Daily Archives: August 22, 2007

Having dropped the first two games in Anaheim, the Yankees needed Andy Pettitte to come up big in the finale, and that’s exactly what he did. Pettitte held the Angels scoreless through five innings (though a blown call at first base by Dan Iassogna on an inning-ending double play in the fourth helped). The Yankees, meanwhile, scratched out a run in the fourth off John Lackey, bringing around a one-out walk to Alex Rodriguez to give Pettitte a 1-0 lead.

Pettitte made his only mistake of the night in the sixth, doubling up on curveballs to Orlando Cabrera, who knocked the second one over the fence in left just beyond Johnny Damon’s reach to tie the game. The 1-1 tie didn’t last long, however, as the Yankees rallied to take the lead against Lackey in the seventh. Jorge Posada, who was 3 for 4 with a pair of doubles on the night, led off with a walk and moved to third on a single up the middle by Robinson Cano. Wilson Betemit, who had struck out in his first two at-bats, followed by yanking a line drive to right, but right at Vladimir Guerrero, whose strong arm held Posada at third. Melky Cabrera then followed with an RBI single past Howie Kendrick at second, and, after a quick fly out by Damon, Derek Jeter delivered a two-out single to plate Cano.

Curiously, both run-scoring innings by the Yankees to that point ended with outs on the bases. In the fourth, Jorge Posada got caught in a run down between third and home as he tried to score on John Lackey’s wild throw to first on Cano’s infield single which had plated Rodriguez. In the seventh, Jeter was thrown out trying to advance to second on Guerrero’s throw home.

Fortunately, the Yankees didn’t need any extra runs as Pettitte stranded a leadoff single by Kendrick (that was aided by a Robinson Cano bobble) in the seventh, and the Yankees piled on in the eighth. A leadoff homer to dead center by Bobby Abreu bounced Lackey, after which the Bombers added two against the struggling Scot Shields and plated a third run charged to Shields with Chris Bootcheck on the hill. With a 7-1 lead, Joba Chamberlain came on to strike out the side, all on that nasty corkscrewing slider, around a Reggie Willits single in the eighth. The highlight of Chamberlain’s inning was his three-pitch strikeout of Vladimir Guerrero. Vlad fouled back a 100-mile-per-hour fastball on 0-1 only to come up empty on that slider for strike three.

The Yanks and Angels each added a run in the ninth, the Angels on three dinky singles against Mariano Rivera, to set the final score at 8-2.

With the Red Sox and Mariners both losing, the Yankees gain a game in both the Wild Card and the division with the win, which also moved Joe Torre past Casey Stengel and into second place on the Yankees’ all-time managerial list. The Yankees are just 4-5 in their last nine games, but they’re 7-3 against the contenders they’ve faced over the last two weeks and will have today to rest up before starting a seven-game stretch against Detroit and Boston.

What to say, what to say? We’ve bitched and moaned for two days now as the Angels have once again handed the Bombers their bacon. Lots of humble pie round these parts, dag nabit. The Yanks put Andy Pettitte on the spot to come up with another huge performance tonight, hoping they end their losing skid at two. It’d sure be nice to see ’em leave Southern California with a victory. Unfortunately, they’ve got to deal with the tough John Lackey, but hey, playoff teams beat good pitchers, and if the Yanks think of themselves as a playoff team, well, they’ll have to face the likes of Lackey, Escobar, Beckett and Matsuzaka somewhere along the line. So never mind the bollocks, Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

We are learning more about Joba Chamberlain every day. At first, the stories ranged from, "What kind of a name is Joba?" to tracing the line of Yankees with Native American ancestry (those of you proposed the "Superchief 2" nickname last week, nice call).

Tyler Kepner informed us yesterday of the special relationship Chamberlain has with his father, who contracted polio as a child and is sometimes relegated to a wheelchair. We’ve surmised through various television interviews that he has a competitive drive with a demeanor that leads us to wonder whether he’s oblivious to the fact that he tore through three minor-league levels and is succeeding in baseball’s grandest league and with its most hallowed franchise. We’ve seen that his Clemensish body produces Clemensish pitches.

We’ve learned other things, too. For example, there are rules for Chamberlain’s usage. He will not pitch on consecutive days. Joe Torre won’t summon Chamberlain in the middle of an inning. We’ve learned that the plan is still for him to be a starter next season, but with many comparisons of Chamberlain’s ascent to that of Bobby Jenks in 2005 and Jonathan Papelbon in ’06 — and verbal comparisons to the 1995-96 edition of Mariano Rivera — that the Yankees would be wise to at least consider Chamberlain to succeed Rivera as the Yankees’ closer.

The way he has captured our attention is not unlike the means Shane Spencer made an all-time season even better in 1998. His once-in-a-lifetime September that featured 10 home runs, including three grand slams, 27 RBIs and a silly .910 slugging percentage, led Torre to add his righty power bat to the postseason roster, where he played a role in the Yankees’ first-round sweep of the Texas Rangers. But Spencer never recaptured the ’98 magic. He shuttled back and forth between the majors and minors for the next four seasons. He did participate in more memorable Yankee moments — he started the relay that became the Derek Jeter “flip” play in Game 3 of the 2001 ALDS at Oakland — but his utility was limited. His batting average was 77 points lower versus righties (.239, as opposed to .316 vs. lefties), and when given every possible chance to win the everyday right-field job after Paul O’Neill’s retirement, he could not follow through.

Stories like Spencer’s and Chamberlain’s got me thinking about an old media trick: building up the “Cinderella story, out of nowhere,” and offering us every possible bit of information we could consume about the player. Murray Chass compared the effects of the Red Sox’ latest bullpen acquisition — the Quebecois Jon Favreau look-alike — to the Big Nebraskan’s effect on the Yankees. (I’ll cut Mr. Chass some slack; he probably didn’t read this blog or our discussion on that topic last week.)

At what point is it too much hype? Will it cause the guy to crack? I don’t believe this will happen, given what I’ve seen from Chamberlain, but the name Rick Ankiel continues to pop into my mind. The buzz surrounding Ankiel as the Cardinals’ next great young pitcher in 2000 was enormous, and on a national stage, he turned into Nuke LaLoosh when he stopped breathing out of his eyelids. Luckily, and perhaps remarkably, Ankiel proved to be an excellent hitter and had a fallback option, having worked his way back to the big leagues as an outfielder.

Do you object to this kind of buildup of 20- and 21-year-olds? There is no such thing as a sure thing, so why present Joba Chamberlain, or anyone, for that matter, in such a light, regardless of whether or not it sells papers? I ask you: Do you want to read these stories for the hero buildup, to learn more about him as a person, or to learn more about him as a ballplayer?

The crapshoot element of Chamberlain’s short- and long-term success was echoed in last week’s comments. If he is lightning in a bottle, then as fans, we should make like the Metallica album and ride the lightning. It’s not as if we haven’t done that before.

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