Because “Bitter Smell of Vicious, Cynical Self-Loathing” Would’ve Been a Hard Sell at the Box Office

“I love this dirty town.” That’s the only line from Sweet Smell of Success that I quote on a regular basis, but only because I don’t quite have the presence to pull off “You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.” For that, you need Burt Lancaster.

Sweet Smell of Success is one of the most brutal movies I’ve ever seen that includes almost no physical violence at all; it’s just funny enough to keep you from slitting your wrists afterwards, but with humor so cold and sharp you could use it for a razor blade. Anyone who thinks of the 1950s as a Norman Rockwell era of innocence should be sat down in front of this paean to cutthroat cynicism and soul-destroying ambition, then given a nice mug of warm milk and a hug.

Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, two good-looking actors with charisma to burn, have never been less attractive. It was a brave choice by both of them (and the studio was opposed to Curtis taking the role of smoothly sniveling Sidney Falco, a press agent who’s had all the empathy, dignity, and morality burnt out of him by a lifetime of humiliations), but I think especially by Lancaster. Sidney Falco is at least occasionally pitiable, but Lancaster’s Walter Winchell-esque monster J.J. Hunsecker is one of the least redeemable characters ever committed to film. (See his inclusion on the AFI’s list of all-time movie villains, although that is, now I look at it, one terrible list — if you think Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were the “villains” of Bonnie and Clyde, you missed the whole damn point. And “Man” in Bambi as an all-time villain? Please. But that’s a whole separate post).

I first remember seeing Lancaster in Atlantic City, a favorite VHS rental of my dad’s (mostly for the line “You should’ve seen the Atlantic Ocean back then… it was really something.”). Later I saw him in From Here to Eternity and the cheesy fun western Vera Cruz, with his magnetic appeal on full display, and in the film noir classics Criss Cross and The Killers, where he was a dark, flawed, but handsome and charismatic figure. He is still my definitive Wyatt Earp in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral – which came out in 1957, the same year as Sweet Smell of Success, but takes place in a staggeringly different America. Lancaster was a gorgeous young man, and still quite an eyeful in his forties, but J.J. Hunsucker is too despicable to have even a shred of sex appeal.

Words are the weapons in Sweet Smell of Success (written by Ernest Lehman and blacklisted lefty Clifford Odets, and directed by Alexander Mackendrick), and J.J. Hunsecker is its serial killer; Freddy Kreuger and Mike Myers earn more viewer sympathy. This is all by design, of course, and the merciless screenplay doesn’t pull a single verbal punch:

It’s a dirty job, but I pay clean money for it.

The cat’s in a bag and the bag’s in a river.

Like yourself, he’s got the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster.

Son, I don’t relish shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun, so why don’t you just shuffle along?

My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in thirty years.

Match me, Sidney.

Those last three are Lancaster’s, and only a handful of the movie’s best. (For full effect, of course, the last one needs to be quoted while holding an unlit cigarette). According to rumor the script was brilliantly rewritten by Odets months past deadline, while he was in the midst of a nervous breakdown, and then rushed scene by scene directly from his typewriter to the set.

The movie was shot on location in New York, and I’m not sure you could say it has any affection for the city — really, I’m not sure you could say this movie has any affection for much of anything — but it certainly gets a jolt of jittery energy from its setting. The story could be transplanted to Los Angeles easily enough, I expect, but it wouldn’t be same without the rushing crowds its characters struggle past, or the packed bars and restaurants where glamor and power and desperation and slimy cunning are jostled together.

If Sweet Smell of Success has a flaw, it’s that the female lead, J.J.’s sister Susan, around whom the whole plot turns, is never really developed as a character, at least not compared to the devastatingly etched male leads. But on reflection I believe this is not really a gender issue – not because she’s a woman, but rather because she’s moral and kind. These are not the human facets that Sweet Smell of Success is interested in, and god bless it for that. Nice people are almost never any fun to quote.

Alright, enough is enough. Three runs in twenty-three innings? Roll, Score Truck, roll!

Let’s go, Yan-Kees!

In his series preview, Cliff pointed out the peculiarity that is the 2010 Blue Jays, a team that abhors smallball, and lives and dies by the homer.  Coming into today’s game, the Jays were leading the majors in homers . . . by a whopping 17 over the Red Sox (94 to 77).  Their gaudy, majors-leading  .476 slugging percentage was tempered by a 23rd-best .248 team batting average.   Their resulting ISO (isolated slugging; the difference between batting average and slugging percentage) of .228 would be the highest season total in at least 20 years.  They are also dead last in GB/FB ratio, at .63.  The edict in Toronto seems to be “we are Jays . . . everything we do must involve flying”.

Furthermore, they’ve executed exactly two sacrifice bunts and attempted only 29 stolen bases all year.  Smallball is apparently not spoken in Canada anymore.

Andy Pettitte looked to stem the Gashouse Gorillas conga line of homers today as he faced off against Ricky Romero.   Pettitte worked both corners well throughout the game, striking out a season-high ten, all of them swinging.

Meanwhile, Romero, when he wasn’t toying with Mark Teixeira like Teix was a frenzied kitten,  was inducing many groundballs with a solid changeup.  The Yankees best early threat came in the top of the second, as Alex Rodriguez singled, and two outs later, Francisco Cervelli and Brett Gardner each walked.  On his already-40th pitch of the game, Romero got Kevin Russo to ground out to short.

Leading off the bottom of the second, Vernon Wells took a Pettitte fastball up in the zone out beyond the RF fence. Two outs later, Lyle Overbay hit a one-hop double to the RF wall.  But Andy got John Buck to foul out to Francisco Cervelli to end the inning.

After a couple more well-struck pitches in the third, including a ground-rule double leading off the inning, Pettitte really settled down, as there were no more pitches left up in the zone.   From that double through the end of the sixth, he allowed but two walks and one single.  In a one-run game seemingly dominated by the pitchers, for each of those three baserunner opportunities, Jays manager Cito Gaston eschewed trying to build a run through a sacrifice, hit-and-run or stolen base attempt.

Meanwhile Gardner led off the Yankee 5th with a double down the RF line, and then Derek Jeter capitalized on a rare Romero mistake, a changeup left up and outside, to collect his 6th homer of the season, giving the Bombers a 2-1 lead.

The Yanks had a rare, but golden opportunity to extend the lead in the 7th.   Cervelli led off with a hard-hit grounder to Edwin Encanarcion which knocked him down, allowing Cervelli to beat the throw to first.  Gardner walked again, and then Russo complied with General Joe Girardi’s smallball order, executing a nice 1-3 sac bunt to put runners at 2nd and 3rd with one out.

With the infield a few steps in all around, Jeter then lined a ball right at second baseman Aaron Hill.  Hill caught it, then dropped it on the transfer to his throwing hand.  Cervelli made the mistake of not watching the ball to see if it got out of the infield, and took off for home on contact.  Hill easily doubled Cervelli off third, as Jeter wondered what had happened.  Your not-so-basic 4-5 double play.

Meanwhile, the top three hitters in the Jays lineup had gone 0-10 against Pettitte as he took the mound in the bottom of the 7th.  Unfortunately the cosmic laws inherent in the Yanks missing a scoring opportunity bit Pettitte, as #6 hitter Alex Gonzalez led off with a homer on an 0-1 pitch, knotting the game at two.

Soon after, the game turned into a battle of the bullpens.  Girardi had relieved Pettitte after 107 pitches with 2 outs in the eighth, while Romero had completed eight innings, finishing by inducing a double play grounder from Alex Rodriguez.

Joba Chamberlain relieved Pettitte and promptly gave up a single to Wells.  But once again, Gaston didn’t put any wheels in motion, and Jose Bautista struck out looking on a nasty curve.

Chamberlain was still pitching in the ninth when he yielded a one-out single to Lyle Overbay.  Surely this would be the time for a pinch-runner for the sluggish Overbay? Nope.  Instead John Buck popped up to Cano and Encanarcion struck out.

The Yanks mounted a 2-out rally in the 10th against Kevin Gregg on a Jeter single and an eight-pitch walk by Swisher, but Teixeira struck out swinging for the fourth consecutive time, on his way to his own hellish version of a 5K.

Against David Robertson, Bautista led off the bottom of the 11th with a full-count walk, and again . . . the Jays did not play for one run . . . in a tie game in extra innings.  Gonzalez promptly banged into a 6-4-3 DP.  Even after Overbay immediately singled, there was no pinch-runner, and Buck flew out to deep left.

The Yanks did try to make something happen with their limited opportunities in extras.  Gardner singled with one out in the 12th, and one out later, stole his 20th base of the season.  But Jeter ended the threat grounding out to third.

In the bottom of the 12th, Chan Ho Park came on and walked the sub-.200 hitting Hill with two outs, but Gaston sat on his hands as Lind K’ed.  Park was still pitching in the 13th when Gonzalez placed a two-out single down the LF corner and Overbay walked.  But Buck buckled under the pressure, grounding to short.

In the top of the 14th, the Yanks tried to show Gaston about this smallball thing one more time, as Posada laced a long one-out single, and pinch-runner Ramiro Pena came on.  Pena couldn’t get a good lead on new pitcher Casey Janssen and somewhat curiously, Cervelli wasn’t asked to bunt.  Cervelli eventually struck out.  Pena did manage to steal second with Gardner up, but was left stranded when Gardner flied to Bautista.

Finally, in the bottom of the 14th, Gaston finally seemed to have the smallball impetus, and the absolute best players to employ it.  It also helped that they were now facing Chad Gaudin.  Encanarcion walked on four pitches leading off, and then Lewis executed a nice little 5-3 sacrifice.  Girardi elected to have Gaudin pitch to Hill, rather than setting up the force/DP by walking him and facing the lefty Lind.  Hill promptly ripped a hanging slider to plate the winning run in an excruciating 3-2 game.

(photo credit:  RoyalsReview.com)

Photo by Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated

When I started coaching middle school basketball nineteen years ago, my knowledge for the game didn’t extend much beyond what I had learned from playing pick-up ball in college — which means that I knew almost nothing.  I haunted the practices of the best local coaches, spent most Friday nights in sweaty high school gyms, and attended coaching clinics whenever and wherever I could find them.  One of the best was at UCLA during the Steve Lavin era.  Lavin spoke for a while, as did Pete Newell and Purdue’s Gene Keady.  The biggest draw, though, was John Wooden.

Keady and Lavin worked from prepared speeches as they paced back in forth in front of elaborate diagrams to illustrate their points, but in a concession to their advanced ages — both men were in their eighties at the time — Wooden and Newell took their turns seated side-by-side in folding chairs, prepared to take questions from the audience.  What’s the best simple drill to help post players?  Which fast break strategy works best for a small team? The two coaches took turns answering the questions that appealed to one’s strength or the other’s, Newell speaking into a microphone clipped neatly to his lapel, but Wooden holding his stubbornly in his hand after a UCLA staffer had twice failed to attach it properly.

Finally, someone asked a question that truly sparked the Wizard of Westwood’s interest.  How do you teach your players to defend the pick and roll properly? Wooden hopped out of his chair and the cadence of his voice quickened as he begin to explain.  Realizing that  his words weren’t enough, he stepped out onto the court and began pantomiming the defensive steps.  The problem, of course, was the microphone.  He still held it in his hand, so when he thought about it and held it close enough to his mouth, we could hear his lecture.  But when he extended his arms and dropped into a stance, suddenly losing at least three decades from his true age as he slid around or dropped below an imaginary screen, he became almost impossible to hear.

There were several hundred coaches sitting in the stands, but we were absolutely silent.  We heard only half of what he was saying, but those words were still golden.  This wasn’t just a coach.  Somehow, it was more than just a coach who had won ten national championships.  This was Moses coming down from the mountain.  Every coach in that arena, ranging from me to Gene Keady, had quoted John Wooden to young players who couldn’t possibly know who he was.  We had all studied his Pyramid of Success.  I even admonish my own children, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”  And so when Coach Wooden finished answering the pick and roll question, he sat down to an appreciative round of applause.  We had heard only about half of what he had said, but it didn’t really matter.  We had been in the presence of greatness, and that was enough.

John Wooden passed away on Friday evening, leaving behind hundreds of loyal former players, thousands of devoted coaching protégés, and millions of adoring fans.  This is a national story, certainly, as Wooden’s death will likely dominate the headlines of every sports page outside of Chicago and Philadelphia on Saturday morning, but nowhere has the news hit harder than here in Southern California.  Baseball announcers will likely discuss Wooden throughout their Saturday telecasts, and you can bet that every coach and manager will be asked about John Wooden’s influence.  You’ll hear about how he taught his players the right way to roll their socks and tie their shoes, how he wouldn’t allow Bill Walton to grow a beard, and, inevitably, how he strung together 88 consecutive wins.

I hope they also tell the most important stories, about how he came to UCLA instead of the University of Minnesota because he had made a promise — not signed a contract.  About how he never complained while earning only $32,000 a year while many of his peers were paid six-figure salaries.  Or, most importantly, about how for the past twenty-five years he marked the passing of his wife Nellie by sitting down each month to write her a love letter.

We’ll miss you, Coach, but Nellie is waiting.  Be quick, but don’t hurry.

Now that the Red Sox, Braves, Dodgers, and Reds (all teams I picked to make the playoffs this year) are ascendant, there are just two teams whose performances escape my understanding. One is the San Diego Padres, who continue to have the best record in the National League thanks to a wildly overperforming starting rotation and despite almost no contribution from their offense. The other is the Toronto Blue Jays, who are tied with the Red Sox with the fourth-best record in the American League thanks to a homer-happy offense that leads the majors in dingers having tagged 20 percent more taters than the second-place Bosox. The Blue Jays also lead the majors in slugging with a remarkable .474 team mark, but are fourth-worst in on-base percentage, second only to the Diamondbacks in strikeouts, and their pitching has been merely average.

If that’s not confusing enough, here are the Jays’ top home run hitters this year:

16 – Jose Bautista
13 – Vernon Wells
11 – Alex Gonzalez

Huh? Bautista’s 16 homers lead the majors; they also tie his previous career high set in 2006. Wells averaged just 17 taters the last three years, and Alex Gonzalez averaged just 13 in his six full seasons from 2003 to 2009 (he missed 2008 due to a knee injury). Wells has hit 30 homers twice before, but while Bautista and Gonzalez are both known to have some pop, they’ve both far exceeded their previous propensity for power.

I might have understood if the Jays were winning with starting pitching. Shaun Marcum is back from a season and a half lost to Tommy John surgery and pitching like a front-of-the-rotation horse. Ricky Romero, who faces Andy Pettitte on Saturday afternoon, is building on his strong rookie performance from a year ago, and Brandon Morrow, the former Mariners prospect acquired in an offseason swap for Brandon League and right-field prospect Johermyn Chavez and who faces Javy Vazquez on Sunday, has tremendous stuff, as the Yankees saw first hand when he pitched 7 2/3 no-hit innings against them in late 2008. Yet, Morrow has been erratic, and after Marcum and Romero, the pitching staff has been largely mediocre.

I suppose the good news for the Jays is that while Bautista and Gonzalez have been going yard, their young offensive core of Adam Lind, Aaron Hill, and Travis Snider have been scuffling and/or injured. That suggests that once the early-season flukes fade (which seems to already be happening), the Jays will still have the bats to keep the offense afloat. Still, even with those that young core producing, the Jays weren’t really supposed to be good this year (as I thought I made clear in my essay on the team in Baseball Prospectus 2010).

The Jays have gotten fat on the Orioles and Indians (9-0), but then so have the Yankees (11-2). Perhaps it’s more telling that Toronto is 3-9 against the Rays and Red Sox and have yet to face the Yankees. That ends this weekend as the Yanks arrive in Toronto for a three-game set. Things kick off tonight with A.J. Burnett facing sophomore lefty Brett Cecil. Burnett had two quality starts against his old team in the Bronx last year, but lost his one start in Toronto. In his career, he’s 22-9 with a 3.83 ERA with 290 strikeouts in 270 innings pitched at the Rogers Centre, most of them with the Jays behind him rather than in front of him.

Cecil was the Jays’ top pitching prospect heading into last year, but in that organization that’s not a huge compliment. He was erratic as a rookie last year and started this year in the minors, joining the rotation at the end of April. Toss out his one big stinker against the Rangers on May 14 and he’s been solid thus far, going 5-2 with a 2.45 ERA in his other seven starts. In his last three, he has averaged roughly 7 1/3 innings while posting a 1.66 ERA and a 0.74 WHIP, winning all three games.

Marcus Thames starts in left against the lefty Cecil, giving Brett Gardner a day off. Chad Moeller catches Burnett, giving Francisco Cervelli a breather. Jorge Posada is the DH again.

(more…)

Ken Griffey Jr. was the best baseball player I ever saw.

Sure, I can look at the numbers now and understand why everyone kept telling me that Barry Bonds was better, but I never really saw Bonds in his mid-90s prime. I was an American League fan who got all of his baseball through Yankee broadcasts when Griffey burst on the scene in 1989, and while I always loved numbers, I didn’t really dig much past what was available on the back of baseball cards or in the MacMillan encyclopedia until after Griffey was traded to Cincinnati.

Ken Griffey Jr. was the best baseball player I ever saw.

I wasn’t much moved by the big goofy grin, though I appreciated it. I always thought the backward cap schtick was corny (though not disrespectful as Buck Showalter and Willie Randolph tried to convince Griffey it was before Griffey got the final word in the 1995 playoffs). I never called him “Junior.” I just watched what he did on the field.

I still can’t see photos of the center field fence in the renovated Yankee Stadium without checking for the holes made by Griffey’s spikes on his wall-climbing theft of a Jesse Barfield home run (off Randy Johnson no less) in April 1990. That was just one of many spectacular catches Griffey made upon entering the league.

Then he started hitting: .300-22-80 in 1990; .327-22-100 in 1991; .308-27-103 in 1992. Then 45 homers in 1994, and a record home-run pace in 1994 before the strike stopped him at 40 in 111 games. In 1995, one of those spectacular catches broke his wrist and robbed him of half of the season, but he returned in August to help the Mariners execute the greatest comeback in regular season history, eliminating the Angels in a one-game playoff after trailing by 12.5 games on August 20 and six games on September 12.

The Yankees took the first two games from Griffey’s Mariners in that year’s inaugural Division Series, but Griffey homered three times in those two games, one of them coming off John Wetteland with two outs in the 12th inning of Game Two to give his team a brief 5-4 lead. Griffey homered in four of the five games of that series, hitting .391 with five of his nine hits leaving the yard. His ninth hit was a single off Jack McDowell that put the go-ahead run on base with his team trailing 5-4 in the 11th inning of Game 5. Moments later, he’d be racing around the bases to beat Gerald Williams’ throw home and score the winning run of the series, drastically altering the futures of both franchises.

Over the next four seasons, Griffey averaged 52 home runs and 142 RBIs (oh, and 19 stolen bases) for the Mariners while winning the 1997 AL MVP, his sixth-through-tenth Gold Gloves, and settling for second billing to the steroid-fueled home run barrage going on in the National League.

Griffey was voted to the All-Century team in 1999, along with Mark McGwire but ahead of the pre-enhanced Bonds (who ranked 18th among outfielders in the voting), but the day after the ceremonies to introduce the team prior to Game 2 of the World Series, Griffey’s neighbor, golfer Payne Stewart, was killed in a plane crash. Stewart’s death awakened a desire in Griffey to move close to his family in Cincinnati, and he asked for and received a trade to the Reds that February.

I remember hearing the news of the trade. It was shocking. Griffey was the best player in the game (to my mind and those of many others). He was an icon, the Babe Ruth who built Safeco Field with his bat and pulled the Mariners out of the second division. I had just been out to Seattle late in the 1999 season and saw Griffey make a great sliding catch in a 1-0 game at the new ballpark, which the Mariners had just moved into in July. They couldn’t possibly trade him.

But they did. The trade seemed laughable at the time. The Mariners got a quartet of players, none of whom could even reflect Griffey’s star, let alone rehang it. Mike Cameron turned out to be the best of the bunch by a long shot, living up to Griffey’s defensive reputation in center but proving a vastly inferior hitter despite a bit of pop and a willingness to take a walk. Brett Tomko was a dud. Antonio Perez became a minor league throw-in in the trade that sent manager Lou Piniella to Tampa Bay for Randy Winn. Right-handed reliever Jake Meyer never made it to the major leagues. Griffey, wearing the number 30 that his father wore with the Big Red Machine, hit 40 home runs and drove in 118 in his first year with the Reds.

Then the unthinkable happened. Griffey got hurt. Then he got hurt again. And again. And again. After hitting 249 home runs in a five year span from 1996 to 2000, he hit almost exactly half that over the next six seasons due to a laundry list of injuries, most of them to his legs including a hamstring injury that required the muscle be reattached to the bone with screws. Meanwhile, the Mariners, who had been forced to trade Randy Johnson in anticipation of his free agency a year before Griffey’s departure, then lost Alex Rodriguez to the Rangers via a record-setting contract the winter after Griffey’s departure, won a record 116 games in 2001.

It didn’t make sense. Without Griffey, the Mariners were thriving. With Griffey, the Reds were struggling. In Cincinnati, Griffey quickly became a drain on the roster and the payroll as the Reds struggled to break in outfield prospects Adam Dunn, Austin Kearns, and Wily Mo Peña while keeping a pasture open for Griffey’s brief stretches of availability. As early as 2003, the Reds were actively shopping Griffey, but it wasn’t until 2008, after Griffey had finally shifted to right field and enjoyed a largely healthy season in 2007 (30 homers, 93 RBIs), that they finally unloaded him, trading him to the White Sox for spare parts.

Griffey’s two months in Chicago gave him a last hurrah in center field and just his third trip to the postseason, thanks in part to his throwing out a runner at home in the Chisox’s 1-0 AL Central playoff victory over the Twins. After that, he returned to Seattle as a free agent, where he entertained his old fans and their kids with 19 home runs, but contributed little else as a designated hitter batting .214. He re-signed there this past winter, but never hit another home run, retiring on Wednesday with 630 in his career.

I take a look at what might have been during Griffey’s time in Cincinnati in my latest for SI.com, providing a quick-and-dirty tally of Griffey’s alternate-universe hit and homer totals, but I’ll always remember Ken Griffey Jr. as a Seattle Mariner, a human lightning bolt, streaking across center field to rob another hitter, racing around the bases, and unleashing thunder at the plate.

Ken Griffey Jr. wasn’t the greatest player of his era, but he was close. He was the greatest modern-era major leaguer never to play in a World Series, and back when seeing was believing, he was absolutely the best baseball player I ever saw.

The Yankees weren’t playing their best baseball coming into their just-completed seven-game homestand, but the prospect of facing two of the three worst teams in the majors, the Indians and Orioles, as well as getting Curtis Granderson and Jorge Posada back from the disabled list promised better results. The Yankees got them by taking three of four from the Tribe, then sweeping the lowly O’s, wrapping up a 6-1 homestand with a 6-3 win over Baltimore on Thursday afternoon.

Despite the relatively close score, there wasn’t much drama in this one. The Yankees put up two runs again Baltimore starter Kevin Millwood in the bottom of the first, the first scoring on a balk when Millwood’s spikes caught on the mound in the middle of his slide-step, the second scoring on a Robinson Cano double that extended the Yankee second baseman’s hit-streak to 17 games. CC Sabathia gave up a solo homer to Adam Jones in the top of the third on what looked like another sinker up in the zone, but the Yankees answered right back with three runs in the bottom of the frame, two scoring on a home run by newly-minted active career homer leader Alex Rodriguez that hitting coach Kevin Long predicted was coming before the game, the third manufactured from Millwood’s ensuing walk to Cano.

Brett Gardner led off the sixth with a home run to right, his third of the year, all three coming at home and going to right field. That set the Yankee tally at six, making room for the two-run jack by Luke Scott that Sabathia allowed in the top of the seventh. Sabathia cruised through most of the game. In the first six innings, he allowed only Jones to reach base (on his home run and a comebacker that Sabathia swatted down with his big bare paw only to pull Mark Teixeira off the bag with his throw, ruled an error). He seemed to wilt in the heat a bit in the seventh when his pitch count approached 90, allowing a single to Ty Wigginton before Scott’s homer, a booming shot into the second deck in right, then walking the struggling Garrett Atkins, but CC rallied to strike out Jones (his seventh K of the game) and get a fielder’s choice to wrap up his seven innings with 94 pitches. Sabathia allowed just three hits in the game, two of them were home runs.

Joba Chamberlain followed Sabathia with a perfect eighth. Mariano Rivera then made things slightly interesting by starting out the ninth by walking Nick Markakis and hitting Wigginton to bring the tying run to the plate, only to reach back and strike out Scott on a sharp 94 mile-per-hour cutter, then hit 95 twice while getting the final two outs, one of those pitches being a fastball riding in that the righty Jones swung through for the final out.

Credit Rivera’s velocity, Sabathia’s homers and “early” exit, and perhaps Gardner’s shot as well, to the heat. It was hot Thursday afternoon, and so are the Yankees, which is exactly what they needed to be in this soft spot in their schedule. The Yanks are just two games behind the Rays, and, if they can survive their three game set in Toronto against the surprising Blue Jays this weekend, they should stay hot next week when they rematch against the Orioles (who seem likely to have a new manager by then) in Baltimore then return home to face the National League’s worst team, the Astros.

On Tuesday, in my preview of the Yankees three-game set against the Orioles, I wrote that “the Yankees should be embarrassed by anything less than a sweep this week.” So far, so good. The Yankees won the first two games being sharp pitching by Javier Vazquez and Phil Hughes and huge offensive outburst in the latter game. This afternoon, they hand the ball to CC Sabathia, looking for that sweep.

Normally that would be a slam dunk, but Sabathia has struggled in three of his last four outings, including his last against the punchless Indians (the team that made 28 straight outs against Armando Galarraga last night). Still, CC has already beaten Baltimore twice this season (allowing just four runs in 15 2/3 innings) and facing the O’s just might be what he needs to get back on track (though I said that about the Indians as well).

Kevin Millwood throws for the O’s. He faced the Yankees back on April 27 and held them to two runs but was inefficient and was pulled after throwing 112 pitches in just 5 1/3 innings. The O’s actually won that game after Millwood came out, one of four times that has happened this year, while Millwood’s record remains stuck at 0-5 due to an average of just 2.75 runs of support. Millwood’s 3.89 ERA and better than 6 2/3 innings pitched per start attest to his value, but while he’s never been awful (never allowing more runs than innings pitched in his 11 starts this season), he’s also never been dominant, allowing three or more runs in eight of his 11 starts and two runs in each of the other three. Using the standard of three runs allowed (rather than three unearned runs allowed), Millwood has turned in just three quality starts this season.

The Yankees run out their new standard lineup this afternoon. For those who missed it last night, it looks like this:

R – Derek Jeter (SS)
S – Nick Swisher (RF)
S – Mark Teixeira (1B)
R – Alex Rodriguez (3B)
L – Robinson Cano (2B)
S – Jorge Posada (DH)
L – Curtis Granderson (CF)
R – Francisco Cervelli (C)
L – Brett Gardner (LF)

Posada is not yet cleared to catch, which is just fine by me. I’d rather have Posada’s bat at the low-impact position of DH and Cervelli’s strong defense and solid singles-hitting bat behind the plate than risk another Posada injury by having him catch in order to allow Joe Girardi to rotate Ramiro Peña around the infield or Kevin Russo and Marcus Thames around the outfield. I’m hoping that, once Posada is cleared to catch, Girardi will stick with this alignment and use Jorge only as Cervelli’s backup behind the dish, perhaps having him catch against lefty starters so that Thames can DH in those games. I’m not expecting that, but I’m hoping for it, and I was encouraged by Posada’s comments as reported by Chad Jennings yesterday:

Jorge Posada has been cleared to play, but he has not been cleared to catch during drills, much less in a game. For now he’s limited to designated hitter, and this afternoon Posada acknowledged that his career might start trending that direction. He plans to catch again, but he expects to start seeing more and more time at DH, less and less time behind the plate.

“I know that I can catch and I know that I can be out there,” he said. “But a lot of circumstances have come. I’m going to have to be smart about it. If I’m in the lineup, I’m happy. I would like to catch here and there sometimes, but I understand what the future holds.”

Posada said he knew when he signed his most recent contract that he might see more time at DH by the end of it. He still considers himself a catcher — “I’m not a DH yet,” he said — but after a remarkably healthy first 13 years in the big leagues, he’s now gone on the DL four times since 2008.

“Knowing that the American League has a DH, yeah, it was on my mind,” Posada said. “When you’re talking about guys that catch every day, you don’t see too many 38-year-olds catching every day. I understand what’s going on.”

With the messy explosion of baseball news last night – from Griffey’s retirement to Galarraga’s excruciating blown perfect game – it was a little hard for me to get my head into the Yankees’ 9-1 all expenses included Royal Caribbean cruise of a win over the Orioles (if memory serves, already the 123rd Yanks-O’s game of the season). Not that I’m complaining: watching the New York hitters tee off while Phil Hughes figures it all out is hardly the worst way you could spend a summer night, and you need to store up games like this one to keep yourself warm during the long cold winter.

I saw the Yankees’ lineup yesterday afternoon and thought: now that’s more like it. No Marcus Thames,  Randy Winn, Juan Miranda or Ramiro Pena; the Yankee outfield once again consists of Swisher, Granderson, and Gardner, as God and Brian Cashman intended, and Jorge Posada made it back from the DL faster than he goes from first to third (even if he’s only cleared to DH for now). But it was Robinson Cano, who’s been here all long, who led the way again, hitting early and often: his single in the second began a four-run rally that set the tone for the rest of the game, though ensuing doubles from Granderson, Gardner, and Swisher [contented sigh] did not hurt either. Cano homered in the seventh, too, with the Yankees in tack-on mode, his 12th of the year – and not surprisingly, he’s got more longballs against the O’s than any other team. Granderson, Swisher, and A-Rod all had themselves big games too, and Posada, so far, is moving better than an aging catcher with a fractured foot has any right to move.

Meanwhile, back on the mound, Phil Hughes looked comfortably in charge. After the game, he told reporters that he realized early on that his cutter wasn’t cutting it, and mostly stayed away from it thereafter – the kind of on-the-fly adjustment that, coming from a young developing pitcher like Hughes or, across town, Mike Pelfrey, warms my cold shriveled heart. His only notable stumble came in the sixth, when Ty Wigginton — the Oriole’s best hitter to date, which says quite a bit about the 2010 Orioles — singled in Miguel “Ty Wigginton is hitting how much better than me?” Tejada. (Perhaps in a misguided effort to overcompensate, Tejada would go on to get thrown out at home plate with his team down 8-1 in the eighth inning).

Chad Gaudin pitched the last two innings, allowing a few hits but no runs and lowering his ERA to… uh, 7.43, but hey, it’s a start. Have a good day, Banterers, and if you can’t manage that, at least be glad that you’re not Jim Joyce right now.

Yo, so dig this: our very own scrabble-lovin’ Diane Firstman will participate in ESPN Zone’s 3rd Annual Sports Spelling Bee. The Spelling Bee will take place at ESPN Zone in Times Square tomorrow, June 3rd at 7:00pm. ESPN Zone is located at 1472 Broadway on the corner of 42nd Street. If you around, head on over and provide some BRONX CHEER for our gal!

Say WERD! (That’s w-e-r-d, you n-e-r-d)

[Photo Credit: The Baltimore Sun]

Our friend Todd Drew passed away almost a year-and-a-half ago. In the days after his death, I coped with the sadness by staying busy. I didn’t want to sit with the pain. We talked about Todd on the site as the Banter sat shiva. What can we do? The rest of the Banter writers and I talked about it. What about a compilation of Todd’s work, from his blog Yankees for Justice, and his Shadow Games columns here at the Banter?

Then Diane Firstman suggested that we compile the Yankee Stadium Memories series into a book. It would have a broader appeal. Made sense to me. So when Skyhorse approached me about doing just that, I knew we had the perfect farewell to Todd.

I’m proud to announce that Skyhorse will release Bronx Banter Presents: Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories this October. The collection features 60 essays including 25 entirely new pieces (the Amazon link above has some errors that will be corrected shortly). And none other than Yogi Berra penned the foreword. The book features original work from the likes of Richard Ben Cramer, Tony Kornheiser, Tom Boswell, Leigh Montville, Pete Hamill, Charles Pierce, John Schulian, William Nack, Steve Rushin and Alan Schwarz.

Marilyn Johnson, Tyler Kepner, Neil DeMause, Ted Berg and I have essays on the new Stadium. Todd’s wife, Marsha, collaborated with me on the final piece in the book, a bittersweet memory of her view from the season-ticket seats in the new place that Todd didn’t live to see. It is the perfect ending. The book is introduced by Todd’s wonderful Stadium memory.

I lost a battle with the publisher in an effort to get all of the Stadium Memories that appeared on-line into the book. I was left to make some painful choices (and the writers whose work didn’t make the final cut were gracious and professional when they didn’t need to be and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that).  Of the essays that first appeared here on the Banter, close to two-thirds have been revised–condensed, mostly to make room for as many as possible–and I think vastly improved.

I’m exceedingly proud of the book. The entire Banter staff had a hand in putting it together and making it as strong as possible. I think this collection stands out for its depth and diversity. There are pieces from Yankee fans and Yankee-haters, New York beat writers and columnists, novelists and actors, New Yorkers and out-of-towners, transplants and visitors. The essays are, at turns, touching and sentimental, vulgar and hilarious, thoughtful and and irreverent, almost always intelligent—a true reflection of Bronx Banter.

I think Todd would dig it and I hope that you do too.

[Photo Credit: Baseball-Fever.com, N.Y. Daily News]

The 2010 versions of Javier Vazquez and the Baltimore Orioles: on their own, neither suggests a well-pitched game, but in combination they produced exactly that Tuesday night. Vazquez and the O’s highly-regarded rookie left-hander Brian Matusz opened this week’s three-game set in the Bronx by not allowing a hit in the first two innings, not allowing a run in the first four, and taking a 1-1 tie into the seventh.

Both runs scored on solo homers. Curtis Granderson led off the fifth by homering to right on a full count. Corey Patterson answered that shot with two outs and a 1-2 count in the top of the sixth. Both pitches were fastballs up and out to lefties who reached out and pulled them over the fence. Granderson’s went into the box seats in the right-field gap. Patterson’s was hooked into the second deck close to the foul pole.

The game was ultimately decided in the seventh inning. Vazquez got into trouble in the top of the frame when Nick Markakis singled and Luke Scott doubled to put men on second and third with one out. It was the first time in the game that Vazquez allowed multiple baserunners in an inning and the first time other than Patterson’s homer than an Oriole had gotten past second base against him.

With first base open, Joe Girardi had Vazquez walk switch-hitter Matt Wieters and go after righties Adam Jones and Julio Lugo. Vazquez rose to the challenge, striking out Jones on four pitches then getting Lugo to ground out on one.

The bottom of the seventh saw Derek Jeter single and Nick Swisher draw a four pitch walk to put men on first and second with one out. A Juan Miranda groundout move them up to second and third presenting Orioles manager Dave Trembley with the option of walking Alex Rodriguez to have his young lefty face Robinson Cano with two outs and the bases loaded.

Trembley opted to bring in a righty, deposed starter David Hernandez, to face Rodriguez, a tribute to the MVP-quality season Cano is having. Rodriguez hit the first pitch hard to third base, but right at Miguel Tejada who, ignored Jeter at third in an effort to get the out at first. Tejada’s throw was in time, but it was short, hitting the wet grass in front of first base and skipping under the glove of first baseman Ty Wigginton, who has spent most of the season playing second base. Rodriguez was safe, as was Jeter, who scored the go-ahead run, and Swisher came around to score as well as the ball trickled up the firstbase line past Rodriguez, who walked casually back to the bag.

The play was ruled an error on Tejada (both runs unearned, no RBI), but the only scoring that counted was the 3-1 tally, which the Yankees promptly nailed down via a perfect eight-pitch inning from Joba Chamberlain and a scoreless ninth from Mariano Rivera.

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This was supposed to be the year that the rebuilding Orioles began their long climb back up the AL East standings. They weren’t supposed to win, but they were definitely supposed to improve thanks to the young bats in the heart of their lineup and the first of a strong supply of pitching prospects breaking into their rotation. Mix in some solid veteran stop-gaps such as Miguel Tejada and Kevin Millwood and the Orioles were supposed to be, well, not terrible. That they started the season by going 1-11 and 2-16 was supposed to be a fluke, but in their last 15 games coming into this week’s three-game set in the Bronx the O’s have gone just 3-12. It’s just not happening. The Orioles not only aren’t better than last year’s last-place team, they have the worst record in baseball and a winning percentage below .300.

What happened? Well, to begin with, no one is hitting. Adam Jones, an All-Star in 2009, is hitting .251/.274/.382. Matt Wieters, the organization’s can’t-miss catching prospect is hitting .250/.323/.351 as a sophomore. Nolan Reimold a solid-hitting rookie left-fielder last year, hit just .205/.302/.337 and lost both his job and his roster spot to Corey Patterson of all people. Nick Markakis, the one established star in the Orioles’ youth movement, is hitting .307 with a solid .405 on-base percentage, but is slugging a mere .434 with just three home runs after slugging .476 and averaging more than 20 homers a year over the last three seasons. Tejada is slugging just .365.

Garrett Atkins, signed to be a stop-gap at first base, has been a total bust, hitting .214/.261/.294. Atkins first lost his starts against right-handed pitchers to rookie Rhyne Hughes, but once Hughes stopped hitting, the Orioles were forced to move Ty Wigginton to first base. Wigginton has been the lone bright spot in the Baltimore lineup, putting up MVP-quality numbers, but he only got to play because Brian Roberts has been out all season with a back injury and isn’t close to returning. So with Wigginton at first, the Orioles have turned to Julio Lugo at the keystone. Lugo is hitting .234 in 81 plate appearances with three walks and no extra-base hits.

That just leaves shortstop Cesar Izturis, who wasn’t supposed to hit and isn’t (.227/.295/.250) and Luke Scott, who is doing his modest best as the DH and occasional fill in at first base and in left field. The result isn’t the worst offense in baseball (thanks Pirates and Astros!), but it’s darn close. The Orioles are scoring just 3.43 runs per game. Apparently they heard about Ubaldo Jimenez and thought it was 1968.

As for the rotation, heralded rookie lefty Brian Matusz, who faces Javy Vazquez tonight, got off to a solid start, but perhaps frustrated by a lack of run support (he lost consecutive starts to the Yankees despite turning in quality starts both times because the O’s scored a total of one run in those two games), he’s been struggling of late, turning in disaster starts in three of his last four outings. The young pitcher who was supposed to join him in the rotation this year, 22-year-old righty Chris Tillman, only just got there, making his first major league start of the year on Saturday.

Millwood, who faces CC Sabathia on Thursday, has pitched well, but is 0-5 on the season thanks to a mere 2.75 runs of support on average. In Millwood’s 11 starts, the O’s have scored more than three runs just thrice. The O’s have won four of Millwoods starts, with the veteran righty taking a no-decision all four times, by a combined margin of five runs. One of those came against the Yankees. It was the only time in six games the O’s have beaten the Yankees this season and was a game I, among others, blamed on the Yankees having something of a hangover from a busy off-day in Washington, DC the day before.

Phil Hughes faces Brad Bergesen in the middle game of the series. Bergesen has a 5.96 ERA and has walked three more men than he has struck out, a stat that has more to do with Bergesen’s inability to strike anyone out (just 2.4 K/9) than anything else.

So, yeah, the Orioles are a terrible team right now. They still have the potential to suddenly click and have a solid second-half, but even with a pair of fair pitching matchups (the talented lefty Matusz against the struggling Vazquez tonight and the solid vet Millwood against a struggling Sabathia on Thursday), the Yankees should be embarrassed by anything less than a sweep this week.

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Hazy, too. Good day for a picnic or a baseball game…

[Picture by Bags]

The less said about yesterday’s game the better. I’m willing to forget the whole thing if you are.

New day, new game. Let’s get it right today, will ya, boys?

[Picture by Bags]

Saturday marked the 15th anniversary of Derek Jeter’s major league debut.  On May 29, 1995, he went 0-5 with two putouts and two assists in an 8-7 Yankee loss at the Kingdome.

He would go on to compile a .250/.294/.375 line in 15 games with the big club in ’95 . . . and got the starting shortstop nod in ’96.  The rest is much-repeated history.

Here are some stats to munch on . . .

Since his debut, Jeter leads in games played (2,185, 2 ahead of Alex Rodriguez), games started (2,176, 11 ahead of A-Rod), at-bats (8,868, 293 ahead of Johnny Damon), hits (2,807, 248 ahead of A-Rod). He’s second in runs (1,602), 3rd in batting average (.317), 10th in OBP (.387), 14th in doubles (448) and 14th in stolen bases (310).

Over his 15 seasons, he’s faced 1,089 different pitchers. His worst 0-fer is against Jorge Julio (14 ABs).  He’s gone yard the most against Sir Sidney Ponson (5 times in 88 ABs).  Of those pitchers he’s had at least 40 plate appearances against, his best batting average is against Rodrigo Lopez (.448).  Oh, and John Lackey has plunked him the most (5 times in 57 plate appearances).

Jeter has had 41 different hitting streaks of ten games or more in his career (12 of these were 15 or more games). On the flip side, he’s had only seven instances of going hitless in four or more consecutive games.  All this while amassing only one major stint on the disabled list.

Here’s to you, Captain!

(photo credit: Cardboard Icons)

“It’s a bad loss. There’s no doubt about it. It’s a bad loss. You know, you gotta believe if you’re up 10-5 going into the seventh inning that you have a good chance of winning. We didn’t do it today. And they never stopped fighting, and, uh, they scored more runs than we did.”

–Joe Girardi

“You’re not going to be up until 3am again, are you?”

–my wife

It took the Yankees nearly four and a half hours on Saturday afternoon to build up a huge lead over the Indians then, slowly, like a mighty mountain being eroded by the wind, give it all back plus some for a soul-crushing, mind-numbing, eye-gouging, 13-11 loss to the hapless, punchless Indians. Indians broadcaster Tom Hamilton had a flight to catch out of Newark International, the last flight of the night back to Cleveland where his daughter was having a graduation party later that night and her graduation on Sunday. Between innings late in the game, he told Yankee announcer Michael Kay, “I cover a team that never scores and today they score 12 runs.”

It was ugly in almost every way that a game could be ugly. In the middle of a third-inning rally, Alex Rodriguez lined a ball off the forehead of Indians starter David Huff, who fell face-first onto the mound and lay motionless for several minutes before being strapped to a board and carted off. His family was in town to see him pitch. They wound up spending the afternoon with him at New York-Presbyterian hospital where, thankfully, his CT scan came back negative (“they x-rayed my head and found nothing” goes the classic Dizzy Dean line). He was back at the ballpark soon after the last out.

What he missed was the Yankees adding a third run to his ledger in the bottom of the third, then a fourth inning in which the two teams combined for nine runs. CC Sabathia, who looked sharp in the first three innings, suddenly started to struggle again, perhaps due to the long delay from Huff’s injury. He couldn’t seem to get in sync with catcher Francisco Cervelli and threw 31 pitches in the inning in the process of allowing the Indians to tie the game at 3-3 on an infield single, a wild pitch, a walk, an RBI single, and a tw0-RBI double by Matt LaPorta, the key player the Indians received for Sabathia back in July 2008.

Facing Huff’s replacement, fellow lefty Aaron Laffey, the Yankees picked up their struggling ace with a six-spot in the bottom of the fourth, the key hit being a two-RBI double by Robinson Cano, but Sabathia let the Indians chip away at that 9-3 lead with a run in the fifth (which the Yankees got right back to go up 10-4) and a run in the sixth.

Out after 113 pitches in six innings, Sabathia yielded to  David Robertson, but after allowing a run on a hit-by-pitch, stolen base, and RBI single, Robertson, who had been hit in the back by a Joe Mauer comebacker in his previous appearances, came out of the game with a stiff lower back. That caused another long delay in the game as Sergio Mitre took some 30 pitches to get warm on the game mound only to complete a four-pitch walk to Jhonny Peralta and get pulled in favor of Damaso Marte as Joe Girardi began playing matchups with a four run lead in the seventh.

Marte got his man, but he was promptly replaced by Joba Chamberlain, who didn’t. Having entered the game with a four-run lead, runners on first and second, and two outs, Chamberlain proceeded to cough up the lead via a single, walk, back-to-back doubles by rookies Lou Marson and Jason Donald, the eighth and ninth men in the Cleveland batting order, and another single. By the time Chamberlain finally got the third out of the inning, the Yankees were down 12-10.

After Derek Jeter erased a leadoff walk to Brett Gardner by hitting into a double play in the seventh, Chad Gaudin, effectively the last available man in the Yankee bullpen save for Mariano Rivera, gave up a solo homer to Russell Branyan in the eighth, but the insurance run was unnecessary. After stranding a two-out Robinson Cano single in the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees did push a cross a run against closer Kerry Wood in the ninth when Curtis Granderson drew a pinch-hit walk, was balked to second, and scored on a Jeter double, but that was all the Yankees would get.

I don’t know if Hamilton made his flight or not, but the game, which I didn’t start watching until the evening due to a busy day with my daughter and some preparation work for her first birthday party on Sunday, did indeed keep me up until 3:00 am, even with the benefit of the fast-forward button on my DVR. All totaled, the game saw 402 pitches thrown, 159 of them balls, across the course of 92 different plate appearances resulting in 24 runs scored on 26 hits, 13 walks, and three hit batsmen.

I’m glad Huff is okay. I hope Robertson is (Girardi said he was day-to-day). I also hope Sabathia’s problems had more to do with the long delay fouling up his rhythm, as Girardi suggested, than with his poor outings against the Mets and Tigers. I also hope I don’t have to watch a game like this one again anytime soon, and that someone takes the time to read this recap before we all move on to Sunday’s 1:05 matchup between Justin Masterson and A.J. Burnett, a pitching pairing that doesn’t seem to suggest the clean, crisp game we all deserve after Saturday’s mess.

I also hope I don’t pass out in my daughter’s birthday cake. My wife would not be pleased.

Phil Hughes got back on track against the weak-hitting Indians Friday night. This afternoon it’s CC Sabathia’s turn. Two of CC’s last three starts have been duds (total line in those two games: 11 IP, 19 H, 12 R, 11 ER, 4 HR, 2 BB, 10 K), and in his last four starts, Sabathia has allowed six home runs, many of them on two-seamers up in the zone. CC has quite simply been off his game, and now’s the time for him to put it back together.

Sabathia has faced his old team just once since being traded to Milwaukee in July 2008. That came one day shy of a year ago, when he twirled a solid seven innings against them in a 10-5 Yankee win in Cleveland. Today, he faces fellow lefty David Huff, a 25-year-old with little to offer who has made just two quality starts in eight tries this season and has gotten just 2.57 runs of support on average on his way to leading the American League in losses. Huff, who faces the Yankees for the first time this afternoon, is a fly ball pitcher with poor velocity who doesn’t strike anyone out (he’s struggling to keep his strikeouts above his walks this season). The Yankees should eat him alive.

Should.

Alex Rodriguez and Francisco Cervelli return to the lineup, while Curtis Granderson sits against the lefty in favor of Kevin Russo, who will start in left. Nick Swisher bats second. Bottom four below Cano: Thames (DH), Cervelli, Russo, Gardner (CF). Girardi says he’s “easing” Granderson back in. Old pal Shelley Duncan draws the DH start for the Tribe against the lefty Sabathia.

As our man Hank Waddles pointed out in his recap of last night’s game, the Yankees on Friday night began a stretch in which they will play 13 of 16 games against the three worst teams in baseball: the Indians (four games in this current wrap-around Memorial Day weekend series), the Orioles (six games, three home, three away), and the Astros (three games at home to end the stretch). Of those 13 games, ten of them come at home, and the only winning team the Yankees will face during that 16-game stretch is the overachieving, third-place Blue Jays.

This is the time for the Yankees to fatten up, and they did exactly that Friday night.

Phil Hughes opened the game by striking out the first five men in the Indians order. In the bottom of the second, Nick Swisher launched a two-run home run off Tribe starter Fausto Carmona that hit the right-field foul pole maybe a foot from the top. Clinging to a 2-1 lead in the 6th, the Yankees added another couple of runs via a bases-loaded, no-out rally that was cut short by the feeble bottom of the order on a day that Joe Girardi opted to rest Alex Rodriguez and Francisco Cervelli, both of whom needed it. Then in the seventh, Robinson Cano, who went 3-for-4 with a walk while batting cleanup for the first time in his career, launched a grand slam off lefty reliever Tony Sipp that iced the game.

Hughes gave up a second run in the seventh on a Russell Branyan solo homer that got out so quickly that Michael Kay’s only description of the action as it was in progress was “there that went”, but that was the extent of the damage in Hughes’ seven innings of work as he struck out eight in total against just one walk. Sergio Mitre and Chan Ho Park wrapped things up without incident, and the Yankees won 8-2.

Heading into Friday night’s game, Hughes needed a good start, and the Yankee offense needed to put a big number on the board. Both ate well. Here’s hoping the Yankees continue to feast for the next couple of weeks.

There are four basic steps to rebuilding a ballclub. First, trade your marketable stars and veterans for prospects, retaining only the core, team-controlled players around which you plan to build. Second, evaluate your new assets to determine which will hit, which will miss, which might benefit from a position or role change or a particular mechanical or coaching fix, and identify what holes are likely to remain on your roster once those players have graduated to the majors. Third, once those players are established at the major league level, compliment them with one or two big free agent signings and perhaps another trade that target the remaining holes. Step four: win.

It’s not that easy (not that it sounds easy), but that’s the plan. The Indians are currently in Stage Two. Beginning with the trade that sent CC Sabathia to the Brewers in July 2008, Cleveland has traded CC Sabathia, Cliff Lee, Victor Martinez, Casey Blake, Franklin Gutierrez, Rafael Betancourt, Ryan Garko, Kelly Shoppach, Ben Francisco, and Mark DeRosa. That’s a pair of Cy Young award winners, more than half of their 2008 starting lineup, an ace set-up man, a productive back-up catcher, and their 2009 Opening Day third baseman.

That has left them with a core of center fielder Grady Sizemore, 27, middle infielder Asdrubal Cabrera, 24, (both, cruelly, on the disabled list at the moment with injuries that could keep them out for a significant portion of the season), right fielder Shin-Soo Choo, 27 and the team’s best hitter for the last two seasons, and right-handed starter Fausto Carmona, 26. Travis Hafner, Jhonny Peralta, and Jake Westbrook are still around, but Hafner is tied down by a bad contract, the market for Peralta dried up last year when he moved to third base and stopped hitting, and Westbrook was frozen in place by his June 2008 Tommy John surgery.

To that core, the Indians have added these young players and prospects via trade:

2B – Luis Valbuena (from Seattle for Gutierrez)
SS – Jason Donald (from Philadelphia for Lee)
C – Lou Marson (also for Lee)
C – Carlos Santana (from the Dodgers for Blake)
OF/1B – Matt LaPorta (from Milwaukee for Sabathia)
OF – Michael Brantley (also for Sabathia)
RHP – Mitch Talbot (from Tampa Bay for Shoppach)
RHP – Justin Masterson (from Boston for Martinez)
RHP – Chris Perez (from St. Louis for DeRosa)
RHP – Jess Todd (also for DeRosa)
RHP – Carlos Carrasco (also for Lee)
LHP – Scott Barnes (from San Francisco for Garko)
RHP – Nick Hagadone (also for Martinez)
RHP – Bryan Price (also for Martinez)
RHP – Rob Bryson (also for Sabathia)
RHP – Jason Knapp (also for Lee)
RHP – Connor Graham (from Colorado for Betancourt)
RHP – Joe Smith (from the Mets in the Gutierrez deal)
LHP – Zach Jackson (also for Sabathia)
RHP – Jon Meloan (also for Blake)

Valbuena, Marson, LaPorta, and Brantley were in the Indians Opening Day lineup at second, catcher, first, and left, respectively. Talbot and Masterson are in their rotation. Perez was their closer while Kerry Wood was on the disabled list. Donald is now their starting shortstop with Cabrera on the DL. Santana is expected to be called up in June to push Marson into a backup role. Of those 20 players, only relievers Jackson and Meloan are no longer with the organization (both were throw-ins that yielded no lasting value for the team).

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