The Yanks have the pitching match-ups in their favor this weekend, so why do I keep thinking that thick-necked Brad Penny will throw a good game tomorrow night? Maybe I’ve just got sore feelings left over from the 2003 World Serious. Or maybe I just like to worry. Man, so long as the Yankees don’t get swept, I’ll be straight.
As Tyler Kepner notes, the Yankees still have something to prove in Boston.
Something Wild is not only one of my favorite ’80s movies but one of my favorites, period. It’s Jonathan Demme at his peak, and the stars–Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels and Ray Liotta–have rarely been better.
Here’s Pauline Kael’s blurb from The New Yorker:
Jonathan Demme’s romantic screwball comedy isn’t just about a carefree kook (Melanie Griffith) and a pompous man from Wall Street (Jeff Daniels). The script–a first by E. Max Frye–is like the working out of a young man’s fantasy of the pleasures and punishments of shucking off middle-class behavior patterns. The movie is about getting high on anarchic, larcenous behavior and then being confronted with ruthless, sadistic criminality. This rough-edged comedy turns into a scary slapstick thriller. Demme weaves the stylization of rock videos into the fabric of the movie.
Starting with David Byrne and Celia Cruz singing Byrne’s “Loco De Amor” during the opening credits, and ending with a reprise of Chip Taylor’s “Wild Thing” by the reggae singer Sister Carol East, who appears on half of the screen while the final credits roll on the other half, there are almost 50 songs (or parts of songs), several of them performed onscreen by The Feelies. The score–it was put together by John Cale and Laurie Anderson–has a life of its own that gives the movie a buzzing vitality. This is a party movie with both a dark and a light side. With Ray Liotta as the dangerous, menacing Ray; Dana Preu as the kook’s gloriously bland mother; and Margaret Colin as bitchy Irene. Also with Jack Gilpin, Su Tissue, and Demme’s co-producer Kenneth Utt, and, tucked among the many performers, John Waters and John Sayles. Cinematography by Tak Fujimoto.
I love watching Derek Jeter play baseball but reading about him has become a chore. It’s exhausting: He’s the best hitting shortstop ever, he’s the worst fielding shortstop ever. He’s overrated. Nah, nah, says Joe Pos, this season Jeter might be underrated (as Diane noted earlier).
Jeter is many things to many people. Remember that bumper crop of shortstops he came up with the mid-late ’90s? Jeter is still at it, still productive. One thing is for sure: he’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. And he’s ours.
Today’s news is powered by The Thin White (not Zach) Duke:
. . . I think that in many ways Derek Jeter this year has added a third title. He has, against all odds, become UNDERRATED. And that is a wicked turn. I think Jeter at 35 is having one of his greatest seasons. I think he’s playing defense better than he ever has, he’s getting on base and slugging like he did in his prime, and in my view he has been the Yankees most valuable player in 2009. And, for once, it’s funny, I don’t hear too many other people talking about it.
Now, let me be clear — there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the American League MVP this year is Minnesota’s Joe Mauer, and nobody else is even close, and I feel so strongly about this that I am doing daily updates about it on my blog. But the Twins are probably not going to make the playoffs, and there are many people who feel that the most valuable player must come from a playoff team. And if that’s the case then … well, I think at this moment Jeter might be my MVP, non-Mauer division.
Look: He’s hitting .330 through Tuesday and has a .394 on-base percentage — tied with A-Rod for best on the Yankees. He’s on pace for 218 hits, 109 runs, 21 homers. 27 stolen bases. He’s having a great offensive season, quite similar to the season last year’s MVP, Boston’s Dustin Pedroia, had.
And — this is weird — those advanced statistics that have so universally mocked his defense now show him to be, well, darned good defensively.
New York Yankees pitcher Ian Kennedy likely will pitch next month in the instructional league, his first game action since having surgery May 12 to remove an aneurysm from beneath his right biceps.
Kennedy said Wednesday it’s doubtful he will return for a minor league game this season. The right-hander is throwing fastballs and changeups during bullpen sessions and could be ready for a simulated game early next month.
Alex Rodriguez winced as he made his way down the first-base line on Tuesday, having been drilled on the left elbow for the second time in the Yankees’ past five games.
While Rodriguez certainly wouldn’t claim the repeated bruising is helping his performance at the plate, he also isn’t about to use it as an excuse. For the time being, Rodriguez is prepared to keep moving forward.
“I’m not really concerned,” Rodriguez said prior to Wednesday’s series finale with the A’s. “I’m probably just dealing with a little bit of a back [issue] and my elbow. It’s all part of it. I feel pretty good up there. I felt really good up there last night. I had five quality at-bats.”
I’m just trying to find the bridge. Has anybody seen the bridge?*
by Hank Waddles
Chad Gaudin made his debut start for the Yanks on Wednesday night and held the Athletics to no runs and a hit over four and a third innings, which sounds a lot better than it was. The problem was that he also walked five batters and hit another, which led to a series of uncomfortable innings and eventually cost him a shot at his first Yankee win. Gaudin’s stuff was good enough, as evidenced by his five strikeouts, but his demise came in the fifth inning when he followed a dubious Robby Canó error with his fifth walk, loading the bases and bringing Girardi out to ask for the ball. Gaudin left with a three nothing lead but two outs shy of the necessary five innings. Alfredo Aceves came in and induced Kurt Suzuki to bounce back to the mound for a snappy 1-2-3 double play, and the threat was over.
All three Yankee runs came courtesy of Mark Teixeira. He brought Jeter in with a ground ball to third in the first and then hit a monstrous two-run blast to left off A’s rookie Brett Anderson in the fourth. But as Cliff has been telling us, the Yankees’ true MVP candidate is Jeter. He picked up two more singles on the night, and has been raking at an insane .550 clip (22 for 40) over the past ten games. An interesting thing to watch in the Boston series will be whether or not he’ll pick up any free passes. The Captain hasn’t seen ball four since July 28th, a span of close to a hundred at bats.
But back to Aceves. After putting out Gaudin’s fire in the fourth, Ace struggled for the second straight outing. He gave up one run in the sixth on a Jake Cust homerun that floated over the wall in left center, then gave up three straight singles in the seventh for another as the A’s narrowed the margin to 3-2. From there it was about finding the bridge to Mariano, as Bob Lorenz is so fond of telling us. Phil Coke got the last out in the seventh, Phil Hughes took care of the eighth, and Rivera locked down his career-best 32nd straight save with just seven pitches in the ninth. Ball game.
With that the Yankees took the series, their ninth series win of ten since the all-star break, which isn’t bad. And if we go all the way back to that fateful night in Atlanta when Girardi got tossed and Cashman paid them a visit, the Bombers have won 38 of their last 51 games, good for a .745 winning percentage. Again, not bad.
Now all they need to do is keep the motor running as they head into Boston. Even though the objects in the mirror are larger than they appear, this is a team that’s picking up speed at just the right time.
* Eh, I’m not wild about that tuneski. How ’bout this instead?
Chad Gaudin goes for the Bombers as they try to win this series against the A’s before flying across the country to Boston for the big weekend serious against the Red Sox. A whole mess-o-runs would really hit the spot.
Especially with Roy Halladay having an off-night against the Sox.
My friend Pat Jordan has an essay on growing old in the latest issue of Men’s Journal:
You get old, you lose your anger. It takes too much energy to be angry when you’re old. You have more important things to do with your waning energy, so you hoard it like a dwindling resource.
You get old, it’s not always about you. You no longer wait for an opening in a conversation to talk about yourself, your dreams, your accomplishments. It becomes second nature to draw other people into talking about their lives. You’re no longer the life of the party, making people laugh. You no longer have that neurotic compulsion to be known. Why should you? You get old, you know yourself.
The photo above comes from John Loomis’ blog.
Today’s news is powered by . . . a sneakerphone!
(Hideki) Matsui had not played in New York’s past three games after having his troublesome knee drained on Sunday during the club’s series in Seattle, but he said that the stiffness and lack of motion has subsided.
“There never was any pain,” Matsui said through an interpreter. “That’s not really an issue. There’s the difficulty of movement when there’s fluid in there, and it’s harder to move the knee. It just feels like there’s all this pressure there. Right now it feels very light and easy to move.”
Knee difficulties have become a fact of life for Matsui, part of the price he has had to pay for a lengthy consecutive games streak that spanned 1,250 contests in Japan before setting a big league record with 518 straight games played to open his Yankees career.
The Yankees inquired about Reds right-handers Aaron Harang and Bronson Arroyo, but backed off when the Reds said they would not include any money in a deal. While the Yankees remain active in their pursuit of a starter, they likely will stand pat and await the benefit of the roster expansions on Sept. 1.
The A’s played a horrendously sloppy game Tuesday night, committing four errors, hitting two batters, setting up a run with a wild pitch, setting up another with a cross-up passed ball that hit the home plate ump, and generally booting away the game on their way to a 7-0 loss. That’s the story of the game, but lost in all that slop was a third-straight dominant performance from CC Sabathia.
Near the start of the game, MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch tweeted that prior to Sabathia’s last two starts, the last Yankee to win consecutive starts with a minimum of 7 2/3 innings pitched and a maximum of three hits in each was Dwight Gooden in May of 1996 (the second being his no-hitter). CC, who had allowed one run on five hits over 15 2/3 innings over his previous two starts, allowed a whopping five hits Tuesday night in the course of pitching another eight impressive innings. Over his last three starts, Sabathia has pitched 23 2/3 innings and allowed just three runs, all on solo homers.
Sabathia pitched with runners on base in just two of his eight innings last night. In the latter case, he pitched around a harmless, two-out single by Ryan Sweeney in the seventh. His only real jam came in the fourth when Scott Hairston singled with one out and both he and Nomar Garciaparra capitalized on a Johnny Damon bobble on what was ruled a double for Garciaparra. After the hot-hitting Mark Ellis lined out to shallow right, holding Hairston at third, Joe Girardi had Sabathia intentionally walk righty Tommy Everidge to pitch to the lefty Sweeney, who grounded out to end the threat.
That intentional walk might have seemed like a bit of overmanaging, but Everidge, who looks like a right-handed Erik Hinske but even thicker, had homered off Sabathia in his previous at-bat and, with two-outs, the walk set up the force at every base. With some pitchers you wouldn’t want to walk the bases loaded for fear of a hit-by-pitch or unintentional walk driving in a run, but as River Avenue Blues pointed out after the game on twitter, Sabathia threw just 28 balls all night, four of them in the free pass to Everidge.
The other solo homer off Sabathia came in the bottom of the first. A’s starter Vin Mazzaro hit Alex Rodriguez in his tender left elbow in the top of the first, and Sabathia retaliated by throwing behind catcher Kurt Suzuki with two outs in the bottom of the first. Suzuki dodged the pitch, then hit the next one into the left field seats, thus earning the Bad-Ass of the Game award (not recognized by the YES Network). Both benches were warned, but despite the fact that Melky Cabrera was hit later in the game by a clearly wild Jay Marshall, there were no further incidents.
As for all of those Yankee runs, Derek Jeter plated a Cabrera double in the second by hitting a ball through Adam Kennedy’s legs for the A’s second error in as many innings. The first A’s error was a throwing error by Suzuki on a Johnny Damon steal, but Damon was stranded when Jorge Posada struck out with the bases loaded trying to check his swing on a curve ball that almost hit his back foot). Posada made up for that strikeout in the third by doubling home Alex Rodriguez, who had singled, moved to second on a wild pitch, and to third on a groundout.
That tied the game at 2-2, but the Yankees made Mazzaro throw 103 pitches in five innings, then jumped all over the A’s extremely shaky middle relievers in the sixth. If Joe Girardi had brought a sidearming lefty with a 6.43 ERA and four more walks than strikeouts in to face a lefty and two switch hitters in the sixth inning of a tie game the readers of this blog may well have burned the Bronx to the ground. Fellow former Yankee catcher Bob Geren did just that and got what he paid for.
After getting the lefty (Robinson Cano) to ground out, Marshall gave up a double to the wall in left center to Nick Swisher (a switch-hitter batting right), moved him to left by crossing up Suzuki immediately after a mound conference with a pitch that somehow hit the home plate umpire on the left elbow after hitting Suzuki’s glove, hit Cabrera, then gave up RBI hits to Derek Jeter (single) and Johnny Damon (double). With that, Geren handed the ball to righty Santiago Casilla, who walked Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez on eight pitches (the last to Teixeira intentional), forcing in another run, then gave up an RBI single to Hideki Matsui and a sac fly to Posada before Cano came back around to groundout and put the A’s out of their misery.
In the middle of that action came the absurd scene pictured to the right. When Marshall hit Melky in the rump, Melky jumped back to try to avoid the pitch, but Suzuki also shifted to his left to try to block the pitch, resulting in Cabrera tumbling over the A’s catcher, much to the delight of his Yankee teammates and coaches (Tony Peña was in hysterics and both Joba Chamberlain and Jorge Posada mimicked Cabrera’s duck-winged attempt to keep his balance). The ball, meanwhile, deflected off Melky and headed toward first base.
That was this game in a nutshell. Yanks win a laugher 7-2.
The Yankees enter tonight’s game having lost consecutive games for the first time in August. Last night they were shut out for the first time since June 23 (though honorable mention goes to that 15-inning scoreless tie on August 7). This is what qualifies as a slump in a second-half that has seen the Yankees go a staggering 23-8 (.742).
Vallejo, California native CC Sabathia takes the mound to try to keep Yankees from playing like a normal team comprised of humans rather than ass-kicking baseball-playing robots. He has his own battle to fight as well, as he’s struggled at the Coliseum over the course of his career (0-4 with an 8.54 ERA in his last five starts there). CC has been flat awesome in his last two starts (15 2/3 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 HR, 4 BB, 19 K, 0.57 WHIP, 0.57 ERA, 2-0).
Facing CC will be Hackensack, NJ native Vin Mazzaro, who gave up six runs in 4 1/3 innings against the Yankees in the Bronx on July 23. Mazzaro started his major league career in June with four quality starts, but hasn’t had one since. He did pick up wins his last two times out by holding his opponents to three runs across five innings, but those opponents were the Royals and Orioles.
The Yankees run out their standard lineup tonight against the righty Mazzaro. That means Hideki Matsui is back in at DH having missing just one game after having his knee drained during Sunday’s contest. Last night the lineup behind Derek Jeter went 4-for-28 with a pair of walks against Brett Tomko and company. They’re almost guaranteed do better tonight.
Four prominent members of the 1979 Yankees have passed away over the years. I’ve written extensively about three of them—Thurman Munson, Bobby Murcer, and Jim “Catfish” Hunter— in this space. All three were beloved players, though for very different reasons. I have hardly written anything about the fourth player. It’s about time to end that practice.
Jim Spencer has become a forgotten link to the late 1970s. When he died in 2002 from a heart attack, there was barely a mention in the New York newspapers, like the Daily News and the Post. There might even be a few longtime Yankee fans who are surprised to hear that Spencer is deceased. His passing created little fanfare, even for those who grew up with the Yankees during the Bronx Zoo years.
No one ever remembers Spencer fondly as part of the late seventies run of pennants and world championships, just like no one remembers Jay Johnstone or Gary Thomasson. I guess that’s the fate that befalls old platoon players or bench guys; the more time that goes by, the less and less they seem to become pertinent. That natural human tendency to forget overshadows the fact that Spencer could provide decent production in a part-time role. Did you know that he led the 1979 Yankees in OPS with a mark of .970? I certainly didn’t. In just 295 at-bats, Spencer clubbed a career-high 23 home runs. It’s too bad that Spencer couldn’t have timed that performance to occur in 1978, when it would have felt far more relevant as part of a world championship contribution. Limited by injuries in 1978, Spencer came to bat only 166 times, rendering him a footnote during that memorable summer and fall.
I was walking around the Bronx last Sunday afternoon when I stopped to catch some of the action at Kingsbridge Little League. I stood on the street, pressed against the fence, behind the bleachers. In front of me, a gaunt man in a bright orange and yellow shirt sat quietly watching the game.
The kids must have been about ten. It was brutally hot and I felt for the fielders especially after the pitcher walked the lead-off hitter. Then, he walked the next man and the one after that to load the bases. He was aiming the ball now. The pitcher heard a few scattered words of encouragement–I heard a woman say, “Settle down, Mikey, throw strikes.” But the worse he got, the more silent it became.
No place to hide. The boy hung his head. He kicked the dirt at his feet and held his palms out in exasperation after the umpire called a ball. His catcher had trouble getting the ball back to him–it either bounced in front of the mound or sailed over his head. Typical Little League comedy of errors.
A fat kid who looked like Lou Costello, two batting gloves carefully hanging out of the back pockets of his tight-fitting pants, came to the plate. He looked at two pitches in the dirt, took two strikes, and then looked at two more balls and earned himself an RBI. He trotted to first with his head in the air, pleased. He never intended to swing. I restrained myself from booing.
I looked at the scoreboard for the first time and was surprised that the score was just 6-4. The pitcher slumped his shoulders. The coaches were mum, his cheering section in the stands, silent. Finally, the catcher stumbled out to the mound and said a few words. As he was leaving, the third baseman and the shortstop approached. The pitcher covered his mouth with his glove and the third baseman laughed and went back to his position.
The next batter popped out to third and the one after that lined into double play. The agony was over and the pitcher slowly walked off the field. The opposing team was in no hurry to replace them. Finally, they shuffled to their positions as the tough-luck pitcher sat next to the man in the orange shirt in front of me. The man spoke in a clipped, terse voice. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but heard his tone–critical, angry. “I told you a thousand times…”
I walked away. It’s never too early to have the fun get beaten out of the game.
Today’s news is powered by a tour of the current home of the Oakland A’s:
The Yankees have signed first-round pick Slade Heathcott for $2.2 million. He was drafted 27th overall, and the MLB recommendation for his slot was $1,107,000.
The Yankees have also agreed to terms with their second-round pick, catcher J.R. Murphy, and a fifth-round pick, right-hander Caleb Cotham.
A catcher with power and good arm strength from the Pendleton School in Bradenton, Fla., Murphy’s signing bonus was for $1.25 million, Baseball America reported. A Vanderbilt sophomore, Cotham signed for $675,000.
Despite the opposition of baseball romantics and some Bronx residents, the city plans to dismantle the classic Gate 2 from the old Yankee Stadium.
“I think saving it is a good idea,” Sandra Mullen, 33, of the Bronx, said of the majestic entrance opposite the new Yankee Stadium.
“I like the old stadium from when I was a child. The new one is beautiful, but the old one was a classic.”
Boosters of the effort to save Gate 2 want it incorporated as the front door to the new Heritage Park, a 10-acre park slated to fill the footprint of the House That Ruth Built.
I’ve always contended Jeter’ defense has not hurt the team as much as some people think. Now, has he been better in the field this season? Sure, but look at the reasons, none of which have anything to do with Jeter himself.
He has a new infield coach, Mick Kelleher, whom he trusts and has known for many years. He has a better first baseman in Teixeira. And he plays behind pitchers more capable of hitting their spots than their predecessors, meaning, in theory, that hitters more often hit the ball where the fielders expect it to go.
Jeter is also playing on a new home field and might have made a change in his workout habits, though he never talks about that. I don’t know how those factors might have impacted him.
Where’s a Four-Hour Slugfest When You Need One?
by Hank Waddles
To be honest, I felt like a kid in a candy store. Brett Tomko and I were called up to the big leagues to spot start on the same day, Tomko to pitch for the struggling A’s, and me to write the game recap, allowing the usual Bronx Banter scribes to get to bed at a decent time. When I saw that I’d be doing Tomko’s game, I was sure it would be cake. I’d run down the list of Yankee offensive heroes, make a clever comment about Tomko and a woodshed, and wrap it all up by mentioning Jorgé Posada’s birthday. Really, it was a column that would write itself. Not a bad way to get my feet wet.
And then the game started. Do you remember Brett Tomko? All he did last night was shut down the best team in baseball after struggling to put down Triple-A hitters for the past couple weeks. How stunning is this? I’ll let you be the judge. This was Tomko’s longest outing of the year, topping the three innings he threw against Texas on June 3rd. In his stint with the Yankees he retired the opposing team without allowing a run in only eleven separate innings; he strung together five zeroes against his former team on Monday night. Finally, he hadn’t pitched this deep and this successfully since throwing seven scoreless innings for the Royals against the Angels on May 5, 2008.
But as good as the box score might look, Tomko wasn’t exactly Bob Gibson. Yankee hitters, particularly Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon, seemed to be pounding the ball all night, and when Ramiro Peña and Jeter each singled to open the third, it seemed like Tomko would certainly melt. He survived a blast to right from Damon that might have scraped over the wall in the Bronx, but then walked Teixeira to load the bases for Alex Rodríguez.
If for some reason you only had time to watch one at bat of this game, I hope this was the one you chose. Before popping out in the first, A-Rod had faced Tomko nine times, and the results were impressive: two doubles, two homeruns, and a walk. As Tomko stared in to get the sign, the rest of the game played out in my mind’s eye: Alex would work the count before lacing a double to right center; Posada or Canó would take advantage of a rattled Tomko and drive in a couple more; Melky might even get a hit. Eventually A’s skipper Bob Geren would have to lift Tomko and cobble together five or six innings with his bullpen, leaving a weakened staff for the rest of the series.
But it didn’t happen that way. A-Rod jumped on Tomko’s first pitch and tapped a roller back to the mound for an inning-ending 1-2-3 double play. Tomko hopped off the mound with a Joba-like fist pump, and the Yankee bats didn’t make much noise for the rest of the night.
On the other side of things, A.J. Burnett presented a microcosm of his career in 99 pitches. He was absolutely dominant for much of the night, shutting out the A’s over seven innings, allowing just two hits and a walk while striking out four. During those seven innings, he looked like the $82.5 million man, maybe the best #2 starter in the league. The problem, though, was the fourth inning. I’ve got no issue with the double by Rajai Davis, and I can even forgive his subsequent steal of third without a throw. But after that steal, A.J. the Headcase showed up. His next pitch was returned back through the middle to drive in Davis, and his next pitch after that resulted in another base hit.
Two batters later the A’s had runners on second and third and things got really crazy. Working from the stretch, Burnett rocked and prepared to fire… but then decided to hold on to the ball for a balk, allowing a run to score. Watching live, it seemed like he must’ve gotten a cleat caught in the dirt, but subsequent replays showed nothing. After the game Burnett admitted there had been confusion between him and Posada, but that doesn’t fly. Let’s say Burnett was thinking fastball, but then noticed in mid-windup that Posada had slid to the outside edge of the plate in anticipation of a breaking pitch. Burnett couldn’t have thrown the fastball anyway? If he were worried about hitting Posada in the face or having his pitch sail to the backstop, couldn’t he have lobbed a pitchout? Instead he risked injury and ushered in Oakland’s second run by aborting his delivery and holding the ball. Inexcusable.
Burnett recovered nicely, facing one batter over the minimum over the final four innings, but the damage was done. A’s 3, Yanks 0. No worries, though. CC goes tonight, and he should be pretty amped to pitch in front of friends and family. Plus, if I had told you two months ago that the Yanks would have the best record in baseball and a seven game lead on the Red Sox when you woke up on August 18th, wouldn’t you have taken it? Sure, you would’ve.
Since the Yankees took three-of-four from the A’s in the Bronx in late July, Oakland has gone 11-9 including a split with the Red Sox and taking three of four from the now-Wild-Card-leading Rangers. Of course, the Yankees have gone 14-6 over the same stretch with half of those losses coming on the south side of Chicago as the calendar turned to August and are 5-1 against the A’s on the season.
Still, the A’s are suddenly doing something they hadn’t done all season: scoring runs. In April, May, and June, the A’s averaged 4.21 runs scored per game. In July and now half of August, they’ve scored 5.22 runs per game. What the heck happened?
The most obvious thing is Mark Ellis, who returned from the disabled list at the end of June and has hit .313/.342/.520 since, pushing Adam Kennedy to third base. Ellis thus replaces the A’s non-Kennedy third basemen, who hit a combined .195/.284/.324 in 292 plate appearances. That’s a huge upgrade at that spot in the lineup, one highlighted by his throwback walkoff in yesterday’s game. The A’s are also getting a ton of production from Rajai Davis. Since taking over in center field after Matt Holliday was traded to St. Louis (with Scott Hairston sliding over to left), Davis has hit .373/.429/.533 and stolen 11 bases in 12 tries. Less dramatically, Cliff Pennington (.296/.333/.407) has thus far been a slight upgrade on Orlando Cabrera (.280/.318/.365). I’m not sure that that adds up to a full run per game, but those are the big upgrades you might not necessarily see when looking at their lineup below.
Again the Yankees have the A’s beat, having scored 5.57 runs per game in July and August, but when you consider the disparity in the two team’s home ballparks, it’s shocking that the A’s offense has come that close to matching the Yankees over a full month and a half of the season.
As you may have noticed, the Yankees have won 12 of their last 14 games and 13 of their last 15 series. Tonight they look to keep that ball rolling by pounding recent bullpen castoff Brett Tomko, who was released just before the trading deadline after posting a 5.23 ERA in 15 relief appearances for the Yankees and has since posted a 7.94 ERA in two starts and one relief outing spanning 5 2/3 innings for the A’s Triple-A team in Sacramento. Said Girardi of Tomko after Sunday’s game, “I think we have an idea of what he’s going to do.”
Opposing Tomko tonight will be A.J. Burnett, who has turned back into A.J. Burnett in August after an awesome run of eight straight quality starts in which he went 7-1 with a 1.68 from mid-June to the end of July. Burnett’s last three starts have been a dud (4 2/3 IP, 7 R, L), a gem that still managed to include a ton of walks (7 2/3 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 6 BB), and something in the middle that included a lot of strikeouts, but also a game-tying wild pitch (6 IP, 10 H, 3 R, 7 K, 3 WP, ND).
Matsui’s out after having his knee drained during yesterday’s game. Derek Jeter will get his hits at DH, not shortstop tonight as Ramiro Peña gives him a half-day off on the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum field which has been battered by preseason football.
Update: Aaron Cunningham is the player sent down to make room for Tomko, leaving the A’s with a three-man bench.
The biggest flaw I’ve got running this site is updating the links. There have been so many new Yankee blogs in the past few seasons and we are still woefully behind the times in terms of providing a full listing. I will make sure to change this and apologize to the quality blogs out there that aren’t listed on the blogroll. It’s me, not you.
Anyhow, I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but River Avenue Blues, continues to do a great job. The first quality a good blog needs is reliability. Was Watching, YFSF, No Maas. They are all different but they keep showing up.
I dug this recent River Ave. piece on Johnny Damon:
Damon is currently enjoying the best season of his career at age 35. He’s two shy of tying his career high of 24 homers, which he set in his first year in pinstripes. His .532 SLG and .240 IsoP are far and away career highs, ditto his .894 OPS and 11.1% walk rate. Oh sure, Damon’s getting a ton of help from the New Yankee Stadium this year (.979 OPS at homer vs .803 on the road), but HitTracker says that every one of his homers would have been gone out in at least one other park, and 15 of his 22 homers would have left the yard in at least 20 big league ballparks. Even if you want to discount the 57 home games he’s played this year from his career production, it’s like taking a cup of water from the ocean.
