New or Hughes'd....?

Sorry, that was the best title I could come up with. Phil Hughes just got knocked around for the second start in a row. While it's not fun to lose or watch our top prospect get mauled on the field, it's certainly understandable. Cold weather-experience+the Red Sox lineup+angry Royals=disaster for a young pitcher. I'd be more worried if he continues to get knocked around when the weather gets a little warmer. Obviously, pitching in cold weather is something players have to get used to, but the guy's younger than me and that places me at the opposite ends of the happy/sad spectrum at the same time. Final note: Phil Hughes has a lot of potential and I'm not worried at all.

You heard this here: A-Rod is going to have only a second tier ridiculous season and will not be an MVP candidate. It's a pattern of his with the Yankees on even vs. odd years. Go check out his stats.

This is an odd season overall. Baseball philosophy has always dictated that you cannot rebuild and compete in the same year, but I would argue the Diamondbacks were a top notch example of just that last year. The Yankees still have a solid lineup (and anytime you have the largest payroll in the game, you have to be considered as trying to compete), but they also need to dedicate this year to giving a lot of the young guys playing time with all the contracts that are expiring after this year.

I'm cool with just watching how the season plays out and giving the kids a chance to develop (though we'll see if my answer changes around September). There's also the whole sentiment of wanting to make some sort of playoff run for the last year in the Stadium, yadda yadda, etc.

At any rate, it's been an interesting season thusly and a fresh one as well, owing much to our new High Overlord Girardi. I'm looking forward and you should look forward to more updates from me...maybe...

Everybody Loves the Raymonds

I realized I have no more excuses not to update the blog as the season has commenced. Here's to hoping I regularly update this once more.

Anywho, the Yankees are currently playing the Devil Rays. Apparently, I'm not supposed to call them that as they're now just the Rays. But, here's my issue with that: what is a Ray? To protest this, I'm going to continue calling them the Devil Rays. Scratch that, just to push the point even further, I'm going to call them the Tampa Bay Fallen Raymonds. Just because.

As we speak, said FR's are giving it pretty hard to the Yankees. Some people may see this as a sign of bigger things to come for said Fallen Raymonds. I don't know. They give it to us pretty hard on/off every year. Edwin Jackson's having his obligatory game where he pitches as well as his "stuff" would dictate. One down, maybe six or so to go and probably five of those will be against us. They've always had a very good lineup, but I still don't think their pitching is good enough to take them very far. Maybe I'm wrong.

As for the Yankees, I mostly like our roster this year. It could be better, but it could be worse. Our hitting's more or less the same and still good. I think our bullpen is better being younger. Our rotation's a little too young right now, but everyone knows that. But, as they say in baseball: you never know. I don't know who says that. Maybe I should've said as no one says in baseball. I digress.

Hopefully this will be the first of more than one post every several months. Until next time...

Mitchell

I had nothing to blog yesterday regarding George Mitchell's Mystical Report of Fun(c). I had a Nihongo no Fainaru(I think that's how it was spelled on the test). That's more important than this silly report. Honestly, I have no feelings either way on the report. I don't think knowing that Chuck Knoblauch or Mo Vaughn possessed performance enhancing drugs does anything to help the game. I mean, I imagine Vaughn ate someone in response and Chuck probably threw something at a wall which landed in the 3rd row of the stands, but does anyone else actually care? Pretty much every current player on there I've heard fingered before, just flat out wasn't surprised by, or was named Paul Lo Duca and/or Nook Logan. For those curious, those last two have a combined career slugging percentage of .760, so maybe they should've worked on being combined into one person instead of trying, and apparently failing, at boosting their individual power strokes.

I guess the only player on there who I have any sort of sentimental attachment to is Andy Pettitte and I had heard him fingered before anywho. As is the case with anyone on the list, I don't personally know exactly what any of them did, but I'm not going to attempt to defend Andy. Asking myself honestly though if this changes my opinion of him or makes me think less, I can answer honestly not at all. I don't know what that's worth and I don't care to guide myself or anyone through the thought process, but I love Andy as much as I ever did.

On a final note, I'm certainly glad we know who has done steroids and didn't spend more time on trying to prevent its use in the future. Certainly sounds helpful to me.

That's Our Carl!

Carl Pavano is apparently hesitant to take the Yankees' offer of a buyout of his contract and then accept a minor league assignment. The purpose here is Pavano accepting a buyout would clear room on the 40-man roster and the acceptance of a minor league assignment would provide insurance should the Yankees for whatever ridiculous reason, NEED him near the end of the year, assuming he's even ready to pitch by 2009. For those not in the know, Mr. Pavano had TJ surgery earlier this spring for an elbow ouchie(apparently there was no structural damage and the surgery was not required, the trooper that he is) and the recovery of TJ for a pitcher is usually 12-18 months.

So anywho, Carl has stated that this mode of operation would limit his options. What options, Carl? What options do you have? Is he afraid he might be forced to pitch in the minor leagues and he's somehow above that? Get over yourself, man. Do something to help the team for once. I'm big on giving guys second chances and I was fully pulling for him to have a good year, especially after that really good start against the Twins. But after a little elbow soreness, instead of electing just to miss a few starts(even if a stint on the DL was necessary) until it improved, he effectively took a giant dump on the Yankees' rotation plans for the season. And now he may not accept this plan the Yankees have put forth to him which does not take ANY money away from him. Wow. I really think there's nothing I can say to grace the consummate team player that is Carl Pavano. I try not to cast judgment on people based on the way they perform in sports, but I seriously hope he's somewhat of a better human than he is a teammate.

Yankees Sign LaTroy Hawkins

Well, this is kind of odd in that as far as I can tell, MLB.com is the first to report that LaTroy Hawkins has officially signed with the Yankees for 1 year at $3.75M. There had been whispers of it on Fox and ESPN throughout the day, but I refused to acknowledge the POTENTIAL signing of a reliever as blogworthy. Now that it's official, I suppose I'll throw in my 2 cents.

I'm fine with this deal. He'll be 35 entering 2008, but that's virtually insignificant on a 1-year deal. He also was untyped as a free agent, so the Yankees give up nothing. I imagine this also means they will be letting Vizcaino go, which means second round and supplemental picks for us. It also lets the Yankees avoid being tied down to a 3-4 year deal on a reliever which is apparently what Vizcaino wanted. In that regard, I'll say Hawkins was the better choice.

The Troy had a good year with the Rockies, posting a very good ERA+ of 140. In 55.3 innings, he only struck out 29, but also only walked 16 resulting in a solid 1.23 WHIP. He's been fairly consistent over the past several seasons, only once having had an ERA over 4 since 2001. Mr. Hawkins also counts himself among those elite pitchers who have struck out 3 batters on 9 pitches.

I doubt that he'll be an immediate savior, but if he can produce something near what Vizcaino did last season(perhaps minus the extreme streaky manner in which Luis did it), then I'll be happy. No one guy can pick up an entire relief staff, that's why it's called a bullpen...because it's a pen...of bulls....yeah, anyway.

So, I assume the pen's shaping up to have some combination of Mo, Hawkins, Farnsworth, Ohlendorf, and Abu Ghraib. On the lefty front, I'd probably give Igawa a chance in relief, though I really have no idea what the front office's plans for him are(nor do they, if I had to guess)and I've put my two cents in on Ron Mahay already. So, how does this pen look? Going from left to right we have Mo(fine), Hawkins(hopefully fine), Farnsworth(oh dear), and then two kids who look to have a lot of potential, but about 20 innings of combined major league experience. Luckily for us, the bullpen tends to be the place where major league experience can matter the least and, if the guy has enough ability, can even work to his advantage. So, on paper it doesn't look like anything overly impressive, but it's hard to gauge a team's bullpen out of spring training(never mind the fact that it's only December). Look at all the relievers the Orioles signed last offseason and it helped them negative. Then, there was the Red Sox who most thought would be relying on their offense and out from the depths comes Okajima and Delcarmen to lead into Papelbon. And Gagne sucked. The bullpen is a great place for dependables to disappoint and stars to emerge. I wouldn't cry if we entered the season with a pen that looked something like what I've laid out here. As seems to be becoming the motto with our team in general(especially the pitching): time will tell.

Major News!

So, the big stories over the past few days has been the DFAing of Andy Phillips and Bronson Sardinha. You may know Bronson Sardinha as that pinch runner who kind of looks like Melky Cabrera when he has a helmet on. I imagine he'll clear waivers and accept a minor league assignment. Phillips on the other hand, has elected free agency. Andy always seemed like a good guy to me who played his hardest, despite not being the greatest ballplayer. He's been through a lot off the field as well with his wife dealing with cancer and his mother in a terrible car accident. Basically, he's just one of those players who's hard not to like even if he doesn't have the greatest stats at the end of the day. That said, he's a pretty solid first baseman and he put up an 88 OPS+ this year which isn't awful for a backup(and was actually exactly equal to that of Andruw Jones and his terrific 2007 campaign which is going to make him near $40M over the next 2 years). So, I hope Andy catches on somewhere and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors(copyright). I'm sure some teams will be interested in him.

I've also read some whispers that the Yankees are in the lead for lefty reliever Ron Mahay. Depending on what kind of deal he wants(hopefully not in the Linebrink territory), this could be a solid signing. Despite a career WHIP of 1.41, Mahay has kept a decent career ERA of 3.87 while pitching the past few seasons in the AL West, so his transition to the East would not be nearly as drastic as some of those Giants relievers I had been discussing. This past season, in time split between the Rangers and Braves, he posted a tremendous 2.55 ERA and a passable 1.33 WHIP over 67 innings. His K/BB ratio wasn't anything impressive, but he's done a decent job of preventing runs from scoring in the AL for several seasons(with the exception of a lousy 2005). That's really all you can ask for. Furthermore, Mahay was absolutely filthy to lefties this season. He faced 117 left-handed batters and gave up just 20 hits and 8 walks with one HBP, holding them to a .189/.250/.292 line. That's impressive. He wasn't quite as dominant against righties, but still held them to a .242/.377/.379 line. What we can gauge from this is that Mahay doesn't give up a lot of extra-base hits(or hits at all for that matter), has a tendency to walk righties, and dominates lefties completely. I'll take that. Mahay was classified as a Type B, so we would surrender our second round pick to the Braves in the 2008 draft(I'm assuming they offered him arbitration, but not 100% positive). However, Vizcaino is also a Type B and recently declined arbitration, so we could just regain that second round pick from wherever he signs, or have at least two solid relievers in front of Mo going into next year, if he stays.

The bullpen was certainly a major weakness for us last year, so it deserves some extra attention. I think I'll hold off on a full analysis until a few moves are made.

Matsuimania

So, Peter Abraham is reporting that the Yankees may be discussing a trade of Matsui to the Giants. Names being thrown around that we could get in return are some combination of Noah Lowry, Kevin Correia, and Rich Aurilia. Ok...wow. This is just stupid and I doubt that's all we'd get in return for Matsui. I think because of the way he presents himself, Hideki is often overlooked. He has a career OPS+ of 125 and posted a 123 mark this year. For those who don't realize it, that was 5 points higher than YOUR National League MVP Jimmy Rollins. Matsui is a great hitter plain and simple, and while he is not A-Rod, the effects of not having him in the lineup would be felt enough that we should be able to get back a lot for him. Let's look at some of those guys, shall we?

Lowry just recently turned 27, so he's not quite an aging vet, but is no longer a spring chicken. It's highly doubtful that he's going to get much better than he already is especially moving from the NL West to the AL East. Outside of 2005, he's never started more than 30 games or pitched more than 162 innings(ie: a full season for a starter). His ERA+ in 2007 was a respectable 113, but as Abraham notes, he had a perfect 1/1 K/BB ratio with 87 each in 156 innings. Top that with a delicious WHIP of 1.55 and it's safe to assume this guy would probably get ROCKED in the AL East. Bottom line: I don't like him and I don't want him.

Rich Aurilia went to my high school...and graduated in like 1925. Is he really considered a desirable commodity any more? I hope this was a joke. His .368 Slg% in 329 at bats, I think was actually a practical joke. No one would do that seriously on a major league team. Next.

Kevin Correia is only a few months older than Lowry, but I feel a reliever's age is a little less important than a starter's. He has a career ERA+ of 109, but a career WHIP of 1.41 which is pretty high for a reliever. His career K/BB ratio is a shade under 2:1, so while nothing awful, he's nothing to write home about. I doubt he'd blow hitters away if he came to the Yankees and don't think he'd much improve the bullpen.

More or less, in my opinion, each one mentioned as a potential return for Matsui is a replacement level player. Matsui has the ability to put up all-star numbers every year and grouping a bunch of mediocre players together does not equate one good player. I mean, if the Giants were willing to part with a Matt Cain type(which I understand they would not do...and wouldn't even entertain Lincecum), I might feel a little better. I just don't think they have the tools we need to make this work. We don't need young starters, especially not mediocre ones. They really don't have anyone who could be a 1B solution for us. They have some good relievers, but not really anyone who I think would improve our bullpen enough to warrant giving up Matsui. The only potential idea I could think of is if they were willing to do an A-Rod with Texas type deal and give us Zito while eating a large portion of his contract. Even then, I'd probably rather not have him locked for 6 years with a no-trade clause. I also don't think he's enough for Matsui straight up. While I'll go against the norm and say he's probably still a better pitcher than last season showed, he's definitely not nearly as good as his contract shows(and most know that). Our rotation is looking a bit inexperienced going into 2008, so having a 29 year old starter with a lot of experience(and who's decent at worst and pretty good at best) would not be the worst possible scenario.

On a final note, I just really like having Matsui on the team. He's a guy who shows up ready to play every game and just strikes me as the kind of guy you want on your team. The fact that he said he's willing to waive his NTC I think just shows the kind of guy he is. He's willing to cooperate and do what's best for the team, even if that means leaving it. I'd really prefer not to trade him unless we got an offer that was really enticing and I just don't see the Giants being able to pull something like that off.