Yowza… thats .808 baseball!
Coincidence?
Are we hitting poorly or pitching poorly the same days we are fielding poorly? When you look at Offensive RS vs. Defensive RS, it seems great D never makes up for very poor O. Might this be a flaw in ‘statistics’?

I have seen many games, every year, where one or 2 fielding plays turned a Win into a Loss… and visa versa. Thoughts?

Food for Thought:
Just who is the real Melky? When he is smart and patient he is a good LD hitter. With more patience and more BBs, he is an above average CFer (slightly above average D, above average arm and his bat).

Jeter w/6 HRs. Can’t say the power is gone, 4 at Home and 4 vs RHP… so these don’t appear that skewed. A .792 OPS. So…..
Is Jeter in DECLINE or just a gradual, expected aging process?

Am I reading this correctly?
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/posadjo01.shtml?redir
Jorge, on defense AND throwing has only cost us 1-2 runs per year? (with an OPS+ of 124)

Tex is the real deal. $23m/yr is still too high, but the market overvalues premiere players. Watching Mattingly play his entire career,I think people UNDERvalue the importance of D at 1B. Yeah, I know, defensive spectrum and all that… but I’m not buying. I think excellent D at 1st makes a big difference.

Nick the Swish: Current line: .231 .373 .515 .888
Career OPS: 810, OPS+ 113.
Can Nick be counted on for at least a .825 OPS?

Do we need Nady? I know he can’t hurt, but who might we get for him. Worth exploring?

Montero and Cervix might be a very nice #1 – #2 pair of catchers for 2011 and beyond. I have to think Posada is a #3 C and primary DH in 2011.

ARod is stiff in the field. He is still in his first month of ST after a 3 months longer layoff then everyone else. Looking at his power numbers, all things considered, I think he is doing well (but our expectations are always Oh so high).

I left him another comment (not email), so maybe I’ll be the inspiration for his Sunday blog too.

Interesting, given Olney’s concerns about the park (you’ll see it in my NOTD later this morning).

Also … this just in …. LeBron James …. is pretty good!

[11] haha, thanks pj :}

i have no way of knowing which pitching coaches are worth a damn. i know a lot of people were down on stotlemeyer – who knows. supposedly cmw worked very well with guidry. eiland has seemingly done good work with the young guys.
but i do think both cone and leiter have the lingo and body of work that lend itself well to be pitching effective pitching coaches. supposedly cone goes down and watches the pitchers a lot.

[5] i’ll second that. i find burnett very frustrating.
and his last few starts have not been good enough.

i’d be interested to hear from someone like leiter or cone to get a better sense on whether a night like last night can be something for wang to build on or if he would have been better off making another aaa start.
my belief is the aaa start – but i don’t know.

Cone, and better yet Leiter, would make great Pitching coaches… or at least, ‘consultants’.

Maybe that’s not so humorous after all…

Ms October was right on the last game thread (Post #101)! Is Wil Nieves available?

: )

Part of maintaining sound mechanics is to be able to be self-aware (as well has having a catcher than can spot flaws; I’m not sure what Cash contributes). Apparently, AJ isn’t.

It has often been said that AJ has a million arm and a ten cent head. I think we have been seeing how accurate that assessment is.

His mechanics seem to fall part whenever he perceives that he is under stress (e.g., what happened in Boston and in Toronto). When that happens on a consistent basis over time, another approach has to be tried (assuming your GM isn’t smart enough to even think about giving him a five year contract, but I digress).

That, imo, was the type of advice that Cone was offering, in other words, outside of the box thinking.

We’ll see if the Yankees’ pitching “brain trust” is capable of that.

But I digress.

The point is that Burnett’s injury history is based on things like the flying open, and it’s possible that his success was often based on compensating for them, thus hurting himself (as Leiter said). Maybe now he is healthy because he is not compensating. I’m only speculating wildly, but it’s just to say that Eiland is very, very well-respected, and seems to know what he is doing. He was a terrific AAA coach, too.

btw, When Cone talks about pitches, he seems to know what he is talking about. For example, he mentioned that AJ needs to move hitters off the plate and give them different looks. All Eiland talks about is his shoulder flying open.

The Yankees should consider hiring him.

However I did not envision Burnett doing … whatever the hell he was doing. He’s incredibly frustrating to watch when he’s bad because he still appears to be good. His stuff was still nasty, by the looks of it, but the result was a failure.

I’m not down with keeping Wang in the pen. What is the point of that? So we have another firebug? Either he’s good to go or he’s not. Wang is not – apparently – the kind of pitcher who can “make do”. I’d much rather see Hughes in the pen, if anything.

Man, it’ll be sad if this is the end of Chien-Ming Wang. He was a solid, consistent pitcher.

Anyway, a loss but not a heartbreaking loss. It’s essential they win tomorrow. I don’t want Sabathia pitching to salvage a series at home.

Oh and can we close the book on the new stadium? It’s a ****ing band box, period.

However, I’m rapidly losing patience with Burnett. a 5.28 ERA 10 HR and a 1.43 WHIP just aren’t cutting it.