Daily Archives: November 13, 2008

The Yankees just picked up OF/1B Nick Swisher from the White Sox for triple-A starter Jeff Marquez (and possibly others, though it seems Marquez is the main piece). Both players had bad years this year. The big question is whether or not this will impact the Yankees pursuit of Mark Teixeira, or if Swisher is more of a Shelley Duncan/Wilson Betemit replacement. Discuss. I’ll be back later to break this one down.

Update: The full deal is Swisher and Double-A righty reliever Kanekoa Texeira for Marquez, Wilson Betemit, and Double-A righty reliever Jhonny Nuñez, the last of whom was the player received for Alberto Gonzalez at the trading deadline.

By Mike Vaccaro

What I’ll always remember most are the eyes: eyes belonging to professional baseball players, who aren’t supposed to be impressed by much and are surprised by even less. Eyes filling a clubhouse containing men who had already won three consecutive World Series and 11 consecutive playoff series and were already being listed among the greatest dynasties of all time.

And yet late on the night of Nov. 1, 2001, and early in the morning of Nov. 2, those eyes were all rheumy and moist and wide with wonder. Even the Yankees couldn’t believe what they’d just seen, and done. Even the Yankees couldn’t quite fathom that, a night after Tino Martinez had rescued them with a two-out, two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 4, Scott Brosius had done the same exact thing, taken Byung-Hyun Kim deep and sent Yankee Stadium into the kind of frothy frenzy that you can still summon in your ears, and your memory, all these years later.

I remember it especially well because it is the only time in 20 years as a newspaperman that I’ve ever blown an edition. I was working for the Newark Star-Ledger at the time, and had written a “running” column which described how valiantly the Yankees had fought in losing and going down three games to two in the Series, and I’d done so without composing a backup “early” column in case it didn’t work out that way.

But it was clear: lightning had struck once the night before.

Couldn’t happen again.

And then it did.

I had already left the press box to stand outside the Yankees clubhouse, to avoid the rush and the crush of postgame. There was a TV monitor set up there, which was on a four-or-five second delay. Which helped add to the surreal nature of the moment, because Kim was still in the stretch position on TV when suddenly there emerged from the tunnel leading to the home dugout a roar that defied explanation. And could mean only one thing.

(more…)

Marcus Carter showed some wear on the 2 train this morning. The stress of too much work and too little pay was catching up with him.

“I sleep okay,” he said, “but I’m still tired all the time. I guess it’s from worrying about having to wake up in a subway tunnel or under a bridge next month.”

They have cut him to part-time at the warehouse in Hunts Point. He got another job washing dishes at a downtown coffee shop, but the pay isn’t very good and the hours are worse.

“The traveling and the split shifts mean 18-hour days,” Carter explained. “I also work weekends at the coffee shop and my paycheck still comes up short, but the bills keep coming.”

So Carter keeps looking for anything he can get.

“There ain’t much out there,” he explained while scanning the newspaper classifieds. “Actually there are jobs, but I’m not qualified to do most of them: CPA, dental hygienist, medical assistant, sales manager.

“Maybe I could do something in sales,” Carter reasoned. “But who would buy anything from me? Who’s buying anything, period?”

The sports pages were more promising.

“Here’s something,” Carter said. “This baseball story has all kinds of information from an ‘unnamed Major League executive.’ That sounds like a growth industry with free agency ready to start. ‘Unnamed’ means there’s probably not much responsibility. ‘Major League’ means a job in baseball. ‘Executive’ means my mother would be proud. Perfect!”

Carter laughed at himself.

“Guys like me don’t get those kinds of jobs,” he said, “but at least it was funny.”

You take what you can get on the 2 train these days.

T-minus one day till free agent hell breaks loose … here’s the news:

• Over at Newsday, Ken Davidoff pokes holes in the public statements that Hank, Hal and Brian are all working with the same mindset on how to build the team.

“Cashman understood that the key to roster management was controlling the years you commit to players.  … the Yankees were using their financial might in a more intelligent way: Paying over slot in the draft. As Cashman said, better to pay them well on the front end than on the back end.

Cashman’s vision started to melt away a year ago at this time …  the Steinbrenners – both Hal and Hank, we should stress – decided they needed to retain their own free agents at all costs. They signed Jorge Posada to a four-year, $52.4-million deal, an investment that already looks terrible; Cashman wanted to give Posada two years and an option … the fact that A-Rod has nine years left in pinstripes seems to horrify, rather than excite, the Yankees and their fans.

There went some roster flexibility, and they sure seem happy to fritter away at it some more, starting on Friday. Will they really bid six years for CC Sabathia? Would they possibly go seven for Mark Teixeira?”

• MLB.com reports that Al Leiter has taken his microphone from the YES Network and will be a studio analyst for the new MLB Network next season.
• Aside from clearing out the area near “the bat” soon to make room for a pedestrian walkway to the new ballpark, demolition of the old stadium won’t really take place until Summer 2009, as per LoHud’s Pete Abe.
• From the Times, we read that in other old stadium news, Babe Ruth’s monument was VERY carefully excavated and wrapped up for its move across the street.

(more…)

The Yankees have signed their first Type A free agent of the offseason, re-upping lefty reliever Damaso Marte, whose $6 million option they had declined just last week, with a three-year deal worth $12 million with a club option for 2012. Marte joined the Yankees just before the trading deadline this year in the deal that also brought Xavier Nady over from the Pirates.

Marte’s Yankee career didn’t get off to the best start as he struggled in two of his first five outings for the Bombers, allowing six runs in his first 4 2/3 innings. His fifth Yankee appearance saw him throw 42 pitches in 101-degree heat in Texas. Marte hadn’t thrown that many pitches in a single outing since August 2006 and promptly developed discomfort in his pitching elbow. Four outings later, Marte turned in another stinker, setting his Yankee ERA at 11.05 after nine appearances. Though Joe Girardi insisted that there was nothing wrong with the Dominican lefty, Marte faced just one batter over the next nine days, eventually informing the media of his elbow discomfort on his own.

The time off did trick as Marte returned to action on August 22 and posted a 1.64 ERA over his last 15 appearances, striking out 13 in 11 innings, while allowing just nine baserunners. The Yankees have clearly chosen to focus on those last 15 outings rather than on the first nine and that bit of elbow pain.

By declining Marte’s option only to resign him to a multi-year deal, the Yankees have done exactly what many expected they would, though I’m troubled by the length of the deal, particularly given that Marte will turn 34 before pitchers and catchers report. Perhaps the most significant success of the 2008 Yankees was their ability to piece together one of the best bullpens in baseball from an assemblage of home-grown arms and minor league free agents. Perhaps just as impressively, they were able to replace parts on the fly when, for example, Brian Bruney broke his foot, or Joba Chamberlain moved into the rotation.

That success seemed to teach the Yankees all they needed to know about the fungibility of relief pitchers, prompting them to release struggling veteran LaTroy Hawkins, whose signing last winter seemed like little more than a hedge against betting the pen on those other unproven arms, and trade Kyle Farnsworth, the lone big-money holdover from past failed attempts to buy a better bullpen, in the wake of the acquisition of Marte. When Marte struggled in his first month as a Yankee without doing much damage to the pen as a whole, that seemed to provide another lesson. Still, here we are again, evaluating a three-year deal for a veteran set-up reliever.

I would have understood if the Yankees had picked up Marte’s option, using him as a hedge against coming set-up man Mark Melancon or against a second look at lefty Phil Coke in the major league pen. I would have understood a two year deal at a reduced salary, which would have allowed the team to trade Marte either at the deadline or next winter. Three years plus an option? That I don’t get. Not when the option would be for Marte’s age-37 season. Not given that bit of elbow trouble in August. Not given all of the pitching already in the Yankee system.

(more…)