Daily Archives: June 19, 2007

Figures I’d predict a slugfest and the Yanks would lose a pitchers duel. Figures as well that the guy I said sucked would hold the Yanks to one run on four hits over seven innings and strike out Alex Rodriguez with junk low and away twice, skipping off the mound after one of them. Figures as well that Mike Mussina, who I said was cooked a few weeks ago, would hold up his end of things by limiting the Rockies to three runs over six innings. Yeah, he got fed up with Lance Barksdale’s umpiring in his final inning and served up a homer to eighth-place hitter Yorvit Torrealba on an 85-mile-per-hour “fastball,” but he was also keeping the Rocks off balance with a change-up in the high 60s.

So the Yanks dropped the Colorado opener 3-1 in a game that felt a lot like their 2-0 loss to the Mets in the last series opener. What’s far more compelling about yesterday’s action was the Yankees’ developing first base situation.

Before the game, the Yankees called up Andy Phillips, a move that was overdue seeing as they’ve been carrying both Chris Basak and Miguel Cairo on the roster and starting Cairo at first while avoiding Basak like the plague. Phillips, who has been playing second base at Scranton and crushing International League pitching as is his way (.301/.382/.494, 11 HR), gives them a superior defensive first base option who actually represents something of a threat at the plate. After all, Cairo has hit .342/.350/.421 as the Yankee first baseman, which is great, but it’s all singles and won’t last. Last year, in similar playing time, Cairo hit .239/.280/.320 and Phillips hit .240/.281/.394. Cairo might be a smidge better than that. Phillips, who was already a smidge better than Cairo, is definitely a lot better than that.

There’s one catch. Rather than demoting Basak, the Yankees designated Josh Phelps for assignment. Sure, Phelps and Phillips are a tad redundant, but facing six games without the designated hitter, having Phelps, who’s a career .294 pinch-hitter, rather than Basak, who’s still never come to the plate in the major leagues, seems like a no-brainer. Seems. Instead the Yankees will have to offer Rule 5 pick Phelps back to Baltimore, where current YES broadcaster and prospective Oriole manager Joe Girardi could very well be the man deciding Phelps’ fate.

Meanwhile, both Jorge Posada and Johnny Damon saw action at first base last night, Posada starting there to allow Wil Nieves to catch Mussina. Jorge made one nice play leaping for a high throw from Derek Jeter and coming down on the bag in time to make the out. Otherwise, neither was challenged, and neither had to play a ball off the bat. Most likely Phillips will start against the lefty Jeff Francis tonight, with Damon starting against righty Rodrigo Lopez on Thursday. Chris Basak will continue to do little more than cheer on his teammates.

For anyone looking for a comparison between Phillips and Phelps, I think I covered that plenty in spring training.

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This just in: The Rockies don’t suck. In fact, the Rockies have won as many games in 2007 as the Yankees have (though Colorado has lost two more). No longer Todd Helton and a bunch of scrubs, the Rockies are a legitimate .500 team that has some youth and promise that could represent the beginning of a small turn around for a franchise that has never won more than 83 games in any single season in its entire 14-year history. Note I said small. The Rockies are not the Brewers, Diamondbacks, or even the Marlins. Their future isn’t quite that bright, but it’s still about as bright as it’s ever been if not more so.

Start with the pitching staff. Josh Fogg and Rodrigo Lopez are filler, even if Lopez is having an excellent though injury-shortened season, but Jeff Francis, Jason Hirsh, and Aaron Cook (of whom the 28-year-old Cook is the oldest) form a solid top three with third-year lefty Francis showing continued improvement as the defacto ace, Cook serving as the National League’s answer to Jake Westbrook, and 25-year-old Hirsh (the key prospect in the Jason Jennings trade) succeeding despite a scary fly ball rate. With additional thanks to Lopez, the Rocky starters have posted a 4.52 ERA this far, which is a minor miracle for a team playing in Coors Field. Mix in strong showings from closer Brian Fuentes and hard-throwing, side-arming sophomore set-up man Manuel Corpas and surprising performances from lefties Jeremy Affeldt (more walks than Ks, but zero homers) and Tom Martin, and the entire staff’s ERA+ is a dead-average 101, while the team’s road ERA is 3.85, which is the third-best in the NL behind the Mets and Padres.

On offense, the Rocks have a solid outfield and left side of the infield, with the oldest of those five men being 28-year-old right fielder Brad Hawpe. Matt Holliday is a legitimate All-Star (.318/.374/.546 career and .321/.372/.522 on the road this year). Hawpe is a lesser version of same (.281/.371/.483 career on the road). Center fielder Willy Taveras (who also came over in the Jennings deal) is a fantastic defender in that big park and has solid on-base numbers both at home (.373) and on the road (.358), though he could stand to be more selective about his stolen base attempts. In the infield, Garrett Atkins got off to an awful start, but has turned it on in June (.327/.441/.673), and 22-year-old future-star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki has been playing gold glove defense while waiting for his bat to come around. Throw in solid contributions on both sides of the ball from reclamation project Kaz Matsui and a healthy Helton and, well, the Rockies don’t suck.

Josh Fogg kinda sucks, though, and he’ll take the mound tonight against the Yankees. One might not be surprised to find that Fogg’s only two wins came on the road and that his ERA at home is 2.77 runs higher than his road mark, though one might be surprised to find out that those two wins game against the Mets and Red Sox. What’s more, the Rockies have won Fogg’s last three starts and Fogg’s ERA over his last four starts (two home, two on the road) has been 3.91. Then again, opponents have hit .326/.375/.495 against him in those four starts, so, even when he does well, Josh Fogg sucks.

As for Mike Mussina, he was fantastic in his last two starts (13 2/3 IP, 10 H, 3 R, 0 BB, 11 K, 1.98 ERA), but I’m still not convinced, as the two teams Moose faced in those games, the White Sox and Diamondbacks, comprise half of the four worst offensive teams in baseball. The Yankees have visited Colorado during the regular season once before, in 2002. In those three games, the two teams scored a total of 70 runs. Coors Field isn’t quite the launching pad it was then thanks to the humidor (the 2002 park factor was 121 compared to 107 for 2006 and 2007), but I don’t think it’s out of the question to expect that kind of game again tonight.

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In his first installment of our series about the box set of the 1977 World Series, Jay Jaffe mentioned how much his father admired Reggie Jackson:

Reggie made a big impression on my father, himself a second-generation Dodger fan who had no truck with the pinstripes. Via him, Reggie gained larger-than-life status in my eyes. When we played catch, occasionally Dad would toss me one that would sting my hand or glance off my glove. If I complained, he’d shout, “Don’t hit ’em so hard, Reggie!” In other words, don’t bellyache, and don’t expect your opponent to cut you any slack.
 

Longtime readers of Bronx Banter know that not only was Reggie my favorite player as a kid but he was one of the few Yankees my Dad also enjoyed too. Shortly before my father died earlier this year, I wrote a memoir piece about him and Reggie Jackson. I was thinking a lot about the old man two days ago on Father’s Day, and thought now would be a good time to share this story with you.

“Dad, Reggie, and Me” was originally published in Bombers Broadside 2007: An Annual Guide to New York Yankees Baseball (March, Maple Street Press). (c) 2007 Maple Street Press LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Dad, Reggie and Me

There is nothing like the first time. Nothing is as intense, as memorable as your first love, your first break-up or, in this case, your first hero. Mine was Reggie Jackson, who signed as a free agent with the Yankees 30 years ago. I was six years old during Jackson’s first year in pinstripes, a time when I was as interested in action heroes and comic books as I was in baseball. Reggie was more a superhero—a “superduperstar” as Time magazine once dubbed him—than a ball player. Bruce Jenner may have been on a box of Wheaties but Reggie had his own candy bar. (Catfish Hunter once said “I unwrapped it and it told me how good it was.”) Reggie arrived in New York at a time when I desperately needed a fantasy hero; his five volatile years in pinstripes coincided with the disintegration of my parents’ marriage.

The truth is the Yankees never wanted Jackson in the first place. In 1976, they won the pennant with an effective left-handed DH in Oscar Gamble. But after they were swept in the World Series by the Reds, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was bent on adding a big name. The first free agent re-entry draft was held that fall and the Yankees drafted the negotiating rights for nine players. Reggie was their sixth choice. Steinbrenner and his general manager, Gabe Paul, coveted second baseman Bobby Grich; manager Billy Martin pined for outfielder Joe Rudi. Then, over the course of a few days in mid-November, seven of the nine players the Yankees were interested in signed elsewhere, and suddenly Steinbrenner had no choice but to court Reggie. Paul was against it, but Steinbrenner courted Reggie anyway, wining and dining the superstar around New York. In the end, Jackson couldn’t resist the Yankees anymore than Steinbrenner could keep himself from wooing the slugger. He turned down bigger offers from the Expos and the Padres and signed. “I didn’t come to New York to be a star,” he said. “I brought my star with me.”

I remember my father in those years sitting in his leather-bound chair, reading The New York Times, a glass of vodka constantly by his side. In 1976, we moved from Manhattan to Westchester and my father had a heart attack at the age of 39. He was unemployed for a year, horribly depressed. My mother got a job and chopped wood to keep our gratuitously spacious house warm. We moved to a nearby town, Yorktown Heights, in 1977 before my father began to work again.

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