Although he’s only played in New York for a season-and-a-half, Gary Sheffield has already left an lasting impression on Yankee fans. He’s not only an incredibly clutch hitter but a viscerally exciting one–even his foul balls are electric. (In fact, for much of 2004, Sheffield’s signature hits for the Yanks were line drives scorched into the left field stands.) Yesterday, in the first inning Sheffield glicked a low and inside pitch from Joe Mays into the left field stands that was hit so hard that it didn’t have a chance to twist foul. Although I’ve seen great right-handed hitters like Jim Rice and Mike Piazza rope line drive home runs like that, Dave Winfield is the only Yankee I can recall who specialized in those kind of laser shots. Jim Kaat said later on that it was like watching Tiger Woods drive one off a tee, and he was right. I know Sheffield has hit more important home runs and even more majestic home runs too, but for my money, that shot yesterday was my favorite one he has hit in pinstripes. It was Mmm, Mmm Good. Put a patent on it because that there was the ultimate Sheffield dinger to me.

Aaron Small pitched impressively yesterday as the Bombers beat the Twins, 6-3. Small allowed three runs over seven innings. He struck out only one but didn’t walk a batter. He was aggresive, throwing strikes and working quickly. After his first game last week, Cliff e-mailed me and commented that Small was a dead-ringer for Kaat. Yesterday, the YES broadcast put up a still photo of Kaat in the first inning and made the comparison in the first inning: it’s all in the jaw. (Incidentally, Paul O’Neill continues to bust Michael Kay’s chops. Early in the game he was ragging on Kay for being such a big star now. He asked Kay if he had his own clothing line yet. O’Neill went further and said it would probably be a line for oversized men. Kay was clearly offended and after O’Neill apologized an uncomfortable silence hung in the booth for the next two pitches.)

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Ah, relief. The heat wave that has been killin’ New Yorkers for the past week broke overnight. Today reminds me a lot of the kind of summer weather you find in Belgium–where my mother’s family lives. It’s mostly cloudy, though you can see some blue sky up there, and it is is cool and slightly breezy. It might rain or become sunny later, or both. Perfect day for tea time. The afternoon game in the Bronx today features Joe Mays v. Aaron Small. The Yankee offense is going to have to do its thing in order for the Bombers to win the series.

Peter White, one of the authors at the USS Mariner was in town this week and got together with Alex Ciepley and me last night for eats. Ciepley had us over his place on the Upper West Side and made a delicious Thai meal. We caught bits and pieces of the Yankee game thoughout the evening. White is a good-natured guy, originally from Tulsa, and a classic Yankee-hater. But he wasn’t hostile and it was fun watching the game with him, seeing the Yanks from his perspective. Interestingly, the two Yankees he not only tolerates but admires happen to be my two favorites: Bernie Williams and Mariano Rivera. Of course, Alex Rodriguez is his least-favorite Yankee, a bonafide Judas if there ever was one. Peter likened him to Anakin Skywalker.

Given the company–Ciepley hates the Yankees too–it is fitting that the Bombers suffered an almost comic loss last night. Al Leiter was in fine, dramatic form–as if every inning, every batter, each pitch, was the last act of “Camille.” (Or “Macbeth,” or “The Iceman Cometh”…insert your favorite melodrama here.) At this point, Leiter looks more like an actor than he does a great athlete which makes him even more compelling. Like other great Yankee dramatists in recent years (Cone and El Duque come to mind), Leiter doesn’t have much left in the tank in terms of pure stuff, but he’s got career’s worth of guile and expertise by his side. If he has to go to 3-2 on every hitter (which he often does), and load the bases before he gets an out (ditto), he’ll do it. This kind of living-on-the-edge style of pitching can be infuriating to watch, but as uncomfortable as it is at times, I’ve always found it entertaining and admirable. It’s hard for me not to appreciate the humanity in it. Leiter is probably smarter than he ever was, but there is a disconnect between his intelligence and his physical ability. Mistake pitches are not fouled off, they are crushed for home runs. Everything is so hard-earned. You become aware of just how hard it is to get major league hitter’s out.

Anyhow, Leiter loaded the bases many times, and threw about 7,000 pitches by the fourth inning. He wasn’t terrible and allowed one run over five innings (115 pitches). But the Twins scored six runs off the Yankee bullpen (Sturtze, Proctor, Graman) while Johan Santana pitched seven scoreless. The Yanks came close at moments, but not close enough. In the third, Alex Rodriguez narrowly missed hitting a three-run home run to left, flying out to the warning track instead; in the eighth, he would just get under another one and fly out to deep center.

The Yanks did manage to score three times in the eighth, then Bernie Williams hit what looked to be a game-tying three-run dinger to right field off Joe Nathan. I got out of my chair and yelled. But the ball hooked foul and for the third time in the game, I looked foolish. (I don’t know what it was, but my home-run-call judgement was way off last night.) Williams, who, like Leiter is playing the final games of his career, struck out on the next pitch, a nasty splitter in the dirt.

Rodriguez capped a frustrating night by striking-out looking to end the game. Nathan threw two fastballs by him, wasted another up and away and then painted the outside corner with a heater, a perfect, unhittable pitch. Twins 6, Yanks 3. Happy Birthday indeed. Lots of humble pie to go around for the Bombers, who fell another game behind Boston who beat the Devil Rays yesterday.

Speaking of which, the final bit of comedy–or tragedy, depending on your viewpoint–is that the Yankees have signed Hideo Nomo. It says something about the state of affairs when the Yankees pick up a guy like Nomo who was cut by the last-place Devil Rays. Ciepley and White got a kick out of that. I could only laugh to keep from crying.

Brother is it ever hot in New York. It’s like a swamp outside, absolutely horrible. Tonight gives old man Leiter vs. young gun Santana. Hope everyone enjoys it…from somewhere cool. I’m going to be out for a good portion of the game, so if anyone is around and can leave me their impressions I sure would appreciate it. Thanks.

ESPN celebrates Alex Rodriguez’s 30th birthday today with two articles: one by Alan Schwarz and the other by Bob Klapisch. Good stuff.

Before Randy Johnson came out to pitch the six inning, the YES cameras spotted his glove with a big wad of chewed bubble gum on it resting on the ledge of the dugout. I don’t know if he always does this, but it was notable because Johnson had a no-hitter through five. That gum looked nasty, but you don’t want to mess with a man’s routine, right? The Twins’ ninth-place hitter Juan Castro broke up the no-no with a two-out single in the sixth–I called it–but Johson was absolutely dominating tonight. His slider was sharp (even the ones that were out of the zone had a bite that his breaking pitches simply did not have earlier in the year) and the Twinkies looked as if they didn’t have a chance. Johnson pitched eight innings, throwing 97 pitches (71 went for strikes), and striking out 11. He allowed just two hits and didn’t walk a batter.

While the Big Unit worked quickly, the normally efficient Brad Radke was in-and-out of trouble against the Yankees. Radke entered the game with just ten bases on balls on the season, and he walked Jason Giambi twice (to be fair, the second pass came with a runner on second and just one out…Radke was pitching around Giambi as much as Giambi earned the walk). Still, he left the game after six trailing just 2-0. But in the seventh, the Yanks loaded the bases against Jess Crain, before Hideki Matsui singled home two runs off J.C. Romero as the Bombers cruised, 4-0 (Flash Gordon pitched a one-two-three ninth). Alex Rodriguez, Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter and Matsui each had two hits apiece for New York.

It was a big win for the Yanks what with Al Leiter and Johan Santana pitching tomorrow. Kevin Brown was scratched from his Thursday afternoon start (Aaron Small will likely take his place) and he may not be available for a while. Carl Pavano won’t pitch Saturday either, so the Yanks really needed this game. (I think we can count on Cashman making a deal for another starter by the end of the weekend; according to the Post, the Yanks will sign Hideo Nomo after he clears waivers later today.) The Twins are not an impressive offensive team, but Johnson would have likely been rough for any squad to handle this evening as he turned in one of his best performances in pinstripes. Let’s hope he stays grouchy.

It was brutally hot in New York today. It isn’t exactly chilly this evening either. It behooves Randy Johnson and Brad Radke to work quickly. Through three-and-a-half, they’ve done just that. Johnson has six strike outs. Alex Rodriguez golfed his 28th dinger of the season to straight-away center to lead-off the second inning.

It doesn’t appear as if the Yankees are going to make any splashy moves before the end of the trading deadline, but they are reportedly interested in pitching–both starting and relief–as well as a center fielder. The only name that really jumps out and moves me is Grady Sizemore, but that just doesn’t seem realistic–at least not without losing Cano (which I think would be worthwhile). Here is the latest from the Times,the Daily News, Newsday, and the Newark Star-Leger.

The Yanks go into a three-game series against the Twins trailing the Red Sox by just one game in the AL East. Tonight offers a good pitching match-up in the Bronx: Radke v. Johnson. Be sure and check out how the other half lives by dropping in on Batgirl, John Bonnes, Seth Stohs, and of course, Aaron Gleeman.

I was browsing through Robert Whiting’s enjoyable book about the current generation of Japanese baseball players, “The Samurai Way of Baseball” recently and thoroughly enjoyed the chapter on Hideki Matsui. Whiting details Matsui’s career in Japan and explains why his conservative and humble manner is so appealing to Japanese fans. Matsui is described as a traditional but unpretentious guy.

Trailed constantly by a scrum of Japanese reporters eager to record any Matsui moment for the devoted and insatiable Japanese media machine, Matsui invariably wore a smile–unlike the prickly Ichiro. “I asked for this life,” he would say. “Nobody forced it on me and I have a duty to the people who put me here.” He refused to charge admission at the Hideki Matsui House of Baseball back home–a practice which stood in marked contrast to the Ichiro Museum in Nagoya, which a ticket costs $8. It just wouldn’t be fair, he explained.

Some cyincs called Matsui simpleminded, a workhorse wihtout the brainpower to comprehend what all the attention really meant or the sophistication to mimic Ichiro’s studied cool. But Matsui, who in fact had been an attentive student with high marks in math (one who actually sat in the first row of the classes he attended), would shrug and say, in his coarse baritone, “I’m just an ordinary guy.” He liked to have an occasional beer. He loked to shoot the breeze with the security guards and maintenance personnel, and he liked to trade tapes form his extensive library of adult videos with reporters. (His reply, when asked about his eccentric hobby, was a droll “Doesn’t everybody do this?”)

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In his latest column, Ken Rosenthal writes:

Is anyone noticing that the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera is enjoying his best season as a closer? Rivera allowed two earned runs in his first two appearances, then only two in his next 36. His 0.89 ERA would represent a career best, and his 10.18 strikeouts per nine innings would be his highest rate since 1996, when he was John Wetteland’s setup man…

You bet we’ve noticed it. I’m just too superstitious to want to write about it myself. My favorite Yankee next to Bernie Williams, Rivera is one of the few players whose numbers I get very precious about. I want him to do well so badly it almost hurts. Given the nature of his job, Rivera’s ERA could ballon with just a few bad outings, but it is now down to 0.85. Since the first two outings agains the Red Sox, it is 0.44. He’s done made us proud…again.

David Pinto wonders if the Yanks should try to trade Jason Giambi now that the slugger’s value is as high as it has been in a long time.

With their ace relievers Scot Shields and Fransico Rodriguez unavailable for yesterday’s game, the Yanks just had to find a way to take the final game of their long road trip. Having lost the first three to the Angels, Mike Mussina responded with an excellent performance. He was matched by Jarrod Washburn, who changed speeds well and allowed just one hit through six innings. Chone Figgins murdered the Yanks all weekend and got the Angels on the board quickly in the first inning (walk, stolen base, ground out, ground out=run scored). Figgins would follow with three more hits. Dag.

The score didn’t change until the seventh. With one out, Alex Rodriguez hit a hard ground ball down the third base line. Figgins not only snagged it–preventing a sure double–but he made an impressive throw to first that almost nipped the hustling Rodriguez. It was a closer play than I expected it to be. Hideki Matsui who was 0-2 on the afternoon (on three pitches), followed and plastered a home run to right center field. Washburn stayed in the game and the Yanks scored another run later in the inning when he failed to cover first base properly.

The Angels chased Mussina in the bottom of the seventh and had runners on first and second (Kennedy and Figgens) with just one man out. Tanyon Sturtze was in the game for New York and the Angels put on the hit-and-run with Daren Erstad at the plate. Erstad slapped a ground ball directly down the third base line. Alex Rodriguez, moving to the bag as the runners were moving, fielded the ball, stepped on the bag and side-armed the ball to first for the double play. It was a bit of good fortune the Yankees sorely needed.

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Slammed

Six runs was not enough tonight. Derek Jeter went 4-4 with a home run, while Robinson Cano and Jason Giambi had dingers too, but Kevin Brown was awful as the Yanks dropped their third straight to the Angels. The final score was 8-6. What began as a promising road trip has now officially hit the skids. The Yanks are 5-5 since the break and they fell another game behind Boston who shutout the White Sox tonight in Chicago.

Al Leiter was hit hard last night in California as the Angels beat the Yanks, 6-3. The Red Sox lost as well, so the Bombers are still only a game-and-a-half back. I can’t stand the Angels. Did you see the two Molina brothers celebrating like mad after they both truckulated their fat asses home against Leiter. Calm down, boys. The whole team gets really geared up to beat New York. Makes it tough to watch. Ugh. Hopefully, the boys can rally and win these last two.

It’s in the Numbers

Meanwhile, I was hanging out with Jay Jaffe yesterday afternoon, and we were talking about how well Jason Giambi has been playing. Using David Pinto’s terrific Day by Day database, we looked to see just how long he’s been doing well for. While we were at it, we took a look at Tino Martinez’s numbers over roughly the same time. The dates may seem arbitrary, but they were selected to best illustrate how much better an offensive player Giambi has been (of course, you could counter this by showing Giambi’s numbers while Tino was on that hot streak, but that was more of a fluke than the norm).

From close to two months, from May 24 through July 22, Giambi has been a monster: .352/.497/.689. On the other hand, from May 20 through July 19 (the day before Tino’s two home-run game), Martinez hit a most unflattering .122/.215/.183. Yikes.

Due to some technical difficulties (I’m breaking in a new laptop to increase my ability to post on the go, but it always seems you have to take one step backwards to get two steps forward when these new-fangled fire-boxes are concerned), I was unable to get a series preview post up yesterday, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t write one. Here’s how what I wrote yesterday afternoon kicked off:

The Yankees enter this weekend’s four-game series with the Angels having gone 5-2 on their current roadtrip and 8-3 to start the punishingly difficult portion of their schedule. Considering that fantastic level of play (for the month, the Yankees are winning at an even 75 percent clip: 12-4), it seems like sour grapes to complain about some of Joe Torre’s bullpen decisions, as I (among countless others) did following Tuesday night’s 2-1 loss to the Rangers. Still, having done so then, I feel I must follow up by pointing out that using both Tom Gordon and Mariano Rivera with a four-run lead in last night’s 8-4 win is exactly the sort of thing that lead to letting Wayne Franklin pitch against the heart of the Texas line-up in the eighth inning with a one-run lead the night before.

Sure, watching Gordon and especially Rivera blow away Rangers hitters with a comfortable lead inspires tremendous confidence on the part of the team and its fans, but on a night that Aaron Small made his first major league start in seven years and held the Rangers to just three runs in 5 1/3 innings, it was worth a shot to see if Scott Proctor and the re-purposed Alex Graman could take care of business, saving Gordon and Rivera for a game such as Tuesday’s in which they were desperately needed. With a four-run lead, there was enough margin for error that Gordon and Rivera could have been brought in should either of those lesser pitchers faltered, but by going to those lesser pitchers first, one creates the opportunity for them to succeed thus rendering Gordon and Rivera unnecessary.

Well, last night, Joe Torre took my unpublished advice and turned to Scott Proctor in the seventh inning with a three run lead. Even better, he did so with the bottom of the order coming up, as per my assertion following Tuesday’s loss that with weaker hitters due up a manager can get away with using his less dominant pitchers.

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The Yankees hit four home runs last night (Matsui, Rodriguez and two more by Jason Giambi), and Randy Johnson pitched reasonalby well before leaving the game with an injury, but the bullpen blew a three-run lead as Vlad G’s grand-slam sunk New York, 6-5. I wasn’t up late enough to catch it. Sounds like it was a real heart-breaker.

According to Bob Klapisch, George Steinbrenner is interested in bringing the legendary Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone to the Bronx next season.

“We’re back in order,” Manager Joe Torre said. “We’re dragging a little bit, but I thought we showed a lot of dogfight in us over the last three games. I’m very proud, but it’s a little bit too early to pat ourselves on the back, because we have a lot of work to do.”
(N.Y. Times)

Aaron Small has a big chin and from the profile looks like the protagonist from the recent animated movie, “The Incredibles.” He’s not fat at all, he’s tall and well-built, but he’s got some kind of jaw. Jason Giambi’s high-school teammate had a decent outing for the Yankees last night, throwing a lot of off-speed pitches and working into the sixth inning. The offense gave him plenty of support as New York beat Texas, 9-4 to remain a half-game behind first place Boston. I liked the headline on the back page of today’s Daily News: “Biggie Small.”

The Rangers’ starter, Joaquin Benoit started off well, striking out the first four batters he faced (he would get Alex Rodriguez on strikes three times in all, and the three-four-and-five batters in the line up would go hitless on the night). Benoit’s stuff looked good early on as he combined a good change-up with a lively fastball. But he left an off-speed pitch over the plate to Jason Giambi in the second, and the Yankee DH lifted a high fly to center field. Gary Matthews Jr lined it up and narrowly missed robbing Giambi of a dinger. I didn’t think it would make it over the fence, but it did and the Yanks were on the board. Before you knew it, Jorge Posada reached out and slapped another hanging off-speed pitch into the upper deck in right field.

Richard Hidalgo answered with a solo home run in the second, but the Yanks came back with two more homers in the fifth, a solo shot by Tino Martinez and a three-run job by Robinson Cano–both off Benoit’s slow stuff. With the Yankees ahead 7-2 (Jason Giambi added another solo dinger), Small walked two men in the bottom of the sixth and was relieved by Tanyon Sturtze, who promplty left a high fastball over the plate. Hidalgo pounded it into right field. One run scored and men were on second and third. Next, Gary Matthews Jr. walked, putting the Yanks in a tight spot. Sturtze got Rod Barajas to pop out for the second out, but then fell behind 3-0 to the lead-off hitter Dave Dellucci. He did manage to get two strikes however, then Dellucci fouled off two more pitches before grounding out to Tino Martinez.

Sturtze recorded two outs in the seventh, but then allowed a single to Hank Blalock and a walk to Alfonso Soriano. Tom Gordon relieved him and got the Yanks out of the inning. A run would score in the eighth when a ball went through Martinez’s legs at first, but Tino hit his second home run of the night in the top of the ninth, and that was that. (Both Martinez and Giambi’s second homers came off lefties.) To cap it off, Rivera overwhelmed the heart of the Texas order in the ninth. Mark Teixeira led-off and swung at two cutters, up and in for strikes, then went down looking at a two-seamer on the outside corner. Blalock took an outside fastball for strike one, fouled off a cutter for strike two, laid off a high fastball, then swung through another high heater for strike three. Soriano took a cutter for a strike, leaned back at a fastball that came up and in, then split his his bat in two on a cutter, and grounded out weakly to second. It was vintage Rivera and the Yanks left Texas with another series win.

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With two less than stellar starting pitchers on the mound tonight, there is a good chance we’ll see plenty of offensive fireworks down in Texas. The Bombers have five games left on their current road trip, and the way we figure it, they’ve got to come home with three more victories, no matter how they get ’em.

I don’t have a gut feeling about tonight’s game, but I do think Giambi and Rodriguez and Cano will be strong. Maybe Jeter will break out of his slump too.

Let’s Go Yan-kees!

There were just two run scoring plays in last night’s 2-1 Yankee loss to the Rangers in Arlington, both coming in the eighth inning.

In the top half, Robinson Cano (now hitting .305 on the season) singled Bubba Crosby home for the lone Yankee run (Bubba, starting in center, walked on five pitches to start the inning and was bunted to second by a slumping Derek Jeter–2 for his last 19–Crosby also singled earlier in the game, going 1 for 3 on the night).

In the bottom half, Hank Blalock hit a two-out, two-run homer to right center off of lefty Wayne Franklin to provide the Rangers with the eventual margin of victory.

The latter provoked many questions as to just what exactly Wayne Franklin was doing pitching to the heart of the Rangers order in the eighth inning of a one-run game. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first it’s worth mentioning that the only inning in which the Yankee batters were retired in order was the first. Thirteen Yankees reached base, yet they only managed to plate one run against Texas starter Chan Ho Park (5.64 ERA) and were unable to break through against relievers Kameron Loe (4.77 ERA) and Francisco Cordero (4.02, five blown saves). The Yankees as a team left eight men on base, a number artificially lowered by the fact that they hit into three double plays and ran in to one unnecessary out on the bases.

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