Daily Archives: December 18, 2009

Right on time for Friday night, one of my favorite cuts of ’em all:

And here’s the Sister Nancy sample:

Topps issued this card, its final regular card for Mickey Mantle, during the spring of 1969. The listed position of “first base” doesn’t seem quite right for an all-time great outfielder, but “The Mick” looks good here, still handsome and his weight under control. Yet, he didn’t play that season. After reporting to spring training, Mantle decided that his aching knees, along with the rest of his diminishing skills, simply mandated that he call it quits. I wish that Mantle had played a little bit longer, if only to allow me to have remembered seeing him play.

Even thought I have no first-hand recollections of Mantle, that doesn’t mean that I never saw him take the field. Quite the contrary. My family occasionally delights in telling me how I used to walk up to our black-and-white television set as a small child, and then begin jumping and screaming when I saw Mantle step up to the plate. This would have been in 1967 or ’68, when I was either two or three years old. So you can see how I wouldn’t remember these episodes. But my family assures me that they actually did happen.

What can a three-year-old know about baseball? I suppose I could have recognized a home run when it was hit, but my knowledge of secondary leads, the roles of middle relievers, and the intricacies of the infield fly rule must have fallen a bit short of diehard standards. I’m not even sure how I knew Mantle was the man on those Yankees. After all, he was at the end of his career, struggling to play a new position at first base, and merely a shell of the five-tool ballplayer who had helped center field become the position of glamour in New York City during the 1950s. Perhaps my father clued me into Mantle’s importance. I can just hear him whispering to me, “One day, this guy will be in the Hall of Fame.”

In spite of my early obsession with Mr. Mantle, I somehow lost touch with his legacy. During the 1970s, I had little interest in Yankee history; I was far more concerned with Bobby Murcer (and then Bobby Bonds), along with Thurman Munson and Mel Stottlemyre, followed by the wave of winning that came to town in the form of Jim “Catfish” Hunter, Ron Guidry, and Reggie Jackson. By then, the Yankees of the 1960s had become forgotten. I had no memories of those teams; if anything, I was tired of hearing that the Yankees’ last period of glory had come to an end in 1964.

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Ken Rosenthal says enough already, the Yanks and Johnny Damon/Scott Boras all need to recognize: they need each other.

Mere days after Hideki Matsui agreed to join the Angels on a one-year contract worth $6 million, the Yankees have come to terms with Nick Johnson on a one-year deal worth a reported $5.75 million plus incentives to replace Matsui as their designated hitter. The decision to sign Johnson, so it seems to me, was less one the Yankees had made entering the offseason and more one that was made as a result of other decisions made by and about departing free agents Matsui and Johnny Damon.

Though many believe Matsui signed with the Angels because Halos manager Mike Scioscia promised him the opportunity to play left field once or twice a week (though, actually, Scioscia only promised him an opportunity in Spring Training to prove he could still play the field, which he likely can’t), and The Daily News‘ Mark Fiensand reported late last night that the Yankees opted not to resign Matsui primarily because of the state of his knees, I have another theory.

Based on a piece by Matsui’s agent Arn Tellem that appeared on the Huffington Post on Wednesday, I believe Matsui took the Angels’ offer without giving the Yankees a chance to match or beat it because he was afraid the Yankees, who had been focusing on negotiating with Johnny Damon, might either not make an offer (true if you believe Fiensand’s unnamed source), or might take enough time doing so that the Angels would rescind their offer. Here are the key passages from Tellem:

Hideki’s overriding concerns have always been winning and playing for a quality organization. Over his 17 seasons in pro ball, his only two teams have been the Yankees and the Yomiuri Giants. Each is the premier franchise in its respective league. Beyond the Yanks, his preferences were the Angels and the Boston Red Sox, two dominating franchises with superb players, coaches and management. But with David Ortiz entrenched as Boston’s everyday designated hitter, the Red Sox were never a real option.

[snip]

Hideki chose to accept Angel’s offer rather than wait for Yankees to decide whether they wanted to bring him back. Failure to act quickly might have caused L.A. to withdraw its offer and forced Hideki to sign with a weaker team, thus forfeiting a shot at another World Series. Conflicted, Hideki stayed up all Sunday night mulling his final move in this limited game of musical free-agent chairs. He didn’t want to be left standing.

Now, I realize that almost everything an agent says in public is spin, but I see no reason for Tellem to basically admit to being the first to blink in a game of contract chicken other than having actually done so.

The catch here is that, while the Yankees might have preferred to bring back Johnny Damon as their designated hitter (he’s clearly no longer qualified to play the field, either), Damon has been firm in his desire for a contract that comfortably exceeds Bobby Abreu’s two-year, $19 million re-up with the Angels in both years and annual salary. The Yankees have wisely balked at Damon’s demands, which suddenly left them searching for option C.

Enter Nick Johnson, the once and future Yankee. As an underpowered on-base machine, Johnson is a good fit as a replacement for Damon in the number-two hole in the Yankee lineup, and as an oft-injured, defensively challenged first baseman who hit just eight homers last year in 574 plate appearances, he was willing to take a one-year deal with a base salary even lower than Matsui’s.

That’s all well and good, but there are a lot of reasons to be underwhelmed if not outright dissatisfied with the Johnson signing. First and foremost among them is his fragility. Yes, Johnson’s on-base percentage of .426 was surpassed only by MVPs Joe Mauer and Albert Pujols among qualifying batters in 2009, but it’s getting into the batters’ box in the first place that has been the challenge for Johnson. The 133 games he played in this past season were the second most of his major league career and he played just 38 games over the previous two seasons combined.

Here’s a quick look at Johnson’s injury history:

• 1998: separated shoulder (out six weeks)
• 2000: unknown left hand/wrist injury (missed entire season)
• 2002: bone bruse in left wrist (missed three weeks)
• 2003: fractured right hand (missed two months)
• 2004: back (missed first two months); broken cheekbone (missed last six weeks)
• 2005: bone bruse in right heel (missed a month)
• 2006-7: broken right femur (suffered late September ’06, it wiped out his entire ’07 season)
• 2008: torn ligaments and tendons in wrist (ended season in mid-May)
• 2009: strained right hamstring (missed two weeks)

Johnson has had his share of fluke injuries, chief among them the foul ball that bounced back up and broke his cheekbone in 2004 and the broken leg he suffered in a collision with right fielder Austin Kearns in 2006, but the frequency and severity of his injuries is no fluke. Johnson is truly fragile and when he breaks he takes longer to heal than most players (to cite two recent examples, he was expected to return from his soft-tissue injury in 2008, but didn’t, and that broken leg, which kept him out of action for more than a calendar year, also took far longer to heal properly than was anticipated).

So, yes, Johnson’s on-base skills (.402 career OBP) would look mighty fine in the two hole, helping to set the table for Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, but there’s a good chance the Yankees will need someone else to fill that spot for a significant portion of the coming season, and if that person is Curtis Granderson (who would otherwise likely hit fifth behind Rodriguez), they’ll need someone else to take Granderson’s spot lower in the order.

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