Daily Archives: May 8, 2009

I’ll get to the Orioles in a second. First here’s what’s new about the Yankee roster:

• Alex Rodriguez is back, playing third and hitting fourth in the tonight’s lineup.

That’s huge. Joe Girardi has posted a lineup without Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada in roughly one third of the Yankees’ games this season (nine of 28). Amazingly, the Yankees have scored 5.67 runs per game in those nine games, but their record in those games has been 3-6, and four of those games have occurred during the team’s current five-game losing streak, with the Yankees averaging just four runs per game in those four games. Losing Posada for a month or so has undermined the impact of Rodriguez’s return, but Rodriguez’s return similarly negates the impact of the loss of Posada. Yankee third basemen have hit .202/.248/.283 in Rodriguez’s absence. It’s difficult to underestimate the importance of his return.

• Jose Molina is on the DL with a Grade 2 strain in his left quadriceps. Kevin Cash, who hurt his right shoulder on a slide in April and was just activated from the DL on Tuesday, has been called up to take Molina’s place.

Francisco Cervelli draws the start tonight. I have no idea how Girardi is going to dole out the starts going forward, but I would be surprised if Cervelli and Cash are much more productive in place of Posada and Molina than the Yankee third basemen were in place of Alex Rodriguez. Here’s what I wrote about Cash in my Yankee Campers piece back in February:

Kevin Cash is only three years younger than Chad Moller and a whole lot worse at the plate. He has a great arm, but that simply makes him a younger, less-productive version of Jose Molina. At 31, he’s a career .184/.248/.285 hitter in 557 major league plate appearances. His career OPS+ is 38. He’s among the worst of a worthless breed. The Yankees should be publicly apologetic for not being able to do better.

And here’s what I said about Cervelli:

Cervelli played just 21 games for Trenton last year, but hit .315/.432/.384 in them. That high on-base and poor power is typical of Cervelli, a strong defender who turns 23 in early March and could yet emerge as a major league starter. The Yankees hope Cervelli, the leader in their parade of low-minors catching prospects, will advance quickly, but they’d be wise not to rush him out of desperation. He looked completely overmatched in his five major league plate appearances last September.

And here’s what I wrote about Cervelli when he was called up earlier this week:

After losing most of last year to a broken arm, Cervelli now looks not unlike the catcher-version of [Ramiro] Peña. He’s a strong defender, easily major league quality, with little to recommend him at the plate other than a good batting eye. Cervelli looked overmatched at the plate in his very brief September call-up last year, while playing for Italy in the WBC this March, and in spring training after Italy’s elimination from the tournament. The sample size is minuscule, of course, but the competition in each was something less than what he’s likely to see in the majors in May, and he went a combined 4-for-25 (.160) with just one extra base hit and, despite that good batting eye, just one walk across those three appearances. Thus far this year, he’s hitting just .190/.266/.310 for the Trenton Thunder.

Though I did temper that a bit with this:

I’m not particularly worried about the Yankees “rushing” the 23-year-old Cervelli because Jesus Montero is now just a level behind him at High-A Tampa and is crushing the ball. Montero’s defense is far from major-league-ready, if it ever well be, but he’s nipping at Cervelli’s heals. Peña has handled the jump to the majors wonderfully. Cervelli, who has a veteran disposition—despite his lack of production he was a clubhouse leader on Team Italy—seems as likely as anyone to do likewise.

The way I see it, Girardi might as well start Cervelli and hope for the best given that Cash has already proven himself to be an incompetent major league hitter. That said, if one of these guys has a good day at the plate, he should ride the hot hand.

• Mark Melancon has been optioned to Triple-A Scranton.

That makes room for Rodriguez, but it doesn’t clear a 40-man roster spot for Cash, so another move is coming. If it doesn’t involve Angel Berroa getting designated for assignment, I’ll hit the roof. The problem is that the need to add Cash takes that 40-man spot away from Shelley Duncan, but then Shelley sat out Scranton’s double-header yesterday with a sore shoulder (his left, not the one he separated last year). Oy.

My suggestion for adding another bat is that the Yankees release the perpetually injured Christian Garcia, who is taking up a 40-man roster spot while working out in extended spring training. The hope there being that they could resign him like they did Humberto Sanchez. John Rodriguez or a recovered Duncan could then take Berroa’s 25-man spot while Berroa and Garcia will have made room for Cash and the extra bat.

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I taped the below segment with Ted Berg yesterday, before Jose Molina tore his quad and left the Yankees without a major league catcher, and before Mariano Rivera gave up back-to-back home runs for the first time in his career and later had his manager explain he’s having issues with his arm strength. How Brian Cashman rejiggers the roster with Molina heading to the DL and Alex Rodriguez coming off it tonight is crucial. Can he find a catcher better than Chris Stewart or Francisco Cervelli? Will he drop Angel Berroa, demote a reliever, and bring up a couple of bats (preferably Shelley Duncan and John Rodriguez) who can hit for that catcher in the late-innings? Will he add Brett Tomko to the struggling bullpen? Have things really gotten so bad that we think Tomko can help?

That the Yankees have allowed more runs per game than any other team in baseball can no longer be blamed on Chien-Ming Wang. Even if you just flat out erase the 23 runs Wang allowed in his three starts, rest of the team has allowed allowed 5.54 runs per game, which would be better than only five teams in baseball.

The Yankees have Sabathia, Hughes, and Chamberlain lined up to pitch in Baltimore this weekend. Those three could go a long way toward making us all feel better if they’re able to build on the flashes of brilliance they’ve each shown in their recent starts. As a friend just said to me, “I won’t take the toaster into the bathtub until I see what happens this weekend.”

I’m still not quite ready to panic, but I’m a lot closer than I was when we filmed this:

Alex Witchel wrote a terrific piece on the Irish novelist Colm Toibin last weekend in the New York Times Magazine. I have not read anything by Toibin but this caught my attention:

It is Toibin’s triumph as a writer that his sympathy for his devils — especially the mothers — is great enough to spread the blame to everyone around them. For him, contradictions are paramount. The unexpected rush of warm feeling he can unleash for a character toward whom you have hardened your heart is one of those luxurious moments of catharsis you rarely experience in real life.

…“Do you know it has no single words for yes and no [in Gaelic]?” he said to Sam, animatedly. The fact of it delighted him. For someone who has such little use for “good” and “bad,” the very notions of “yes” and “no” are equally prosaic. Why bother with such useless extremes when all the really good stuff is in the middle?

I find myself looking for nice, pat answers too often, looking at the world in black-and-white terms, as a moralist. I don’t like feeling uncomfortable so I look for easy answers to complicated issues. I know this is foolish.  Or I know it speaks to my own insecurities and that all of the really good, complicated, messy stuff is in the middle.

Here is an except from Toibin’s latest novel, Brooklyn.

Today’s news is powered by the return of A-Rod:

• Alex Rodriguez should be making his 2009 debut tonight.
• Jayson Stark takes another look at those HR milestones in A-Rod’s contract:

Every time his home run total hit one of those “historic” numbers — Willie Mays’ 660 homers, Babe Ruth’s 714, Hank Aaron’s 755, and then the 762nd and 763rd homers that would pull Rodriguez even with and then beyond Barry Bonds — A-Rod’s cash register was supposed to ring.

But now here’s the key question:

Suppose, given his admission of steroid use and the other furor that has swirled around this man, the Yankees were to argue that he’s no longer a “historic” figure?

Wouldn’t that mean that those milestones were no longer “historic” accomplishments?

And wouldn’t that then mean that they no longer would have to pay him his 30 million “historic” bucks — or any portion thereof?

These are not questions the Yankees are asking — yet. But they’re questions we have heard asked around baseball lately, as A-Rod’s reputation, approval rating and marketability have plunged to somewhere south of Rio de Janeiro.

“If I’m the Yankees,” said an official of one team, “I think I’d be doing everything I could not to pay that money, and let him sue me for it.”

“I think the Yankees ought to challenge it and baseball ought to challenge it,” said an executive of another club. “And then it’s up to A-Rod and the union to determine how much they want to fight it. Does this guy really want to continue to go through this stuff? Does he really want to continue to explain himself?”

• Murray Chass . . . disses Selena Roberts . . . and stands up for A-Rod?:

Roberts has written a book about Alex Rodriguez, and it is a journalistic abomination. That phrase probably won’t appear in any advertisement for the book, but it should to alert prospective readers what they would be getting.

I use the word journalistic rather than literary for two reasons: 1, the book grew out of a Sports Illustrated project; 2, Roberts has been a newspaper and magazine reporter and columnist and as such has practiced the craft of journalism. Based on the book, however, she needs a lot more practice.

In general, Roberts makes far too many serious allegations about Rodriguez to hide them behind anonymous quotes. Rodriguez deserves more, but more importantly readers deserve more. There is far too much in this attack book for Roberts to expect readers to take it on faith that her anonymous sources are real and they can be trusted.

The use of anonymous sources has come under increasing criticism from readers of all types of publications. Having used them frequently in my decades as a reporter and columnist, I am aware of the problems they pose. Reporters have to establish their credibility with their use of unidentified sources for readers to accept them.

Roberts and I were once colleagues at The New York Times, and I can’t say she established that credibility. She also didn’t strike me as being a top-flight reporter. As a result, I don’t feel I can trust her book full of anonymous sources. Even if every single A-Rod transgression she reports is accurate, it’s too easy for her to write one former teammate said this and another player said that.

Had she written these same reports for the Times, very little would have made it into the paper. I’m not familiar with Sports Illustrated’s standards, but I hope they’re higher than the Roberts book offers. Actually, if you remove the quotes and other information that Roberts attributes to anonymous sources in the 246-page book, it might be left with 46 pages.

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