I’m a little late on this, but here’s Rich Lederer on the recent Jered Weaver contract extension.

All Eric Nusbaum wanted was to buy a Dodgers hat.

Here’s a couple of pieces over at Grantland to check out.

First, Louisa Thomas on Venus Williams:

She has always seemed to have an ambivalent relationship to tennis. She is the most recognizable exponent of the game (even more than Serena, perhaps, because she came first) and also a vanishing act, an ambassador and outsider at once. She wanted to be the best, but it wasn’t always clear that she wanted to play at all. Richard Williams said he wanted his daughters to be extraordinary, to stand apart. They do. But that doesn’t quite capture Venus. Nothing does. She is elusive.

The challenge, Venus made clear early on, was to change the game without letting it change her. She has always held something back. Her story isn’t one about a rise and fall, glory and fade. She has become a kind of ghost.

This isn’t because she has other interests outside of tennis, which is often the knock. The spookiest thing about her is that she is one of the greatest competitors in the women’s game, but also one of the most indifferent. She’s a winner who somehow doesn’t need to win. So — and this is the question that has always bugged me, and the question I’ll be thinking about as I watch her in this tournament, and write about it here — why does she continue to play?

Next, Jane Leavy remembers Mike Flanagan:

Unlike my colleagues who have written in recent days of having covered him over the past 30 years as a pitcher, pitching coach, general manager, and broadcaster for the Orioles, Flanagan was in and out of my life as quickly as I tried to get in and out of the locker room. But he stayed with me in ways I didn’t realize until I heard about his death. What struck me about the conversation that day in the locker room was his interest in me. Most athlete-cum-celebs are too busy bemoaning the obligations of public personhood, too consumed by the ego-distorting attentions of doting reporters hanging breathlessly on every not-so-well-chosen word, to think about anyone other than themselves. But Flanagan really wanted to know about me, and because his interest was palpably authentic I told him things I never expected to reveal in a major league clubhouse, where revelation was supposed to be the other way around. I told him the naked truth.

…Flanagan’s suicide and that of former Yankee pitcher Hideki Irabu after the spotlight passed them by, that of Denver Bronco’s receiver Kenny McKinley and LPGA golfer Erica Blasberg after suffering debilitating injuries, and that of former Pro Bowl safety Dave Duerson, who shot himself in the chest so his brain could be studied for evidence of trauma-induced disease — which was found to be ample — cry out for the availability of on-going psychological services for professional athletes and for a reexamination of the fallacious assumptions we make as a result of their sturdy professional lives.

[Photo Credit: moonchild1111]

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. With five games scheduled against the Orioles in Baltimore over the weekend, it seemed like a golden opportunity to get fat at the expense of the worst team in the league. But after dropping the opener on Friday night, having Saturday washed out by Hurricane Irene, and splitting a doubleheader on Sunday, Monday evening’s game became a must-win affair. Losing three of four in a series that a week ago looked like at least four wins would have been unacceptable.

Thinks looked a bit bleak at the outset, with both Derek Jeter and Alex Rodríguez out with nagging injuries, and something of an unknown quantity on the mound, as Freddy García was making his first start since coming back from the disabled list.

Hometown boy Mark Teixeira started things going in the right direction early on with a double to right to score Curtis Granderson for a 1-0 lead, but that would be all anyone would get for quite a while. García was in full Junkball Magician mode. After giving up a harmless two-out double to Adam Jones in the first, García cooly set down the next eleven Baltimore hitters before Mark Reynolds snapped the string with a solo homer in the fifth.

The Yankee hitters weren’t faring much better against the Baltimore starter, someone named Alfredo Simón. After Teixeira’s first-inning double, Simón took care of the next nine Yankees to come to the plate before running into a bit of trouble in the fourth. Robinson Canó flared a single out to left, and then Mr. Happy (you may know him as Nick Swisher) followed with a home run to right for a 3-0 Yankee lead.

It wasn’t a lot of support, but on this night it would be enough. García left after six successful innings with a terribly efficient line: 6.0 IP/2 H/1 ER/1 BB/4 K. (If you’ll excuse my editorializing, that line makes me think that a rotation of Sabathia, Hughes, Nova, Colón, and García might work from now through the end of September. But what do I know?)

The bullpen took over for the final three frames, and they were lights out as usual, save for one shocking exception. Rafael Soriano yielded a walk but struck out two in a scoreless seventh, and The Great One was flawless in the ninth, but David Robertson made things a bit sticky in between. After overpowering Nolan Reimold for the first out and popping up Robert Andino for the second, Robertson gave up a home run to J.J. Hardy. The two-run lead was cut in half, so there was some immediate importance to this, and when Nick Markakis then walked and stole second to put the tying run in scoring position it loomed even larger. But Houdini wriggled free yet again as Robertson was able to strike out Adam Jones to end the threat.

How good has Robertson been this year? This good. It was the first home run he’d allowed all season, and the first run he had given up on the road.

With a 3-2 victory and the split salvaged, they head to Boston. I don’t need to tell you what the standings say, I don’t need to tell you how the Yankees have done against the Red Sox this year, and I certainly don’t need to remind you about how Sabathia has fared against them. I won’t tell you that Tuesday night’s series opener is a must win game for either the team or the man, but a win would certainly be nice.

[Photo Credit: Nick Wass/AP]

Freddy G is back. Here’s hoping the Yanks win tonight to earn a split with the O’s and head off to Boston in a good mood.

No Jeter, no Rodriguez.

Brett Gardner LF
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Eric Chavez 3B
Russell Martin C
Eduardo Nunez SS

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: One of my favorites, Joel Zimmer]

The Road to Philly

By John Schulian 

I know how I ended up in Philadelphia: I drove.

What I don’t know is why I ended up in Philadelphia.

The Daily News, home of one of the truly great sports sections of the last half of the Twentieth Century, already had three stellar columnists, Ray Didinger, Stan Hochman, and Mark Whicker. Bill Conlin was covering baseball with idiosyncratic fervor, conducting a running feud with the Phillies, delivering history lessons in his game stories, and flirting with scatology every chance he got. Long before I hit town, he set the standard for blue wordplay by quoting Dusty Baker, who had dropped a fly ball, as saying, “I had the motor faker right in my glove.” The quote only lasted one edition, but Conlin was the one guy in all of sportswriting capable of getting away with even that much.

None of the other beat writers came close to him in terms of sheer outrageousness, but each was an intrepid digger: Phil Jasner on the 76ers, Jay Greenberg on the Flyers, Paul Domowitch and the young Rich Hoffman (not long out of Penn) on pro football, Elmer Smith on boxing, and the inimitable Dick (Hoops) Weiss on college basketball. These guys were passionate about what they did. And smart. And aggressive. And competitive. I realize that the Boston Globe was regarded as the gold standard for sports sections back then-–and I know what a joy it was for me to read the Globe–but I still think the Daily News gave it a run for its money.

The Daily News certainly didn’t need me to do that. Even with a hole in its lineup after Tom Cushman, who was so solid on boxing, college sports, and track and field, left for San Diego, the paper still had all the talent–and all the egos–it needed. The Daily News hired me anyway.

No matter how good a sports columnist I was, I was hardly a marketable commodity after my inelegant departure from the Sun-Times. It was pretty much what I expected. There are more than a few newspaper editors who love to have a reason to think they have the upper hand on the talent. In my case, they could go tsk-tsk and say I was a troublemaker or that I was out of control. On the other hand, there was the reaction my blow-up got from Pete Dexter, who was a city columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News and whom I had yet to meet. Pete told our mutual friend Rob Fleder, a world-class magazine editor, “I don’t know Schulian and I don’t know exactly what happened, but I know he was right.” Which, of course, earned Pete a place in my personal hall of fame.

But guys like Pete don’t run newspapers. Guys unlike him do. And the hell of it was, I couldn’t argue with them, even though I’d been provoked and maybe set up. I was wrung out. Getting fired and divorced in a four-month span was all I could handle. I didn’t write a word for the first two months after I left the Sun-Times. I just rode my bike and ate pizza and watched the Cubs on TV. As if to spite me, they almost had a great season, but their muscle memory finally kicked in and they fell apart in the playoffs.

I didn’t put words on paper again until Eliot Kaplan, GQ’s managing editor, called because Vic Ziegel, may he rest in peace, told him I was massively available. Eliot was looking for someone to profile Mike Royko and I convinced him that I was his man. In the course of conversation, Eliot told me he’d read me when he was a kid. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping to hear, but the truth was, he really was a kid. He couldn’t have been more than 26 or 27 when he became Art Cooper’s right-hand man at GQ. As for Royko, he couldn’t have been a more cooperative subject, right down to musing forlornly about the death of his first wife and dancing with the woman who would become his second wife on the sidewalk outside the Billy Goat Tavern.

Just like that, I was a made man at GQ, which was becoming a home for first-rate writing and reportage instead of pretty boys in clothes guaranteed to get their asses kicked. I wrote for the magazine whenever I could for the next 20 years, until Art got forced out. He died not long afterward, while having lunch at the Four Seasons. The man had style.

Looking back, I wonder if I should have lobbied for a three-story deal with GQ that would have allowed me to stay in Chicago. John Walsh, when he was running Inside Sports, told me he thought I was a natural magazine writer, and he may have been right. Magazine work certainly was a better fit for the way I approached writing than a four-times-a-week column was. The column chewed me up, and yet, when the Daily News called, I threw myself back in the meat grinder. It was partly because I was afraid let go of the identity a column gave me and partly because I was infatuated with the history of the sports section that Larry Merchant had built for glory 20 years earlier.

I saw myself joining a parade in which George Kiseda, Sandy Grady, and Jack McKinney had marched. Merchant had made them the Daily News’ pioneers in trenchant reporting, salty prose, and raucous laughter. Stan Hochman, who was there at the beginning with them, once told me about the old warehouse the paper had called home when it was known as the “Dirty News” for its emphasis on crime and cheesecake. The building wasn’t air conditioned, and one sweltering summer day, with huge floor fans shoving hot air around the newsroom, some genius got it in his head to open the windows. The fans proceeded to blow every piece of paper that wasn’t weighted down out the windows and to hell and gone.

I should have been smart enough to realize there was no recapturing those days or the spirit that infused the Merchant era. Instead, I acted according to Faulkner’s theory that the past is never really past. Faulkner didn’t play in Philly, though, and soon enough I was a man out of time, out of place.

Click here for the full “From Ali to Xena” archives.

Here’s a nice little essay by Geoff Dyer:

Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner living in an overcrowded city on a tiny island where courts are in short supply, but I love seeing tennis courts: from a plane as it descends (there never seem to be any on the way up) or from speeding trains and cars. This is a purely aesthetic — i.e., pointless — pleasure, but if I am out walking or cycling, this fondness for court-spotting has obvious practical advantages. Over time, in London, I have discovered every public court within a playable distance of home.

…It is in America that you encounter true abundance, both public and private. Descending in a plane over California — or North Carolina or Texas — it seems that tennis courts are more potent than swimming pools as symbols of freedom from the realm of necessity. Which raises the question: What profiteth a man if he gains a world of free courts yet lacks a partner? For life is not just a search for tennis courts; it is also a search for someone to play with.

[Photo Credit: Roosevelt Islander]

This is one of my favorite weeks in New York, the last week of summer. The town is quiet, but this morning it was especially still. It was also cool too, a distinct hint of autumn in the air. It was a relief to hear the chugging sounds of the subway. Back in business.

[Photo Credit: Herve Bertrand]

Ivan Nova stumbled around during the first couple of innings on Sunday night. The O’s led 2-0 when Curtis Granderson hit a three-run homer but Nova gave it right back. Then he righted himself and got stronger as the game progressed. The game was tied at three in the sixth inning when the Yanks hit back-to-back-to-back home runs–Cano, Swisher, Jones. Grandy hit another homer in the seventh and now leads the American league in both home runs and RBI. Not bad for a skinny kid.

The O’s had a beating coming to them. Nice to see the Yanks deliver it with a flourish. Yeah, there were some nervous moments in the eighth when the O’s loaded the bases with nobody out, but then David Robertson struck out the side, dropping the hammer for the third strike on Vlad, Mark Reynolds and Ryan Adams. And Shazam, Yankee fans went to bed heppy kets.

Final Score: Yanks 8, O’s 3.

The Yanks turn to Nova to stop their two-game skid.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Andruw Jones DH
Russell Martin C
Eduardo Nunez 3B
Brett Gardner LF

No excuses, win a “w,” please.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

It was all lined-up. The Yanks drove Zach Britton’s pitch count up while Bartolo Colon kept his down. Britton threw 120 pitches over seven innings but he had the Yankee hitters off-balance with soft stuff away and a cut fastball inside. They didn’t get a runner past second base. Colon blinked first, giving up a double and a single in the seventh inning, and the Orioles had a 1-0 lead.

The game moved along briskly. In the bottom of the eighth, a couple of bloop hits put runners on the corners with nobody out for the Orioles. The game in the balance. A ground ball back to Colon, who checked the runner at third, then threw to second for the force. Then a strikeout, three pitches, caught-looking. But J.J. Hardy lined a single through the left side–fastball up–and Colon’s day was over.

In the 9th, the Yanks sent up Curtis Granderson, Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez against Kevin Gregg. Granderson struck out on a full count fastball. Teixeira hit an 0-2 pitch off the first base bag, good for a single. The fans chanted, “Let’s Go O’s.” Rodriguez hit into a 6-4-3 double play and—thud.

O’s 2, Yanks Zip. First place, slipping away.

It was a long night in New York. The storm wasn’t as bad as predicted, at least not here on the high ground of the Bronx, but the constant news coverage and the anticipation was exhausting. It was a relief to watch baseball, to see the Yankees play, but the results were less than satisfying, despite Colon’s performance. The Yanks have now lost four of their last five, against the A’s and O’s.

Summertimes Blues, indeed.

[Picture by Cloni]

The Yanks and O’s will play two today. Here’s the lineup for Game One:

Derek Jeter DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Andruw Jones LF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Francisco Cervelli C

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Joel Zimmer]

It’s All Right.

[Photo Credit: Koolaidfr0zenpizza]

No games today. Just storm watch. We got batteries, life jackets, water, an ark. We should be good to go.

Hope everyone stays safe.

[Photo Credit: Craig Robinson]

Imagine you’re sitting at home watching the game as you put your feet up on the couch to get ready for a relaxing, if stormy, weekend. You have high hopes because you don’t think things could go worse for A.J. Burnett than his last outing, and you know this is an important game — no one wants to lose even a single game to the lowly Orioles. But things go bad quickly. You smirk at the screen as Burnett muddles through the first inning, then implodes in the second. He pitches the entire inning, but it’s a disaster: groundout, homer, double, double, double, double, homer, E-1, 6-4-3 DP. When the inning finally ends the Yankees are down 6-0, and a loss seems inevitable.

You pick up the remote in disgust and are just about to call your wife to watch Project Runway, when you remember something. Doesn’t this seem an awful lot like yesterday? Didn’t you feel disloyal when you gave up on the Yankees when they were down 7-1? Didn’t you miss 21 runs and the beauty of Jorge Posada playing second base all because you lost faith?

You can’t let that happen again. So you put the remote down and get ready to watch the rest of the game. Seven innings later, you realize you made the wrong decision two days in a row. You remember yesterday’s bile as tasting good compared to what you’re feeling now.

After falling into that 6-0 hole on Friday night in Baltimore, the Yankees didn’t show quite the fight that they had on Thursday afternoon against the A’s. There was a home run from Posada in the fifth, cutting the lead to 7-1 (sound familiar?), but Burnett coughed up two more runs in the bottom half, then a two-out error by Robinson Canó in the sixth led to a three-run home run by Matt Wieters, and the Yanks were down by eleven.

Alex Rodríguez snapped the second-longest home run drought of his career when he went deep in the seventh, Swisher continued his hot hitting with a two-run homer later in the inning, and they tacked on another run in the seventh, but that did nothing more than change the final score. Orioles 12, Yankees 5.

It’s never fun when the Yankees lose, but there is obviously a much bigger concern here. Here’s a hint: it starts with A.J. and it ends with Burnett. His overall record right now sits at 9-11 with a 5.31 ERA, but if you want to know how bad he’s really been, read on. But be warned — what follows is not for the faint of heart.

We know what quality starts are, but Burnett’s season thus far has been measured by blow-up starts. Friday was his fifth outing where he allowed more runs than innings pitched. His last quality start was on June 29th against Milwaukee. Here’s his line since then:

56.1 IP/47 ER/70 H/27 BB/52 K/7.51 ERA/1.72 WHIP

On the surface, those are some pretty bad numbers, but they look even worse when you realize that they came against mediocre competition at best. Over those ten starts Burnett has faced Cleveland, Tampa Bay (twice), Oakland, Baltimore (twice), Chicago, Anaheim, Kansas City, and Minnesota. Those eight teams have a combined record of 491-550.

So we can agree that Burnett’s been bad for the past two months, but when we narrow our focus to August, it gets worse still. In his last five starts he looks like this:

22.2 IP/30 ER/44 H/9 BB/17 K/11.91 ERA/2.34 WHIP

Believe it or not, it gets comically worse. His last three starts have come against the three worst teams in the league. Many pitchers would be padding their stats against competition like this, but Burnett has actually gone in the opposite direction:

12.1 IP/19 ER/24 H/6 BB/8 K/13.87 ERA/2.43 WHIP

After Burnett’s last start, I used this space to defend him — or, more accurately, I attacked those in the media who attacked him. Now I’m here to tell you that the time has come for the Yankees to do something. Scranton is calling.

[Photo Credit: Patrick Smith/AP]

The Yanks start a series in Baltimore tonight. They are scheduled to play five games in the next four days. I say they get a couple in, maybe three.

Cliff’s go the preview.

Here’s the line-up:

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Russell Martin C
Brett Gardner LF

We’ll be around this weekend. Who knows what this weather will bring. The subways will stop running tomorrow afternoon as the city prepares for the worst. If you don’t see any updates it’s because we’ve lost power temporarily. Hopefully, it won’t come to that, although the wife did buy an ark today at Costco just in case.

Never mind Mother Nature:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Lewis W. Hine]

[Picture by my man Nynex]

It’s funny how the fortunes of just one game can completely change the complexion and tenor of a column. With the Yankees trailing the A’s, 7-1, on Thursday and seemingly on the verge of being swept by a second-division club, I was ready to lay the hammer down on the team for an inexcusable letdown after a productive road trip. Six innings later, the Yankees had outscored Oakland by a 21-2 margin, set a record by hitting three grand slams in one game, and put the finishing touches on a 22-9 thrashing of the supposedly pitching-rich A’s. So much for a column ripping the Yankees’ effort or performance.

Instead, it’s nothing but praise for a Yankee team that showed some grit this week by trying to stage three consecutive comebacks against the A’s. Two of the comebacks fell short, but the third represented one of the greatest in-game turnarounds in franchise history. A game like the Thursday matinee can do wonders for a team’s confidence–not to mention some individual batting lines. With three hits, Derek Jeter lifted his season average to .299 and his on-base percentage to .360, as he continues to quiet his critics. Curtis Granderson’s grand slam pushed his RBI total over the century mark, giving him 100-plus RBIs and 100 runs scored, and strengthening his argument for the MVP. With a 5-for-5 performance, Russell Martin raised his average to .243, the first time that he has touched the .240s since the spring. And even Eduardo Nunez joined the party with three hits, lifting his batting average to .280 while also turning in an errorless performance at shortstop.

The Yankees won’t score 22 runs in any of their games with Baltimore this weekend, but they should be relaxed and ready to do more damage against one of the American League’s weaker pitching staffs. I have a feeling they may need to score more than a few runs in support of A.J. Burnett, who is scheduled to pitch the Friday night opener. It could be Burnett’s final start of the season, especially if he blows up the way he did against the Twins last weekend…

***

The Yankees put in a waiver claim for Carlos Pena this week, yet another indication that they are not satisfied with either Jorge Posada or Eric Chavez as the left-handed hitting DH. But don’t expect Pena to be fitted for pinstripes any time soon; the Cubs pulled back the 33-year-old Pena because they’re not willing to give him up for merely the waiver price. The Cubs would want something tangible in a trade, but the Yankees have little interest in giving up even one legitimate prospect for the former Tiger and Ray. In fact, the Cubs and Yankees did not even discuss a trade involving Pena after the waiver claim, an indication that the teams felt there was no middle ground from which to work.

Could Pena have helped the Yankees? With his 23 home runs and 74 walks, Pena would have added to the Yankees’ game plan of power and patience, and certainly would have been an upgrade over Posada. On the downside, Pena’s average is in the .220s, he strikes out a ton, and he would have offered no long-term help, given his age and his current one-year contract. He’s clearly not the player he was during his peak with Tampa Bay from 2007 to 2009. If the Yankees could have added him on a waiver claim, I would have been all for it, but the notion of giving up even a single prospect for an aging Pena does not strike me as the best of ideas.

In the meantime, the Yankees will continue to scan the waiver wires, and will put in claims for any left-handed hitting DH’s (Hideki Matsui?) or legitimate starting pitchers that might become available. The August 31st deadline is less than a week away. Stay tuned…

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When Bill James updated his Historical Baseball Abstract with Winshares in 2001, he felt comfortable about the offensive components but still was uneasy about defense. It’s very difficult to measure defensive skill and defensive value, and to make matters worse, skill and value are not necessarily related.

In researching the odd statistical variance between Bill Buckner and Steve Garvey, he hit upon a key element of defense which makes it difficult to quantify: discretion. Specifically he noticed that Buckner, who carried a weak defensive reputation racked up a ton of assists while Garvey, who owned four Gold Gloves, did not.

In the real world, this was a trivial distinction; all it really indicates is the preference of each player in making a certain play. Baseball players are taught from a young age that, when a ground ball is hit to the first baseman, it is the pitcher’s responsibility to cover first base. Buckner, in part because he had constant pain in his legs, was fanatic about insisting that pitchers do this. I can still see him in my mind’s eye, standing five feet from first base, fielding a slow-hit grounder with the glove on his right hand, pointing vigorously to the bag with his left hand, saying “Your play. Get over there. Cover the bag.” … If a pitcher failed to cover first, Buckner would immediately go to the mound and tell him about it.

Garvey, on the other hand, was paranoid about making unnecessary throws, and strongly preferred to make the play himself if he could. As Garvey saw it, why risk the throw when you can make the play yourself? In part, he saw it this way, no doubt, because he couldn’t throw; he was a fine first baseman, but he had no arm.

…Thus if you use assists by a first baseman to represent “range,” you will reach the conclusion that Buckner was a much better defensive first baseman than Garvey. … The problem with this is, it’s just not true. Buckner was not an outstanding first baseman, and Garvey was not a poor defensive first baseman. A hundred and twenty extra assists per season doesn’t really have any value to the team in this case, because it doesn’t refelct anything other than a choice.

For most of my high-school career, I played in left field next to a speedy center fielder and behind pitchers that often over powered their competition. I played more shallow and towards the line than a typical left fielder would play. I wasn’t fast, but I made good reads and got good jumps. The centerfielder had a better arm than I did, so if we converged on a ball with men on base, I let him make the catch. His skill-set in center let me get to foul balls and turn bloop singles into outs. I may not have made as many plays as I would have as an individual playing a more conventional depth, but as a team, we probably made more plays.

We’ve come a long way since 2001 with the defensive statistics. FanGraphs uses UZR and there’s Dewan’s Fielding Bible’s +/- system plus tons of other stuff is evolving all the time. Not to mention proprietary information hoarded by some, if not all, of the clubs. These systems are dogged and incredibly detailed. The most widely employed use the best information available to divide the field into buckets and to describe the kinds of balls hit into those buckets, and then to assign credits and debits for the plays that are made or not made. It’s a little dizzying, but if you want to read about all the hard work this entails, and how well-thought out the systems are, check here, here and here.

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