Daily Archives: October 2, 2009

The Rays beat the Yankees 13-4 on Friday night in a game that was every bit as ugly as that score would suggest. CC Sabathia, making his first career start with a chance to reach 20 wins, gave up nine runs (five earned) and was pulled with two outs in the third having thrown 82 pitches. Six Yankee relievers followed, with Jonathan Albaladejo giving up two more runs, and David Robertson and Phil Hughes one each (I’m guessing Hughes has already shaved his new mustache). B.J. Upton hit for the first cycle in Rays history in the first five innings, following a key, bases-loaded first-inning triple with a double in the third, a homer in the fourth, and an RBI single in the fifth. He later added another single in the eighth and finished the game having gone 5-for-5 with 11 total bases, 6 RBIs, and 3 runs scored.

The silver lining for the Yankees was an opportunity to get a look at a large swath of their roster, with 16 position players and 8 pitchers appearing in the game. Juan Miranda crushed a pitch off Dale Thayer for his first major league home run which also happened to tie the Yankees’ single-season team mark for home runs at 242, a mark set by the 2004 Bombers. Brian Bruney worked a perfect sixth inning, and Damaso Marte retired the only two men he faced on a total of four pitches in the eighth.

The turning point in the game came in the bottom of the first. Jason Bartlett led off with a solid single up the middle, then stole second on the first pitch to Carl Crawford. Crawford then hit a grounder to Mark Teixeira’s right. Perhaps still a bit rattled from taking a David Price fastball up and in off his left hand in the top of the inning as likely retribution for Sabathia breaking co-AL home run leader Carlos Peña’s fingers with a pitch the last time these two teams met, Tex bobbled the ball. The bobble was of little consequence as Teixeira recovered in time to flip the ball to Sabathia, but Crawford beat the big lefty to the bag, forcing Tex to eat the ball. Nonetheless, Tex was given an error on the play. With men on first and third and none out, Sabathia walked Evan Longoria on five pitches setting up a bases-loaded no-out jam

Then CC bore down. He jammed Ben Zobrist inside, broke his bat, and got him to hit a humpback liner to Robinson Cano. Teixeira then made a nice play, bending over backwards near the stands to snag a Willy Aybar foul pop and firing home to keep the runners in place. With two out and the game still scoreless, Sabathia fell behind Gabe Kapler 3-0, then got two generous strike calls to battle back to 3-2 before finally walking in the first run of the game. B.J. Upton then hit the first pitch he saw just over the reach of Cano (it seemed as if Cano could have had the ball, but it knuckled, causing Robby to miss). The ball scooted toward the right-field gap, eluding a diving Nick Swisher, who seemed to get caught up in the Tropicana Dome turf, and rolling to the warning track for a bases-clearing triple. That made it 4-0 Rays and set the course for Sabathia, Upton, and the game in general.

After the game, both Sabathia and Girardi blamed CC’s bad outing on a lack of fastball command. Sabathia also said his changeup “wasn’t really there,” but that “I’ll be ready for Wednesday,” referring to his Game 1 start in the ALDS.

Though the games are meaningless, it seems appropriate that the Yankees are finishing the 2009 season against the Rays. Tampa Bay was supposed to be in the thick of the AL East race and are the defending American League Champions. The Yankees, having replaced the Rays atop the division, hope to succeed them as pennant winners as well.

The Rays mediocre finish, nearly 20 games behind the Yankees in third place, feels like a disappointment, but it’s important to remember that this is a franchise that had won as many as 70 games just once prior to 2008. This has been the second-best season in Rays history by a dozen games. Entering the final series of the season, they Rays are just one game behind the Twins, who remain alive in the AL Central race.

The 2009 Rays suffered through brutal seasons from Dioner Navarro (.219/.259/.317), B.J. Upton (.238/.308/.362), and Pat Burrell (.226/.321/.376), and got just 67 games from second baseman Akinori Iwamura due to a knee injury, but benefited from what were likely flukey late-20s spikes from Ben Zobrist (.290/.399/.531) and Jason Bartlett (.319/.385/.492).

Carl Crawford bounced back from his disappointing 2008 campaign, but remains a good player rather than a great one. Nonetheless, the trade that sent Scott Kazmir and the $20 million left on his contract over the next two years to Anaheim suggests that the Rays will pick up Crawford’s $10-million option for 2010.

Kazmir was made expendable by the strong performance of 26-year-old rookie Jeff Niemann, a thick, 6-foot-9 righty, as well as the late-season arrival of 23-year-old righty Wade Davis, who has been dominant in three of his five September starts (though two of those came against the lowly Orioles) and good in the fourth. Niemann and Davis will start the final two games of the season against Andy Pettitte and A.J. Burnett.

Fellow rookie David Price will start tonight against fellow lefty CC Sabathia. Price was supposed to be the rookie sensation in the Rays’ rotation, but after spending April and most of May in the minors to suppress his innings total, he struggled with his control and the longball upon returning the majors. In his first 11 starts, he gave up 11 homers and walked 33 in 53 innings, which translates to 1.87 HR/9 and 5.6 BB/9.  As a result, he was averaging less than five innings per start and sported a 5.60 ERA.

In his 11 starts since then, however, Price has allowed just six more homers and walked just 19 in 68 1/3 innings (0.8 HR/9, 2.5 BB/9, almost 6 1/3 innings per start). The result has been a solid 3.82 ERA and a 6-3 record over that span. That’s the kind of progress the Yankees had hoped to see from Joba Chamberlain this year.

The rotation of Matt Garza, James Shields, Price, Niemann, and Davis is the primary reason the Rays will remain contenders in 2010, and the Yankees will get a preview of that in this final series. That seems like a good thing to me. Though Joe Girardi will continue to rotate days off through his lineup, facing good young pitchers will keep the Yankee hitters from falling into any bad habits in the process of playing out the string. Similarly, playoff starters Sabathia, Pettitte, and Burnett will be facing a solid lineup (fourth best in the AL on the year), rather than the glorified Triple-A squad run out by the Royals.

Meanwhile, the pesky Twins are forcing the Tigers to sweat out their Central Division title, and could force them to start Justin Verlander on Sunday, thus bumping him from what would otherwise be his Game 1 start in the ALDS. I’ll, of course, have an in-depth preview of that series next week. In the meantime here are some individual stats that are within reach for the Yankees this weekend:

CC Sabathia: a win tonight would be his 20th, a new career high. Six strikeouts would get him to 200.

A.J. Burnett: needs 8 Ks for 200.

Mark Teixeira: needs 1 homer for 40

Nick Swisher: needs 1 homer for 30

Derek Jeter: needs 2 homers for 20

Robinson Cano: needs 2 doubles for 50

Alex Rodriguez: needs 7 RBIs for 100 and two homers to tie Mark McGwire for 8th place all-time.

Derek Jeter: needs 4 RBIs for 70 (Jeter has reached 70 RBIs in all but two of his full seasons and missed by one last year. Leading off has cost him RBI opportunities this year in what has been one the best seasons of his career.) The Captain also needs four hits to tie Hall-0f-Fame shortstop Luke Appling for 48th all-time.

Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui rest today as Jerry Hairston plays left (and tests his wrist) and Jose Molina DHs. That gives Molina some at-bats before the postseason and allows Sabathia to work with Posada. Swisher bats fifth. Melky starts in center against the lefty Price.

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Here’s a site worth checking out: Sports Propaganda Prints.

The one and only Charles Pierce on the one and only Tony LaRussa:

I first became aware of this particular blight when he worked in Oakland a decade or two ago, back in the days before Beane turned the A’s into a mirror with which to show himself his true genius. First thing you heard was that La Russa had a law degree. This was meant to portray him as something of a baseball intellectual, which heretofore had been defined as someone who spit tobacco on his own shoes and not yours. I was fascinated by the fascination with this; I mean, the world is full of lawyers. (So, for that matter, are various low-security prisons, but that’s another story.) I wondered how many of his acolytes would hire Tony La Russa and his law degree to defend them on a capital-murder charge. Not many, I reckoned.

Then there was the ballet school T-shirt. La Russa used to wear this all the time in his post-game interviews. This was meant to portray him as something of a baseball aesthete, which heretofore had been defined as someone who put something larger than a $1 bill into the stripper’s G-string. This particular bluff worked until the night when, while wearing the ballet-school T-shirt, La Russa bum-rushed an elderly reporter from his clubhouse. This is not something Diaghilev would have done — not even to people throwing apples at his head.

But the truly remarkable thing about La Russa is his rather unspectacular record at winning anything that counts. Eugene McCarthy once said of Walter Mondale that the latter “had the soul of a vice-president.” Tony La Russa has the soul of a semifinalist.

For more LaRussa-related ugliness, check out this Deadspin post featuring Buzz Bissinger.

Thanks to Baseball Think Factory for the links.

In what already seems like an overwhelming year for public deaths, comes the news that Mr. Magic has reportedly died of a heart attack. He was 46.

Childhood slips away more and more each day.

In what is likely a sign of the times, Joe Girardi has become a lightning rod for debate in these parts. Even in the midst of a 100-plus win season and a guarantee of the best regular season record in baseball, Girardi still has his share of critics. They say he bunts too much, brings too much tension to the dugout, doesn’t tell the truth about injuries, mishandles the bullpen, etc, etc, etc.

Such is life in the age of the Internet and talk radio. Every manager, no matter how successful, is severely criticized by a percentage of his team’s fan base. Every manager fails at handling the bullpen, an inevitable gripe when a manager has six or seven fulltime relievers. If you listen to the criticism long enough, you’ll soon believe that every manager is the reincarnation of the village idiot.

So what is the reality? In the case of Girardi, his biggest weakness is probably an over reliance on the sacrifice bunt. If that’s his Achilles heel as a manager, then he grades out pretty well. Girardi has done a very good job in 2009, as indicated by the team’s total of 102 wins, with the potential of three more wins this weekend. When I looked at this Yankee team in the spring, I tried to assess the club objectively. Weighing the strengths of a tough schedule and a difficult division, along with the absence of the team’s best player for six weeks, I considered the Yankees a 95-win team. So at this point, Girardi has guided the Yankees to at least seven more wins than I originally projected. In my mind, that is significant overachievement, which is worthy of praise, not derision.

Girardi has succeeded in relaxing the atmosphere in 2009, compared to the general tension he created last year. He doesn’t make major mistakes with his lineup, uses his improved bench sufficiently, and distributes the workload in the bullpen evenly. In terms of preparation and reviewing scouting reports, I don’t know of a manager who puts in more hours or works any harder. Girardi’s high level work ethic is unquestionable.

If you don’t believe me, consider some of the other precincts registering votes. After the Yankees clinched the AL East on Sunday, reporters asked Alex Rodriguez who should be considered the team’s MVP. Rodriguez listed the accomplishments of several teammates, but then ultimately answered “Girardi.” And when the results of the AL Manager of the Year award are announced, do not be surprised if Girardi receives a few votes and finishes third, behind only Ron Washington and Mike Scioscia. Joe Girardi, with his smarts, toughness, and willingness to work, is a keeper.

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