Daily Archives: April 15, 2009

When Mark Teixeira fielded the ground ball and hustled to first for the final out in the bottom of the ninth, manager Joe Girardi watched eagerly from the vistor’s dugout.  He was coiled.  But when the last out was made, Girardi and his coaches shook hands with enthusiasm.  Everyone was pumped up.

Yanks 4, Rays 3.   

They had every right to be pleased as the Yankees earned perhaps their most satisfying win so far this year.  Andy Pettitte staked the Rays to an early 2-0 lead but pitched a wonderful game, allowing three runs and working into the eighth inning.  Brian Bruney, who struck out the side last night on ten pitches, replaced Pettitte and whiffed the two batters he faced (Bruney got the win).  Robinson Cano hit a two-run dinger and Johnny Damon, who missed the two previous games, drove in the tying run in the top of the eighth. 

Then, in the ninth, Cody Ransom, who hasn’t hit a lick (and was benched again today in favor of Ramiro Pena), laced a one-out, pinch-hit liner into right center field.  Running hard out of the box, he hustled his way into a double (a good throw would have made it close, but it was off-line).  One out later, Derek Jeter singled to left, a ground ball that darted between the shortstop and third baseman.  Ransom charged home as Carl Crawford bobbled the ball momentarily allowing him to score easily.  The Yankees took advantage of two poor outfield throws, turning the tables on the Rays who ran without mercy on the Yankee outfielders last season.

Our great friend Mr. Rivera pitched the ninth: fly out to right, and two ground ball outs to first.  Zip, zip, zip.  The Bombers finish their nine-game road trip on a high note, and they will open the new Yankee Stadium tomorrow with a winning record of 5-4.

Hot Dog.

Andy Pettitte takes the hill this afternoon looking to send the Yankees home with a win. Pettitte was fantastic against the Royals on Friday (7 IP, 1 R, 6 K, just four baserunners). In his last start against the Rays, last July, he was even better (8 IP, 0 R, 5 K, four baserunners), though that came at home and his results in three previous starts against the Rays were more mixed.

Johnny Damon, who missed yesterday’s game due to the flu, returns to the lineup this afternoon, bumping Derek Jeter back into the leadoff spot and Brett Gardner down to the seven hole. Damon takes the place of the ailing Xavier Nady who is out indefinitely due to a tear in his right elbow (more specific news is still pending as Nady waits to see the team doctors). The rest of the lineup is the same as last night’s with Jorge Posada at DH and Ramiro Peña at third base.

That lineup will face 26-year-old righty Andy Sonnanstine, who had a rough outing against the Orioles last week (4 2/3 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 4 BB, 2 K) and last faced the Yankees a year and one day ago, also at the Trop, and was even worse (3 1/3 IP, 9 H, 7 R, 3 HR). Of the three Yankees who homered of him in that game, only Damon is in today’s lineup (Alex Rodriguez and Morgan Ensberg were the other two).

Everyone’s wearing number 42 today in recognition of Jackie Robinson day. Whereas wearing the number was elective in past years, this year it’s manditory for everyone.

Yanks and Rays play the rubber game of their three-game set this afternoon in Tampa. According to Pete Abe, Xavier Nady will need season-ending surgery. No official word yet and there probably won’t be for a minute…

So much for the outfield platoon. This is a tough break for the Yankees, no other way to look at it. 

Dag.

A few years ago, Allen Barra wrote an interesting piece about language for Baseball Prospectus:

George Carlin used to do a great routine in which he recounted how the term “shell shock” in World War I evolved to “combat fatigue” in World War II, and, finally, by Vietnam, to “post-traumatic stress disorder.” What, Carlin wanted to know, was wrong with shell shock? It was a perfectly legitimate term–colorful, concise, and descriptive. It grabbed you on first hearing and told you exactly what it meant. That was the whole point. By the time we reached Vietnam the reality of shell shock had become obscured by the very term that was supposed to describe it. It had become something that the average person could no longer understand without an interpreter.

…Cal Ripken Jr. for instance. This weekend while watching the Yankees game, I saw a commercial for his baseball videos. One of them is labeled “Defense,” as in, “Learn to play defense the Cal Ripken way.” When Cal Ripken, Jr., broke into the major leagues, “defense” was called “fielding.” It meant not only catching the ball but throwing to the right base, knowing which bases to cover, backing up the play. They called it “fielding” because unlike other sports, only the defense for the team that had the ball was on the field while they were doing it. In other words, it described a situation peculiar to baseball. (And, by the way, when did players like Cal Ripken, Jr. go from playing the middle infield to playing “key defensive positions”?)

When, exactly, did fielding become defense? For that matter, when did hitting and baserunning get lumped together under the leaden term “offense”? Were “batting” and “hitting” and “baserunning” too quaint for an audience that also watched football and basketball? Did we somehow subconsciously decide that because football and basketball had offense and defense that baseball had to have them, too?

I could not agree more about “fielding,” and ever since have made it a point to use that word instead of “defense.” This ain’t football, after all. Defense? I think it’s okay to use “defense” occasionally, especially when talking about “team defense,” otherwise I just don’t see anything wrong with “fielding.”

Which is not to say that I’m against new jargon. It’s just that in this case, I don’t see why the change was necessary.

And speaking of language, yo, pet peeve #1,637…adding “esque” or “ian” to the end of any person, place or thing. As in “Jeterian,” which Michael Kay whipped-out last night. Man, I think that is just pretentious beyond belief.

We need something to laugh about, something that can deliver some amusement. The first nine days of the new season have brought us too much tragedy, beginning with the senseless death of the Angels’ Nick Adenhart and continuing with Monday’s dual losses of Harry Kalas and Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. So this week’s “Card Corner” is just for fun, as we spin the time machine back to 1976, the year The Bird made baseball childlike and naïve.

A few years ago, Sports Collectors Digest held a contest to determine the funniest sports trading card of all-time. This 1976 Topps card, featuring Kurt Bevacqua, some scary-looking calipers, and one enormous piece of bubble gum, finished second in the periodical’s sweepstakes. (The first-place finisher borders on the X-rated, so I opted not to include that in this article; we need to keep it clean at The Banter.)

In baseball’s more innocent time, players took time to participate in the official Bubble Gum Blowing Championships of 1975. The championships were sponsored by the Bazooka Gum Company and overseen by “gum commissioner” Joe Garagiola, who was NBC’s lead play-by-play broadcaster at the time. Each major league team held an individual contest, with winners advancing to the championships. In fact, almost all of the then-24 major league teams submitted a representative, except for the Pirates and Tigers, whose players apparently had little skill in the field of bubble-blowing. (It’s hard to believe Fidrych didn’t qualify here.) Here’s a look at the complete list of participants, which included three Hall of Famers and a few cool nicknames:

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Let’s get right to it …

• Joel Sherman expresses some concern over Chien-Ming Wang:

Still, the Yanks had envisioned Wang returning from his 2008 foot injury to be what he was the previous two seasons, which was a 19-win innings eater. Instead, he has logged just a total of 4 2-3 innings in two starts and his 28.93 ERA is the worst in the majors for anyone who has made a start in 2009 not named (sorry Yankee fans) Carl Pavano.

Wang . . . is essentially weapon-less when he does not have the sink on his fastball. You could find plenty of statistical analysts who had projected long-term problems for Wang because righties who strike out as few batters as Wang do not typically have extended success.

Right now, the Yanks are saying that Wang’s delivery is messed up and that is preventing him from driving his sinker down in the strike zone. And when that sinker is up in the zone, Wang simply becomes glorified batting practice. But one apprehension with Wang has always been what happens as AL hitters become more familiar with Wang and don’t chase that sinker early in the count and simply wait and wait until Wang comes up in the zone.

[My take: Is that one of the reasons why the Yanks have not offered Wang a long-term deal?]

• Yanks pitching coach Dave Eiland speaks about Wang:

Up until Chien-Ming Wang’s first batter on Monday, the pitching coach Dave Eiland expected a good game. In two bullpen sessions, one last weekend and one before the game, Wang had corrected a flaw in his mechanics.

“Starting in Baltimore, his arm was late, he wasn’t on time, he wasn’t getting on top of the ball to throw the ball downhill and get his signature sink,” Eiland said. “He made the adjustment in his side work, he warmed up tremendously, and then in the game, he was back to where he was in Baltimore. He just didn’t take it out there with him.”

• PeteAbe didn’t have a problem with Nick Swisher enjoying himself on the mound Monday night:

. . . It was 15-5 and they asked a guy to pitch who hadn’t pitched since his freshman year of high school. . . . These things happen sometimes.

The best part was when he shook Jose Molina off, even through there were no signs. When he struck Gabe Kapler out, Swish rolled the ball into the dugout for a souvenir. Hilarious.

His best line was that this game is like an Etch-A-Sketch, you need to shake it and start over again.

• Pete also isn’t getting too worried about Wang:

Wang seemed stunned. He said the issue was where he released the ball, which was off to the side instead of over the top. A sinkerball pitcher wants to stand tall on the mound and throw the ball on a downward plane. Otherwise the ball floats over the strike zone and you see what happens.

Try and remember, Wang was 46-15, 3.74 from 2006-08. There are only a handful of starters who have been better. He’s also coming off a ninth-long stretch when he didn’t pitch in a regular-season game.

Have a little faith that the guy didn’t suddenly lose his ability. This stuff happens sometimes.

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Disregard that 7-2 final score; last night’s game at Tropicana Field was a tense pitchers’ duel that saw both teams execute late-game rallies, leaving the result in doubt until the ninth inning.

The Yankees got off to a good start by loading the bases against Matt Garza without recording an out in the top of the first. Singles by Brett Gardner and Derek Jeter and a walk to Mark Teixeira brought up the team’s hottest hitter in Nick Swisher. Swisher worked a seven-pitch full count, but Garza struck out Swisher on a nasty curveball. Jorge Posada got one run home with a sacrifice fly to deep left, but Robinson Cano hit a looping liner to strand the remaning runners.

For a while it seemed that one run was all the Yankees would need as A.J. Burnett burned through the Rays order, issuing only a walk to Pat Burrell the first time through.

When Swisher led of the fourth, Garza sent a 1-1 fastball right at Nick’s noggin, likely retribution for Swisher’s jovial mound appearance (and souvenir strikeout ball) from the night before. Swisher ducked out of the way, took a close strike on the outside corner, then dumped Garza’s next pitch in the right-centerfield stands to make the Yankee lead 2-0.

Burnett, set the Rays down in order the second time through the Tampa lineup to bring a no-hitter into the seventh inning. Burnett wound up allowing just three hits in his eight innings of work, unfortunately, they all came in a row to start the seventh as Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria, and Carlos Peña singled to make it 2-1 and Burrell lifted a sac fly to right to tie the game at 2-2.

Undeterred, the Yankees took the lead right back in the eight. With Garza’s night having ended after seven frames, nine Ks, and 112 pitches, Joe Maddon brought in lefty J.P. Howell to face Brett Gardner, Derek Jeter, and Mark Teixeira, whose aching wrist is most bothersome when he hits right-handed. Gardner led off by lifting a fly-ball double over a drawn-in Crawford in left field. Jeter then singled to put runners on the corners, and the aching Teixeira, who had gone 0-for-2 with a walk from the left side, worked a full count, then lifted a sac fly to the warning track to plate Gardner with the go-ahead run.

After one last perfect inning from Burnett in the eight, the Yankees added some insurance against Dan Wheeler in the ninth. Robinson Cano led off with a first-pitch single. Melky Cabrera, who had entered as a defensive replacement for Xavier Nady in the eighth, hit a ground-ball single through the right side. Then, after Ramiro Peña, who started for Cody Ransom and went 0-for-3 with a walk) failed to get down a bunt and Jose Molina (0-for-4) struck out, Gardner bounced a ground-rule double off the warning track in straight-away center and Jeter completed the scoring with a three-run homer to right center. Brian Bruney the capped the night off by striking out the top three men in the Rays’ order on ten pitches, five of them, including all three pitches to Evan Longoria, swinging strikes.

Burnett did exactly what the Yankees needed him to do, and exactly what he set out to do, not only delivering a win, but eating up eight innings in the process. He needed just 103 pitches, struck out nine, and allowed just four baserunners (the Burrell walk and the three straight singles in the seventh).

The Yankees can now wrap up a winning road trip with a win behind Andy Pettitte this afternoon.

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