Daily Archives: May 1, 2007

It’s just been that kind of year for the New York Yankees.

The Bombers bust out with ten runs against the Rangers last night, driving Kameron Loe from the game in the fifth. Jorge Posada and Robinson Cano had the big days, both picking up a pair of doubles (the Yanks had six on the night), Jorge going 3 for 4 with a walk, 2 RBIs and 3 runs scored, Cano going 4 for 5 with 3 RBIs and 2 runs scored. Every Yankee starter reached base at least once. That includes the slumping Bobby Abreu (1 for 6), who moved to the leadoff spot in place of Johnny Damon, who got an extra day off following four chiropractic sessons and says he’s feeling great, and Doug Mientkiewicz (1 for 5, RBI).

While all that was going on, Phil Hughes was carving up the Texas Rangers’ lineup in just his second major league start. Hughes walked Kenny Lofton to start the game after getting ahead of him 0-2, but erased him on a double play off the bat of Michael Young and struck out Mark Teixeira. In the second, he walked Hank Blalock only to erase him on a double play as well, this one off the bat of the hot-hitting Ian Kinsler. Hughes didn’t allow a ball out of the infield until Blalock’s fly out for the second out of the fifth, and faced the minimum until he walked Kinsler following Blalock’s fly out. Along the way he simply dominated. He started the second by striking out Victor Diaz (just called up from triple-A to take the place of the just-DLed Frank Catalanotto) on a wicked curve ball that literally dropped from Diaz’s nose to his toes (it’s the first pitch shown in this ESPN highlight clip). He then started the third by pumping three fastballs past Brad Wilkerson. Hughes had been 0-2 on the two hitters he walked in the first two innings and when he got Wilkerson 0-2 he shook off Posada to get the fastball, sending Wilkerson back to the bench on three pitches. His fastball was clocked at 91-92 miles per hour by the YES gun, but had explosive late movement. That heater, the wicked curve, and his change combined to give Hughes six strikeouts through 6 1/3 efficient innings (83 pitches, 64 percent strikes).

Put simply, Hughes had no-hit stuff last night. Indeed, he didn’t allow a hit through those 6 1/3 innings. Then, with one out in the seventh and two strikes on Teixeira, Hughes reached back to break off an extra wicked curve ball, overextending as he followed through on the delivery, and felt his left hamstring pop.

That was it for Hughes no-hit bid. Hughes was removed from the game at that point and said after the game that there was no way he could have throw another pitch. He’ll remain with the team for the rest of this short three-game road trip and likely get an MRI when they return to New York, but a trip to the disabled list is a certainty. The ESPN highlight linked above says Hughes will be out four to six weeks, though I’m not sure where they got that information. Peter Abraham thinks it will be a couple of months. Obviously, the Yankees won’t be able to wager a guess themselves until Hughes gets his MRI.

The loss of Hughes is a blow to the rotation considering the fact that he was already delivering on his promise in just his second major league start, but in a twisted way this injury could be a good thing in the long run. Certainly the Yankees are lucky that it was Hughes’ hamstring and not anything in his right arm that went pop, and having him spend most of the next two months on the DL could go a long way toward protecting that right arm. Brian Cashman had said before the game that Hughes was in the major league rotation to stay; that his development would continue at the major league level. That’s a frightening change of plans regarding a 20-year-old pitcher who could be the most important asset this franchise has. Now, Hughes’ hamstring will force the Yankees to bring him back along more slowly, and will limit his aggregate innings pitched to a reasonable total rather than the 200-plus he could have thrown if left in the rotation for the remainder of the season.

I’m not saying I’m glad that Hughes is injured. Certainly you don’t want to see a young player hurt, and hamstrings have a habit of reoccurring, so you certainly don’t want to see that pattern develop in any player, particularly one as important as Hughes. I do think, however, that the injury will protect Hughes from the team’s desperation to overuse him this season, and I look forward to seeing more performances like last night’s once he returns to the rotation, which hopefully will happen by the All-Star break at the absolute latest.

In the meantime, with Mike Mussina coming back on Thursday and Kei Igawa installed back in the rotation after his tremendous emergency performance on Saturday, the Yankees can turn to Darrell Rasner or, as Abraham suggests, Matt DeSalvo to fill the fifth spot in the rotation while Hughes (and Carl Pavano, of course) is on the shelf (of course, DeSalvo isn’t on the 40-man roster right now).

As for the no-hitter, Mike Myers finished the seventh without incident, but blew the no-hitter and the shutout in the eighth. Still, thanks to another double play, the Rangers sent just 29 batters to the plate on the night, falling to the Yankees by the final score of 10-1. Luis Vizcaino finished the game in the ninth, marking just the third time all season that the Yankees completed a game with just three pitchers (the other two times both coming in their first road series in Minnesota in games started by Andy Pettite and, yes, Carl Pavano).

Really, everything that needed to go right for the Yankees last night did, with one glaring exception.

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First thing’s first. Joe Torre is not going to get fired, in part because George Steinbrenner is in no condition to fire him. If Joe’s going to be fired, Brian Cashman will have to do it, and that’s not going to happen. Cashman would have to go before Joe, and that’s a far more significant move now that Cashman’s finally executing his own vision for this team, which as poorly as this season has begun, has reaped benefits in the sense that the pitching reinforcements are finally coming in the form of young minor league talent rather than washed up veterans of the Sidney Ponson and Scott Erickson variety. Hell, Cotler Bean is on the 25-man roster. Colter Bean! If that’s not the indication of a significant change in attitude, I don’t know what is.

Further to that, Phil Hughes makes his second big league start tonight in Texas. In his first start, Hughes looked appropriately nervous in the first inning and understandably winded in the fifth, but put together three solid innings in between in which he allowed just a single and a walk while striking out three. Hughes peripherals for his entire 4 1/3 inning debut were excellent (5 K, 1 BB, the majority of his outs coming on the ground, and just one of his seven hits allowed going for extra bases). On the flip side, Hughes didn’t look very good against the experienced major league hitters in the Toronto lineup (Alex Rios, Vernon Wells, Frank Thomas, and Lyle Overbay were a combined 6 for 9 with a walk, a double, and no strikeouts against Hughes with two of their three outs coming in the air).

Obviously it will be interesting to see what Hughes can do now that he’s dealt with those debut jitters. That said, I still think he should be swapped out for Darrell Rasner regardless of his performance tonight, if only to keep his innings pitched limited for another month or so, at which point he can be safely loosed up on the American League for the remainder of the year.

On the mound for the Rangers will be Scott Brosius look alike and snake lover Kameron Loe. The Rangers’ fifth starter, Loe started the year in the bullpen, posting a 5.40 ERA after five appearances. He’s since earned his 1-1 record in two starts, throwing 5 1/3 innings of shutout ball at the weak-hitting A’s in the first and getting lit up over the same span by the heavy-hitting Indians in the last.

As for the rest of the Texas squad, sophomore second baseman Ian Kinsler has been tearing the cover off the ball, and reclamation project Sammy Sosa has been depositing mistakes in the seats like a late-career Jose Canseco, but the rest of the team is scuffling, including stars Mark Teixeira (always a slow starter) and Michael Young (a miserable .215/.236/.346). Out in the bullpen, closer Akinori Otsuka has been dominant, and lefties C. J. Wilson and Ron Mahay have been solid, but their cast of supporting right-handers has been a mess, as has most of the starting rotation, particularly high-profile off-season trade target Brandon McCarthy. Still, they’ve won a higher percentage of their games than the Yankees, but then that’s true of every AL team other than the Royals. May Day, indeed.

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By now, you’ve heard everything remotely possible breaking down the speculation of Joe Torre’s firing and George Steinbrenner’s statement, which added some slack to the leash on Torre and GM Brian Cashman.

The Yankees finished April losing eight of nine – including five of six to the Red Sox – a 9-14 overall record, a walking wounded list that an NFL team would envy, and numerous questions regarding the cause of their demise. The Yankees led in all five of those games. In four of the eight losses, the Yankees held leads in the seventh inning or later. They could easily be 15-8, 16-7 or 17-6; they’d still have the same flaws but because the victories would far outnumber the defeats, we wouldn’t be discussing the current state of affairs.

As we know, “losing is not acceptable.”

Torre is a convenient scapegoat. He is certainly part of the problem, but he’s not the sole reason for the poor start. He’s correct in that Torre didn’t re-sign a fragile Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte, or bid way too much for Kei Igawa, who should probably be a situational reliever in the Hideki Okajima mold. Torre hasn’t gone 1-for his last 20 like Bob Abreu. He isn’t whining about cramps in his forearm or calling throwing 20 of 45 pitches off a mound “progress.” He didn’t catch too much of the plate with a pitch to Marco Scutaro in Oakland or to Coco Crisp at Fenway. He isn’t the LOOGY (lefty one-out guy) who is throwing up loogies.

Don Zimmer told the New York Post that Cashman is the problem, and that the Torre criticism is unjust. Because he served as Torre’s consiglieri for eight seasons, his words can be taken seriously on one level. Don’t discount Zimmer’s bitterness toward the Yankee organization, however. When Zimmer and Steinbrenner had their tiff during the 2003 season – YES was prohibited from showing Zimmer on camera during games, he was forbidden from appearing on any network programs, and he declined several interview requests for the dot.com – Torre was affected. He’s never outwardly said it, but do remember the frequent camera shots where it appeared Torre was sleeping during games? You don’t see them too much anymore. From 1996-2003, Torre managed the egos and media — he still does — but he lost a great tactician in Zimmer. It’s not a stretch to conclude that the results would be better if Torre still had his right-hand man. Torre is on his fourth bench coach in as many seasons, and while all were capable despite never having comparable experience, none was as good as Zimmer. It’s not a coincidence that Zimmer’s absence and three straight years of “Fire Joe” talk have paralleled each other.

Three years ago, the Yankee rotation’s mediocre performance was the foundation for 61 comeback victories. What happened over the past weekend is similar to two years ago, when the Yankees started the season 11-19 — including losing six of seven to the Red Sox — brought up Chien-Ming Wang in late April and Robinson Cano in early May in Tampa. The team went through growing pains before rattling off 10 straight wins on a West Coast trip (Cano batted close to .400 on that trip after starting is Major League career 0-for-22), and eking out the Division in Boston on the season’s final weekend. Injuries befell the team early last season as well. There were no revelations like Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon going 17-3 as in 2005, but the team bore down and got through its funk.

The Daily News’ Bob Raissman pointed out that Sterling and Waldman are blaming the media for “looking for stories” over the course of April; that seasons aren’t decided in the first month. Tell that to the 1988 Baltimore Orioles or any Tampa Bay Devil Rays team prior to this season.

Steinbrenner is not forcing hair-trigger moves like the Raul Mondesi trade of 2002 following the inexplicable placement of Enrique Wilson in right field against the Mets (correction: I mistakenly wrote Red Sox). But while he’s only speaking to the media through his publicist, Howard Rubinstein, and to a lesser degree team president Randy Levine and COO Lonn Trost, for as long as he’s alive, he is omnipresent in that front office.

The culture he has created, where pressure to win is so intense that any letdown is considered failure, is a double-edged sword. Are the media creating the state of emergency when Brian Cashman tells Anthony McCarron of the Daily News that he’s “never felt secure” in his job? Are they formulating fiction when Torre likens this aspect of the job to “dancing with the heat”?

When Jerome from Manhattan calls Steve Sommers’ show and says, “They won’t come out of this. Torre and Cashman need to be fired,” is that a media creation or an extension of the spoiled Yankee culture?

Starting last Friday, when the Torre/Cashman smoke billowed, the coverage on all accounts – from broadcast – except Sterling and Waldman on WCBS – the papers and the blogosphere has deftly mixed hard-news reporting, analysis, speculation, projection, and the columnists like Joel Sherman have offered provocative and practical solutions. Scribes like Bill Madden have pointed out the unfairness of bringing in Don Mattingly at this point and questioned other possibilities like Larry Bowa. 

Mike and the Mad Dog – more Russo than Francesa – claim that Torre has continued to return and put himself in the line of fire for the financial gain. I don’t know Torre beyond my reporter/manager dealings with him, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was true. Prior success is also a motivating factor. He basked in the glory of four championships and was arguably the most popular manager the city has seen. Wouldn’t you want to go out on a high note and recapture that high?

“(Torre) will be the manager when the Yankees play Texas, but I think he’s one or two more bad series away from being fired,” Buster Olney told Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic on ESPN Radio Monday morning.

Olney acknowledged George Steinbrenner’s desire to scapegoat Torre in previous years, noting – as did the NY Post’s George King on Monday– that Cashman talked him out of firing Torre. Two years ago, following Mel Stottlemyre’s resignation, the prevailing thought was that Torre would be gone. Cashman and Steve Swindal talked him into coming back.

Joe Girardi told Michael Kay Monday afternoon that the team still doesn’t have an identity. He said to see where things are on June 1. By then, Roger Clemens may be here, the Yankees could be in first place and for another year, we’ll be talking about the greatest managerial job Torre and Cashman have done.

The thing to remember while processing the “manager/GM job watch” story is this: the media haven’t created the environment, they are a product of it.

George Steinbrenner released a statement yesterday:

“The season is still very young, but up to now the results are clearly not acceptable to me or to Yankee fans. However, Brian Cashman our general manager, Joe Torre our manager and our players all believe that they will turn this around quickly. I believe in them. I am here to support them in any way to help them accomplish this turnaround. It is time to put excuses and talk away. It is time to see if people are ready to step up and accept their responsibilities. It is time for all of them to show me and the fans what they are made of. Let’s get going. Let’s go out and win and bring a world championship back to New York. That’s what I want.”