Daily Archives: May 29, 2008

Hey, check it out, I remembered to do another one of these! (For those who missed it, here’s the April Farm Report.) This month I’m adding bold faced names.

Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre

The big news out of Scranton is the impending opt-out of Jason Lane and the recent signing of Ben Broussard. Lane has hit .287/.387/.521 in May and can opt-out at the end of the month (which is tomorrow). A righty outfielder who has been working out at first base, he’s just an older Shelley Duncan with more major league experience, but given the poor performance of the newer model, it may be worth giving the old chassis another kick.

Former Indian and Mariner Broussard is a 31-year-old lefty first baseman who can play the outfield corners. He was signed by the Rangers during the offseason and released by them earlier this month. His .225/.288/.393 career line against lefties in the major leagues makes him a bad fit for the Yankees and is the reason he was available in the first place. He has three doubles and a walk in seven plate appearances for Scranton.

Speaking of first-base depth, or the lack thereof, Juan Miranda is back on the DL after reinjuring his shoulder. He played just six games in May. Eric Duncan‘s promising April turned into a typically disappointing May (.205/.300/.269).

That .269 SLG for Duncan makes me wonder if the wind was blowing in all month, as Brett Gardner‘s April power surge also vanished in May as his game returned to it’s previous form with outstanding on-base (.431) and stolen-base numbers (15 for 18), but a sub-.400 slugging percentage. On the season, Gardner is hitting .285/.405/.442 with 19 steals in 26 attempts (73 percent success).

Shifting to the pitchers, with Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy on the DL, Joba Chamberlain moving into the rotation alongside Darrell Rasner, Kei Igawa having shown that he’s made no improvements since last year, Steven White having been bounced to the bullpen, and Alan Horne having been on the DL since early April, the sixth starter on the Yankee depth chart is converted reliever Dan Giese, who posted a 2.59 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, and 3.38 K/BB ratio in five May starts. Jeff Marquez was better in May than he was in April, but still had just two quality starts in five tries. Jeff Karstens has yet to achieve the feat since being activated and optioned. He was awful in his last start. Daniel McCutchen could surpass Giese by the time I do my next Farm Report. His one triple-A start thus far was quality, though he gave up ten hits and took the loss.

Things are more encouraging out in the bullpen. After a rough April, Scott Patterson found his footing in May and posted a 1.59 ERA, a 0.88 WHIP, and struck out eight men against just one walk. He’s now the triple-A closer. J.B. Cox has yet to allow a run in triple-A and has a 0.55 WHIP, though he’s struck out just three men in 7 1/3 innings. David Robertson, who like Cox and McCutchen was promoted during May, has struck out 14 in 13 triple-A innings without allowing a home run and posted a 2.77 ERA, but has also walked 10. Once he gets those walks down, he’ll be ready.

(more…)

YES is broadcasting Game 6 of the 1978 World Serious tonight. I tuned in just in time to catch Reggie’s bomb of Bob Welch, a first pitch shot that served as revenge for Welch’s dramatic K of Jackson earlier in the series. Jackson admired the blast, though his posturing is tame by today’s standards, and then tipped his hat to the Dodger faithful after he crossed home plate. In a short, 1994 New Yorker tribute to Jackson called “Swingtime,” Roger Angell noted this home run as one of Jackson’s career highlights. Here’s more from the piece:

Coming up out of the dugout before his next at-bat in a big game, Reggie Jackson was always accompanied by an invisible entourage: he was the heavyweight champion headed down the aisle for another title defense. The batter’s box was his prize ring, and once he’d dug in there–with those gauntleted arms, the squashed-down helmet, the shades and the shoulders–all hearts beat faster. It really didn’t matter what came next–a pop-up or a ground ball, a single or a dinger, or one of those tunneling-to-Peru strikeouts that ended with his helmet askew, his massive legs twisted into taffy ropes, and the man lurching and staggering as he fought for balance down there in the center of our shouting–because what he gave us, game after game, throughout a twenty-one-year career, was full value.

…From first to last, he was excessive; he excelled at excess…His ego, like his swing, took your breath away, but the dazzled, infuriated beat writers and columnists had to concede that it probably arose from the same deeply hidden, unforgiving self-doubt that whipped him to such baseball hieghts, mostly in the hard late going.

I think Angell gets to the heart of Jackson’s gift–no matter what he did when he was at-bat, he always gave us full value. There aren’t many athletes you can say that about.

I know the NBA home office will be thrilled and delighted if the Celtics and Lakers reach the Finals, something that is a very real possibility (the Lakers can knock the Spurs out tonight, the Celts can finish the Pistons tomorrow). If that happens, we’ll see plenty of highlights from the 80s, when both teams brought out the best (and occasionally the worst) in each other and generally elevated the game to spirited heights of competiveness. And we’ll also hear from the old cast of characters, including Bill Russell.

Here is a classic story from "Second Wind: Memoirs of an Opinonated Man," by Russell with the historian Taylor Branch (1979, Random House; currently out-of-print). It’s about Russell’s grandfather and his mule, Kate. Russell’s family was from Monroe, Louisiana and he lived down there until he was about ten (his family later moved to the Bay Area where Russell played junior high hoops with Frank Robinson, who in turn played baseball with Curt Flood and Vada Pinson). He called his father’s father, The Old Man. When Russell was four or five (1938-9), he followed his grandfather and Kate around one day:

I could tell that Kate and the Old Man understood each other. One day I was walking along with them when Kate decided to go off and stand in a ditch. Being an honest mule, she had a stubborn, mulish personality, and she stood there with this determined look on her face. It was as if Kate were saying, Okay, I got you now. We’re going to do this my way." The Old Man did everything he could to get Kate back up on the road. I watched him talk to her, and push, pull, shove and kick—a tough job, because there must have been nine hundred pounds of mule there. The Old Man would get Kate’s front up on the raod and be cooing into her ear, but when he walked around to pull up her taile end, the front would sidle back into the ditch again—so he’d take a deep breath and start over. I was taking all this in, and I couldn’t believe that the Old Man didn’t lose his temper.

After a long ordeal, Kate finally wound up back on the road. The Old Man looked exhausted, and the mule must have taken some satisfaction from all the effort she’d cost him. She looked fresh and relaxed, standing there as warm and lazy as the country air. The Old Man leaned on Kate and rested there for a minute or two; then out of nowhere he hauled off and punched her with his bare fist. Wack, just once, right on the side of the neck. The thud was so loud that I must have jumped a foot. The mule gently swayed back and forth groggily; then her front legs buckled and she collapsed to her knees. Then the hindquarters slowly buckled and settled down too. Kate looked all bent and contorted, like a squatting camel, as she sat there with a vacant stare in her eyes. I was dumbstruck. Right in front of my eyes the Old Man had knocked out a MULE with one punch.

He never said a word to me or to the mule. He just let Kate sit there for a minute, and then he grabbed her by the head and picked her up. "Okay, let’s go," he said quietly, and we started off again as if nothing had happened.

That sight stuck in my mind so vividly that I learned a practical lesson from it. I got into very few fights when I played for the Celtics, but every single one of them was in the last quarter, after the game was decided. You have to choose when to fight, and that is the time. The Old Man knew he’d have been in big trouble if he’d knocked that mule down in the ditch, so he waited until it didn’t cost him anything. Then he relieved his frustration and gave Kate something to think about.

Eat your heart out Mongo.

Thanks to Pete Abraham, I caught Mike Hayes’ interview with Bob Sheppard over at a place called Busted Halo:

BH: What a lot of people don’t know about you is that you’ve been a speech teacher for most of your life at the high school and college level. Do you consider yourself a speech teacher first and the Yankee announcer second?

BS: I’m a teacher first and a Yankee announcer second or maybe third or fourth. Primarily, my whole training has been to be a speech teacher. That’s what I decided to do when I was early in college at St. John’s (University in New York). For many years I was teaching high school speech during the day, St. John’s in the late afternoons and evenings and some of the summer times, and in the meantime, I was still at Yankee Stadium doing the night games and the weekend games.

We will hopefully see Mr. Sheppard later this summer. The old place just ain’t the same without him.

For the past couple of seasons, Jay Jaffe’s blogging has slowed considerably as his writing for BP, the New York Sun, etc. has increased. However, Jay’s been back at it this spring at The Futility Infielder, which is good news for us. Check out this recent post on Doc Ellis and this fine one on his grandfather, Bernie.

Today gives Jay’s excellent piece on Marvin Miller. Peep, don’t sleep.