Daily Archives: May 12, 2008

Don’t look now, but the Tampa Bay Rays have third-best record in American League. Given that, the Yankees look pretty good rolling into town with a 4-2 record against the Rays and a 2-0 record at the Trop this season, but then it’s been nearly a month since these two teams last met. The Rays were 6-8 when the Yankees last left town, but are 15-7 since then, 13-5 over their last six series, and are coming off a sweep of the Angels.

Just as they planned it, the Rays have been winning on the strength of their pitching and defense, particularly since getting Scott Kazmir and Matt Garza, neither of whom has faced the Yankees yet this year but both of whom will start in this series with the latter taking the hill tonight, back from the disabled list. Last by a lot in preventing runs last year, the Rays are now are the fifth stingiest team in the league and are second only to the surprising A’s in least runs allowed per game at home, yielding just with 3.47 R/G at the Trop.

Garza has a 3.06 ERA in three starts since coming off the DL, but with a reverse K/BB of 0.75. He’ll face Andy Pettitte, who is working on an extra day of rest due to yesterday’s rainout.

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I was having a conversation with a friend over the weekend about the future of the newspaper business. He suggested that the print version of The New York Times will not exist in ten years. I don’t know enough about the future to know if that is correct, but the way things are going it wouldn’t really surprise me. Everything is in flux.

The Times is doing a good job with their baseball blog, Bats (their Diner’s Journal blog in the food section is tremendous). Sherman at the Post, Feinsand at the News and O’Brein at Newsday, Murti at the FAN, all have blogs to maintain along with their regular duties. Heck Pride of the Yankees has been around, and doing it well, forever. Blogging is part of the every day news cycle.

The fact that blogs as a medium have been co-opted by the mainstream press is not news. Nor is the fact that best Yankee information available anywhere now comes from a blog. But who would have thunk that the one-stop-shop for behind-the-scenes Yankee news would come from a Westchester paper and not one of Big Three? Pete Abraham will be scooped-up one day and be handsomely rewarded for his hard work. In the meantime, if his blog was the only access you had to the Yankees, you’d be well-informed. Pete’s site isn’t the end-all–other blogs, including this one and a host of others around the ‘net, have lots to add to the conversation–but he’s the starting point. It’s a sign of how things have already changed that the New York Times, Daily News and the Post are all getting their asses kicked by a paper from the ‘burbs.

This is good for us as fans because Pete has raised the bar, and now the rest of the papers have to keep up. That’s competition at its finest.

I caught most of the games at Shea this weekend. I actually went out there with Rich Lederer, his son Joe, and Repoz on Friday night. We sat around and watched it rain for an hour-and-a-half and then split when they announced no game would be played. Anyhow, it was nice to see Junior Griffey, who I don’t catch all that often, being an American League guy. Nate Silver had a fine piece on Junior for the Times yesterday. Check it out.

Also, thanks to Jon Weisman for pointing out Paul DePodesta’s new blog (with a clever name), It Might Be Dangerous…You Go First, which rightly celebrated Greg Maddux’s 350th career win. Man, I just hope Maddog can last through the end of next season as it would be tremendous to see him pass Warren Spahn (363) on the all-time wins list. As for the title of DePo’s blog, the first movie that comes to mind is “Young Frankenstein.” But it sounds like such a stock line, I’m sure it was in one the old Bob Hope movies or Warner Bros. cartoons. Hmmm.

I wasn’t impressed with Joba Chamberlain’s emotional outburst after striking out Dave Dellucci last week.  I realize that being demonstrative is just the way it is today, whether it is Chamberlain celebrating after a strike out or Manny Ramirez admiring a home run for fifteen minutes at the plate.   My problem with Chamerlain letting loose after he retired Dellucci was that it seemed to be all about Joba getting revenge for the home run Dellucci hit off him a few nights earlier.  In other words, it was selfish, and had nothing to do with the game situation.  To me, Chamberlain would have been more of a bad ass if he had just stalked off the mound after making Dellucci look helpless.  I think his antics undermined a beautiful sequence of pitches.  It isn’t a that big a deal, certainly not worth all the attention it has gotten on WFAN, but that is my take. 

According to Bob Klapisch, former Yankees Goose Gossage and Roy White weren’t impressed either:

Goose always has hated showboaters, past and especially present day, so when Dellucci told reporters he thought Chamberlain’s response was immature and "bush," Gossage didn’t hesitate to say, "I’m on Dellucci’s side.

"That’s just not the Yankee way, what Joba did. Let everyone else do that stuff, but not a Yankee," Gossage said by telephone on Saturday. "What I don’t understand is, the kid’s got the greatest mentor in the world in Mariano [Rivera]. He’s one of the leaders of the team, so you’d think it wouldn’t happen on that team.

"But there’s no one to pass the torch anymore, no one to teach the young kids how to act. The Mets did a lot of that [celebrating] last year, and look how it came back to haunt them."

…White, in particular, took issue with Melky Cabrera, who often does a full-spin, twirl high-five after a home run or Yankee victory.
“I saw that 360-thing he did with [Robinson] Cano at the end of one of the games and I was shocked. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” White said by telephone. “I’m sorry, that’s just too much. I’m guess I’m old school, but there’s a professional way to play baseball, there’s a Yankee tradition, back to [Joe] DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.
“You hit a home run, act like you’ve hit one before, not like it’s the first time in your life.”

On the other hand, Ed Valentine thinks all the talk about Yankee class is nonsense.