Off to the second worst start in franchise history and tied for last place after a crushing 3-1 series loss against the abysmal Devil Rays, the Yankees needed someone to step up against the A’s this weekend. Carl Pavano tried to be that person, but instead he discovered that even three runs allowed were too many for a team that seems to find a new way to loose every day.

Mike Mussina got the message. Yesterday afternoon he took the hill and turned in by far his best performance of the year, going the distance and shutting the A’s out to halt the Yankees’ losing streak at four games and lift them out of last place in the AL East.

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The Yanks look to Mike Mussina to end a four-game skid, and perhaps save Mel Stottlemyre’s hide. Remember, the Derby is today. When the dust clears from the track, my Spidey Sense tells me that Mt. Saint Steinbrenner is about to blow.

I’m calling it now. Oakland is going to sweep the Yankees this weekend. I’ll be pleased if I’m wrong, but before last night’s game I predicted a Yankee win followed by a pair of weekend loses. After seeing the way they performed in the most favorable pitching match-up of the weekend, I would be downright shocked if they won one of the remaining two.

For those who were privileged enough not to witness it, here’s what went down:

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Oakland A’s

2004 Record: 91-71 (.562)
2004 Pythagorean Record: 86-76 (.531)

Manager: Ken Macha
General Manager: Billy Beane

Ballpark (2004 park factors): McAfee Coliseum (101/101)

Who’s replacing whom?

Jason Kendall replaces Damian Miller
Nick Swisher replaces Jermaine Dye
Mark Ellis returns to take playing time from Marco Scutaro and replaces Eric Karros
Keith Ginter replaces Mark McLemore
Charles Thomas replaces Eric Karros and Billy McMillon
Jermaine Clark last year’s spare parts
Joe Blanton inherits Tim Hudson’s starts
Dan Haren replaces Mark Mulder
Kirk Saarloos inherits Mark Redman’s starts
Hudson Street replaces Chad Bradford (back surgery)
Kiko Calero replaces Jim Mecir and Arthur Rhodes
Keiichi Yabu replaces Chris Hammonds

Current Roster:

1B – Scott Hatteberg
2B – Mark Ellis
SS – Marco Scutaro
3B – Eric Chavez
C – Jason Kendall
RF – Bobby Kielty
CF – Mark Kotsay
LF – Eric Byrnes
DH – Erubiel Durazo

Bench:

R – Keith Ginter (IF)
S – Adam Melhuse (C)
L – Charles Thomas (OF)
L – Jermaine Clark (UT)

Rotation:

L – Barry Zito
R – Joe Blanton
R – Rich Harden
R – Kirk Saarloos
R – Dan Haren

Bullpen:

R – Octavio Dotel
R – Huston Street
L – Ricardo Rincon
R – Justin Duchscherer
R – Kiko Calero
R – Juan Cruz
R – Keiichi Yabu

DL:

R – Chad Bradford [60-day]
R – Bobby Crosby (SS)
S – Nick Swisher (OF)

Typical Line-up

L – Mark Kotsay (CF)
R – Jason Kendall (C)
L – Eric Chavez (3B)
L – Scott Hatteberg (1B)
L – Erubiel Durazo (DH)
R – Mark Ellis (2B)
S – Bobby Kielty (RF)
R – Eric Byrnes (LF)
R – Marco Scutaro (SS)

Hey, this just in: the Yankees are terrible. But guess what? So are the A’s.

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I don’t think much about the Red Sox this early in the season when they aren’t playing the Yanks. I’m actively avoiding thinking about them these days, just imagining how delighted Sox fans must be at how poorly the Bombers are doing. That said, I just felt the need to state that I miss Edward Cossette.

In “Annie Hall,” Woody Allen’s character complains that in Los Angeles all they do is give out awards (“Greatest Fascist Dictator: Adolph Hitler.”). These days, all the Yankees do is lose and have meetings. The back cover of the New York Post says it all. There is a photograph of frowing Joe Torre, and the headline reads “Stinko De Mayo.” The Yankees lost to the Devil Rays, 6-2, and are now tied with Tampa Bay for last place in the American League East.

Chien-Ming Wang allowed five runs in his second start but from top-to-bottom, the Bombers looked defeated. Gary Sheffield hit a two-run home run; otherwise, the Yankees are playing like a stunned team, unable to get out of their own way. They hit a half a dozen balls on the screws over the past few innings but had nothing to show for it. (The Devil Rays infield made plays the Yankees haven’t been able to convert.) Even worse, there were a few mental errors that suggested just how lost the team is. Jorge Posada doubled with one out in the sixth inning. Matsui followed and hit a sharp ground ball to third base. Posada got caught well off second base and was tagged out, an inexusable error. With two outs in the eighth, Aubrey Huff stole second base, and Posada’s throw bounced into center field. Why? Nobody covered the bag. The run didn’t score, but it was an embarassing moment for Jeter and Cano. One that summed up another awful night for the team.

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“You’d have to be there,” General Manager Brian Cashman said, when asked about Steinbrenner’s mood. “It’s not a good time if you’re with the Yankees right now.” (N.Y. Times)

The Yankees look as if they are playing under water. Everything is slowed down, dulled, arduous. The Headline in the Times today reads: “Sinking Yankees Nearly Hit Bottom.” I wonder when they’ll get there all ready. Hear that ticking? We know what that’s about. At this point, Yankee fans must be thinking: When will Steinbrenner finally explode? (Yeah, firing the first base coach, now that’s the answer).

The Devil Rays made short work of Sean Henn last night (a key error by Robinson Cano didn’t help matters, but Henn looked doomed regardless). Though the Yankee offense battled back, the Devil Rays continued to tack on runs against the Bomber pen, as Tampa beat New York, 11-8. Eight runs should be enough to win. Heck, you should feel good when your team puts up eight runs, but that wasn’t the case last night. It’s hard to get too excited when your pitching staff can’t retire the Devil Rays in order.

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The newly twenty-four-year-old Fort Worth, Texas native Sean Michael Henn is a sturdy, six-foot-five lefty who was drafted by the Yankees not once, but twice, in the 30th round of the 1999 amateur draft and the 26th round of the 2000 draft. The Yanks finally signed him to a record $1.701 million bonus as a draft-and-follow in 2001 (he attended McLennan Community College in Texas in the interim). According to an informative post over at Off the Façade, at the time Henn was drafted, “He sported an upper-90s fastball along with some nasty breaking pitches,” but did not throw a pitch as a Yankee farmhand before having to undergo Tommy John surgery later in 2001.

Henn finally got to take the mound as a professional ballplayer in 2003, when he made two dominant rookie league appearances before moving on to make sixteen starts for single-A Tampa, in which he had moderate success. Last year, Henn made a brief appearance in spring training with the big club before spending the entire season with double-A Trenton, posting a 4.41 ERA, a 1.44 WHIP and an equally middling 1.87 K/BB ratio (6.50 K/9 and 3.47 BB/9, both slight improvements over his single-A numbers) in 27 starts. This year, he again spent the spring with the major league club before returning to Trenton, where he has posted the following line in four starts:

25.1 IP, 16 H, 2 ER, 1 HR, 9 BB, 21 K

That translates into the following rate stats: 7.46 K/9, 3.19 BB/9, 2.33 K/BB, all of which show a continuation of the improvements he made in those categories in 2004. Those improvements would support the suggestion that Henn is still rebuilding his arm strength coming off his 2001 surgery. Of course they could also suggest that Henn is simply improving as a pitcher. As it stands, he’s not a dominating prospect, but a pitcher with potential who’s a bit old for double-A (though that’s the fault of the surgery). With that in mind, as much as I’d love to see Henn pitch well enough to allow the Yankees send Kevin Brown to the DL or Tampa to work out his problems, I’d much rather see Henn return to the minors, work his way to Columbus this season and throw his hat into the ring for next year’s rotation, if not 2007’s.

I attended my first ball game of the year last night out at Shea. It wasn’t much of a game at all as the Phillies battered Tom Glavine on the field and the Mets fans booed him off it. The highlight of the evening for the hometown fans–other than Cliff Floyd’s line drive homer–came in the ninth inning when Jose Reyes drew his first walk of the season, on four pitches no less. The fact that it came with the bases loaded and earned him an RBI was a nice touch.

Carlos Beltran threw a runner out at home plate, but earlier in the game he made a strong throw to third base after catching a fly ball. There was a man on second base who thought better of trying to tag, and it was just one of those plays that make baseball such a great game to watch live. It didn’t show up in any box score, yet it was just an impressive athletic feat. The throw attracted the appreciation of the crowd. For me, it was just reminder of what could have been.

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Despite the fact that I didn’t expect to catch much of it due to playing in my first softball game of the year (1 for 2 with a nice ranging catch in my only chance in right field), Alex asked me to write the recap of last night’s game in Tampa because he was going to be at Shea taking in his first ballgame of the year. As it turns out, we were both treated to similar games. At Shea, Alex witnessed a 10-3 thrashing of the Mets by the Phillies, with Tom Glavine suffering his third dreadful outing in six starts (3 2/3 IP, 6 H, 8 R, 7 ER, 6 BB, 1 K, 53 percent of 93 pitches for strikes). It is only in comparison to that line, which pushed Glavine’s ERA over 7.00, that Kevin Brown’s performance in the Yankees 11-4 loss to the Devil Rays last night can look like anything other than a disaster.

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As per the division of labor here at Bronx Banter, now that Alex has hipped you to the changes the Yankees announced after last night’s 6-2 victory over the Devil Rays, its my turn to try to figure out what effects they will have on the team’s performance.

To begin with, the announced changes occur in three areas, defense, offense, and roster construction:

Defense: Robinson Cano replaces Tony Womack at second who replaces Hideki Matsui in left who replaces Bernie Williams in center.
Offense: Cano replaces Bernie Williams
Roster: Cano replaces Steve Karsay

Let’s take them in order.

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Buster Olney’s “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty” is now out in paperback. Olney has written a new epilogue, which you can read over at ESPN…for free!

Let me just get this out of the way. At the risk of beating a dead horse: If the Yankees had signed Carlos Beltran, none of this would have ever happened. There, I said it. Enough. There’s no use a-looking at spilt milk. The Yankees didn’t sign Beltran. They were roundly criticized during the off-season all over the Internet. But it was hard not to think about this front office gaffe after reading this morning’s papers.

In an effort to shake the team up, the Yanks are making some position changes: Robinson Cano is being called up from Columbus to play second base; Tony Womack will move to left field; Godziller Matsui shifts from left to center, and Bernie Williams moves from center to the bench/DH. As a result, Steve Karsay has been designated for assignment, and is likely to be picked up off of waivers. In addition, Randy Johnson will miss at least one start with a tender groin, and could be sent to the DL. Andy Phillips will likely be shipped down to Columbus today to make room for Double A starter, Sean Henn.

Matsui is the team’s best option in center field right now. I don’t think anyone can be surprised, or even dismayed to see Bernie finally move into a part-time role. As much as it saddens me to see him toward the end of his career, it’s what is best for the team. The official reason for the move is that the tendinitis in Bernie’s right elbow has effected his fielding. For his part, Williams handled the move with dignity:

“This move is to show everybody that nobody is indispensable,” Williams said. “Everyone is expendable on this team. At least that’s how I see it. You’ve got to prove yourself every day or else you will be replaced. All I have to do right now is make myself available, working hard. Hopefully, they’ll have the confidence to put me back out there.”

Tony Womack is saying all the right things too:

“I guess these guys want to win,” Womack said. “So do I. So, go play and do what you’ve got to do.

“I’m not going to make a big deal out of it. I’m just going to go play, chase the ball and throw it to the guy closest to you.”

I can’t complain about seeing Cano get a chance to play second, but Womack in left field is a problem. The Bombers will get roasted over this one, and I figure, critics will say it serves the team right. However, it’s unlikely that the Yanks won’t end the season with Womack as their everyday left fielder. A trade will be made. With what, your guess is as good as mine. Right now, Bernie, Giambi, and eventually, Sierra will split time at DH.

I can’t imagine anyone has any feelings about this. Yo, you may fire when ready, Grizzly.

“Bad, bad, bad baseball,” Piniella said. “That’s what it is. Bad, bad, bad baseball.” (Tampa Bay Tribune)

The Yanks needed a win in the worst way, and the Devil Rays did everything they could to accomodate them. It was the kind of game that must have tried Lou Piniella’s patience something serious, as the Rays fell to New York, 6-2. Unfortunately for Sweet Lou, it is the kind of performance that he has seen all too often in Tampa Bay. Leading 1-0, Ray Sanchez led off the fifth inning with a routine pop fly to right field. Rookie right fielder Damon Hollins made a curious leap when he got to the ball. He actually let it get behind him and botched the play in the process. Gary Sheffield, who is tearing the cover off the ball, laced a double to right, scoring Sanchez. He then stole third on Scott Kazmir’s first pitch to Alex Rodriguez. With one out, Jorge Posada skied an 0-1 pitch into foul ground along the right field line. Hollins raced over and nearly ran past the play, making that little jump again. He made the catch and Sheffield tagged and scored easily. With a strike out pitcher on the mound, Hollins might have been wise to let the ball go there.

He redeemed himself with a single in his next at bat, and scored when Alex Sanchez hit a two-run dinger off Mike Mussina. It was the only significant mistake that Mussina made all night. Overall, his pitches were sharper than they’ve been all year. He pitched seven solid innings, relieved by Flash Gordon in the eighth, then Rivera, who struck out the side in the ninth.

The Yanks added three more runs in the eighth, thanks in part to a miscommunication in center that allowed Bernie Williams’ bloop to fall in for a single, and a throwing error by pitcher Travis Harper on a sacrifice bunt by Derek Jeter. The Bombers got the win, but the Rays gave them a helping hand. It wasn’t pretty–just ask rookie Andy Phillips, who struck out swining five times–but it was a win.

The Devil Rays team the Yankees will face over the next four nights in Tampa has changed slightly from the one they faced two weeks ago at the Stadium.

To begin with, the Yankees themselves knocked Rob Bell out of the Tampa rotation when they scored ten runs off him in one and one-third innings on April 18. He’s been replaced by 24-year-old Doug Waechter, who was once an exciting up-and-comer for the Rays, but in two starts has looked more like the Old Mussina than the prospect of 2003. Waechter was in the pen two weeks ago, where he pitched much better than Bell has since switching places with him.

When Bell made that ill-fated start against the Yankees, he was moved up a day to do so to fill in for the injured Mark Hendrickson, who has since enjoyed a 15-day stint on the DL and is now back in action, having performed modestly in one start since being activated. Hendrickson will start Thursday against Chien-Ming Wang. Waechter starts tomorrow against Kevin Brown.

Overall, the Devil Rays’ pitching has been awful. They have a 6.21 team ERA and only set-up man Travis Harper has a WHIP below 1.50 (0.83, but a 6.32 ERA). Conversely, only closer Danys Baez has an ERA below 4.00, but he has an equal number of saves and blow saves (one of each), and identical walk and strikeout rates of 4.91 per 9 IP. Recognizing that quantity does not guarantee quality (something the Yankees have yet to figure out), the Rays have slimmed down to eleven pitchers, as I mentioned in my previous post. They did this by demoting another once-exciting young prospect, 24-year-old Seth McClung, who returned to Durham with a 12.19 ERA and a 2.13 WHIP after nine appearances with the big club.

The Rays have replaced McClung on the other side of the ball by calling up yet another 24-year-old prospect, outfielder Jonny Gomes. Gomes got two cups of Turkish Coffee (too small and too overwhelming) in the past two years, but finally seems to be clicking, forcing his way into the lineup, primarily in left field, forcing Carl Crawford to center and Alex Sanchez to the bench (good news for Rays fans).

Throughout the line-up, the Rays are hitting so poorly that Lou Piniella is desperately shifting playing time around to get his hottest hitters in the line-up. Gomes (corner outfield), Nick Green (3B/2B), and Eduardo Perez (1B, and sure to start against Randy Johnson on Wednesday), are the only members of the Devil Rays’ 25-man roster with OPSs above .800. One wonders how long it will take Lou to snap and exile Chris Singleton (.250/.294/.250, .195 GPA) in favor of Joey Gathright (who hit for a .309 GPA in his six games with the club during Alex Sanchez’s suspension), giving the Rays the outfield they should have installed at the beginning of the season of Crawford, Gathright and Gomes.

In the infield, the underachieving Alex Gonzalez, Josh Phelps, and Travis Lee are finding themselves having to fight for playing time, while Aubrey Huff is once again being bounced around between right field, first base and DH, playing a different position in each of his last three games. Julio Lugo isn’t hitting either, but Gonzalez is the only other man who can play shortstop (donde esta B.J. Upton?) and he’s been even worse, opening up third base to Nick Green’s advances.

All of this adds up to the Devil Ray’s having the third-worst record in baseball (above only the Rockies and Royals). The Yankees, by the way, have the fifth-worst record in the majors, only the equally-disappointing Indians falling in-between tonight’s two opponents. Speaking of tonight, the Yanks send the Old Moose up against the Rays’ Young and Spritely ace Scott Kazmir. The Devil Rays enter this series on a seven-game losing streak and Kazmir has yet to win a game this year, despite hurling seven innings of one-run ball against the Red Sox two starts ago (the only one of his starts his team won, but Baez vultured the win). Pessimists start your engines!

Tanyon Sturtze, who is eligible to come off the disabled list tomorrow, will work two or three innings in an extended spring training game in Tampa today and rejoin the team at the Tropicana Dome tomorrow. This means a roster move is imminent, but looking at the Yankees’ pen, exactly what that move will be is not obvious.

Despite what Joe Torre might have said (and I’m still not sure he wasn’t kidding) the Yankees are not going to reduce their bench to three men in order to carry 13 pitchers. On the other hand, Sturtze’s return in and of itself does not force the team to scale back to eleven (as the Devil Rays have recently done, as we’ll see later today). That said, now might be a good time to package two relievers in a trade to both clear room for Sturtze and get down to six men in the pen in one foul swoop. If that were the case, Mike Stanton would be staying, because he has a no trade clause, though he could still be bought out and released.

This is a popular topic in the press, as well it should be, though no one seems to have anything resembling a clue as to who’s on the way out. Tom Gordon and Buddy Groom, who can’t be returned to Columbus without passing through waivers, appear to be safe, and obviously Mo isn’t going anywhere, but there are mixed reports on Stanton and the remaining three–Steve Karsay, Paul Quantrill, and Felix Rodriguez–are anybody’s guess.

Check the stats here and let us know in comments who you think should go. I’ll chime in later.

“It’s tough, I don’t care how good you are or how good you’re supposed to be,” [Manager, Joe] Torre said. “Until you can start going out there and winning with regularity, you know, basically your confidence is not where you want it to be, and that’s just the human part of this game.”

“It was the worst loss of the year for me because we beat ourselves,” General Manager Brian Cashman said.
(N.Y.Times)

So I got all my chores done and cleared my afternoon to do nothing but lay on the couch and enjoy the ball game. The skies had cleared. After a lousy Saturday, the sun was shinning, and the stadium looked great for “Bat Day.” More than three-and-a-half trying hours later, I tried to come up with the word that best described the game, as well as the 2005 Yankees so far. “Exasperating,” was the best I could do. Even worse, I came seem to shake the sensation that this team hasn’t hit rock bottom yet. After three straight well-pitched games by the Bronx Bombers, Carl Pavano and the bullpen allowed eight runs on sixteen hits, turning a 6-3 fifth inning lead, into an 8-6 loss. Oy veh.

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Yesterday afternoon, in his major league debut, 25-year-old righty Chien-Ming Wang (pronounced “Chin-Ming Wong”) retired the first ten batters he faced on 24 pitches and shut out the Blue Jays through his first four innings. In the fifth he gave up a pair of runs on a single, a full-count walk, a pair of groundouts that moved the runners up, and an infield single. In the sixth he worked out of a two-on, no-outs jam on eight pitches, and in the seventh the only hit he allowed was a one-out wet-grass bunt by Russ Adams, who was then stranded at first base.

Throughout Wang appeared unflappable, lulling the Blue Jays to sleep with his easy motion. Wang takes two pauses in his wind up, one when he brings his hands over his head, and another when he lifts his leg. He then appears to soft toss the ball to home, but in reality he whips his right arm producing mid-nineties heat. Over the course of his seven innings of work, he broke countless bats and produced ground balls by a nearly 3:1 ratio. His final line was 7 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 0 K, 67 percent of a mere 81 pitches for strikes.

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A fine day for Chien-Ming Wang’s major league debut, eh? It’s been raining steadily in New York all morning. I wonder if they’ll just call this one and play two tomorrow instead.

I don’t care that the Yankees lost last night’s game 2-0, or that the loss established just their second three-game streak of any kind this year (both losing streaks, the other a four-gamer two weeks ago). Last night’s game was a classic. Randy Johnson and Roy Halladay both pitched complete games, baffling the opposing hitters with high heat and wicked sliders (in Johnson’s case) and sharp curves and changing speeds (in Halladay’s).

Both starters also benefited from excellent defense. Bernie Williams made a key running grab at the wall in the right field gap in the first inning. Johnson himself stabbed a pair of comebackers with his back to the plate, one with his glove and one barehanded, and Tino Martinez made a series of less flashy but equally excellent plays at first, from the throw that nailed Alexis Rios at second on a pick-off play, to the pop-up he caught while running over the pitchers mound, to a series of scoops and tags at first to convert questionable throws into easy outs. For the Blue Jays it was their middle infielders who were putting on the show, particularly Orlando Hudson’s Jeter-style stretch to his right jump and throw move and John McDonald’s tremendous leap to stab a line drive well over his head, which was followed by a stylish roll.

The difference in the game was a seventh-inning slider from Johnson to Eric Hinske that didn’t slide far enough and landed in the right field seats for a two-run home run (Gregg Zaun preceded Hinske with a walk), just the 22nd home run hit by a lefty off Johnson in his 18 seasons in the majors.

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