Daily Archives: May 5, 2006

If the Yankees caught the Devil Rays at exactly the right time over the past week and a half, getting off to a 3-1 start in the season series against their nemesis of a year ago while Aubrey Huff, Julio Lugo, and Jorge Cantu languished on the DL, the opposite is true about the six games they’ll play against the Texas Rangers over the next two weeks. As of this afternoon, the Rangers had a half-game lead on the Yankees for the second-best record in the American League, they’re sixth in the AL in runs scored, but just five runs behind the second place Yankees (the Indians lead by a bunch), and fifth in the AL in ERA with a 4.21.

It’s that team ERA that is the big news here. The Rangers pitching has been awful for years, and the primary reason their crop of young hitters has been unable to take the team into the playoffs. In 2001 and 2003 the Rangers were dead last in the AL in team ERA and they were in the bottom three in 2002. In 2004 they lept into the top half of the league on the strength of a fluke season by their bullpen, which posted the third best pen ERA in the majors, but their starters still struggled, posting a 5.16 mark, leaving few leads to be protected. Last year, their pen crashed back to earth and the Rangers once again finished among the worst three teams in the majors in team ERA.

This year, the Rangers rotation features just one pitcher who was with the team last year, and he, 24-year-old Kameron Loe, pitched primarily in relief in 2005. Loe’s 4.15 ERA stands as the worst of the five men currently in the Texas rotation. While big trade acquisition Adam Eaton languishes on the 60-day DL following surgery on the middle finger in his pitching hand (he’s due back in August), Loe, late-March acquisition John Koronka (25) and veteran free agents and former Phillies Vincente Padilla and Kevin Millwood have combined to record 14 quality starts in 24 tries. Meanwhile, Robinson Tejeda, who is younger than Loe (having just turned 24), and a more recent Phillie than Padilla, and more recent acquisition than Koronka, held the Devil Rays to three hits over five innings in his first start of the year on Tuesday. Other spot starters and new acquisitions Rick Bauer and John Rheinecker have also turned in solid, if abbreviated starts, with only famiar face R.A. Dickey, since dropped from the 40-man roster, stinking up the joint.

Things have been only slightly less encouraging in the bullpen, where Francisco Cordero has lost the closer job he’s held for the past several seasons, but Akinori Otsuka, who came over in the Eaton trade, has picked up the slack, posting a 1.98 ERA and a 0.95 WHIP in 13 2/3 innings. No one else has been quite that dominant, but only another member of last year’s staff, lefty C.J. Wilson, has been truly bad.

Back on the other side of the ball, the few Rangers hitters who didn’t get off to hot starts have heated up in past weeks including Brad Wilkerson, the key player in the Alfonso Soriano deal, and Kevin Mench, who–as the Yankee broadcasters are sure to tell you far too many times over the next three days–discovered his shoes were a size to small and has been hitting the cover off the ball ever since he fixed his footwear. Most notably, Mench fell one game shy of Don Mattingly’s shared record for most consecutive games with a homer (the record is eight, shared with Griffey Jr. and Dale Long, Mench hit homers in seven straight).

The good news is that the Yankees have Mike Mussina on the mound tonight and Gary Sheffield back in the lineup to get things off on the right, properly outfitted foot. Moose’s opponent will be Vincente Padilla, a borderline All-Star for the Phillies in 2002 who posted similar numbers in 2003 before a pair of disappointing and injury-shortened seasons in 2004 and 2006. Still just 28, Padilla looks to be reestablishing himself as a solid mid-rotation starter, having failed to record an out in the sixth inning just once in six starts, and lasting through five in that exception. Padilla had one dominant outing against the Mariners two turns ago (7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 HR, 3 BB, 7 K), which was immediatley preceeded by that stinker in Oakland (5 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 4 HR). His other four starts have fallen in between those two extremes, though curiously he hasn’t given up any other home runs in those four other starts.

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Last week, Emily and I were watching the game and she says, “Isn’t Al Leiter there tonight?” Indeed he was. It was just that, without anything pressing to say, Leiter had actually been silent for several minutes. Go figure that. Generally, new announcers are so geeked-up, they go the other way–they never shut up. They don’t actually say anything, but that doesn’t stop their mouth from running. Of course, this happens to some veteran announcers as well. Earlier this season, Michael Kay and Bobby Murcer were calling a game, and for the life of me, bless ‘ol Bobby, but I don’t think either came up for air all afternoon. It was exhausting, because it was as if they were talking just to talk.

Al Leiter’s sense of reserve is appealing–he’s learning the ropes and being cautious and respectful in the process. His insights into pitching have been outstanding. He’s still not completely sure of himself, but is obviously being encouraged to be more forceful in selling his thoughts. (Richard Sandomir has a good piece on the man-behind-the-scenes at YES, John Filippelli today in the Times.) Last night, he talked at length about how Randy Johnson is still making the transition from menacing flame-thwrower to crafty veteran. He discussed why this would be more difficult for a guy like Johnson, who used to be able to overwhelm hitters with his stuff, than for guys like Maddux or Glavine. Leiter even snapped at Kay at one point, and then made sure to soothe any hard feelings moments later.

It has been a pleasure following Leiter’s progress thus far. That he’s willing to keep his trap shut, listen, and learn already sets him apart. Good job by the YES in landing him.

The Yankees beat the Devil Rays 10-5 last night, but the game was closer than the final score indicates. There were five lead changes and the Bombers didn’t break the game open ’til late. Here are a few things that caught my eye:

Randy Johnson, who had another uneven game, smirking to himself and then laughing as he came off the field in the second inning. The guy is so private you don’t normally see him smile. I wonder what struck his funny bone.

In the fifth, Robinson Cano lined a double to right field (Cano would also line out hard to the outfield twice) and Bernie Williams followed with an RBI single, also to right. It’s funny, we’ve been busting on Bernie for his lack of pop. His single missed being a home run by a few feet–it was a line drive that just didn’t get up enough, but it was hit too hard for him to get to second. I was laughing, thinking, “Even when he strokes one, it’s still a single.”

The Yankees went ahead for good in the top of the seventh. The most encouraging part of the inning was that the Bombers rallied after recording two quick outs. Gary Sheffield started it off with a pinch-hit single to right (he would later line out to right field too). This was Sheff’s first appearence since colliding with Shea Hillenbrand last weekend and it was a pleasure to see him again.

Alex Rodriguez went 0-4 but had the go-ahead RBI (he was plunked on the first pitch of his at bat with the bases loaded). How’s that for clutch? Har-har-hardy-har-har.

Jason Giambi had “driven in” the tying run one batter earlier when he walked with the bases loaded. It was another impressive at bat for Giambi who was down in the count 0-2. He took two very alluring change ups with the count 2-2, and then 3-2, showing tremendous restraint.

The strangest moments of the game came in the top of the eighth inning. After Jorge Posada walked to start the inning, Dan Miceli entered the game for Tampa Bay and promptly booted a little tapper hit by Cano. Then, Bernie Williams stepped in and sqaured to bunt. He took the first pitch right-down-the-pipe for a strike. It looked like an ideal pitch to bunt, but then again, what does Bernie know from bunting? Well, he laid down a nice sarifice on the next offering and almost beat the throw to first. The YES announcers said that Bernie had one sacrifice bunt last year, one in 2004, but prior to that his last sacrifice came in 1996. That’s three in eleven seasons.

The Rays chose to intentionally walk Sheffield, and the first pitch came a little high to the catcher, Toby Hall. Then Miceli stuttered off the mound and chucked one way over Hall’s head. Talk about a pysch job. Posada, who is not one of the team’s best base runners, screamed for a balk then didn’t get a great jump, so he did not try to score. The ball actually bounced off the fence behind home plate and right back to Hall, so Posada would have likely been out had he tried to come home. Larry Bowa, and then Joe Torre, joined Posada in arguing about the missed balk. The umps didn’t change their mind, but they clearly blew the call. Actually, they were probably as caught off guard as eveyone else was, but it was as obvious a balk as you are likely to ever see. So of course, Miceli completes the intentional pass, then serves up a grand slam to Johnny Damon. He then fell behind Jeter 2-0, was taken out of the game and later placed on the DL with a sore shoulder and hurt feelings.

I usually don’t play armchair manager at home, but I was thinking about a lot of our readers who enjoy that sort of thing, watching Torre manage the bullpen last night. It seemed as if Torre was over-managing taking out Scott Proctor (heck, even taking out Sturtze), but for one night, all of the moves worked out.

Even with Johnson not pitching especially well, I had all the confidence in the world that the Yanks would come back and win that game. It was great to see the two-out rally. These are games good teams need to win. The Rays were without some of their best hitters and man, thier bullpen is just plain lousy. In the end, it was a satisfying, though slightly odd night. Hey, we’ll take it, right?