, don't get hurt too bad, leave men on base for the relief corps, and stress them to the max. If the Yankees had exercised greater patience, his stats would have been as lackluster as his performance actually was. He too is not tired, hell he was throwing 95 into the 6th and he never throws higher. But he's actually a little like Mussina: a) his out pitches are usually out of the zone (he has more velocity than Moose but his fastball is really flat) so b) he gives up lots of walks to patient line-ups and c) he then gets frustrated and serves up hittable strikes.



I have concentrated on the ills of the Boston staff because that is what was supposed to save them from a diminished line-up. Obviously there is a power outage in New England, especially with Manny on vacation or hiatus or sabbatical or drugs or whatever the hell he is on. Ellsbury looks talented but I can see why he only hit 2 homers all year in AAA. We found out tonight why Drew has sucked so bad all year and I really feel bad for him on that, but the fact remains that he has given and continues to give them no pop whatsoever. Lowell is a better hitter but a lesser slugger than ever--he may not even reach 20 homers let alone the 35 he used to be good for. Varitek is-- as I said last year and again this spring--done, done, done. His last at bat, against Mo, whom he has owned, was nothing short of pathetic. If he played for any other team, and if he wasn't a world-class wanker in any case, I'd pity him for it, or at the least feel guilty for all the shadenfreud I am taking about his descent into sub-mediocrity. As a team, they have to string together lots of hits (or Yankee errors) to score runs, particularly when you do the sensible thing and walk the still dangerous Ortiz (if only for the comedy of watching him try to pull all that steriod enhanced fat around the bases on those steroid damaged wheels). And their singles hitters--Crisp, Lugo, Kielty, Youkilis--are all hitting below, in some cases well below 300. If it weren't for Pedroia to back up against Ortiz and Lowell, this team would have all the offensive explosiveness of the Minnesota Twins.



Well, big day tomorrow. The Tigers try to beat Santana with someone I've never heard of. If the Yankees can put them 5 games down in the loss column with only 14 to play, I think the wild card is sewed up. After all, if the Yankees can just go 7-6 against the Rays, O's and Jays, the Tigers would still have to go 12-2 the rest of the way to tie, and that's presuming the unpresumable, that we lose Sunday to Goehring's nephew.

JOE BLOWS ANOTHER ONE

Slow Joe wasted a great effort by Ian Kennedy tonight by refusing to play small ball with the game on the line. Top of 9, 1-1, and Abreu singles. AROD up and he hasn't really done anything all game. Now noone expects AROD to bunt in this kind of a situation, but the truth is he's probably the second best bunter on the team after Jeter. If he lays one down, he may get a hit; he'll certainly get Abreu over for Matsui to drive in. Matsui's infield hit would have put him on third with one out and Cano's little grounder would have scored him. Cue Mo! You have to play to the dimensions of the game and particularly on the road. Now the pressure is off Boston altogether; even a sweep would leave them pretty comfortably ahead, with nothing but cripples left to play.

I love the decision of the league to allow the champs of the AL determine whether they will play in the 8 day series, in which you would get to start your # 1 & 2 twice apiece and your # 3 only once, or whether you would play the 7 day series, in which only your #1 would get a second start and you would have to use your # 4. I love it because a) it brings such interesting strategic calculations to bear and b) it allows the best record to dictate terms to the wild card, diminishing the chance that the wild card will win it all, which it has done entirely too many times.

Now trhe first three times I heard about this it was from pundits asserting that the Sox or the Angels would use this as an opportunity to "stick it to the Yankees" (they all used that phrase) by putting them in the more compressed series in order to limit their use of the Hut. Leaving aside the fact that recent performances by Hughes and all of Kennedy's outings have served to make the Yanks' rotation look deeper than most, the idea that any team would use this opportunity to lower another team's chances rather than enhancing their own is a pretty ridiculous example of rivalry-think.

If the Red Sox choose the long series, they will increase rest for Papelbon going through it, but since they have an Ace and then 4 number 4 starters, they can't really exploit the rotation advantage. If they were playing Cleveland, choosing the drawn out series would involve them in 2 games apiece against Sabathia and Carmona. With the Sox shaky starting pitching, I'm not sure they could survive that. What if Beckett loses a close one to Sabathia? They have to beat Carmona at least once with either the incandescent MR. K or Fat Man/Fat Pitch. They'd be better off going short one would think of forcing Cleveland to pitch Westbrook. That way a Beckett/Sabathia split (the most likely scenario) and a win by Schilling or Wakefield over Byrd ( a possibility) sends them to the next round.

If the Angels choose a short series, as the pundits envision, they have to pitch both Saunders and probably Colon, against Clemens and Kennedy for the Yanks. Wouldn't they be better off going long so that they can pitch both Lackey and Escobar twice, with one of them getting both his games in LA? Under that scenario, the Yankees would need a split against that pair on the road and a victory against Saunders in NY just to earn the right to face Escobar or Lackey again in a road game 5.

If Cleveland manages best record, they positively have to go long. It's really their only hope of beating the Yankees, who will, I guarantee you, beat both Byrd and Westbrook.

My point is the difference in the compressed and extended series is too great for anyone making that choice to worry how it affects anything but your immediate relation to your own opponent as determined by your own rotation.

ALPHABET SOUP

A-ROD
If you are like me, you believe the holder of the greatest single season record in sports, the home run record, remains Roger Maris, 61 in '61. Yes he had 8 more games than the Babe but he could'nt bounce them over the fence. all subsequent marks, Mcguire, Bonds, and Sosa, are testament not to the prowess of the player but to the juice of the juice. That's why I am surprised more people are not talking about the chance that the real record could fall this year. Yes, AROD would need to hit 10 in the next 17 games, but he's got a short porch at fenway, a week bullpen in Tampa and an imploding staff in Baltimore--plus toronto, whom he always hits well. Could happen, especially since there's no pressure. the Yankees march towards the playoffs is getting more secure and the public, being asses, do not recognize thee Maris record.

Dice-K(O)

By June, I was saying that while Dice-K may be good, he isn't great because he walks too many batters and he frequently blows up in the 4th or 5th inning. finally, after his last disaster, the Boston message boards are abuzz with this insight. So now we can quantify things precisely: the average Yankees fan, me in this case, is roughly 3 months smarter than your average chowderhead, who is nonetheless smarter than the sports punditry. The latter still haven't awakened to this fact: they are all obsessed with how Dice-K may have hit the wall. his problems are doubtless exaggerated by having to pitch every 5th rather than every 6th day, but the tendencies were there all along. Moreover that same sports punditry regularly yaks about how deep boston's starting pitching is. Huh1 They're like one pitcher deep, Josh Beckett. Dice-K has been melting down,, but no worse than Wakefield since his stint on the DL, and this is par for the course with him. Once his back goes out his knuckler flattens out. Lester has an ERA north of 5, and Schilling has a fastball south of 88mph. they won't start Bucholz and Taveras is just plain unreliable. If you take recent appearances by Hughes and Kennedy to heart, the Yankees starting pitching is deeper, and that's even if you discount Clemens as injured and Moose as finished (although apparnetly on 15 days rest he can pitch effectively into the 6th inning).

DJ

Perhaps mthe most impressive thing about the Yankees recent 7 game streak is how little Jeter has contributed. I don't know if that knee is really bothering him, but he has had an unusually long string of o-fers and 1-fers. On the record, one has to assume he will be back hitting soon, which could well mean the winning if not the actual streak will continue through September.

YOGI

If you haven't heard the song Deja Vu (All Over Again) by John Fogarty, you should definitely check it out. It wins my award for the best use made of this Yogi Berra malapropism.

SLOW TO GET THE MESSAGE, JOE

After the Sox sweep, Jeter pointed out that they had to play with urgency every game. A 9-1 loss to the Rays never looks like urgency, but there was the hangover effect and they did bounce back. But today, Slow Joe failed to manage with urgency. After taking out Pettite too early in May, thereby overworking an already subpar bullpen, today he left him in long after everyone watching knew he should be lifted. Not only did Pettite throw 119 piches, or 10-15 too many for him, hbe struggled through the 6th inning, loading the bases and just escaping, and was struggling in the seventh when Pena cam up to effectively end the game. He had given up hits to 5 of the last 7 batters, and yet Torere doesn't make a move. When Pettite is struggling, you should be happy to get 6.1 out of him. Put in Vizcaino to get the outs. If he does and you score to tie things in the bottom of the frame, or go ahead, bring in the Joba to Rivera connection. Otherwise continue with Vizcaino and pitch Ramirez or Farnsworth if you must. But give yourself a chance to stay in the game. Remember every game is like the playoffs now (as Jorgew sais) and in the playoffs you always go to the bullpen in situations like that.

SHIT,

I feel like saying.

We've been insisting that the idea that the Yankees returned to form owing to ease of schedule was a canard, but now there is pretty convincing evidence. The Yankees have played .630 ball against the division leaders and do not have a losing record vs. any of them (8-7 v. boston, 3-3 v. LA, 6-0 v. Cleveland, 17-10 overall. It would be more accurate to say that this is a very good team at home and a pretty bad team on the road (2-1 v. LA at home, 1-2 on the road, 3-1 v. Detroit at home, 1-3 on the road, 6-3 at home against Boston, 2-4 at Fenway, and don't even get me started about Camden Yards. Of course this is part and parcel of the close game problem. It is easier to win close games at home, where you have the psychological reassurance of last-ups.

The great thing about the Boston series was that every game was close and they won them all. Each one was the kind of game you need to win come playoff time. But they'll need to win them elsewhere too, particularly as a wild card.

The Phillies are fucking awesome! With Utley and Hamels back and Burrel siddenly hitting again, I predict they will win the East. Yes they have no starting pitching beyond Hamels, but the Mets have Maine and nothing and the Braves have Smoltz, Hudson and a very bad team.

The Yankees have two of the greatest cut fastball pitchers in the history of the game, Andy Pettite and MO. Will somebody please teach Hughes how to throw one? As it currently stands, his fastball is too straight, so he has to be fine with it, despite its velocity, and he winds up walking too many hitters.

BGW is right. Torre has grown too complacent about putting Giambi in the line-up. Cano shouldn't be hitting 8th anyway.

I have decided that basball cannot continue to have a DH in one league and no DH in the other. The NL is in danger of becoming a permanent minor league. The AL has access to all sorts of hitting talent the NL doesn't have. As a result, it takes a better pitcher to make it in the AL than in the NL. AL rejects, hell Yankees rejects like Wells and El Duque, wind up in the National League. The economics of the game only exacerbates this trend. With their veteran reserve army, the AL can cultivate their minor league prosepcts longer, so they are that much better in their pre-arbitration, pre-free agency years on the majors. Honestly, I don't see how the NL can be expected to sustain parity with the AL so long as the DH differential exists.

They all said the sweep means nothing if they lay an egg today, and then they did so anyway, botching plays, failing to hit etc. OF course everyone else (Boston, Seattle, Detroit) laid an egg too so the sweep's significance remains intact, but they really need the next two. When was the last time the Rays won 7 of 8; what a time to get them.