Monthly Archives: December 2009

The original version (1968) of “Suspicious Minds” by Mark James:

There is a nice piece on Johan Santana in the Times today.

This update is powered by some legendary prog rock from Yes:

• Christina Kahrl has an opinion on the Yankee contract tendering:

Ditching Wang to avoid an uncomplicated payout via arbitration, and keeping the chance to work out an incentive-laden deal, makes good sense—canny financial management’s worthwhile, even in the mega-market, big-money behemoth category of franchises. The real question’s over why the Yankees would tender Sergio Mitre a contract, because as long as you’re being pound-wise, why keep that roster bon-bon on the plate? The only team that finds that suggestion sweet is the team the Yankees face on the days they employ him. Perhaps we can consider this a Joltless Joe Girardi roster tax, as he gets to keep a designated Marlin, no differently than Joe Torre was permitted his Bellingers and his Grimsleys as a matter of convenience.

• More info on the Yanks’ decision to non-tender Chien-Ming Wang.
• Wang WAS offered a minor-league contract by the Yanks prior to the non-tender decision.
• All quiet on the Johnny Damon front.  Yanks haven’t contacted him yet.

Poll time!

[poll id=”43″]

See you Thursday!

I mentioned John Lahr yesterday. Bright guy and an interesting writer.

 
His first book was a biography of his father, Bert Lahr, Notes on a Cowardly Lion, which is excellent, one of the very best showbiz biographies.

His next book was a bio of the British playwright, Joe Orton, Prick Up Your Ears, another stellar book. Not a bad start, eh?

I read both books when I was in high school and have occasionally read Lahr’s criticism since, mostly on the theater. Can’t say he’s a favorite but I admire his work and will always stop to see what he’s got to say. 

And he’s got a website.

Dig this 2005 Steve Buscemi profile:

Nothing about Buscemi’s physical presence suggests the poetic lineaments of masculine film glamour. He is pale, almost pallid-as if he’d been reared in a mushroom cellar. In a certain light, he can look cadaverous. His eyes are large and bulgy, with a hint of melancholy. When he smiles, his mouth displays a shantytown of uneven, uncapped teeth. And yet that unprepossessing ordinariness is what makes Buscemi captivating as a performer. It gives him the unmistakable stamp of the authentic, and it helps to explain his emergence over the past two decades as an icon of independent films. (Buscemi himself understands the value of his rumpled looks. When his dentist suggested fixing his teeth, he told her, “You’re going to kill my livelihood if you do that.”) “Steve is the little guy,” says the director Jim Jarmusch, who cast Buscemi in his 1989 film “Mystery Train.” “In the characters he plays and in his own life, he’s representing that part of us all that’s not on top of the world.”

…Onscreen or off, Buscemi is never ostentatious. Still, with his simplicity and restraint-an emotional as well as a physical minimalism-he manufactures a truthfulness that always surprises. At lunch, as he tentatively told the story of his working-class upbringing (his father was a sanitation worker, his mother a hostess at Howard Johnson’s), he cast an unexpected light on his own edgy inhibition. We were talking about the terror he’d felt at nineteen, when he first thought of moving from Long Island to Manhattan to try to be an actor. What held him back, he said, was “this feeling that you don’t deserve to be heard, that you don’t really have anything to say or a point of view that’s interesting, because you haven’t been properly educated. I was very intimidated, basically feeling culturally inferior.”

When Buscemi acts, his thinness and his slouch-which seem a product of that original shame-only heighten his odd presence, which is a topic of conversation in many of the seventy-eight movies he’s made since his first major role, in “Parting Glances,” in 1986. In Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Fargo” (1996), the other characters repeatedly make fun of Buscemi’s Carl Showalter, a dopey kidnapper turned killer. When Frances McDormand’s beady-eyed, homespun policewoman presses a hooker for a detailed description of Showalter, whom she has recently bedded, all the girl can say is “The little guy was kinda funny-lookin’ … He wasn’t circumcised…Funny-lookin’ more than most people, even.”

Who you callin’ funny-lookin’?

It is official. Chien-Ming Wang is a free agent.

Never did see this version, have you? Meanwhile, here is more on Cate Blanchett’s performance as Blanche DuBois from The New Yorker’s theater critic, John Lahr:

Blanche is the Everest of modern American drama, a peak of psychological complexity and emotional range, which many stars have attempted and few have conquered. Of the performances I’ve seen in recent years, Jessica Lange’s lacked theatrical amperage, Natasha Richardson’s was too buff, and Rachel Weisz’s, in this year’s overpraised Donmar Warehouse production in London, was too callow. The challenge for the actress taking on Blanche lies in fathoming her spiritual exhaustion, her paradoxical combination of backbone and collapse. Blanche has worn herself out, bearing her burden of guilt and grief, and facing down the world with a masquerade of Southern gaiety and grace. She is looking—as Williams himself was when he wrote the play—for “a cleft in the rock of the world that I could hide in.”

Blanchett, with her alert mind, her informed heart, and her lithe, patrician silhouette, gets it right from the first beat. “I’ve got to keep hold of myself,” Blanche says, her spirits sinking with disappointment at the threadbare squalor of the one-room apartment her sister shares with her working-class husband. “Only Poe! Only Mr. Edgar Allan Poe!—could do it justice! Out here I suppose is the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir!” she drawls to Stella, flapping her long birdlike fingers in the direction of the window and the railroad tracks beyond. Blanchett doesn’t make the usual mistake of foreshadowing Blanche’s end at the play’s beginning; she allows Blanche a slow, fascinating decline. And she is compelling both as a brazen flirt and as an amusing bitch. When Stella explains that Stanley is Polish, for instance, Blanche replies, “They’re something like the Irish, aren’t they? Only not so—highbrow.” It’s part of Blanchett’s great accomplishment that she makes Blanche’s self-loathing as transparent and dramatic as her self-regard. She hits every rueful note of humor and regret in Williams’s dialogue. In one desperate scene, in which Blanche explains her sordid past to Stanley’s friend Mitch (Tim Richards), who has been disabused of his romantic interest in her, she takes a slug of Southern Comfort. “Southern Comfort!” she exclaims. “What is that, I wonder?” Dishevelled, sitting on the floor by the front door, she fesses up to Mitch. “Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers,” she says, in a voice fatigued by heartbreak. I don’t expect to see a better performance of this role in my lifetime.

Lahr is less enthralled with the rest of the production. Still, sounds like an experience, don’t it?

It appears as if Chien-Ming Wang’s Yankee career is over. Man, it just goes to show how fragile a career can be–a few years ago, Wang was the ace of the staff. Now, who knows what will become of him?

If he’s a goner, here’s wishing him the best of luck. He was an easy guy to root for.

According to the Baseball Twitter Machine known as Jon Heyman: “yanks as much $34 million apart on damon so far–18 mil for 2 vs. 52 mil for 4.”

I imagine Brian Cashman’s reaction to be something like this:

Here’s a couple of goodies for those of you who dig Golden Era Hip-Hop.

First, is MTV’s Yo! MTV Raps page (kudos to Cliff for hipping me to it):

Bada:

Bing:

Secondly, here is an SI.com bonus piece by a guy named Benjamin Wallace on the rise, and apparent fall, of Pete Nash, aka Pete Nice:

Nash sits in a café in lower Manhattan. At 42 he wears cuffed khaki pants and a short-sleeved button-down cotton shirt. He lives in a rental home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with his wife and young son, and he has driven a sensible Honda SUV to this meeting. Since his moment of fame as a rapper for Def Jam Records, Nash has achieved a markedly different kind of renown — among hard-core baseball memorabilia collectors who wouldn’t know Def Jam from Def Leppard. Over the past two decades Nash has become known as the most prolific source of the rarest old-school material, especially from the 19th century.

But on this afternoon in late July the tough-guy rapper turned baseball historian is mired in a widening scandal over the holiest relics of America’s pastime. Nash recently lost a lawsuit against a leading memorabilia auctioneer in which he admitted to fraud, and, according to sources, the FBI is investigating whether he sold forged memorabilia. (Nash declined to comment on the investigation.)

Even so, he retains some of the old Prime Minister’s swagger, seemingly confident that he has turned the tables on his antagonist. He riffles through a fat case stuffed with files of evidence he says he has compiled, and tells stories about innocently buying memorabilia that turned out not to be authentic. “In the baseball field, you have to question pretty much every single thing that’s out there,” he says. “It’s like the Wild West.”

As he sits in the café talking, his car is ticketed. The next day a judge in New Jersey will issue a bench warrant for his arrest for repeatedly ignoring court orders.

Long before his unlikely rise to fame as a white rapper, Peter Nash was obsessed with the history of baseball. MC Serch, also of 3rd Bass, recalls the first time he visited the home of Nash’s parents on Long Island, in the late 1980s. “Here was this 20-year-old kid,” Serch says, “and he had all this stuff: three-fingered mitts and Ty Cobb baseball cards. It was his passion, more than I think emceeing was his passion.”

If you had told me during the World Series that the Yankees could have Curtis Granderson without having to surrender any of these four players—Jesus Montero, Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, or Zach McAllister—I would have asked for the signup sheet right then and there. So when I heard that the Yankees had acquired the Tigers’ center fielder for a package of Austin “Ajax” Jackson, Phil Coke, and Ian Kennedy, I was thrilled with Brian Cashman’s latest trade. When it comes to making trades for position players, Cashman is very good; just look at last winter’s deal for Nick Swisher and that long-ago swap that brought Alex Rodriguez to town.

Granderson makes the Yankees younger in the outfield and potentially improves their defensive play at two positions. If Granderson plays center field—and he should in my book—his speed gives him an advantage over Melky Cabrera. Granderson can outrun his mistakes, something that the slower Cabrera has a tougher time doing. I’ve heard all of the talk about how Granderson played a poor center field in September. Given that he’s still only 28, I doubt that he’s suddenly lost his defensive abilities. More likely, fatigue may have been a factor, along with the very real possibility that he fell into a defensive slump. Fielding slumps can and do happen, just like a few years ago when A-Rod had such difficulty throwing and fielding that ESPN had him pegged for DH duties.

With Granderson in center, the Yankees would be able to slide Cabrera to left field, where he would be a huge upgrade over Johnny Damon. An outfield of Cabrera/Granderson/Swisher greatly improves the outfield defense, which was one of the few weaknesses on the world championship team.

In terms of character, Granderson is a slam dunk. People in nearby Oneonta remember his season as a member of the minor league Tigers; they continue to laud him as gentlemanly, cooperative, and community-minded, all traits that have carried over to his time in Detroit. Extraordinarily popular in the Motor City, Granderson should have no trouble blending into a cohesive clubhouse that already has pillars like Derek Jeter, CC Sabathia, and Mariano Rivera.

Aside from his late-season defensive foibles, the biggest criticism of Granderson has to do with his inability to hit left-handed pitching. This is a legitimate point that needs to be brought up, but it has been wildly overstated. Exactly who has all this left-handed pitching that is supposed to shut down Granderson? A look at the American League East, where the Yankees will play approximately half of their games, reveals a right-handed landscape. The Red Sox have one left-handed starter in Jon Lester; he’s one of the best in the game, but the rest of the rotation is right-handed. Like the Red Sox, Tampa Bay has one left-handed starter in David Price. The Orioles also have one lefty in rookie Brian Matusz. The Blue Jays are the only divisional rival with two southpaw starters: Ricky Romero and Brett Cecil. That makes for a grand total of five left-handers among the 20 projected starters within the division. And for those interested in the composition of the division’s closers, currently only J.P. Howell of the Rays is left-handed…

(more…)

I crossed Broadway in the middle of 13th and 14th street last night, moving from the west side of the street to the east. I had the light, and as I looked to my left, I saw that the street was clear of any vehicles. I love the fleeting sense of room that you find in New York as traffic sits at a red light. It doesn’t last long, less than a minute I’m sure. At first it feels empty and then slowly, the momentum builds up again and then whoosh, the action is back.

But for a brief moment, the buzz of cars and buses and trucks and bikes, comes to a halt, and there is nothing but space. Freedom and space. It is something so routine in daily life here in New York that I often don’t register it, but even subconsciously, it feels like a small treat.

I went to Forbidden Planet to pick up some Christmas gifts–original Star Wars action figures–for my nephews and then, with some time to kill before I met a friend for dinner, went to the Strand to browse. I haven’t been reading much baseball literature these days, but I found myself in the basement anyway, looking at the sports books. And guess what? There on the shelves, near the Roger Angell books and Allen Barra’s Yogi Berra biography were two copies of the book I wrote about Curt Flood. And they weren’t even dirt cheap at ten bucks a pop.

Well, to me, this is a milestone of sorts because I’ve been introduced to so many great books through used book stores. I know it is a backward thing to wish for–most writers hope to be on the best-seller list, and belive me, I’m no exception–but still, it was a satisfying moment.

I don’t think back on the Flood book much these days. It was something I did and now it seems like it all happened a long time ago. I’m proud of it, of course, but it’s not something I identify with too tough. I did it, it’s out there in the world, and now, I’m on to the next thing. But to see it sitting there on the shelves I’ve patrolled all these years, well, that was as sweet a Christmas gift as I could ever ask for.

And so it was that at the Winter Meetings, Brian Cashman satisfied two of his major offseason priorities: settling the left field/center field question by acquiring Curtis Granderson in the three-team, seven-player swap with the Tigers and Diamondbacks. On the surface, it looks like the Tigers win this trade in a landslide, getting two young lefty relievers, a hard-throwing righty starter, and a major-league ready outfielder all while shedding $25.75 million in salary over the next three seasons.

The coverage was fairly bland, as it can tend to be when hammering out details of a trade. There were subtle nuances, though. For example, the Post, in my surfing, was the only outlet to cite that the Diamondbacks entered the fray a few weeks ago when Cashman balked at not including Joba Chamberlain or Phil Hughes in the deal for Granderson (maybe this gives a hint regarding their 2010 status?). ESPN claimed Buster Olney broke the story. How do we know? Jon Heyman tweeted the components of the deal yesterday, and Alex Belth dutifully posted them here.

A couple of items and intimations that appeared everywhere:

• Granderson’s 2009 decreased OBP and OPS, his strikeout total (141) and average against left-handed pitchers (.183), plus poor home/road splits somehow signaled a decline when he’s in his prime at age 29. Joe Posnanski took those stats and put them in context with Granderson’s career numbers against lefties, adding that he faced tough lefties in the AL Central (Sabathia and Santana), and playing 81 games a year at an unfriendly ballpark for left-handed hitters. Cliff Corcoran took a more analytical turn on a similar premise in this space.
• Granderson’s personality is perfect for New York.
• Now the Yankees can more easily make a decision on Johnny Damon or Hideki Matsui. Thursday morning, the Yankees were reportedly negotiating with Johnny Damon’s representatives, but in the evening, George King of the Post submitted a story, complete with quotes from Cashman, refuting the earlier reports.
• The questions as to which Granderson the Yankees will get: the 2008 version that emerged into a perennial 20-20-20-20 threat or the 2009 item that frustrated fans with inconsistent offense and defense, despite the “plus” numbers aggregated in various fielding metric data. And then there is this item, which was not mentioned in the first wave of coverage but could appear within the next couple of days: a NY Times column from William C. Rhoden touting the importance of this acquisition from a cultural standpoint, highlighting the fact that Granderson could bring African-American fans to the Bronx and carry that torch/example set by Derek Jeter. The caveat: with CC Sabathia on the team also, and with him being there first, this may be a non-issue.Most of what was printed centered on the Yankees’ piece to the deal, which was Granderson. Looking deeper, though, I noticed more attention paid to what the Yankees were able to maintain — Chamberlain, Hughes, and Jesus Montero — than what they gave up.

(more…)

Do You Want Some More? 

Granderson and Pettitte are official.

So, what next? Scott Boras is talking up his client, Johnny Damon, right on cue.

What about Halladay? Coming to the Yanks? Not likely, opines Joel Sherman.

The Yanks done at these meetings? What do you think?

UPDATE: From Buster Olney at ESPN:  “Heard this: The Yankees are in the process of negotiating with Johnny Damon’s camp.”

UPDATE: Chad Jennings, who has been doing a terrific job covering the winter meetings, just posted a few final words from Brian Cashman as the Yankees General Manager was on his way out of town:

“I am definitely not in a position right now where I feel like I’m ready to do anything,” he said. “The next step isn’t ready to happen now, based on my conversations. There shouldn’t be another shoe to drop immediately.”

Cashman has options, and he has little need for urgency. He has to act, obviously, but the past four days have surely eased any need for desperation. Yesterday, Cashman acknowledged having talked to John Lackey’s agent. Today, he acknowledged talking about Ben Sheets. He’s met with the agents for Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui. He’s been engaged with multiple trade talks. As soon as something makes sense, he’ll be ready to move.

“Patience can benefit you, (or) it might not,” Cashman said. “You can wait something out and see if it falls in your lap, but by doing that you risk losing something that you want. It’s a little riskier for us to play that game. If we really want something and it fits in our criteria at some point, waiting it out to see if it gets cheaper, I’m not sure that’s the way we go about it.”

Much as I miss Pete Abraham over at Lo-Hud, I’ve got to give credit to Jennings, Sam Borden, and Josh Thomson for maintaining the blog’s high standard.

Forty-Two
by Hank Waddles

All eyes are drawn to the hero’s routine
The moment he stands and steps into the night.
He pauses so slightly, surveying the scene,
Then readies to rescue his team from its plight.

It starts all at once with a simple steel ball
Whose weight gently pulls on the golden right arm.
The stakes might be high when the manager calls,
But the Great One reveals not a trace of alarm.

He enters the field as the gate opens wide
And runs with head down towards his stage on the mound.
The crowd claps along, watches each graceful stride,
Lets loose a crescendo of glorious sound.

Each pitch he precedes with a bow to third base,
Then lowers his glove and the ball to his belt.
The batter awaits with fear etched on his face,
The outcome assured though the ball’s not been dealt.

They tell us he throws just one pitch, but they lie.
His fastball can cut, disappear, or explode.
Three pitches in one means as hard as they try,
The batters aren’t hitters, they’re outs to unload.

The first goes down quickly, taps back to the mound,
The next is called out by a pitch on the black.
The third out’s foretold by the hideous sound
Of splintering wood as he makes the bat crack.

It’s five hundred times he’s done this before,
Reacting the same at the end of each game.
A nod towards his catcher, beneath the crowd’s roar,
He steps off the mound towards what’s next: Hall of Fame.

More from Indy…

Trading for Curtis Granderson does not take the Yankees out of the Roy Halladay Sweepstakes, according to Joel Sherman. But while Curtis is center stage, here is what Sean Casey and Andy Van Slyke have to say about the man.

Welcome to the Big Apple, dude. Here’s the first of what is likely to be many musical nods in your general direction.

First up today, a note from ESPN’s Buster Olney: “If the Yankees sign Johnny Damon, that will increase the likelihood that they will attempt to trade Nick Swisher. It’s increasingly unlikely that the Yankees are going to re-sign Hideki Matsui, regardless of what happens with Damon.”

UPDATE: According to Jon Heyman, Andy Pettitte will sign a one-year, $12 million contract to remain in New York. The deal could be announced as early as today.

Jon Heyman reports that Andy Pettitte and the Yanks have agreed to a one-year deal worth $11.75 million.

Okay, first thing’s first: Curtis Granderson is a Yankee, so who the hell is Curtis Granderson?

Granderson grew up in the suburbs south of Chicago and attended the University of Illinois in the Windy City before being drafted by the Tigers in the third-round of the 2002 amateur draft. A slender center fielder with a nice power/speed combo who bats left and throws right, he moved steadily up the Tigers’ ladder. After a cup of coffee in September 2004 at age 23, he returned to the majors in July 2005 and took over Detroit’s center field job for good that September. In his first full season, Granderson led the American League in strikeouts with 174, but his outstanding defense in center field and average bat against righties helped the Tigers topple the Yankees in the ALDS and claim Detroit’s first pennant since 1984. In his sophomore season, Granderson cut down on his Ks, added 42 points of average, and led the league with 23 triples, turning in by far his best major league season with a .302/.361/.552 line, 26 steals in 27 attempts, and a 14.2 UZR in center, becoming the first American Leaguer to have twenty or more doubles, triples, homers, and steals all in the same season.

Granderson has been trying to live up to that season ever since. In 2008 he posted his best strikeout and walk rates at the plate, but his slugging percentage dipped below .500 and he stole just 12 bases and rated 8.9 runs below average in center according to UZR. This season, both his strikeout and walk rates regressed and he posted a career-low .249 batting average which dragged down his overall line to an underwhelming .249/.327/.453. His steals and defense rebounded, but the latter only got up to about average. Thus, despite making his first All-Star team and reaching 30 homers for the first time in 2009, he arrives in the Bronx off a very disappointing season, one in which he had a lower EqA and UZR than either Melky Cabrera or Brett Gardner.

As you’re surely aware, Granderson’s big bugaboo is left-handed pitching. For his career, he’s hit just .210/.270/.344 (.208 GPA) against lefties, and in two of the last three seasons he’s been significantly worse than that against southpaws:

2006: .218/.277/.395 (.223)
2007: .160/.225/.269 (.169)
2008: .259/.310/.429 (.247)
2009: .183/.245/.239 (.170)

The good news is that Comerica Park, while it is a triples-hitter’s paradise, is hell on left-handed hitters, especially left-handed power hitters. It’s next to impossible to hit a triple in the new Yankee Stadium, but it is already well-known as a home-run hitting paradise for hitters of both hands, which means that Granderson is likely to get a significant boost from his home park, particularly as his triples already started to turn into home runs this year. Just a .261/.334/.451 career hitter at Comerica, Granderson has hit .284/.353/.516 on the road, and 20 of his 30 home runs in 2009 came outside of Detroit. As a Yankee, he could well reach 40 home runs in a season, a total which has been reached by a Yankee center fielder just five times, four by Mickey Mantle and one by Joe DiMaggio.

That’s quite exciting, but Granderson isn’t anywhere near a Hall of Fame player, and one wonders just how viable he’s going to be defensively in center field going forward. Once praised for his routes and jumps, both have become shaky over the past two seasons, as anyone who watched the All-Star Game or the Tigers’ one-game playoff against the Twins could tell you. Then again, the Yankees still have Cabrera and Gardner, the latter of whom had the best EqA and UZR (admittedly in a smaller sample) of the trio in 2009. The Bombers could easily slip Granderson’s pop into left field, let Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui low-ball one another for the DH job, and be both content and no less productive than they were in their just-completed championship season. To my eyes, where Granderson is going to play in 2010 is entirely up in the air right now.

As for the years beyond, Granderson is signed for a total of just $23.75 over the next three years and comes with a $13 million club option for 2013, his age-32 season. That’s a good deal for a player with his skill set, which mixes in some decent patience (138 unintentional walks over the last two years) with the power and speed, and one that ends at exactly the right time (Granderson’s top PECOTA comparable player prior to the 2009 season was Andy Van Slyke, whose last productive season came at age 32). If his new ballpark gives him the boost many expect, and Yankee hitting coach Kevin Long can finally solve his struggles with lefties, Granderson will become an absolute bargain and a true star. Of course, the latter is a huge “if.” The flip side of that is that he could prove to be a platoon left fielder as early as 2010, one who could be dangerously miscast as a number-two hitter despite having the high slugging and middling on-base percentage of a five or six-spot hitter.

So what did the Yankees give up to get him? The three-team deal that brought Granderson to the Bronx breaks down this way for the three teams involved:

• The Yankees get Curtis Granderson for Austin Jackson, Ian Kennedy, and Phil Coke
• Tigers get Austin Jackson, Max Scherzer, Daniel Schlereth, and Phil Coke for Curtis Granderson and Edwin Jackson
• Diamondbacks get Edwin Jackson and Ian Kennedy for Max Scherzer and Daniel Schlereth

Jackson and Kennedy were two of the Yankees’ top prospects. Phil Coke was a key member of the 2009 bullpen. Coke was expendable because of the strong late-season comeback of lefty set-up man Damaso Marte, who is signed through 2011 with a club option for 2012, and because of the emergence of rookie lefty Michael Dunn, who was initially part of this trade but salvaged by the Yankees. Marte and Dunn have their issues (Marte will be 35 in February and was on the DL with shoulder trouble for most of 2009, Dunn is an unproven rookie with alarming walk rates above A-ball), but Coke had his own, specifically his gopheritis (1.5 HR/9IP). The Yankees made something out of nothing with Coke, who was converted from starting at age 26 late last year, and they’ve cashed him in before he had a chance to go back to being nothing.

Austin Jackson was the Yankees’ most advanced hitting prospect, but given the speed with which Jesus Montero has progressed, was no longer their top hitting prospect. A center fielder who projected as very much of a Granderson-like player (20 homers, 20 steals, but not a middle-of-the-order hitter, solid but not spectacular defense), Jackson was supposed to spend 2009 getting ready to take over the major league job in 2010, but despite earning rave reviews from scouts, his Triple-A performance left a lot to be desired as he hit a heavily average-dependent .300/.354/.405 with just four homers and 123 strikeouts. In Jackson’s favor is the fact that he’ll be able to repeat Triple-A at the still-tender age of 23 in 2010 and that he was a late convert to baseball as the Yankees’ money was really all that kept him from going to college to play basketball. However, in Granderson the Yankees get one of the better-case scenario versions of Jackson’s future now, and for up to four years. There’s an outside chance that Jackson could prove to be a better player than Granderson, and the Tigers will own him for six years prior to free agency, but by giving up two years and a lot of uncertainty, the Yankees get that player in their lineup immediately, using him to reinforce a world championship squad that had a big hole in its outfield.

Some of the uncertainty the Yankees are giving up comes in the form of Ian Kennedy. Drafted ahead of Joba Chamberlain in the first round of the Yankees’ extremely successful 2006 draft, Kennedy was the third amigo in the young starting-pitching trio of Chamberlain, Kennedy, and Phil Hughes which emerged in 2007. All three had their detours, but Chamberlain returned from his admittedly successful bullpen exile in the second half of 2008, and Hughes made a strong rebound from a pair of injury-plagued seasons by replacing Chamberlain in the bullpen this year. Both are now headed for the 2010 rotation behind CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, and, most likely, Andy Pettitte. Chamberlain and Hughes are both top-notch starting pitching prospects with filthy stuff and ace potential. Kennedy, the oldest of the trio (he’ll be 25 a week from Saturday) is more of a mid-rotation arm, a three-pitch pitcher whose best pitch is his changeup. Kennedy frustrated the Yankees in 2008 by nibbling and refusing to throw his curveball, making him a very hittable two-pitch pitcher with some attitude problems. An aneurysm robbed him of most of the 2009 season, but he made a strong comeback at the end of the year, even making a courtesy appearance with the big club in September, a show of renewed faith on the part of the team. Organizationally, Kennedy is replaced by another 2006 draftee, six-foot-six righty Zach McAllister, a third-round pick who thrived after making the leap to Double-A last year and just turned 22 yesterday. If McAllister continues his progress at Triple-A in 2010, the Yankees will never know Kennedy is gone.

So the Yankees gave up two pitchers they could afford to lose, both 25 or older, one of whom has already reached his major league ceiling, and an unproven minor league version of Granderson. Jackson and Kennedy, the latter of whom has spectacular minor league numbers (19-6, 1.95 ERA, 273 Ks in 248 2/3 IP, 0.99 WHIP, 3.55 K/9), both hold the potential to give the Yankees and their fans some buyer’s remorse down the line, but it’s just as likely that neither develops into anything special. Then again, that’s also true of Granderson, who arrives in New York for his age-29 season not as an established star, but as a talented-but-flawed player hoping to fulfill his potential and in danger of becoming a part-timer.

Rob Neyer doesn’t understand the Brian Bruney deal from Washington’s perspective. I liked Bruney, liked his mug, but I ain’t complaining over this trade, are you?

“Pitching, pitching, pitching, and then left field,” General Manager Brian Cashman said. “Those are the obvious areas we need to focus on.”

Here’s the big rumor from yesterday…

…In the meantime, while you wait…

UPDATE: According to a Tweet by Jon Heman: “yanks to get granderson, e. jackson, i. kennedy to dbacks, scherzer, schlereth, a. jax, coke to tigers….teams in agreement on trade. assuming medicals check out, it’s a go.”

I can’t imagine the Yankees getting E. Jackson as well. I’m sure he’ll be headed to the Dimaondbacks too.

UPDATE: According to this press release, Peter Gammons is leaving ESPN.

More on Curtis from Sweeny Murti:

And over at the Times, Tyler Kepner makes a case for Granderson.

This is where the heavy hitters in the Scoop Industry make their living.

First up…According to Buster Olney, Andy Pettitte will pitch in 2010, likely in New York. Jon Heyman has more.

Details to come…

UPDATE:  According to a tweet, Joel Sherman reports that Brian Bruney has been traded to the Nationals.

Today’s update is powered by a short film about the changing labor market:

• John Perrotto’s take on the Yankees’ shopping list:

The defending World Series champions say they are going to be quiet this winter, but their biggest needs are a left fielder and starting pitcher, and they have the resources to sign Holliday and Lackey if they really want. Lackey seems a more likely signing with the Yankees bringing back left fielder Johnny Damon on a two-year, $20-million contract.

• Robinson Cano wouldn’t mind seeing Pedro Martinez in pinstripes next year.
• According to Joel Sherman, Andy Pettitte has turned down a one-year offer from the Yanks. 
• Meet Joe Girardi in NYC at lunch this afternoon, for a good cause.
• Tino Martinez turns 42 today.
• Rich Coggins (part-time OF on ’75 squad) turns 59 today.

No Update this Thursday, so I’ll see you again next Monday.

As Diane pointed out to me in an e-mail, we’d be remiss not to bow in appreciation of Dave Brubeck who turns 89 today.

How about his signature cut?

Happy Sunday Everyone.