Daily Archives: May 3, 2006

Following last night’s rain out and in anticipation of the start of the Yankees’ two-game series in Tampa, here’s a quick status report on the team:

• Joe Torre has declined the opportunity presented by last night’s rainout to skip Jaret Wright’s start tonight. His reasoning is that Wright had already flown ahead to Tampa before yesterday’s game whereas Shawn Chacon, who will now be pushed back to Saturday (an odd decision that puts him one day short of his originally scheduled next start on Sunday while giving Chien-Ming Wang an extra day of rest), had to be dressed and ready to pitch in Boston until the game was officially cancelled around 8:00 last night. Torre also wants to see if Wright can build on the four scoreless innings that concluded his last start against the Blue Jays. What I took away from that start was not the fact that Wright appeared to settle down after a rough first inning, but that he pitched five innings without striking out a single batter, walked four while throwing just 52 percent of his pitches for strikes, and benefited from three double plays in those four scoreless innings. One could blame the balls and walks on rust, and the ground balls just might be a good sign, but the lack of strikeouts for a pitcher who throws in the mid-90s and has supposedly discovered a nasty new curveball is alarming. Wright’s next turn falls on Monday’s off day and is followed by a three-game series with the Red Sox. I imagine he’ll be skipped then and, depending on his performance tonight as well as how well Aaron Small (who replaced Matt Smith on the roster on Monday, for those who missed it) does out of the bullpen in the interim, could find himself out of the rotation when that spot comes due again a week from Saturday against Oakland.
• Speaking of rotation rumblings, Carl Pavano is expected to make his first rehab start with single-A Tampa on Sunday. If nothing else, that starts his rehab clock, which means that he will have 30 days before the Yankees will have to activate him, shut him back down, or otherwise dispose of him. Pavano pitched well in an extended spring training game yesterday needing just 59 pitches to get through five innings, allowing one run on five hits and striking out three (no word on his walk total, though walks have never been Pavano’s problem).
• The Yankees other rehabing pitcher, Octavio Dotel, who’s progress was recently derailed by tendinitis in his surgically repaired elbow, threw 35 pitches in a bullpen session yesterday. He’s expected to throw another bullpen later in the week and could get back into extended spring training games next week if he can avoid further complications.
• Speaking of injuries, Gary Sheffield has yet to swing a bat due to his swollen wrist. Until he can take some swings, he won’t see any game action. The Yanks are hoping they won’t need to disable him, but for the moment he’s not a consideration, and the Yankees are operating with a three-man bench.
• With Sheffield on the mend, last night’s line-up was to include Bubba Crosby in right field and Bernie Williams at DH. Ouch. Hopefully Andy Phillips, who hit a game-tying home run in his last start on Sunday, will take Bernie’s spot tonight against the left-handed Casey Fossum. Fossum, for his part, has a dreadful season line due largely to a pair of awful outings in Toronto and Texas in which he gave up a total of six home runs in 8 2/3 innings. He’s allowed just one dinger in his other three starts, one against the O’s and two against the Red Sox, posting this combined line: 19 1/3 IP, 13 H, 5 R, 1 HR, 11 BB, 6 K. Looks great until you get to those walks and strikeouts. The Cherry Hill, NJ native was surprisingly successful against the Yanks last year, posting a 2.66 ERA in four games (three starts). Makes you wonder if tonight will be a repeat of the Yankees’ odds-defying 14-walk, 2-run performance against Seth McClung and company from last week.
• Finally, I’ve been ranting at anyone who will listen about Hideki Matsui’s current slump. Every year, Matsui’s swing falls apart as he starts opening up too early and pulling off the ball. In his first year with the Yankees, Jorge Posada noticed it and told him to keep his hands back as a reminder, setting Godzila off on a tear when interleague play began in June. Last year, Matsui was doing the same thing when he hurt his right ankle playing right field in St. Louis on June 12. The injury forced him to keep his weight back in the batters box and again he went off on a tear. It’s the same thing every year, he starts with a flourish, starts pulling off the ball and falls into a slump, and then hits the cover off the ball once he corrects his swing. One would think that he’d be conscious of it now, but he’s been doing the same thing this season. Fortunately, his manager and hitting coach have been paying attention. From Tyler Kepner:
  

  The hitting coach Don Mattingly has shown Matsui video of his at-bats this year and last, and Matsui agreed with Joe Torre that he was opening his front shoulder too soon.

  “He’s probably right,” Matsui said through an interpreter. “Usually when I get into bad slumps, the bad habit that comes specifically is that I come off the ball and open up a little bit. It’s something you go through during a season.”

  Matsui’s a month ahead of schedule in recognizing the problem. If he fixes it as easily as he has in the past, he could be well on his way to replicating his outstanding 2004 season, which was easily his best in pinstripes. Indeed, Matsui’s swing could be one of the more compelling aspects of what promises to be an ugly game at the Trop tonight.

Update: A monster headache wiped out my afternoon and, having just come to, I just realized that I forgot to rest the D-Rays roster for you all. There’s not much different. The only actual roster move they’ve made since putting Jorge Cantu on the DL and calling up Greg Norton during last week’s Yankee series was trading non-roster minor league reliever Carlos Hines to the Giants for righty set-up man Tyler Walker and designating Scott Dunn for assignment to make room for Walker. They have, however, shuffled their line-up, moving the surprising Ty Wigginton to second in Cantu’s absence and giving Sean Burroughs the third base job for the time being (bouncing Russell Braynan from right field, to third base to the bench). They’ve also moved Joey Gathright from ninth to lead off and promoted Toby Hall, resulting in something that looks like this:

L – Joey Gathright (L)
L – Carl Crawford (L)
R – Jonny Gomes (R)
R – Ty Wigginton (R)
R – Toby Hall (R)
R – Damon Holins (R)
L – Travis Lee (L)
L – Sean Burroughs (L)
S – Tomas Perez (S)

Yankee fans love to talk about which players are “real Yankees,” and which players are not. Joe Girardi was murdered here in New York when he replaced the popular Mike Stanley in 1996. Tino Martinez took over for local legend Don Mattingly the same year and felt the heat as well. Now, both Girardi and Martinez are considered “true Yankees.” Jason Giambi, of course followed Martinez, and because of the size of his contract as well as his involvement with performance-enhancing drugs, learned how difficult it can be to be embraced by Yankee fans. But after a fine performance in 2005, and a terrific start this season, how long before Giambi is considered a bonafide Yankee? Last year at this time, it looked that would never happen, but now? It’s closer than you think. He’s a productive hitter, Don Mattingly’s boy, and a likable lug. I think if he has another good year, he’ll win over the remaining doubters.

Steven Goldman has some cherce material in the latest edition of his Pinstriped Bible over at YES: Larry Bowa talking about Derek Jeter’s fielding:

Where Jeter can improve:

“One area we’ve talked a little bit about is playing more to his right on some ground balls. But for the most part, he follows our game plan. When we say straight away, he’s there. When we say, ‘Pull,’ he’s there. I think what happens is people, they’re used to him making every single play, and if he just misses a ball, it could be the pitch. A lot of times when you’re playing shortstop, and location’s away, you’re mentally saying, ‘Okay, the pitch is this way, it’s going to be hard for this guy to pull.’

“Now the pitcher misses this much inside, that has a lot to do with it also. You have pitchers who hit spots and pitchers who don’t hit spots. Everything is thrown into the hopper when you talk about how he’s making plays and not getting balls he should have gotten. Maybe he was playing up the middle like we said and [pitchers] kept pounding him inside because they were missing their target. These things, people, when you break it down, they don’t look at stuff.

“It’s very important. And it’s even more so important when you get on these fast fields like when we go down to Tampa or when we play in Minnesota or when we play in Toronto, we have that turf. There are some fields that are faster than others. Big-league pitchers, you hope they hit their spots about 10 out of 10 times, or six or seven out of 10 times. A pitcher on a bad day will maybe hit his spots three out of 10. There’s nothing you can do about that.”

Terrific stuff from Bowa. Thanks, Steve.

As impressive as Boston’s new young closer Jonathan Papelbon has been, and as easy as it is to dislike–though impossible not to admire–Curt Schilling, I’m prepared to regard Josh Beckett as Red Sox enemy number one by the end of the year. He’s good enough to fear and arrogant enough to loathe. John Harper has a piece on Beckett in the Daily News today which indicates just how volatile the pitcher can be:

Beckett is ultra-cocky, and seems to consider himself something of a guardian of the game’s unwritten rules regarding conduct on the ballfield. Four times over the last two years he has publicly criticized players for what he considered showing him up, and in two of those incidents he nearly ignited brawls.

Late in spring training he got into it with Ryan Howard when the Phillies’ slugger was slow to leave the batter’s box on a long fly ball that wound up being caught at the wall. Beckett yelled at Howard to run, using rather salty language to tell him to tell him to stop acting like a prima donna, and then to get back to the dugout.

“I wanted to make a point,” Beckett explained later that day. “You look like a jackass whenever you hit the ball like that and you’re pimping it, and you’re out. I’m kind of about respecting the game, and I’m not the type of guy to not say anything.”

I wonder what he’ll say to his teammate Manny Ramirez, who can be timed getting around the bases with a calendar after one of his majestic home runs. Harper concludes:

Last night a former teammate of Beckett’s, a player who is a member of neither the Red Sox nor Yankees, predicted trouble ahead.

“He’s not afraid, I’ll give him that,” the player said. “But one of these times he’s going to say something to the wrong guy. It’s more likely to happen when emotions are high, like when Boston and New York play. One of these days somebody’s going to go after him.”

Last night’s rain-out will be made up as part of a twi-night double header in mid-August. Instead of a tense four game series at Fenway Park, it will kick off what is now scheduled to be a five game series. Now, that’s serious.

Not for nothing, but I watched a good portion of the Mets game last night with some friends on the count of the Yanks-Sox were warshed out. Did anyone see ‘lil Soriano’s home run? Oh my Lord, he absolutely hammered it–deep into the left field seats. Jeez, what a blast.