Daily Archives: May 13, 2009

In his previous start, Blue Jays’ starter Scott Richmond gave up five runs in the second inning in Oakland, but stayed in the game and pitched six subsequent scoreless innings. Wednesday night, Richmond gave up five runs in the second inning again, but didn’t survive that inning.

The Jays got an early unearned run against Andy Pettitte in the first inning of last night’s game, but that lead didn’t last long. The first three Yankee batters in the second—Melky Cabrera, Brett Gardner, and Ramiro Peña, the last two starting in place of Hideki Matsui (hamstring) and Derek Jeter (oblique)—doubled, homered, and tripled. After a Francisco Cervelli groundout, Johnny Damon tripled, driving in Peña. After a Nick Swisher groundout later, Mark Teixeira doubled, driving in Damon. Richmond then walked Alex Rodriguez on five pitches and battled Robinson Cano for ten more before Cano singled in Teixeira with the fifth run and drove Richmond from the game. The Yankees batted around in the inning, connected for five extra-base hits worth a total of 14 bases, and spent a half an hour at the plate.

That was all the Yankees needed, though they tacked on a run in the fourth (Damon double, Swisher groundout, Teixeira sac fly) off reliever Brian Wolfe and two in the fifth off lefty Bill Murphy (Cano double, Gardner triple, Cervelli RBI infield single). Altogether the fifth-through-eighth men in the Yankee order (Cano, Cabrera, Gardner, and Peña) went 6-for-17 with a walk, five runs scored, four RBIs, and 15 total bases (two doubles, two triples, and a homer). The home run was Brett Gardner’s first in the major leagues, a 330-foot wall scraper that tucked just inside the right-field foul pole. With that homer, a triple, and a walk, Gardner was the hitting star of the game, going 2-for-3 with three RBIs, two runs scored, and seven total bases.

Pettitte gave up a second run in the fourth on two singles, one of which didn’t leave the infield, and a walk. Pettitte wasn’t especially sharp; he walked four men and used up 106 pitches in six innings, but he didn’t need to be and kept the Jays’ league-best offense at bay. Alfredo Aceves pitched around a Vernon Wells double for two innings of scoreless relief, and Jonathan Albaladejo pitched into and out of a bases-loaded jam in the ninth to secure the 8-2 win, smacking himself upside the head after inducing a game-ending double play for walking two men with a six-run lead.

Tomorrow night, the Yankees send CC Sabathia to the mound looking for the series win against the Jays and their second straight series win of their current road trip.

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Of course you want to win every game, but realistically, a baseball team enters a three-game series, particularly one against the team with the best record in the league, hoping to take two of three. Looking at this week’s series in Toronto, the Yankees had to assume last night’s game against Roy Halladay would be the loss, so really everything’s going according to plan, right?

Tonight, Andy Pettitte looks to keep the Yankees on track against Scott Richmond. Richmond is a 29-year-old rookie who went undrafted after graduating from Oklahoma State. He then posted a 14-19 record with a 4.37 ERA over three seasons with the Edmonton Cracker-Cats of the independent Northern League, during which the Vancouver native also pitched for Canada in the inagural World Baseball Classic, though again without particularly encouraging results. The Blue Jays signed Richmond after he made the move to the Cracker-Cats’ rotation in 2007. He split most of 2008 between Double- and Triple-A, going 6-11 witha  4.45 ERA, but also made five spot starts for the major league club. The first four of those starts were nearly identical (between five and 5 2/3 innings, three runs, no more than one walk and either four or five strikeouts in each), but left him 0-3. His last saw him shutout the Orioles in a rain-shortened six-inning ballgame on September 26.

Richmond didn’t get into a game before Canada was eliminated from this year’s WBC, but opened the season as the Blue Jay’s fifth starter and has thus far gone 4-1 with a 3.29 ERA. In the middle four of his six starts, Richmond went 4-0 with a 2.o5 ERA, turning in a quality start each time out with an average of nearly 6 2/3 innings pitched.  That streak was snapped his last time out, when he took his first loss after giving up five runs in the second inning against the A’s in Oakland. Still, Richmond recovered from that rocky frame to shut out the A’s the rest of the way, needing just 96 pitches to complete eight innings.

Richmond has been hit-lucky thus far as his opponents’ average on balls in play is just .245, and he’s always had good, but not spectacular control. The result has been a solid 1.2 WHIP. A fly-ball pitcher, he’s given up five home runs, a rate of 1.2 every nine innings, but three have been solo shots and the other two came with just one man on base. Richmond is also death on right-handed hitters (.155/.183/.182 in his young major league career), but can struggle against lefties.

Unfortunately, Hideki Matsui is out today after tweaking his hamstring in last night’s game. Derek Jeter (oblique) is also out for the second-straight day. Pete Abe reports that Jeter hasn’t swung a bat since Sunday, but “hopes to play tomorrow,” which is what he said yesterday. Ramiro Peña and Brett Gardner once again benefit from these aches and pains per this lineup:

L – Johnny Damon (DH)
S – Nick Swisher (RF)
S – Mark Teixeira (1B)
R – Alex Rodriguez (3B)
L – Robinson Cano (2B)
S – Melky Cabrera (LF)
L – Brett Gardner (CF)
S – Ramiro Peña (SS)
S – Francisco Cervelli (C)

If there’s any upside there it’s that only Alex Rodriguez will hit right-handed against Richmond.

As for Pettitte, his last two starts have been shaky. Against the Angels on May 1, he walked four and gave up five runs in 5 2/3 innings, though the Yankees rallied to win that game 10-9. In his last start, last Thursday against the Rays, he gave up five runs in six innings courtesy of four Tampa homers. The Yankees also rallied to tie that game, but lost on two more home runs off Mariano Rivera. On the season as a whole, however, Pettitte looks like Pettitte: 4.38 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, 6 1/2 innings per start.

I caught this goodness over at Baseball Think Factory.

Check it out.

No, this man will not be the next catcher signed by the Yankees. As much as the Yankees’ catching corps has been overwhelmed by injuries, they’re not that desperate. Close, but not quite.

Contrary to appearances, Larry Haney was not a left-handed throwing catcher. It only looks that way in this 1969 Topps card. In contrast to the way that Hank Aaron and Dale Murphy achieved baseball card glory by being featured in reversed negative photographs, Haney earned only a momentary glimpse of trading card fame. In 1957, Topps released an Aaron card that showed the eventual home run king in a left-handed batting pose. And then in 1989, Upper Deck issued its Murphy card with a similarly wrong-handed pose, again the result of the photo negative being accidentally reversed.

Haney never received as much attention as either of these more celebrated cases, in large part because of his mediocre status as a good-field, no-hit backup catcher. There might have been another factor at play here, as well. Some collectors might have thought that Haney was trying to gain some notoriety by intentionally wearing a left-handed catcher’s mitt and pretending to play the position with the wrong hand. Yet, a conversation with former Topps president Sy Berger, who visited the Hall of Fame several years ago, revealed otherwise. Topps simply made a mistake in its photo processing; Mr. Haney had nothing to do with the “error.” In fact, the 1969 card features the same photo that was used by Topps in the 1968 set. Only that time Topps had the image right.

In many ways, Haney was the Jose Molina of his era. A lifetime .215 hitter with no power, Haney excelled at the defensive side of the game. For his career, he threw out 39 per cent of opposing basestealers. The Oakland A’s thought so much of Haney’s catching skills that they acquired him three different times, including twice during their world championship run from 1972 to 1974.

Originally signed by the Orioles in 1961, Haney played sparingly in three seasons for the Birds. After being taken in the 32nd round of the 1968 expansion draft by the Pilots, Haney appeared in only 22 games for Seattle, but did stake two claims to fame in the Great Northwest. He hit a game-winning home run in his first major league game. Later on, he set a Pilots team record for catchers by committing two errors in one game. Such uncharacteristic defensive pratfalls probably played little influence in the Pilots’ decision to trade him on June 14, 1969 (just before the old trading deadline), as they shipped the veteran receiver to the A’s for second baseman John Donaldson. From there, Haney went to the Padres’ organization (but never actually donned the lovely brown and yellow of the Pods), then came back to the A’s, spent a brief time with the Cardinals, came back to the A’s yet again, and finished his career with the Brewers in 1977 and ’78. Long since retired as a player, Haney worked for years as a scout for the Brewers—who used to be the Pilots, the same team featured on that 1969 Topps card.

Coincidentally, Haney was involved in another card error, albeit of a different kind. His 1975 Topps card displays an in-action photograph of an Oakland catcher awaiting a throw at home plate, but it’s not Haney in the picture. It’s actually former A’s catcher Dave Duncan, who had long since been traded away to the Indians as part of the George Hendrick-Ray Fosse swap.

So for a guy who had a mostly unremarkable career as a backup catcher, that’s two significant error cards. At least the card collectors will never forget Mr. Haney.

Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for MLB.com. He can be reached via e-mail at bmarkusen@stny.rr.com.

Bronx Banter Interview

Our old pal Allen Barra sat down with me recently to talk about his new book, Yogi: Eternal Yankee.

Bronx Banter: You make the argument that Yogi was a better catcher than Johnny Bench. How close was Roy Campanella to Yogi during the Fifties? Was there any catcher even close to these two at the time?

Allen Barra: In Rio Bravo, Walter Brennan asks John Wayne if Ricky Nelson is faster than Dean Martin. “I’d hate to have to live on the difference,” says Duke. The real truth is that if you take Campanella at this peak, there’s probably very little difference between Berra, Bench and Campy. The only thing I might add to that is that it’s possible that, if given the same material to work with, Johnny and Roy could have gotten as much out of as many mediocre pitchers as well as Yogi did. But Yogi did do it, and that has to give him the edge.

BB: Did Yogi really deserve the 1954 and ‘55 MVP awards? In ‘54 the Indians won and Bobby Avila had a big year, also playing a key defensive position, and Mickey Mantle had a monstrous year. And in ’55 Mantle again had another ridiculous year.

AB: That’s a tough question. I don’t know if anyone’s done a “Value over Replacement Factor” kind of analysis for those years, but it’s arguable that Yogi might have had the highest value over anyone who could have replaced him at that position. In 1954 my guess is that the difference between Mantle and Berra wasn’t that great. Avila played a key defensive position, but not more key than Yogi’s. It probably should have been Mantle in ’55, but then I think there’s an equally good case that it probably should have been Yogi in 1950 instead of Phil Rizzuto. What’s interesting is that so many people thought that it should have been Yogi those years. I think that tells us something very important about him.

BB. Was there any year that Yogi should have won an MVP when he didn’t?

AB: Well, as I just mentioned, there was 1950. And you could turn the ’54 argument on its head and ask why Al Rosen, an Indian, wins the MVP [in 1953] when Yogi’s team won the pennant. I’m not saying Rosen didn’t deserve it, I’m just saying that if Yogi had won it, nobody would have gone to the barricades to say he didn’t deserve it, and I’d argue that he was also one of the top five players in the league in 1952. It’s more difficult to figure the value of a top-flight catcher. He did so many things to hold his pitching staffs together back then, I just don’t know if you can figure his worth compared to payers at other positions.

BB: It ‘s well known that Yogi helped Elston Howard when he joined the team but did Yogi ever question or go on the record about the Yankees’ institutional racism?

AB: No, I’m not aware that anyone in that period did. For one thing, when you talked to the players of that era, they all say, “Well, every year we heard that they were brining black players up through the minor league system, and we thought each year would be the next year.” I think there’s something to that – Gil McDougald told me something to that effect. I mean, the Yankee players were ready for it. They had no objections at all to integrating the team. It was only after a few seasons of George Weiss signing a black player for the minor league system and then trading him that they began to catch on. I’d have to say, though, that while the Yankees front office was as racist in its policies as the Boston Red Sox, the Yankees themselves got good marks from Elston and Arlene Howard and Larry Doby for their overall attitudes. Both the Howards and Doby put Yogi at the top of their list of good guys. Arlene Howard told me that Yogi and Elston “hit it off right away.”

BB. I know that walk rates were up in the Fifties and comparatively Yogi didn’t walk that much. But he was contact hitter and it’s hard to point this out as a major flaw. That said, were there any noticeable holes in his game, either offensively or in the field?

AB: No, none, and it ought to be mentioned that though Yogi didn’t walk that much, his on-base average was actually six points better than Johnny Bench’s in about the same number of games, and that’s what’s important. No, Yogi had no flaws. We all know he wasn’t much of a catcher until Bill Dickey learned him all of his experience, but by 1949 he was a very good catcher, and by 1950 the Yankee staff was pretty much relying on him to call their pitches. Or rather, he knew them well enough to call their pitches for them – did I just make some kind of Yogiism? Anyway, all that crap in David Halberstam’s The Summer of ’49 about Allie [Reynolds] and Yogi not getting along is fiction. All the Yankees told me so.

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The Yankees have no shame about promoting the exclusivity of their new park. Kids cannot watch batting practice from the sweet seats in the outfield.

Check this out:

The complaints about batting practice did not draw much sympathy on Tuesday from Lonn Trost, the club’s chief operating officer, who spoke after a news conference announcing the sale of mementos from the old stadium.

Referring to the high-priced Legends Suite tickets clustered around home plate and the infield, Trost said that it was an area that fans without suite tickets would not be allowed to enter.

“If you purchase a suite, do you want somebody in your suite?” Trost said in remarks reported by The Associated Press. “If you purchase a home, do you want somebody in your home?”

Yikes. Nobody is likely to apply the term “friendly confines” to the mallpark in the Bronx.

Is they?