Daily Archives: April 11, 2007

Okay, so that wasn’t exactly a “slugfest.” I was right about the Yankees having to rely on their bullpen, but for the wrong reasons. Ramon Oritiz hurled a gem at the Bombers, limiting them to one run on three hits and a walk over eight innings. That one run came in the fourth when Johnny Damon led off with a single, was pushed to second when Derek Jeter worked the only walk Ortiz issued all night, moved to third on a fly to right by Bobby Abreu, and was plated by an Alex Rodriguez sac fly.

Mike Mussina looked better than he had in his first outing, but pulled up lame in the third inning with what proved to be a balky left hamstring and removed himself from the game (more on Moose’s injury below). Mussina allowed a pair of singles before coming out of the game with a 2-1 count on Luis Castillo. Pressed into emergency duty, Sean Henn got Castillo to pop out on his first pitch, then escaped the inning thanks to a fabulous play by Derek Jeter. With Luis Rodriguez running from second on the pitch, Nick Punto hit a flair to shallow left. Jeter made a great over-the-shoulder, wide-receiver-style catch, then, in one continuous motion, spun and fired a strike to Robinson Cano at second to double up Rodriguez.

Henn turned in two more scoreless frames, but gave up a ringing double to Nick Punto to lead off the sixth. After Joe Mauer bunted Punto to third, Joe Torre went to Scott Proctor to face the right-handed Michael Cuddyer only to have Proctor give up a game-tying single on his second pitch. Proctor did manage to retire Justin Morneau and Torii Hunter to strand Cuddyer, and Luis Vizcaino contributed a perfect seventh inning with the help of a fantastic diving stop by Doug Mientkiewicz at first, but what was shaping up as a white-knuckle ballgame fell apart when Kyle Farnsworth took the mound in the eighth.

Farnsworth had nothing, walking Luis Castillo on four pitches to start the eighth. On Farnsworth’s fifth toss, a called strike to Nick Punto, Castillo stole second. Punto bunted Farnsworth’s next pitch foul and waved over top of a slider in the dirt for the first out, but Joe Mauer singled Castillo home three pitches later, taking second on Melky Cabrera’s throw home. Farnsworth’s first pitch to Michael Cuddyer was several feet away from Jorge Posada’s target, shooting between Cuddyer and Posada’s glove straight to the backstop to move Mauer to third. Cuddyer then singled Mauer home to run the score to 3-1. Justin Morneau cracked Farnsworth’s next pitch to deep right for a double, driving Cuddyer home with the fourth run, and Torii Hunter repeated the feat, knocking an 1-0 Farnsworth offering off the baggy for another RBI double. It was only then that Joe Torre relieved Farnsworth of his duties, bringing in Mike Myers to get the final two outs.

Down a seemingly insurmountable four runs against the man who, all due respect to Mariano Rivera, is likely the best closer in baseball, the Yankees did manage to mount a rally against Joe Nathan. Derek Jeter lead off the ninth with a single and, after Bobby Abreu hit a screaming liner at Castillo for the first out, Alex Rodriguez hit a booming ground rule double into the gap in left to put runners on second and third. That brought Jason Giambi to the plate with first base open and a chance to bring the tying run to the plate in the person of Jorge Posada, but Giambi hacked at Nathan’s first pitch, popping out to third. No longer in a position to tie the game, Posada took four pitches to run the count to 2-2, only to pop out to short to give the Twins a 5-1 win.

Consider this game a bit of stat correction for the Yankees’ unusually low bullpen ERA and unusually high number of runs scored per game. Heck, even Mussina’s two scoreless innings helped shed a few tenths of a run off the starters’ ERA. If there’s one lesson baseball teaches us, it’s that everything comes back to the center in time.

As for Mussina, he said that he felt his hamstring grab during the first batter of the third inning and, when it grabbed at him again later that inning, he decided to get out of there before he wound up with a long-term injury. On his last pitch of the game, you could see Mussina’s front leg stiffen up. Rather than ending up in his usual fielder’s stance, Moose hopped off to the third base side of the mound, at which point he shook his head in disappointment and gestured for Joe Torre and Gene Monhahan to come out and get him. Said Mussina after the game, “It was more than a cramp, but it’s not bad. I don’t limp, and I can still touch my toes.” The Yankees are hoping they won’t have to place Mussina on the disabled list, but it looks like Darrell Rasner will take Mussina’s next turn on Tuesday against the Indians at the Stadium. The Yanks won’t need a fifth starter until Sunday April 22 in Boston, so look for Mussina to make his return to the rotation during that weekend series at Fenway if he’s able to avoid the DL.

As for the other two pitchers the Yankees do have on the disabled list, both Jeff Karstens and Chien-Ming Wang threw bullpens down in Tampa earlier this week. Karstens is scheduled to throw three innings in a rehab game on Saturday. If that start goes well, he could be available to bump Rasner or fill in for Mussina at the end of next week. Wang, meanwhile, will need two rehab starts before being activated. Since the date of his first start has yet to be announced, it seems Wang will not be able to return any earlier than the team’s final homestand of the month, one turn through the rotation later than Karstens assuming both stay on pace.

There was reason to believe that Carl Pavano and Andy Pettitte would do what they did over the past two games, dropping the Yankee starters’ collective ERA more than three runs from 9.97 to 6.75 over the course of 13 stellar innings, but, I have to say, I’m a lot less enthusiastic about what we might see from Mike Mussina tonight. Unlike Pavano or Pettitte, Moose wasn’t hurt all that much by his defense in his first outing. Instead he was just plain roughed up, allowing eight hits, four of them doubles, walking three, and hitting a batter in a mere four innings. Moose allowed the Orioles to score in three of those four innings and in the lone exception he had runners on first and second and used up 21 pitches (and would have used more had Corey Patterson not laid down a successful sac bunt on the first pitch he saw). I suppose one could point to Moose’s four strikeouts in those four innings and respectable 62 percent strike rate as positive signs, but after seeing the way he struggled through spring training, I’m not convinced.

On the other side of the ledger, the Twins are throwing Ramon Ortiz to the wolves. Ortiz is a better pitcher than Sidney Ponson, but that’s not saying much. It’s comical to recall that Ortiz was dubbed “Little Pedro” when he emerged with the Angels last century. Ortiz aged three years in one winter as a result of the post-9/11 crack down on documentation. That year he surrendered 40 home runs. The next he posted a 5.20 ERA. In 2004, he lost his rotation spot. Jumping to the National League in 2005, Ortiz spent the next two seasons in two wildly disparate pitching environments in Cincinnati and Washington and was lit up in both (his home and away splits confirming that his ability to suck was uneffected by his home environment). Giving up 31 homers in 33 games while playing your home games in RFK Stadium is a nifty trick and one that doesn’t bode well for a pitcher facing the hottest offense in baseball (7.29 R/G) and the team tied for third in the majors in home runs.

Of course, Ortiz handled the Orioles in his last start (7 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 4 K, 0 HR), but I’m more interested in what the Yankees did to him when they met in the nation’s capitol last July, knocking him around for seven runs in 4 1/3 innings on eleven hits including homers by Jorge Posada and, you guessed it, Alex Rodriguez. That was the game in which Shawn Chacon, Matt Smith, T.J. Beam, Scott Proctor, and, shockingly, Mariano Rivera combined to blow a 9-2 lead. I don’t expect tonight will be quite as ugly, but I think we’re in store for another slugfest nonetheless. Fortunately, the Yankees have already taken the series (their first series win of the year), winning the first two games by a combined score of 18-3. They also have an off-day tomorrow, which means it could be all-in from their rebuilt bullpen, which posts the second-best bullpen ERA in the majors (1.27).

You could see the seeds of this story being planted back in the first weeks of spring training, and now, nearly two months later, Carl Pavano’s comeback is proceeding apace. In a nice bit of timing, his start on Monday — which was genuinely good, but looked brilliant thanks to the Yankee rotation’s abysmal opening week — fell immediately after Easter Sunday; I think you could probably find a workable metaphor in either the Resurrection or, if you prefer, the giant mythical bunny rabbit with candy.

The truth regarding Pavano’s last few seasons is elusive, and what’s more, it keeps changing. The better Pavano pitches now, the more he was a victim of bad luck; the higher his ERA this season, the more he was shamefully sitting around collecting a fat paycheck, unwilling to fight to return to the mound.

There’s nothing new about this: in sports, talent and achievement tend to morph into character. That’s why Ted Williams is known as a beloved icon instead of a total dick, and Joe DiMaggio is regarded as a symbol of class and lost elegance instead of an emotionally troubled loner. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this – we enjoy watching great players perform, and what they’re like off the field isn’t necessarily important. We’re not looking to Carl Pavano for life lessons, we’re looking to him for quality starts. But in any case, it’s probably not a good idea to make moral judgments based on WHIP.

We may never know exactly what happened with Pavano. Clearly he’s been legitimately injured, but equally clearly, his own teammates thought that he could be doing more to return; I don’t know if they were right, but I can’t recall ever seeing the Yankees disparage a teammate the way they publicly and on the record called out Pavano over the last year, taping the tabloids’ “Crash Test Dummy” headlines to his locker and dismissively joking about his wrecked Porsche. The result was brutal press coverage like this Bergen Record column, which called Pavano a gutless, lying weasel, more or less in those words. At this point you almost have to hope he was avoiding the mound last season – because if he tried his hardest and was simply too hurt to pitch, he’s been treated awfully unfairly.

(more…)

Hey gang, I’ll be subbing in as your recapper today. Andy Pettitte followed Carl Pavano’s lead (!) last night and gave the Yankees their second quality start of the season, while the offense, true to Cliff’s game preview, hurt Twins starter Boof "Boof" Bonser with the long ball: Yankees 10, Twins 1.

The game was actually decided in the first inning, when Derek Jeter singled to right and, after Bobby Abreu flied out, Alex Rodriguez stepped in. I’ll let Alex Belth, via stoked in-game email, take it from here:

"Boof started A-Rod with a slider (as he did in his second at bat too) and didn’t challenge him with the fastball until the count was full. I was at home saying, "Dude, you’re not going to try and get that sh** past A Rod, are you?" Sure enough, he came right into A Rod’s kitchen. Yo, A Rod just murdalized that ball. Goddamn, that was awesome."

Yes it was. There’s actually some difference of opinion as to what kind of pitch it was that A-Rod destroyed; Tyler Kepner agrees it was a fastball, but John Flaherty called it a slider, and Mike Mussina (per Kim Jones) claimed it was a changeup — after overhearing A-Rod tell reporters that he himself didn’t know. What I can tell you with certainty is that it ended up deep in the left field stands. Rodriguez now has six home runs on the season and a 1.107 slugging percentage; this homer, his 470th, tied him with Manny Ramirez, who is three years older. What’s changed since last year? His stance? His strategy? His mental health? I say it’s the socks.

Those runs were all Pettitte needed, though he eventually got a lot more. He looked sharp throughout, cruising through six shutout innings, changing speeds and using both sides of the plate. He allowed singles to Punto and Mauer to lead off the fourth, but swiftly worked out of it with a double play on Cuddyer and a groundout from Mourneau… and that was about as tense as things got. If there’s anything to quibble about, it’s that he could have been more economical, since by the end of the sixth he’d already thrown 96 pitches (60 for strikes); but credit the Twins hitters with some patience there, as well as a knack for irritating two-strike fouls.

The Yankee offense, meanwhile, continued on its path to world domination. Melky Cabrera got his groove back, starting with a single up the middle that plated Cano in the second, and finishing the night 3-for-4 with a nifty running, jumping, twisting catch on a Cuddyer line drive in the eighth. In the fifth, Mientkiewicz and Melky were aboard for a booming Johnny Damon home run, his first of the year. Bonser only made a few significant mistakes, but he paid for all of them, and was removed for a string of Twins relievers of varying efficacy.

Later in the fifth, by the way, Rodriguez was intentionally walked for the first time this season; get used to that.

My favorite Twins reliever by far is "Sideshow Pat" Neshek (nickname via awesome Twins blogger Bat Girl), who has a truly odd, jerky, flailing sidearm delivery; at one point his elbows nearly hit each other behind his back, though I can’t explain how they get there. Think of a stork being violently tickled, but with much better control. Baseball Think Factory has the visuals and the breakdown.

In the Yankee seventh Torre turned to Scott Proctor, who, with the variety of reliable (knocking on wood) arms in the pen this year, needs a new nickname – Semiweekly Scott? You guys can come up with something, I’m sure. Proctor didn’t have it, though, walking Morneau and Hunter to lead off the inning, despite being staked to a then-six-run lead. He did manage two fly-ball outs, but after a broken-bat Jason Kubel single gave the Twins their first and only run, Torre called for Vizcaino.

Finally, Mariano Rivera came in to mop up in the ninth. You know, I realize the guy needed to get some work in, but it seems a little unfair to crush a team 10-1 and then trot out Rivera to top it off, doesn’t it? Mo dispatched Morneau and Tyner with a combined three pitches, then used unfortunate pinch-hitter Luis Rodriguez as a guinea pig for his new changeup — which missed badly, high — before popping him up. So the change isn’t quite ready for prime time yet. Alex Rodriguez, though, definitely was.