Daily Archives: April 29, 2009

The Yankees got a manly effort from Phil Hughes last night.  Let’s see what young Mr. Chamberlain has got this evening.

The future is now.

Lookin’ for a thorough review of the food at Yankee Stadium?  Then dig this cool Boogie Down blog, How Fresh Eats.  Dude has the skinny–soup to nuts.

Part One and Part Two.

What about the beer at the two new parks?  Eric Asimov takes a look in today’s New York Times.

And just cause we’re talking about food, why not take a look at a Shake Shack burger?

With Mother’s Day fast approaching, I thought this would be an ideal time to remind anyone looking for a gift to consider my wife Emily’s photo note cards. 

Check out her site. 

Spring is a good thing.

Much has been written about the need for the Yanks to get off to a strong start in the highly-competitive AL East.

With last night’s win over the Tigers, the Bombers have a 10-10 record after their first 20 games.  Some would call that disappointing.  Some would call for Joe Girardi’s head on a platter.  Some would step back and say “given all they’ve been through, 10-10 is pretty decent.”  But perhaps a larger question is . . . do the first 20 games of a season make or break your chances for the playoffs?

To attempt to answer this, I’ve analyzed the performances of all 104 playoff teams in the wild card era from 1996-2008 (I excluded 1995 due to the shortened schedule).  I first looked at how those teams did in their first 20 games:

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Today’s news is powered by …. Post-its!:

EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

• Christina Kahrl has some thoughts on the construction of the Yankees roster:

The Yankees are supposed to be a good team, but it might be a little hard to see that when, to replace the immortal Cody Ransom at third base, they’ve stopped to… Angel Berroa. Apparently innumerable other bipeds weren’t available, or had already sought other engagements to make themselves unavailable . . .

The alternative would be that this organization, the same proud organization that struggled to come up with a first baseman better than Miguel Cairo in 2007, learned nothing about the value of adequate replacements from that particular lineup atrocity, and was blowing another week of their season on some new A-Rod substitute at third base that almost no other team in the league might consider. Sure, when Alex Rodriguez returns next week, this might prove a minor matter, but blowing the last few roster spots—let alone lineup cards, not to mention forgoing a decision to simply try to stock their minor league affiliates with useful journeymen—has cost this team in the past, and costs them to this day. It’s as if Clay Bellinger wasn’t a happy accident, but a choice informed by what we hope must be an appallingly parochial and ideally uninfectious local sense of taste.

[My take: OUCH! (but she’s right) . . . for a $200+ million team, the Yankee teams of the last few years have been increasingly “bipolar” in terms of their roster construction.  “Stars and Scrubs” might work in Roto . . . but it doesn’t work in real life.]

• Hurricane Alex is now scheduled to hit NY a bit earlier:

Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees have moved up A-Rod’s target date and are now shooting for a return to the team sometime in the first week of May, sources say.

Rodriguez and the Yankees were originally calling May 15 the target date for his return, and that is still the publicly stated goal. However, Rodriguez’s progress has been so good, both he and the team are hopeful he can return more than a week earlier than first expected.

• Ken Rosenthal allays any “Joba (back) to the ‘pen” fears.
• The Bombers have sort of seen the error of their economic ways, and are reducing prices on some of their top tier seats.  Here are some of the reductions:

• Tickets in the first row of sections 15A, 15B, 24B and 25 will be reduced, from $2,500 to $1,250, per regular-season game.

• The first row of sections 11, 12, 13, 27B, 28 and 29 will drop, from $1,000 to $650, per regular-season game.

• All fans who purchased full-season, $2,500 Legends Suite seats in the first row of sections 16-24A will receive an equal number of complimentary Legends Suite seats in the first row of the same sections for each of the remaining regular-season games this season.

• Fans who purchased full-season, $1,250 Legends Suite seats will receive an equal number of complimentary Legends Suite seats in the same price category for 24 games during the season, as selected by the Yankees. . . .

In addition, the Yankees are adopting a program affecting a few hundred seats in Field Level sections 115-125.

From now on, fans purchasing on a full-season basis three full regular-season ticket plans priced at $325 in those sections will receive a fourth ticket free.

[My take: Wonder if the Mets will follow suit . . .]

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“Maybe I’ll get some sleep tonight. I haven’t been doing that much lately.” —Dave Eiland

Welcome back, Phil Hughes.

You wouldn’t know it by the 11-0 final, but last night’s game between the Yankees and Tigers was a pitchers’ duel. Phil Hughes and Edwin Jackson locked horns for six scoreless innings before the Yankees dropped a ten-spot on the Detroit bullpen in the seventh.

Credit the Yankee offense, particularly Robinson Cano, for running deep counts on Jackson all game. Jackson finished the sixth inning having thrown 117 pitches despite having allowed just five men to reach base. With Jackson spent and the game still scoreless entering the seventh, Jim Leyland called on rookie Ryan Perry, a second-year professional who topped out in High-A last year. Perry faced five batters and retired just one, that being Jose Molina, who bunted Nick Swisher (single) and Melky Cabrera (walk) up to set up another key pinch-hitting appearance for Jorge Posada. Posada, who didn’t start for the second straight day due to a sore hamstring, lifted a low fly to left field that Josh Anderson appeared to lose in the Comerica Park lights. The ball skipped past Anderson allowing the gimpy Posada to reach second and both runners to score. After another walk by Perry, Nate Robertson and Brandon Lyon combined to allow seven more Yankees to score. The final blow was a grand slam by Molina that made him the rare player to have a sac bunt and a grand slam in the same inning (it was last done by Sal Bando in 1975, coincidentally also in the seventh inning). The inning went on so long that Angel Berroa, who pinch-ran for Posada, came to bat and singled off Lyon after Molina’s salami. Nick Swisher, who scored twice in that inning and broke out of his slump with two hits and two walks, added the eleventh run with a solo homer off Juan Rincon in the top of the ninth.

The real story of the night, however, was Hughes, who worked six scoreless innings allowing just two hits and two walks while striking out six. Spotting his fastball, which was coming in around 93 miles per hour, and mixing in a deadly, low-70s curve, and his new high-80s cutter, Hughes picked up right where he left off from the eight strong innings he threw against A.J. Burnett and the Blue Jays late last September. With his hair a bit bushier, faint sideburns, and what appeared to be a generally fuller build, Hughes looked and pitched like a more mature pitcher than the one we saw last year despite his still-tender age of 22.

Hughes received no favors from home plate umpire Derryl Cousins, who called several curves that dropped into the strike zone and a couple of fastballs right on the lower right-hand corner balls (included in the latter was ball four of one of Hughes’ two walks), yet he didn’t lose his cool or his confidence. He got into one jam, that coming in the fourth inning. With one out, he hit Miguel Cabrera in the hand. Carlos Guillen then singled and both runners moved up on a groundout. Hughes pitched around the hot-hitting Brandon Inge and got the light-hitting Josh Anderson to ground out to end the threat. He then set the side down in order in the fifth and sixth before his 99-pitch count (inflated by Cousins’ strike zone) and the Yankees’ long top of the seventh ended his night.

Hughes best pitch of the night came on a 0-1 count to Placido Polanco with two out in the bottom of the fifth. It was a curveball that Polanco was convinced was coming right at his head. A look of total fear came over Polanco’s face as he began to bail. The pitch then dropped over the plate for a called strike on the inside corner, knee-high. Sick.

Hughes was followed by Mark Melancon, whom Joe Girardi had warming up before the game became a laugher. Melancon worked a 1-2-3 seventh, striking out Inge in the process. I can’t wait to see Hughes and Melancon team up again.