Yo, baseball history nyerds, do yourself a solid and check out Emily Condon’s most cool site of baseball arcana, Fanned.

Alex Rodriguez sure is having a productive spring, huh? But he’s not alone–Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira are swinging the bat well, too.

Man, the season is so close you can almost taste it. It’s raining again in New York today but it’s nice to know that the Yanks are geared up and ready to roll (knock on everything).

March Madness continues…

Harvey Araton has a long profile on Brian Cashman today in the Times.

[Photo Credit: Catholic University]

Leading off for the Yanks…Derek Jeter or Brett Gardner?

After a long, hard week, time for a tub…

Felt like spring for real out there today.

Tonight gives tourney time, baby…

There is only one conclusion to draw from Ivan Nova’s performance on Wednesday night in Tampa: he is going to make the Opening Day roster, and most likely as the No. 4 starter. In bouncing back from his lone poor performance this spring, Nova pitched brilliantly by forging six hitless innings against the Orioles. He threw strikes, kept his fastball down, and even mixed in a slider, the latest addition to his repertoire. Nova recorded 11 of his 14 outs on ground balls, which is exactly the kind of ratio the Yankees would like to see this summer.

With Nova slotted in the fourth spot, that leaves only the No. 5 starter to be decided. The two right-handed veterans, Freddie Garcia and Bartolo Colon, will continue to fight for that honor, with the loser possibly heading to the bullpen, especially if the Yankees take the careful route and place Joba Chamberlain on the disabled list to start the season. (I don’t think Chamberlain’s oblique injury is all that serious, but the Yankees tend to be overly cautious when it comes to these things.) The Yankees could also open up a relief spot by releasing or trading Sergio Mitre, a possibility that has actually been rumored this spring despite Joe Girardi’s affinity for the former Marlin.

The other outside possibility for the bullpen is Romulo Sanchez, the ex-Pirate who is out of options. Sanchez has been wild this spring, but he has a live fastball that has impressed opposing scouts, and would almost certainly be claimed on waivers by someone. At 26, Sanchez is a lot younger than both Colon and Garcia, and more accustomed to pitching out of the pen.

Whatever happens with the 12-man staff, the Yankees at least appear to have some decent pitching options, more so than they appeared to have at the start of spring training…

(more…)

I’m working on an MLB season preview right now for one of my other gigs, and as part of that I need to have three “Reasons to Watch” for every team. For some, they’re easy to come up with (How will Albert Pujols do in his walk year? Can the Phillies rotation possibly meet epectations?), and in other cases more challenging (the Pirates. Can I say “masochism”?). But for me, it actually may have been trickiest coming up with reasons for the Yankees. It was sort of a forest-for-the-trees effect: I follow them closely enough that things like their 4th- and 5th-rotation slot battles are items of major interest, but I have to remember that the average baseball fan and even the casual yankee fan probably does not give much of a damn wither the 5th starter is Ivan Nova, Bartolo Colon or your aunt Sally. For me, just about everything is a reason to watch: I want to see if Robinson Cano can keept up last year’s torrid pace, if Mark Teixeira can avoid his usual lousy April, if A-Rod’s improved hip leads to another monster season from him, I want to see Mariano Rivera because few things in our imperfect world are so reliably lovely. In fact, I ended up picking for my list Derek Jeter’s upcoming 3,000th hit, which is probably one of the few things that is not really a reason to watch for me. Or, rather, I do want to see Jeter hit 3,000, but I’m dreading the accompanying media hype, which I’m afraid will make the whole run-up to the event itself more or less unbearable.

I think in the end I’ll go with Jeter’s 3,000th hit, Jesus Montero, and Mariano. But I was curious to see what other people would have gone with. If you had to pick three “Reasons to Watch” the Yanks this season, what would they be?

Over at the Japan Society, there is a cool-looking exhibition (through June 12th): “Bye Bye Kitty! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art.”

Nate nerds up to the salad bar.

Matt B Friday continues…here’s a funny piece he hipped me to that Michael O’Donoghue once wrote about How to Write Good.

Back to the old school, for the old-timers like Matt B, and anyone else too.

Swoon…Boom, buh-Boom, buh-Boom.

All together now…

Monty’s D ain’t so hot say the scouts.

Tyler Kepner on a young flame-thrower…

Yeah, it’s mad salty, but it’s still good.

From the Huff Post…

There is a long piece by Dana Goodyear in the New Yorker this week about a shrink to the stars. I didn’t get much out of it, but this did speak to me:

By far the most common problem afflicting the writers in Michels’s practice is procrastination, which he understands in terms of Jung’s Father archetype. “They procrastinate because they have no external authority figure demanding that they write,” he says. “Often I explain to the patient that there is an authority figure he’s answerable to, but it’s not human. It’s Time itself that’s passing inexorably. That’s why they call it Father Time. Every time you procrastinate or waste time, you’re defying this authority figure.” Procrastination, he says, is a “spurious form of immortality,” the ego’s way of claiming that it has all the time in the world; writing, by extension, is a kind of death. He gives procrastinators a tool he calls the Arbitrary Use of Time Moment, which asks them to sit in front of their computers for a fixed amount of time each day. “You say, ‘I’m surrendering myself to the archetypal Father, Chronos,’ ” he says. ‘I’m surrendering to him because he has hegemony over me.’ That submission activates something inside someone. In the simplest terms, it gets people to get their ass in the chair.” For the truly unproductive, he sets the initial period at ten minutes—“an amount of time it would sort of embarrass them not to be able to do.”

You know I’m very fond of the Mets, but this, their St. Patty’s Day hat design, is the creepiest thing seen on a baseball field since Dandy, the aborted Yankees mascot of the 80s:

Shudder. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone – now RUN FOR YOUR LIVES before Mr. Leprechaun Met comes to kill you for stealing his pot o’ gold.

[Insert Bernie Madoff joke here].