Daily Archives: June 23, 2009

My wife has no heart, she doesn’t care. I roll my eyes and make guttural sounds of disappointment, slap my arm against the couch. I curse and curse some more.  They’re killin’ me, I say.

“I’m sorry, honey.”

The Nationals!?!

Straight, with no emotion, like Alice Kramden, she says, “Every year the Yankees lose a series to the worst team, every year it’s the same. It happens. They have hot streaks and slumps.”

But you don’t understand. The Nationals! Two games they should have won against Marlins. Shut out by the damn Braves.

“Well, it’s better than losing to the Red Sox.”

“No it isn’t! At least the Red Sox are good. And they’ve done nothing but lose to them either.”

She shrugs, looks at me, knowing I’m hopeless, and refuses to join in. She has no pity for me or the Yankees. She doesn’t care.

The Yankees played another lifeless game tonight. They had just four hits yet had their chances, leaving the bases loaded twice and stranding eleven in all. In other words, they didn’t do jack-boil-scratch as they lost 4-0 to the Braves in Atlanta. Rookie starter? On cue, the Yankees’ achilles’ heel. I know Tommy Hanson is a stud, but c’mon already.

Chien-Ming Wang wasn’t bad–he gave up three runs on three hits in the third (all three runs scored with two out), and Phil Hughes was terrific again in relief. But that didn’t matter much. Alex Rodriguez went 0-4, Jorge Posada struck out four times and Derek Jeter hit into his third double play in two games as Yankee fans were left with nothing but hard, angry feelings.

Yanks hit skid row, now five behind the Sox. My how it am ugly.

Atlanta Braves

2009 Record: 33-36 (.478)
2009 Pythagorean Record: 33-36 (.478)

2008 Record: 72-90 (.444)
2008 Pythagorean Record: 79-83 (.488)

Manager: Bobby Cox
General Manager: Frank Wren

Home Ballpark (Park Factors): Turner Field (99/99)

Who’s Replacing Whom:

• Casey Kotchman replaces Mark Teixeira
• Nate McLouth replaces Mark Kotsay
• Garret Anderson replaces most of Gregor Blanco (bench)
• Matt Diaz reclaims playing time from Josh Anderson
• Diory Hernandez is filling in for Omar Infante (DL)
• David Ross replaces Corky Miller, Clint Sammons (minors), and Brayan Peña
• Derek Lowe replaces Tom Glavine and Mike Hampton
• Javier Vazquez replaces Tim Hudson (DL) and Chuck James
• Kenshin Kawakami replaces Jorge Campillo (DL) and James Parr (minors)
• Tommy Hanson replaces Jo-Jo Reyes (DL) and John Smoltz
• Eric O’Flaherty replaces Will Ohman
• Mike Gonzalez reclaims his innings from Vladimir Nuñez
• Rafael Soriano reclaims his innings from Julian Tavarez and Jorge Julio
• Peter Moylan reclaims his innings from Blaine Boyer
• Kris Medlen is filling in for Buddy Carlyle (DL)

25-man Roster:

1B – Casey Kotchman (L)
2B – Kelly Johnson (L)
SS – Yunel Escobar (R)
3B – Chipper Jones (S)
C – Brian McCann (L)
RF – Jeff Francoeur (R)
CF – Nate McLouth (L)
LF – Garret Anderson (L)

Bench:

R – Matt Diaz (LF)
R – Martin Prado (UT)
L – Gregor Blanco (CF)
R -Diory Hernandez (IF)
R – David Ross (C)

Rotation:

R – Derek Lowe
R – Jair Jurrjens
R – Javier Vazquez
R – Tommy Hanson
R – Kenshin Kawakami

Bullpen:

L – Mike Gonzalez
R – Rafael Soriano
R – Jeff Bennett
L – Eric O’Flaherty
R – Peter Moylan
R – Manny Acosta
R – Kris Medlen

15-day DL: PH – Greg Norton (hamstring), UT – Omar Infante (broken hand), LHP – Jo-Jo Reyes (hamstring), RHP – Buddy Carlyle (upper back strain/Type-1 diabetes)

60-day DL: RHP – Tim Hudson (TJ), RHP – Jorge Campillo (shoulder tendonitis)

Typical Lineup:

L – Nate McLouth (CF)
R – Yunel Escobar (SS)
S – Chipper Jones (3B)
L – Brian McCann (C)
L – Garret Anderson (LF)
L – Casey Kotchman (1B)
R – Jeff Francoeur (RF)
L – Kelly Johnson (2B)

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A good combination.

The first Hall of Fame Classic, played Sunday at Cooperstown’s Doubleday Field, gave me the opportunity to talk to former Yankee pitcher and broadcaster Jim Kaat. During our on-field conversation, I asked Kitty about his decision to return to the broadcast booth, his thoughts on the ’09 Yankees, his new marriage, and his continuing connection to the village of Cooperstown.

Markusen: Jim, first off, I know that I speak for a lot of Yankee fans who are glad that you’re back broadcasting, not on the YES Network [as before], but on the MLB Network. What went into your decision to come back after essentially retiring for three years?

Kaat: Well, my wife, who had been battling cancer for a couple of years, passed away last year. I retired because we wanted to get a little more time together. She was doing pretty well, but her cancer came back. She couldn’t survive that, so a lot of my friends and family said to me, maybe you ought to go back to work. So that’s what I did, starting this year just on a part-time basis. I just reached out to some people, and if they wanted me to do it, I said fine. So MLB hired me to do ten games, I did the World Baseball Classic, and I’ll do a little stuff for XM Radio. So that sort of motivated me to do it.

Markusen: Did it take a lot of convincing?

Kaat: Not a lot. There was a period of time there where I didn’t know if I wanted to do that [come back], but toward the end of the year in December, I thought, yeah, it might be a good idea for me to do that.

Markusen: Jim, do you still keep close tabs on the Yankees, a team that you followed so closely for so long? Do you still follow them on a regular basis?

Kaat: Oh, very much so. Two of the three games I’ve done so far have been the Yankees. I did the home opener, and I did the Yankee-Red Sox game on June 11. I keep up with all of the teams, and I’ll have another Yankee game—the Yankees and White Sox—at the end of July, so that gives me good reason to keep up with them. I have a Mets-Dodgers game coming up, too. I still follow the Yankees through the newspapers, the box scores, and of course, nowadays on television you can get about all the highlights you want.

Markusen: It’s been a very uneven year for the Yankees. A very poor April, a lot of injuries early, then they had that nine-game winning streak, and now they seem to be struggling a little bit. As you look at the team, what do you think has been the problem?

Kaat: Well, I still think, and I think that with any team, you really need to have quality guys in the seventh and eighth innings to set up whoever your closer is, in this case Mariano. And I always think that’s a determining factor. I mean, hitting comes and goes, guys will go into slumps. The Yankees have played well in the field, in the infield—I don’t know about their range—but they aren’t making any errors. But I’ve always liked teams, as Tampa Bay did last year and the Red Sox this year, that have good guys down in the pen at the end of the game. You know, when Bruney’s been healthy, Aceves has been in and out of the [late-inning] role, Coke, the lefty, has done pretty well, but they haven’t been able to find that solid seventh and eighth-inning guy.

Of course, Brian Cashman knows, and I always chide him about it, I think Chamberlain should be in the bullpen. I think he’d be a perfect eighth-inning guy, but that’s not my decision. But I think that [the bullpen] will determine how well they do.

Markusen: When you look at the intangibles and more subtle areas with this team, you sometimes hear criticism that they play a little too tense, maybe they don’t have a killer instinct, and they continue to struggle with runners in scoring position. Do you give a lot of merit to any of that?

Kaat: Well, the runners in scoring position I do, because the more years go by, the more we’re aware of how great the 1998 team was and the teams in that era, the team that had Tino Martinez and Paul O’Neill, Knoblauch, Jeter was a younger player, Bernie Williams, Girardi was still playing, guys that made contact, advanced runners, manufactured runs. And they had a great bullpen. I think their offense this year is the kind of explosive offense—they’re like a team of really DHs—they can crush mediocre pitching, but until they do those kinds of things against good pitching like the teams in the late nineties, that’s probably where they’re lacking.

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Every so often, when the mood strikes, my wife Emily likes me to feed her baseball trivia questions. We had a session on Sunday after the Yanks lost to the Marlins. My first question was, “What is ERA?” She got it right but did not agree with the number being divided by nine innings.

“What if it is the first game of the year and a pitcher only goes six innings, how can it go into nine?”

I calmly explained.

“What-ever.”

We moved on. And she got a good many of them right–or at least partially right. Her thinking made sense.  Who is known as Junior?  “Cal Ripken.”

What is a fielder’s choice? “That’s when the fielder gets to make the choice. See? I told you I was right.”

The infield fly-rule? “That’s when the infielder’s call off the outfielders and make the catch.”

And my favorite. What is a Baltimore Chop?

“That’s a kind of meat cut special in Baltimore.”

No, dear.

“That’s when they have everyone at Camden Yards come on the field during the seventh inning stretch and practice karate.”

I love my baseball wife.

Today’s news is powered by some cute stop-motion animation from “Sesame Street”:

• And on the seventh day, A-Rod will rest:

Alex Rodriguez, who did not start on Friday and Saturday due to fatigue six weeks after returning from surgery on his right hip, will get one day of rest each week through next month’s All-Star break.

The Yankees will follow a plan created by Dr. Marc Philippon, the surgeon who operated on A-Rod’s hip in March.

“That sounds like a good plan,” Rodriguez said on Sunday. “From what I understand, that comes from Vail (Colo.) and Dr. Philippon. We’ll follow his instructions and regroup in a month. The idea is that I’ll get stronger each month.”

Rodriguez started 38 consecutive games after returning to action on May 8. He is batting .153 (9-for-59) with two homers and 11 RBIs in June. He singled in the third inning of Sunday’s 6-5 loss to the Marlins to end a 0-for-16 slide. Overall, he is batting .213 with nine homers and 28 RBIs in 40 games.

Manager Joe Girardi said he plans to schedule A-Rod’s off days. He’ll get two days off in weeks when the Yankees have an off day.

[My take: Ummm . . . wasn’t the plan coming out of surgery to only play him five or six days a week anyway?  Where did THAT plan go in the last five weeks?]

• The folks at Baseball Prospectus analyze the troubles of Rodriguez since his return:

His .250 Isolated Power (or ISO, slugging percentage minus batting average) is 22 points below his career mark, but about the same distance above two of his five full seasons in pinstripes. It surpasses all but 24 batting-title qualifiers, not that A-Rod himself has enough plate appearances to qualify.

He’s homered in 5.4 percent of his PA, which would rank ninth among qualifiers, though it would be the fifth-lowest mark of his career. The 33-year-old superstar’s real problem is that the hits aren’t falling in for him.

Prior to his benching, Rodriguez’s batting average on balls in play was .192, 128 points below his career mark, and 10 points below the next-lowest qualifier, Jay Bruce. Upon closer inspection, he’s hit line drives—which result in hits far more frequently than any other type—on just 14.8 percent of his balls in play, well below last year’s 18.1 percent. Meanwhile, his ground-ball rate has risen significantly.

A-Rod is one of several star players to recently have a procedure known as femoral-acetabular impingement labroplasty. . . . The problem is that while many skiers have recovered successfully from this operation, there’s almost nothing beyond these very few names to go on as to how this will affect a baseball player.

While the Yankees were ultra-conservative with Rodriguez during rehab, they suddenly forgot the schedule of offdays that Rodriguez’s doctors had set up. Sources tell me that Rodriguez’s hip still shows a small strength and range deficit, one that’s become worse with fatigue. A more regular schedule of rest would appear to be necessary, and it should help get Rodriguez back on track physically.

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