Daily Archives: July 21, 2007

During the nightcap of yesterday’s double header, the Yankees announced that they had traded minor league relief pitcher Jeff Kennard to the Angels for catcher Jose Molina. Molina will become the Yankees’ new backup catcher as soon as he arrives in New York (or Kansas City if he doesn’t make it today), at which point Wil Nieves will be designated for assignment.

First, let’s dispense with Kennard. He’s a right-handed relief pitcher who throws a mid-90s fastball with no movement and gets a bit wild from time to time. He turns 26 later this week and has yet to crack triple-A. This describes Scott Proctor in mid-2003 just before the Yankees acquired him in the Robin Ventura deal, except that Proctor had some experience as a starter and Kennard has made just one start as a professional. Besides, who needs two Scott Proctors? The Yankees used to have another Scott Proctor named Bret Prinz. Prior to the 2005 season, they traded Prinz, then 28 and with 95 major league games under his belt, to the Angels for Wil Nieves. Prinz has since pitched his way through the Rockies and White Sox organizations and is getting lit up for the triple-A Iowa Cubs in the Pacific Coast League. These guys are a dime a dozen, so there’s no harm using one to try to upgrade a position that’s sorely lacking at the big-league level. Kennard had been on the 40-man roster only because he’d been in the minors so long that the Yankees had to add him to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. They did that because they thought they had made a breakthrough by dropping Kennard’s arm slot. Kennard was pitching well for Trenton, but he was no Edwar Ramirez.

As for the catching situation, Wil Nieves went 2 for 3 with two doubles in last night’s game. That makes him 4 for his last 10, all four hits being doubles. That recent surge pushed Nieves’ season line to .164/.190/.230. It’s obscene that the Yankees waited this long to make a move. Given that Nieves hit .259/.298/.346 in triple-A last year, there was nothing to wait around for. Anyone, even last year’s failure Sal Fasano, would have been an improvement (in his brief time with Toronto this year, Fasano hit .178/.229/.311, which is a hair better than what he did for the Yankees last year). By acquiring the middle Molina, the Yankees have done better than Fasano: The Sequel, though not by a whole lot.

Molina is ultimately little more than Wil Nieves four years in the future (though without a big brother clearing the way for him, Nieves is unlikely to get the opportunity Molina has had). A career .245/.314/.319 hitter in the minor leagues, Molina first sniffed the majors with the Cubs in 1999 at the age of 24 (Nieves did the same at the same age with the Padres). After brief appearances with the Angels in 2001 and 2002 (though more extensive than the ones Nieves had with the Yankees over the last two years), Molina finally cracked the 100 at-bat mark in 2003 with a Nieves-like .184/.210/.219 line. The next year, however, Molina got all the way to 203 at-bats and looked like a major league backup catcher, hitting .261/.296/.374 (hey, that’s what these guys hit). It’s been downhill from there, however, as Molina’s production has declined annually, bottoming out at .228/.246/.293 thus far this year.

Yes, Jose Molina, 32-year-old, righty-hitting backup catcher, is a terrible hitter (ML career .238/.276/.339), but even that dreadful career line would be better production than the Yankees have had from a backup catcher since 2004. Read it and weep:

2005: John Flaherty (.165/.206/.252)
2006: Kelly Stinnett (.228/.282/.304)
2006: Sal Fasano (.143/.222/.286)
2007: Wil Nieves (.164/.190/.230)

The Yankees had no idea how good they had it with Kelly Stinnett.

Molina has one other advantage over Nieves: he can throw out baserunners. Nieves has thrown out only six of 27 baserunners this season (22%), and 10 of 43 on his career (23%). Molina has thrown out 28 percent of baserunners this season and a far more impressive 41 percent in his career. Over the last three seasons (2004 to 2006), Molina has thrown out 47 percent of the men trying to steal on him.

So the Yankees have made a very modest upgrade at their least important position (only Kevin Thompson, Chris Basak, and Shelley Duncan have had fewer plate appearances for the Yankees than Wil Nieves this season) for a minimal expense. They say nothing ventured, nothing gained. Both may be true in this case, but if Molina gets hot (last year he hit .377/.414/.642 from the beginning of July through mid-August), it’ll be a great move. If he tanks like Fasano did last year, he’ll replicate Nieves’ production and provide better defense. In that way this is something of a win-win for the Yankees. If nothing else, the fact that Edwar Ramirez and Shelley Duncan have had recent callups and that Wil Nieves has been replaced (and not by triple-A duds Raul Chavez or Omir Santos) proves that Brian Cashman is paying attention. Every little bit helps, even if it’s a very little bit. I just hope Mike Mussina can handle the disruption.

What better way to rebound from a dispiriting loss on Friday than to pummel that same opponent in a double-header sweep on Saturday? That’s exactly what the Yankees did, rebounding from Friday night’s 14-4 drubbing to win a pair by a combined 24-8 score yesterday.

The Yanks fell behind early in game one as Kei Igawa gave up solo homers in the first and second innings, but Igawa got out of a bases-loaded jam in the third when Delmon Young lined into a 4-3 double play, and Hideki Matsui tied things up with a rocket two-run homer into the right field seats in the fourth. Igawa again left the bases loaded in the fifth. Luis Vizcaino took over in the sixth, and in the bottom of that frame, the Yanks dropped a five-spot on reliever Jae Kuk Ryu. That rally almost didn’t happen. Following a leadoff single by Bobby Abreu and a pitch that drilled Alex Rodriguez in the lower back (later prompting Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano to good-naturedly mock Rodriguez’s dance of pain in the dugout), Ryu struck out Matsui and Jorge Posada. Fortunately, Cano delivered a tie-breaking two-out single that plated Abreu, then took second on the throw home, which allowed him to score on Andy Phillips’ subsequent game-breaking two-RBI single. Shelley Duncan then drove the nail in the D-Rays coffin with his first major league home run, and the Yankees got more laughs out of Duncan’s overly enthusiastic hi-fives (he almost beheaded Andy Phillips after crossing the plate, and nearly tore Kim Jones’ shoulder out of the socket when she tried to join in the fun by asking for a hi-five during the post-game interview).

Scott Proctor gave one back in the eighth on a solo homer by backup catcher Raul Casanova (whose beard and batting scowl make him look more than a little like Ice Cube) to set the final score at 7-3 Yanks.

The Yankees would be doing more laughing in the nightcap as Tampa Bay spot-starter J.P. Howell appeared to be throwing batting practice. Johnny Damon set the tone. Akinori Iwamura hit Matt DeSalvo’s first pitch deep into the corner in left where Damon, starting in left field in place of the DH Matsui, made a brilliant leaping catch, slamming in to the wall on his way down and then flexing at Melky Cabrera in celebration. After DeSalvo struck out the next two men, Damon drew a four-pitch walk from Howell, then stole second to jump start the Yankee offense. A single by Derek Jeter and doubles by Abreu and Alex Rodriguez make it 3-0 Yankees before Howell had recorded an out. The Rays countered with two, but the Yankees added one more in the second and three more in the third, with a double by Wil Nieves, of all people, being the big blow in the latter inning. That made it 7-2 Yankees, much as the first game had been, but this time the Rays rallied scoring two in the fifth to drive DeSalvo from the game and one in the sixth off reliever Brian Bruney. That was as close as they’d get, however, as the Bombers greeted former Yankee Jay Witasick with another five-run sixth inning, this one capped by Alex Rodriguez’s 497th career home run (and 33rd of 2007). Brian Stokes got thet same sort of greeting in the seventh with Hideki Matsui’s second homer of the day capping off another five-run inning that set the final score at 17-5.

Thus the Yankees keep the dream alive with the opportunity to win the series today as Andy Pettitte takes on James Shields, a match-up the Yankees won in Tampa to kick off the season’s second half thanks in part to fourth-inning home runs by Jeter, Rodriguez, and Abreu off Shields.

As for yesterday’s starters. Igawa again bent, but didn’t break and struck out six men in five innings along the way, earning another start. DeSalvo de-salvaged (sorry) his standing a bit with a passable outing that saw him strike out more than he walked for the first time in a major league appearance. Nonetheless, he’s headed back to Scranton and will be replaced by Sean Henn, who heads to the bullpen to take Edwar Ramirez’s spot. Since he was last optioned down to triple-A in late-June, Henn has posted a 2.03 ERA in 13 1/3 innings, striking out 10 against just one walk. Luis Vizcaino, meanwhile, earned the win in both games yesterday. Vizcaino, who also picked up the win on Opening Day, is now 8-2 on the season. That four of those wins have come in the last week is a testament to Joe Torre’s increasingly and surprisingly wily use of his most effective set-up man.