…to the great white north.

Yanks at the Jays tonight. Cliff has the preview and so does SNY:

…as one of the best Jersey blogs (and beyond), our man Larry Roibal.

The 2011 season marks the 10th season of baseball on the YES Network, and YESNetwork.com. I was there for the first five and remember the trials, tribulations, sweat, tears, conniptions and aneurysms that went into putting forth a top-flight product on a daily basis. Looking at where the overall coverage is now compared to 2002, the difference is like listening to a song in Mono and then flipping to Stereo.

Technology made my job easier, just as it has made the jobs of beat writers and columnists more efficient. Hardware, software and fiberoptic advances made it easier for scribes to file stories on deadline, fact-check, and ensure accuracy of quotes. Laptop computers, digital/tape recording devices, headphones, WiFi access to the Internet, and the Internet itself have helped reduce the latency that previously existed for the written word to reach fans. These products and services were available in 2002, but have become consistently better over time.

Due to the immediacy of the publication and distribution of information of all kinds, sports teams and leagues reacted accordingly. I don’t know what the current Social Media policies are for MLB, or the Press Box protocol for it. When I was covering games regularly, Social Media as we currently know it didn’t exist. If the Yankees had information to be released, they made it clear to both Mark Feinsand — who at the time was the Yankees.com beat man — and I that we could not publish the info to either Yankees.com or YESNetwork.com before the team OK’d it.

It was made clear that we were not allowed to break certain stories. (This most commonly occurred when players were named to the All-Star ballot or All-Star team, and other similar stories.) So, we would load the items into the system and wait for the go-ahead from Yankees’ PR staff. Twitter, Facebook, and other microblogging services must be a nightmare for team PR staffs looking to maintain a certain level of control over the flow of information.

In addition to the publication advances, informational sites like Baseball Almanac, Baseball Reference, Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, and tools like those available at Inside Edge, ESPN.com’s Gamecast and MLB.com’s GameDay do the heavy lifting, to where the writer can provide the originally intended core function: storytelling.

Even storytelling has gotten a facelift. Perhaps no single entity has affected the craft like Twitter. Many of the writers’ handles are affiliated with their employers, so they are easily identifiable. Follow them during games, you can time the tweets of key plays and events to when they appear in GameDay or Gamecast. In a way, it’s replaced the “running” game story that was once a staple of the beat writer’s portfolio.

Some beat reporters use Twitter in a unique and innovative way. For example, Marc Carig of the Newark Star-Ledger makes it part of his modus operandi to Tweet quotes from certain players as they’re drafting their recaps. Maybe those quotes will appear in their stories, maybe they won’t. But the preview gives you the reader a definite reason to check. I’m amazed at the level of multitasking these men and women can endure.

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Over at SI.com, here’s Will Carroll on Alex Rodriguez’s recent injury:

More speculation? Yes, the chatter got pretty loud when Rodriguez came out of Saturday’s game with what was described after the game as stiffness in his oblique/back. Was this a situation related to his history of hip issues? Simply put — no. This kind of vagueness is a result of the precision we normally see from MRIs not being available on manual testing. Rodriguez’s injury is in that overlap zone where it’s difficult to tell without more advanced tests exactly where the problem is. So why not do it? It’s unnecessary cost and time. The Yankees knew at that point that it was a day-to-day situation, using the experience of their long-time Athletic Trainers. The weather was a factor, I’m told, as the cold day in the Bronx contributed to the tightness. Rodriguez was held out of Sunday’s game, but feels he caught it before it got more serious. The Yankees will watch him closely, but I think knowing there was an off-day Monday tipped the decision to rest him.

[Photo Credit: Herve Bertrand]

So while I celebrated Passover with my family in a cramped Upper West Side apartment–loud, sweaty, funny–the Knicks were busy breaking their fans’ hearts with a 87-85 loss to the Celtics and the Yanks were engaged in a rainy affair with the Rangers at the Stadium. C.C. didn’t have his best outing but the Yanks kept him in the game. I got home in time to see him walk off the mound with a one-run lead in the seventh and settled down in time to see Joba cough it up.

But the Yanks went ahead in the bottom of the eighth when Eric “Caesar Salad” Chavez ripped an RBI single up the middle off Arthur “Fonzarelli” Rhodes–hey the game was on ESPN, excuse me if the spirit of Chris Berman has taken over, maybe I’m just jacked up on rugelach.

Mariano pitched the ninth and here is how that went.

Final Score: Yanks 6, Rangers 5.

Do we eat horseradish, sing songs and root for the home team? Cause my fam rolls a day early, that’s why.

Word to the Exodus and let’s go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Chow.com]

Well well, Freddy Garcia. I was pleasantly surprised, that’s for sure. Garcia has absolutely nothing going for him in the way of velocity, and I think he threw as many changeups as fastballs, but that made his control and planning all the more impressive. Oney Guillen, apparently still a supporter from Garcia’s White Sox days, put things a bit more bluntly. Given that the Yankees put off allowing either Garcia or his catcher today, Gustavo Molina, to appear in a game for as long as they possibly could, things went rather well today and the Yankees won 5-2.

While Garcia kept the Rangers off the board through six, allowing just two hits and a walk in a fairly badass performance, the Yankees started off their scoring in the first inning with a two-run Mark Teixeira home run.Teixeira tacked on with a sac fly in the third, and it remained a 3-0 game until the 8th inning, at which point I noted that if the current score held, the Yankees would notch their first win of the season in which they scored less than 4 runs. At that point, Rafael Soriano labored through an awkward inning that ended with the score 3-2; and shortly thereafter  Robinson Cano jacked a two-run homer. So it wasn’t meant to be, not that the Yankees are complaining, I’m sure.

Mariano came in for the ninth so I don’t feel it’s necessary to elaborate on what happened there. How many of these Garcia-Nova-Colon games can the Yanks expect to win? i don’t know, but so far things have gone better than I’d expected.

It’s cold, gray and windy out there today. A soup is good food afternoon if there ever was one. Bundle up, settle in and let’s hope the Yanks give us reason to cheer.

Fab Five Freddy takes the hill.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Fans like to call Ivan Nova “SuperNova” when things are going well. But keep in mind that, in fact, a nova is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion that triggers runaway nuclear fusion. To be fair, Nova’s start wasn’t all that bad, but I was reminded of that definition in the fifth inning tonight.

Given Phil Hughes’ trip to the DL, a solid start from Ivan Nova would have been nice and reassuring tonight. As it was, he did keep the Yankees more or less in the game, but it wasn’t pretty and it ended unfortunately. Nova pitched into the fifth inning and was charged with 5 runs on 4 hits and, more disconcerting, 5 walks (a career high). That’s no way to live, and the Yankees lost 5-3.

Nova’s trouble started in the second, with a double, a single, and a run-scoring groundout, and continued in the third, with an RBI Michael Young double. But despite the walks and general air of impending runs, the real trouble didn’t come until the fifth. It was a sad story, and it went like this:

• Mitch Moreland walks.

• Julio Borbon hit by pitch. Mitch Moreland to 2nd.

• Coaching visit to mound.

• With Ian Kinsler batting, wild pitch by Ivan Nova, Mitch Moreland to 3rd. Julio Borbon to 2nd.

• Ian Kinsler grounds out softly, shortstop Derek Jeter to first baseman Mark Teixeira. Mitch Moreland scores.

• Elvis Andrus walks.

• Michael Young singles on a ground ball to left fielder Andruw Jones. Julio Borbon scores. Elvis Andrus to 2nd.

That was, as you might imagine, that. Joe Girardi trotted out, retrieved Nova and beckoned David Robertson. If there was a silver lining to tonight’s game for the Yankees, it was that the bullpen was strong again, freezing the Rangers at 5 runs. David Robertson, Boone Logan (obligatory beard link), and then three quite impressive perfect innings from newest Yankee Lance Pendleton in his major league debut. That’s how you make a good first impression.

Rangers starter Matt Harrison doesn’t have a spectacular track record — it was one of those “this guy? You can’t hit this guy?” nights — but he’s off to a fine start this season, now 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA in 14 innings. He did give the Yankees a few fat pitches, but not too many, and displayed an irritating tendency to wipe out base runners with double plays (New York hit into six tonight).

As for New York’s scoring, it started in the third, when Nick Swisher, Thursday night’s hero, singled home Curtis Granderson. Granderson, who is looking good these days, came through again in the 8th inning with a solo homer (off a lefty in case you were wondering), and in the ninth, Alex Rodriguez doubled and came home on an Eric Chavez pinch-hit single. Not a terrible night by any means, and not in fact a cataclysmic runaway nuclear explosion, just one of those games.

The Yankees could really use some length tomorrow from Freddy Garcia. In related news, I could really use a free trip to Barbados.

One very nice thing: MLB may not do all that it could on Jackie Robinson Day (as Jay Jaffe notes at BP today and has noted before), but many of the players spoke on the subject today with real feeling and eloquence, not just canned PR lines. It’s moving to see how much Robinson still means to the guys who play the game, and how much very real respect they have for him.

A photo gallery of New York in the ’70s from Animal New York.

Oh, yeah, and the Yanks take on the Texas Rangers. First time this season, first time since losing to the Rangers last October in the ALCS.

Cliff has the preview. We make the noise.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

I’m not ready to become all jelly-legged about Phil Hughes, not based on a trio of starts. Hughes’ drop in velocity is not as unusual as some make it out to be. I remember just last year the articles that were written in the Bay Area expressing dismay over Madison Bumgarner’s springtime loss of velocity. By the end of the regular season, Bumgarner was not only a significant part of the Giants’ rotation, but he was the No. 4 starter in the postseason, pitching for a world championship team. During the regular season, Bumgarner pitched to the tune of a 3.00 ERA. And then he pitched even more effectively in the postseason, culminating in a scoreless eight-inning start against the Rangers in the World Series.

Assuming that Hughes is not hurt, I think his velocity will return. (It was a bit better on Thursday night against Baltimore.) A 24-year-old pitcher doesn’t usually lose his fastball unless there is something wrong with his elbow or his shoulder. But Hughes could be serving as a test case for what is a flawed organizational pitching philosophy. The Yankees are so overly protective of their minor league pitchers, employing the strictest of pitch counts and innings limits, that it makes me wonder if they are hindering their development.

It’s one thing to avoid giving young pitchers 220-inning workloads in the minor leagues; it’s quite another to bend to the other extreme and do damage in another way. If pitchers don’t throw enough, they can’t develop arm strength, and if they can’t develop arm strength, they won’t be able to throw as hard as they are capable. If pitchers can’t even give you 175 innings in the minor leagues (Hughes never went higher than 146 in a season), how can they be expected to give you anywhere close to 200 innings in the majors, where the competition is stiffer and the pressure is greater?

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Let’s make today a day of pictures starting with this shot I took of an ad for Madam Tussuads on the subway this morning.

I didn’t know DJ was a lefty.

Phil Hughes is lost right now. He’s lost velocity on his pitches and is now lost in space. He threw more BP fastballs tonight and the O’s feasted on that weak sauce to the tune of five runs in four-and-a-third innings. It’s clear that something ain’t right, but what that something is, well, that’ll keep the angst-meter on blast for the foreseeable future, won’t it?

The Bombers inched their way back into the game behind a strong relief outing from Bad Bart Colon and trailed 5-4 going into the eighth. Colon put runners on the corners with one out and was replaced by Joba Chamberlain who uncorked a slider past Russell Martin. Felix Pie charged home from third but Joba beat him to the plate and blocked Pie’s leg, took the throw from Martin and made the tag for the second out.

Went something like this:

Joba struck Mark Reynolds out looking with some easy cheese on the outside corner, end of inning.

That  looked to be the last thing to get excited about as Alex Rodriguez, still hot, and Robinson Cano had two out hits in the bottom of the inning but Nick Swisher, ice cold, rolled over a grounder to end the inning. Joba pitched a scoreless ninth and then Jorge Posada hit Kevin Gregg’s first pitch into the right center field bullpen to tie the game.

And Yankee Stadium was happy.

Even more so when Curtis Granderson lined a ball off Nick Markakis’ glove in right field for a double. But Martin could not get a bunt down and whiffed. Brett Gardner, who has looked overmatched, did the same and Derek Jeter tapped out to short and the inning was over.

Yet all praise the Great Mariano, who worked around a lead-off single, and got the Yanks back up in short order. The lefty Mike Gonzalez walked Mark Teixeira on a full-count pitch to start the inning and then Rodriguez, who has been hitting just about everything on the screws, ripped a double to left. Second and third, no out. Robbie. Worked the count even at two, smacked a line drive right at the shortstop, one out.

The O’s chose not to walk Swisher, batting from the right side. Swish hit a hump back liner to Markakis in right, deep enough to score the winning run.

A.J., pie, game.

Yanks 6, O’s 5. Applause.

[First picture by Michel Gravel]

Calling Phil Hughes, calling Phil Hughes.

The Yanks need ya, Hoss.

Go git ’em, boys.

The news is not pretty for Jose Feliciano who will likely jern Damaso Marte on the 365-day-forever disabled list.

[Photo Credit: dpup]

The Tigers recently called up Alberto “Al” Alburquerque.

That man’s parents had absolutely the right idea. If my last name were Alburquerque, which sadly it is not, I would name my son the same thing and my daughter Alberta. Al is a 24-year-old pitching prospect from the DR, and I wish him a long and productive major-league career. It’s also at times like this that I fiercely miss Bob Sheppard. How much do you wish you could hear him say “Now pitching for the Detroit Tigers, Alberto Alburquerque”? I would cut off a toe.

Not only does the name roll off the tongue, but it gives me an excuse to link to my favorite clips from one of my favorite movies, Billy Wilder’s inky-black and still alarmingly relevant social and media satire, Ace In The Hole. Sadly the clip can’t be embedded, but check it out:

“Even for Alburquerque, this is pretty Alburquerque.”

The longer Al stays in the majors, the more often I get to say that, is the way I look at it.

So there seems to be a formula to the Yankees’ wins in this young season: a whole big juicy bunch of runs. Yes, yes, April, I know – but thus far the Yankees have only won when they’ve scored 4 or more runs, and it’s usually more. Not that there’s anything wrong with scoring lots of runs, of course. And on the plus side, tonight those runs were paired with a nice, solid, hope-giving start by A.J. Burnett, as New York won 7-4.

It didn’t look so hot at the beginning, as the first two innings took more than an hour; and although A.J. Burnett didn’t allow a run in that span, he did burn through about 50 pitches and labored in and out of trouble. In the meantime, though, the Yankees went to town on Baltimore’s struggling starter Chris Tillman. The most damage came from Alex Rodriguez, who hit a three-run homer in the first, apparently being over his head cold, and then Robinson Cano in the second, with a two-run double. Jeter picked up a couple of infield singles, which if not exactly awe-inspiring at least got him on base and nudged his average towards respectability. And later, Jorge Posada broke an 0-for-19 streak with a booming solo homer.

Better yet, Burnett settled down after those first innings and came back to pitch a strong, encouraging game right into the 7th inning – which in retrospect may have been a bridge too far, as he promptly gave up two two-run homers. But as the Yankees had seven runs on the board by that time, there was no real harm done, and the trio of Robertson, Soriano, and of course Rivera ushered the team safely to a win. Which, weirdly, means that A.J. Burnett now has more wins by himself than the Red Sox. That’ll last a day or two max, but might as well enjoy these early season flukes where you can.

A much as I’ve been mistrustful of the Yankee rotation, a solid Burnett makes it merely short as opposed to horrendously short. Well – depending on what you think is going on with Phil Hughes.

It is still raining in New York.

Yanks, O’s–let’s get this in and Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Amanda Friedman]

EJ Fagan at the Yankee Analysts tells us everything we need to know about Hector Noesi.

New York Magazine has a fun little piece on the seven types of John Sterling home run calls (thanks to Was Watching for the link):