Scrubway Serious, Take Two:

It rained all day and deep into the night on Friday in New York and the weaterman said it was going to keep a coming today.  However, the sun is out and it is a warm morning in New York.  Overcast, yeah, but it seems as if the Mets and Yankees will be able to get a game in this afternoon without a hitch.  Turns out this’ll just be a brief encounter between the two teams as last night’s game will be made up as part of a two-stadium double header in late June.  So, today gives an appealing match-up of southpaws: Johan Santana vs. Andy Pettitte.  The Yankees, of course, are well familiar with Santana.  They know how tough he can be, and with Alex Rodriguez’s return still a few days away, the team is still at a disadvantage against lefties.  Pettitte has pitched poorly in three of his last four outings.  Time for him to come through with an improved performance.   

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

I’ll get to the Mets in a moment, but first, since I’ve been out of commission this week due to a business trip, here are some thoughts on what ails the Yankees . . .

First thing’s first, it’s not the bullpen, which has held opponents to a .233/.308/.343 line and posted a 3.30 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 7.67 K/9, and 2.28 K/BB, all despite being called on for the second-highest total of relief innings in the majors.

Second, the problems in the starting rotation are both obvious and in the process of being solved. Chien-Ming Wang has eight quality starts in nine tries, a 2.90 ERA, has spiked his K/9 to 5.80 (up from his career mark of 3.83 entering the season), and is averaging nearly 6 2/3 innings per start. Mike Mussina is 5-0 with a 2.76 ERA and just three walks in his last five starts. Darrell Rasner has two wins and two quality starts since being promoted from Scranton. Andy Pettitte was 3-1 with a 2.45 ERA over his first four starts, but is 0-3 with a 6.75 ERA over his last four. Chances are Pettitte and Mussina will meet in the middle somewhere, leaving Ian Kennedy, who aced his reboot start in triple-A and threw strikes in his return last night only to have those strikes hit hard, as the big question mark in the quintet.

As for the offense. Riddle me this, Batman: as of yesterday morning, the Yankees were fourth in the AL in adjusted OPS, and third in the AL in slugging, but a dismal tenth in runs scored per game. What gives?

Here’s my answer: too many outs. It’s the oldest trick in the sabermetric book; the most precious commodity in the game is each team’s allotment of 27 outs. Avoid making outs and you will score runs by default. In each of the last two seasons, the Yankees were first in the majors in on-base percentage (which is really just the inverse of a team’s rate of making outs) and first in runs scored per game. This year, the Yankees are ninth in the AL in OBP and tenth in the league in runs scored per game.

Yes, it’s that simple.

On-base percentages are dependent upon walks. While it’s true that walks rarely drive in runs, they put runners on base and keep innings alive, preventing those runners from being stranded. The Yankees were third in the AL in walks in each of the last two seasons. This year, they’re tenth in the league in free passes.

Tenth in walks. Ninth in OBP. Tenth in runs per game.

So don’t blame Jason Giambi and his .188 average. Giambi leads the team with 23 walks, which get him up to a solid .351 OBP. Don’t blame Hideki Matsui (not that you would seeing as he’s by far been the team’s best hitter this season). He leads the Yankees with a .399 OBP. Don’t blame Johnny Damon, who is second to Giambi with 19 walks and has a .348 OBP which is right around his career average.

Do blame the injuries to Jorge Posada (career .380 OBP) and Alex Rodriguez (career .388 OBP). Jose Molina has just two walks in 25 games and has been an automatic out since coming back from his hamstring injury (45 outs in 47 plate appearances, counting double plays). Morgan Ensberg, has made 45 outs in his last 58 PAs dating back to Rodriguez’s first game at DH.

Robinson Cano was another guilty party, but has gone .394/.412/.636 over his last nine games. Unfortunately, his buddy Melky Cabrera, who entered May with a .370 OBP, has taken Cano’s place by making 30 outs in 36 PA over those nine games. Together they add up to one valuable hitter and third automatic out in the lineup.

Oh, and there’s one other guy you can blame: Derek Jeter. Of the seven Yankees with 100 or more at-bats, Jeter is dead last in walks with just two-thirds of Cano’s second-worst total. Jeter’s .297 average is the second best mark on the team, but his .331 OBP is fifth among Yankee starters and 57 points below his career mark, which he matched or surpassed in each of the last three seasons. The good news there is that four of those six walks have come in the last 12 games. Still, even over that span Jeter’s PA/BB rate has been below his career mark.

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When I turned 30, my dear friend Alan made me a great mix cd, stacked with soul records from 1971, the year I was born.  "I Know You Got Soul," "Mr. Big Stuff," "Spanish Harlem,"  "Do the Funky Penguin,"  "A Natural Man," and one of my all-time favorite cuts, "Family Affair" are all featured.  (For my 40th, maybe he’ll make me a mix of the best rock n roll songs from that year. What would those records be?)  Here is the cover art for the cd, including a card Alan made of me with my old moniker Al Dente (the back cover of the cd, looks like the back of an old card, but instead of stats, you get the track listing; it includes the tidbit, "Alex loves records," taken from an old Alex Johnson card).  The picture of me was actually taken by Alan in Gravesend, Brooklyn in 1999.  I’m wearing a t-shirt that my boy Javier brought back from the Dominican for me, "Sammy’s 61," celebrating Sosa’s monster 1998 season.  The cup in my right hand is from Nathan’s on Coney Island.

Can you name all the cards–even the bits and pieces–in this collage?

Yankee reliever Edwar Ramirez doesn’t look the part of a major leaguer. He’s listed as six feet, three inches tall and 160 pounds, but appears more like 140 pounds with lead weights attached to his ankles. In some ways, he looks like a Latino version of Kent Tekulve, who was often confused with scarecrows during his hey day in the 1970s. And then there are those funky looking glasses that Ramirez wears. Or are they goggles, something like what Chris Sabo used to wear with the Reds? Perhaps we should call them "gloggles."

Ramirez is only the latest in a long line of players to bring eyeglasses and other forms of optical wear to the forefront. The tradition dates all the way back to the professional game’s roots some two centuries ago. The first major leaguer to wear glasses during a major league game was 19^th century workhorse Will "Woop-La" White, who completed 394 out of 401 starts in his career. (I wonder what his pitch counts were like.) In 1877, White wore a pair of eyeglasses for the Boston Red Sox Stockings, who were then a National League franchise. After White finished donning the spectacles for Boston, no other major leaguer would sport glasses for another 38 years. In 1915, pitcher Lee "Specs" Meadows cracked the 20^th century glasses barrier with the Cardinals. Like White, Meadows was a very good pitcher, a winner of 188 games over a 15-year career.

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Ian Kennedy was filled with big talk before his recent start in Triple A. Last night, he felt there was improvement in his return outing for the Yankees but the results were not splendid–five runs in five innings. The Yankee offense, dubbed “the Dead Bat Society” by N.Y. Post writer George King, mustered just two runs as the Rays won the game (5-2) and the series and sent the uninspired Bronx Bummers into last place. Scott Kazmir, fresh off a three-year extension, got the win.

Things aren’t much rosier in Queens as the Mets lost an agonizing 1-0 game yesterday afternoon (and three of four to the lowly Washington Nats). Mike Pelfry had a no hitter going into the seventh inning; Carlos Beltran got doubled off third base to end it in the ninth. After the game, outspoken closer Billy Wagner let rip in the direction of one Carlos Delgado. According to Adam Rubin in the Daily News:

“Someone tell me why the — you’re talking to the closer. I didn’t even play. They’re over there, not being interviewed.”

Wagner paused for dramatic effect. Then, in a scene reminiscent of last year’s Paul Lo Duca comments, minus the racial overtones, the closer sarcastically added: “I got it. They’re gone. —ing shocker.”

The forecast calls for steady rain today and then thunderstorms tomorrow. Maybe both teams could use an old-fashioned rainout. The way they’ve been been going recalls the title of Jimmy Breslin’s famous account of the ’62 Mets, Can’t Anybody Here Play this Game? Just goes to show, a collective $300+ million don’t buy what it used to.

IPK vs. Kaz.  Come on split.

Again, apropos of nothing, but man, he was pretty damn good, huh?

It is a tired practice; writers contacting former greats from a particular team and having them comment on current players as if their words have any bearing on matters at hand. As much as I respect Goose Gossage and his shoot-from-the-hip style, I’m at a point where I do not want to see his name attributed to a quote unless it’s in a “where are they now” piece, or he becomes affiliated with the team in some kind of coaching capacity and has something meaningful to say pertaining to the team on a day-to-day basis.

It’s understandable, though. When a respected player with a good personality and rapport with the media reaches Hall of Fame status, he becomes a go-to guy for any story with the objective of comparing the past to the present. Such is the case with The Goose. With two and a half months until his enshrinement in Cooperstown, he is everywhere and is being treated as the de facto authority on all things Yankees.

Bob Klapisch’s Sunday column in the Bergen Record, which was later narced by the Associated Press, is further proof of this. When Joba Chamberlain caused a stir with post-strikeout histrionics last week, naturally, Gossage was the person Klapisch sought for comment/judgment. Gossage has for years waxed on the merits of players of his era, particularly relief pitchers and the development of specific roles in the bullpen. In his witty way, he’s been complimentary and critical, and always quoteworthy. Over the winter, Gossage, long a fan of Mariano Rivera, shifted his attention to the phenom, Chamberlain (at the media’s behest, of course). At the time, he said the right move for the Yankees was to leave Chamberlain as the set-up man and eventually have him assume the closer role once Rivera retires. In the subsequent months, he has continued his praise of Chamberlain, but this is the first time he’s openly questioned his maturity.

That this column came from Klapisch should not come as a surprise. Klapisch pitched at Columbia and still pitches in a semipro league. He likely viewed Chamberlain’s fist-pumping and primal screams as bush-league behavior and went to Gossage, knowing he’d have an agreeable audience. Very little work was involved save for making a phone call and transcribing quotes.

Klap’s lead:

The question was brought to Goose Gossage because who else to judge whether Joba Chamberlain was being a jerk on Thursday, pumping his fist and pirouetting after striking out the Indians’ David Dellucci as if he’d toppled the Berlin Wall?

Once upon a time, the Goose was the game’s hardest-throwing closer, who liked nothing more than to intimidate hitters. Not just throw the fastball by them — crush them psychologically. And Gossage, of course, was a Yankee, which means he and Chamberlain come from the same bloodlines.

Why does anyone have to judge at all? Klapisch, a veteran writer, is better than this. He fell into a classic reporter’s trap, which is building a story around a situation and an easy quote. The story is essentially written before the first word is typed. What’s worse, these types of articles invite responses from anyone willing to talk into a recorder or microphone. Predictably, the most boisterous response came from Hank Steinbrenner.

Later in the article, Klapisch criticized Joe Girardi for not taking action, adding that Joe Torre would have disciplined Chamberlain behind closed doors. Klapisch may be right, as well as he knows Torre, but he’s forcing a premise on his readers that may not be true. I can recall numerous times Torre saying, “I like the emotion. I don’t want to change (insert player name here).” Look how often he defended Roger Clemens.

Writers will continue to play this dangerous game, making assumptions and comparing players and teams from era to era. It’s part of the job to spur debate amongst fans in whatever way possible.

It’s unlikely that between now and the Hall of Fame ceremony that writers will cease calling Gossage. The question is: At what point will he stop answering?

OTHER INTERESTING MEDIA NOTES
• You can tell when a player has reached a nadir in the media’s eyes when the New York Times throws a humorous line worthy of print in either the NY Post or the Daily News. Tuesday, in his recap of the 7-1 loss to the Rays, Tyler Kepner observed that Kei Igawa was warming in the bullpen at one point, calling it “as sure a sign as any that the game was a lost cause.”

• A-Rod will miss the Subway Series. Pedro is out, too. What will the writers do to promote the it? For those of you who guessed Johan Santana, give yourself a prize. With the two-time Cy Young Winner pitching in Yankee Stadium Friday night, I’d put the odds of a Hank sighting at roughly the same as Big Brown’s chances at winning the Preakness. You know what that means: quotes a-plenty and follow-ups to his “earn your money” missive that made headlines on Wednesday. Who thinks Hank will fire Girardi by mid-season, bring in Bob Lemon, and then over the next seven years rehire Girardi four more times?

Until next week …

Okay, so the Yankee bats didn’t exactly light it up against James Shields. They scored two runs. But it was enough to beat the Rays as Mike Mussina delivered and the Bombers won, 2-1. Mussina pitched slow and slower last night and it was a thing of beauty to watch.

“Whether it’s Joba throwing 96 or me throwing 86, they have to gear their approach to whatever speed is coming,” Mussina said. “Well, if I can make them gear from 68 up to 85 or 86, that’s a big spread. No matter how hard the top is, the spread is pretty large.

“And if I can throw changeups for strikes at 70 miles an hour, and dump curveballs in there for strikes at 70, and work in between — throw sinkers at 81-82, throw cutters at 81-82, throw fastballs at 85-86 — then that makes it hard on them, no matter what the speed is.

“I’m not going to strike out 10 guys a game, and I know that. But I can mess with them enough that they’re not going to get the swing that they want to get. And that’s all I’m trying to do.”
(Kepner, N.Y. Times)

The Yanks had some luck too when Gabe Gross lined into a double play to get Ross Olendorf out of trouble in the seventh. Gross hit the ball hard, but it was right at Jeter, who quickly flipped to Robinson Cano (four hits, Robinson Cano!) to double Cliff Floyd off second. Joba Chamberlian struck out the side in the eighth and Mariano Rivera was back to putting heads to bed in the ninth, notching his 11th save. Hey, a win is a win, right?

Especially with Hank itching to show that his bite backs up his bark. Here’s more from the Son of Steinbrenner, as reported by Bill Madden in the Daily News:

This is what the new “Hammerin’ Hank” had to say to me Wednesday when I reached him in Tampa with the greeting: “How ’bout those Rays!”:

“They’re a great story down here right now,” he said, “although it’s terrible that they’re only drawing only 16,000 a game. They’re playing a lot better than us, that’s for sure. I know we’re gonna come on at some point in this season, but right now, other than (Chien-Ming) Wang, (Mariano) Rivera, (Derek) Jeter, (Hideki) Matsui, (Johnny) Damon and (Mike) Mussina, after I got on him a little, we’re not doing jack (bleep).

“What bothers me is that these guys are all working for me and my brother and they’re all making more money than we are. That’s what makes me mad. But while I’m confident they’ll come around, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens this year. And if they don’t come around then changes will have to be made. I’ve just got to clean up the mistakes of the last five years and make us what we should be.”

Ah, so Hank gets the credit for Mussina’s recent performance. Same as it ever was.

During the middle of the game last night, I was on-line checking the scores…2-0, 2-1, 3-2, 1-1. Sure sign of a recession when you see lines like that in the Junior Circut. BP takes as look at why scoring in in the American League is down this season. Tom Verducci examines the issue as well, and Jake Luft wonders what ever happen to Travis Hafner.

“I feel like their energy is definitely more than ours.”
–Hideki Matsui
(Feinsand, N.Y. Daily News)

In the top of the fifth inning last night, YES broadcaster Ken Singleton said, “The Yankees look as if they are hitting under water.” It was an apt description and a nice way of puting it. Listless, ancient and awful are other words that come to mind. The Yanks didn’t score their first run until the ninth inning, when with one out, Hideki Matsui ripped a high fastball from Troy Percival for a solo home run. Derek Jeter, standing at the top of the dugout, immediately raised his arms and turned to Johnny Damon to slap five. Al Leiter, Singleton’s partner on the air, mentioned that Jeter must have called Godzilla’s blast. Jeter’s face is a deeply tanned and he smiled broadly.

It was to be the last good moment of the evening. Kyle Farnsworth got through the ninth and Mariano Rivera survived a lead-off single to Carl Crawford in the tenth, but Mo couldn’t get past a lead-off base hit by Cliff Floyd in the eleventh (this was New York’s first trip to extra innings this season). When Jonny Gomes entered the game to pinch run for Floyd, a sinking feeling overcame me. Sure enough, Gomes swiped second and then raced home on a base hit by Gabe Gross. Final: Rays 2, Yanks 1. All three hits against Rivera came from lefties. His location was off, but he can hardly be blamed–this was the first run he’s allowed all season. Neither can Chien-Ming Wang, who wasn’t brilliant, but damn good, giving up just one run over seven innings.

No, the blame rests squarely on the offense. Even without Posada and Rodriguez, $200 million has to buy more than this. Hank Steinbrenner, talking to Kevin Kernan in the Post, agrees:

“The bottom line is that the team is not playing the way it is capable of playing,” Steinbrenner said. “These players are being paid a lot of money and they had better decide for themselves to earn that money.”

…He then paid the much-improved Rays a compliment, saying, the Yankees have “got to start playing the way the Rays are playing. (The Yankees) need to start treating it like when they were younger players and going after that big contract, like they’re in (Triple-A) and trying to make the majors. That’s the kind of attitude and fire the players have to have.

“There’s no question we need to turn it around and we have the talent to turn it around. We’ve got the team in place, and now they just have to go out and do it.

“This is going to get turned around,” Steinbrenner said. “If it’s not turned around this year, then it will be turned around next year, by force if we have too.”

According to Kevin Long, the hitting coach:

“Realistically, we should score about five runs a game if a guy’s not on his game,” Long said. “A guy like tonight, we could probably push across three runs with the stuff he had. Last night’s guy, we probably could have got more.

“You’ve got to figure they’re probably a run, a run and a half,” Long continued, referring to the run production lost without Rodriguez and Posada, “but we’ve talked about it. Each guy thinks we should be able to score five.”
(Kepner, N.Y. Times)

Pete Abraham collected some cherce quotes from the Yankee pitchers:

Chien-Ming Wang: “It’s tough pitching with no runs. It’s surprising because we have good hitters. I got my job done and kept the team close.”

Mariano Rivera: “We have to score some runs and we haven’t done that.”

Joba Chamberlain: “It’s tough right now. Every run against us looks huge.”

With Shields and Kazmir pitching the next two days for the Rays, it’s hard to imagine the Yankees leaving Florida with a split. Go figure that. The Rays, it should be noted, are now in first place, and last night marked a high-point in their history.

“You’re looking for growth moments?” said Rays manager Joe Maddon. “There’s one right in front of your face tonight.”
(The Tampa Tribune)

No kidding.

Sorry, I’m tardy. Chien-Ming has to man-up tonight for the Yanks and keep the Rays from getting out of hand with this up-and-coming-we’re-so-fresh business. Hopefully, the bats will follow suit.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

SI.com has a fun new scouting report feature. Here’s one on Greg Maddux.

The Yankees looked flatter than George Carlin’s ass last night in a 7-1 loss in Tampa Bay. The Rays–led by spark plug Jonny Gomes, who was seemingly everwhere, running, sliding, high-fiving, all with a cloud of dust around him–looked like the varsity squad, while the Yanks appeared sluggish and old.

“Always, beating the Evil Empire is awesome,” Jonny Gomes said. “They’ve been doing work on us for the last 10 years (a 115-58 advantage). … Anyone in the AL East, we’ll take our wins. But beating those guys is always a little more fun.”
(Marc Topkin, St. Pete Times)

The Rays, winners of five straight, were big, young and strong, not your average girls’ softball team. Matt Garza has some life on his pitches and he attacked the Yankee batters all night. According to Tyler Kepner in the Times:

“He came right after us,” Damon said. “Before we knew it, he was jamming us and making us pop out. That’s what happens when you’re late on the fastball, and it seemed like we were late all day. It just seemed like we couldn’t catch up to it.”

Damon referred to Tuesday’s opponent and said the Yankees could be in for another tough game: “I’m sure Edwin Jackson’s taking notes, saying, ‘These guys couldn’t get through tonight.’ And he has a harder fastball.”

The Yankees, on the other hand, were treated to another uninspired installment of “Bad Andy.” New York is back under .500, at 19-20. And Alex Rodriguez won’t be around for the subway serious this weekend.

At least Chien Ming Wang is pitching tonight.

Don’t look now, but the Tampa Bay Rays have third-best record in American League. Given that, the Yankees look pretty good rolling into town with a 4-2 record against the Rays and a 2-0 record at the Trop this season, but then it’s been nearly a month since these two teams last met. The Rays were 6-8 when the Yankees last left town, but are 15-7 since then, 13-5 over their last six series, and are coming off a sweep of the Angels.

Just as they planned it, the Rays have been winning on the strength of their pitching and defense, particularly since getting Scott Kazmir and Matt Garza, neither of whom has faced the Yankees yet this year but both of whom will start in this series with the latter taking the hill tonight, back from the disabled list. Last by a lot in preventing runs last year, the Rays are now are the fifth stingiest team in the league and are second only to the surprising A’s in least runs allowed per game at home, yielding just with 3.47 R/G at the Trop.

Garza has a 3.06 ERA in three starts since coming off the DL, but with a reverse K/BB of 0.75. He’ll face Andy Pettitte, who is working on an extra day of rest due to yesterday’s rainout.

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I was having a conversation with a friend over the weekend about the future of the newspaper business. He suggested that the print version of The New York Times will not exist in ten years. I don’t know enough about the future to know if that is correct, but the way things are going it wouldn’t really surprise me. Everything is in flux.

The Times is doing a good job with their baseball blog, Bats (their Diner’s Journal blog in the food section is tremendous). Sherman at the Post, Feinsand at the News and O’Brein at Newsday, Murti at the FAN, all have blogs to maintain along with their regular duties. Heck Pride of the Yankees has been around, and doing it well, forever. Blogging is part of the every day news cycle.

The fact that blogs as a medium have been co-opted by the mainstream press is not news. Nor is the fact that best Yankee information available anywhere now comes from a blog. But who would have thunk that the one-stop-shop for behind-the-scenes Yankee news would come from a Westchester paper and not one of Big Three? Pete Abraham will be scooped-up one day and be handsomely rewarded for his hard work. In the meantime, if his blog was the only access you had to the Yankees, you’d be well-informed. Pete’s site isn’t the end-all–other blogs, including this one and a host of others around the ‘net, have lots to add to the conversation–but he’s the starting point. It’s a sign of how things have already changed that the New York Times, Daily News and the Post are all getting their asses kicked by a paper from the ‘burbs.

This is good for us as fans because Pete has raised the bar, and now the rest of the papers have to keep up. That’s competition at its finest.

I caught most of the games at Shea this weekend. I actually went out there with Rich Lederer, his son Joe, and Repoz on Friday night. We sat around and watched it rain for an hour-and-a-half and then split when they announced no game would be played. Anyhow, it was nice to see Junior Griffey, who I don’t catch all that often, being an American League guy. Nate Silver had a fine piece on Junior for the Times yesterday. Check it out.

Also, thanks to Jon Weisman for pointing out Paul DePodesta’s new blog (with a clever name), It Might Be Dangerous…You Go First, which rightly celebrated Greg Maddux’s 350th career win. Man, I just hope Maddog can last through the end of next season as it would be tremendous to see him pass Warren Spahn (363) on the all-time wins list. As for the title of DePo’s blog, the first movie that comes to mind is “Young Frankenstein.” But it sounds like such a stock line, I’m sure it was in one the old Bob Hope movies or Warner Bros. cartoons. Hmmm.

I wasn’t impressed with Joba Chamberlain’s emotional outburst after striking out Dave Dellucci last week.  I realize that being demonstrative is just the way it is today, whether it is Chamberlain celebrating after a strike out or Manny Ramirez admiring a home run for fifteen minutes at the plate.   My problem with Chamerlain letting loose after he retired Dellucci was that it seemed to be all about Joba getting revenge for the home run Dellucci hit off him a few nights earlier.  In other words, it was selfish, and had nothing to do with the game situation.  To me, Chamberlain would have been more of a bad ass if he had just stalked off the mound after making Dellucci look helpless.  I think his antics undermined a beautiful sequence of pitches.  It isn’t a that big a deal, certainly not worth all the attention it has gotten on WFAN, but that is my take. 

According to Bob Klapisch, former Yankees Goose Gossage and Roy White weren’t impressed either:

Goose always has hated showboaters, past and especially present day, so when Dellucci told reporters he thought Chamberlain’s response was immature and "bush," Gossage didn’t hesitate to say, "I’m on Dellucci’s side.

"That’s just not the Yankee way, what Joba did. Let everyone else do that stuff, but not a Yankee," Gossage said by telephone on Saturday. "What I don’t understand is, the kid’s got the greatest mentor in the world in Mariano [Rivera]. He’s one of the leaders of the team, so you’d think it wouldn’t happen on that team.

"But there’s no one to pass the torch anymore, no one to teach the young kids how to act. The Mets did a lot of that [celebrating] last year, and look how it came back to haunt them."

…White, in particular, took issue with Melky Cabrera, who often does a full-spin, twirl high-five after a home run or Yankee victory.
“I saw that 360-thing he did with [Robinson] Cano at the end of one of the games and I was shocked. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” White said by telephone. “I’m sorry, that’s just too much. I’m guess I’m old school, but there’s a professional way to play baseball, there’s a Yankee tradition, back to [Joe] DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.
“You hit a home run, act like you’ve hit one before, not like it’s the first time in your life.”

On the other hand, Ed Valentine thinks all the talk about Yankee class is nonsense. 

The Yankees’ series finale in Detroit was one of three games rained out on Mother’s Day yesterday. The game will be made up either July 24 or September 1. The former date would result in the Yankees playing 27 consecutive games coming out of the All-Star break.

The rainout gives the Yankees the option of bringing Ian Kennedy back to reclaim the fifth starters spot from Kei Igawa when it next comes due. Igawa was set to start on Wednesday, with Darrell Rasner pitching Thursday, but the rainout allows the Yankees to start Rasner on either Thursday or Friday with Igawa or a replacement starting the other day. Kennedy, who is eligible to be recalled on Thursday, was scheduled to start for Scranton Wilkes-Barre yesterday, but his game was also rained out. He’ll start today, but if the Yankees pull him from the game early, could start on short rest against the Mets on Friday. It seems more likely to me that the Yankees will either start Igawa or a replacement on Thursday and let Rasner face the Mets on Friday.

The most likely Igawa alternate would be Steven White, who is on the 40-man roster and pitching well for Scranton (2.68 ERA, 1.21 WHIP), but White’s extreme fly-ball rate and 4.02 BB/9 suggest he might just be a right-handed Igawa. It would be fun to see converted reliever Dan Giese get the call, but the Yankees would have to create room on the 40-man for him (possibly by calling up Francisco Cervelli and putting him on the 60-day DL, or better yet, by designating Chris Stewart for assignment). Me, I’d DFA Stewart and give the veteran Giese (1.05 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, 3.5 K/BB in six starts) a shot on Thursday with Rasner starting Friday.

What would you do?