Hey Now Edition…

From I’ll Let you be in my dream if you let me be in yours…

Sometimes the Yankees’ roster decisions leave me befuddled and bewildered. Not to mention confused. When Eric Chavez went down with a broken foot last week, all signs pointed to the promotion of minor league home run machine Jorge Vazquez. Like Chavez, Vazquez can play both third base and first base. In 139 minor league at-bats with Scranton, Vazquez has hit 12 home runs, which translates into a ratio of one home run every 11 at-bats. So what do the Yankees actually do? They call up no-hit Ramiro Pena, who hasn’t managed to make it into a single game over the last eight days.

Why do the Yankees hamstring themselves in these ways? They now have three shortstops on the roster, one who can’t hit (Pena), and one who can’t throw (Eduardo Nunez). And they really have no adequate backup for either Mark Teixeira or Alex Rodriguez, without, of course, having to take one of their outfielders (Nick Swisher) and play him out of position at first base.

Vazquez would have also given the Yankees another DH option. With Jorge Posada flailing away against left-handers, it might have been nice to give Vazquez a few at-bats as a righty DH. If nothing else, the Yankees might have been able to find out if Vazquez’ free swinging ways would translate at the major league level. Instead, the Yankees gave us Ramiro Pena, who is so valuable that Joe Girardi hasn’t seen fit to use him once in the last week. Criminy…

***

Someone in the Yankee organization needs to come to the realization that Francisco Cervelli is no longer a good defensive catcher. In committing an error and two passed balls in Thursday’s embarrassing loss to the Royals, Cervelli provided more evidence that he is simply not a good backup catcher. A capable defensive catcher through the 2009 season, Cervelli has regressed badly (and mysteriously) ever since. He was brutal defensively last year, and he’s never going to be the kind of hitter who can compensate for his erratic throwing and inability to cut down opposing base stealers.

If Cervelli’s defensive yips continue, the Yankees will need to make a change. Who would be a suitable replacement? Among the unemployed veterans, there’s Bengi Molina. Within the system, there’s always that Jesus Montero fellow…

***

Last week, I polled Bronx Banter readers to vote for the worst Yankee defender they’d ever seen. Some interesting names were submitted, including those put forth by Banter writers Alex Belth and Diane Firstman. Let’s take a closer look at some of the nominees:

Mel Hall: Suggested by Diane, old Mel has bigger troubles these days in prison, where he must serve a minimum of 22 years before becoming eligible for parole, but he was a favorite of mine during the dark days of the early 1990s. Hall tried hard–I never once saw him “jake” it in the field–but he just wasn’t well suited to playing the outfield. He wasn’t terrible at tracking fly balls, but with his heavy legs and sluggish way of running, he didn’t cover much ground. But it was his throwing arm that was truly a spectacle. Hall simply couldn’t throw at all; it made him a liability in left field and an absolute millstone in right field. When Hall played in right, opposing baserunners went first to third like New York City drivers storm through green lights.

Marcus Thames: Another suggestion by Diane, Thames was truly awful as an outfield defender during his one year in the Bronx. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Thames’ bat, particularly the aggressive, attacking style of hitting that reminded me of another onetime Yankee, Glenallen Hill. But Thames was just brutal wearing a glove, as bad as one of Kenny Banya’s comedy routines. On every fly ball hit his way, and I mean EVERY fly ball, I held my breath. He took bizarre routes, ran awkwardly, and had hands shellacked in iron. He would have been better off using one of those Jai alai cestas, one of which I believe Luis Polonia used when he played left field at the Stadium.

Chuck Knoblauch (as a left fielder): An Alex Belth special, Knoblauch became a nightmare at two different positions during his Yankee career. We all know about Knoblauch’s struggles in making routine throws from second base, but his outfield play almost made me long for his return to the infield. He looked uncertain on any fly ball not hit directly at him, resulting in him taking staggered routes, particularly on balls hit over his head. His throwing arm was also poor; he had a good arm as a second baseman with the Twins, but he just didn’t have the arm strength to make the long throws from the outfield toward the inner diamond. I felt bad for Knoblauch; by the end of his career, there was simply nowhere for him to play without causing collateral damage.

Rich McKinney: When the Yankees acquired McKinney prior to the 1972 season, they considered him the third baseman of the future. They failed to realize that the man known as “Orbit” had as much business playing third as I do piloting a plane. On April 22, 1972, McKinney put on a fielding exhibition for the ages. Playing at Fenway Park, McKinney made four miscues at third base. In the first inning, he booted Danny Cater’s ground ball, permitting an unearned run to score. Later that inning, McKinney made his second error, allowing two more unearned runs. In the second inning, McKinney mishandled another ground ball by Cater, with an unearned run scoring on the play. And then in the sixth inning, McKinney committed a fourth error, this time on a Rico Petrocelli grounder, with yet another unearned run scoring. The head count? Four errors and five unearned runs.

The Yankees ended the McKinney-at-the-hot-corner experiment after 33 games. By then, his fielding percentage was down to .917. Somehow, that was better than his career fielding mark of .911 at the position.

Hector Lopez: One New York writer dubbed him Hector “What a Pair of Hands” Lopez. And he didn’t mean it as a compliment. Lopez was a poor left fielder, as attested by his dreadful .970 career fielding percentage in the left-hand corner. But it was at third base where Hector truly reached his full potential for defensive ineptitude. Brendan Boyd and Fred Harris wrote about it so lyrically in The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book:

“Now, it is not necessary for me to declare that Hector Lopez was the worst fielding third baseman in the history of baseball. Everyone knows that. It is more or less a matter of public record. But I do feel called upon somehow to try to indicate, if only for the historical archivists among us, the sheer depths of his innovative barbarousness. Hector Lopez was a butcher. Pure and simple. A butcher. His range was about one step to either side, his hands seemed to be made of concrete and his defensive attitude was so cavalier and arbitrary as to hardly constitute an attitude at all. Hector did not simply field a groundball, he attacked it. Like a farmer trying to kill a snake with a stick.”

Folks, I can’t describe Lopez any better than that. Enough said there.

[Photo Credit: NJ.com]

Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.

Nicholas Dawidoff profiles Paul Simon in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. The piece is not available on-line but here are a couple of cherce bits:

“One day not long ago, Donald Fagen, of Steely Dan, who has admired Simon’s work for decades but knows him only slightly, offered up a spontaneous theory of Simon’s childhood. ‘There’s a certain kind of New York Jew,’ Fagan began, “almost a stereotype, really, to whom music and baseball are very important. I think it has to do with the parents. The parents are either immigrants or first-generation Americans who felt like outsiders, and assimilation was the key thought–they gravitated to black music and baseball looking for an alternative culture. My parents forced me to get a crew cut; they wanted me to be an astronaut. I wouldn’t be surprised if all that’s true in Paul’s case.”

Baseball and black music? I can relate.

And this:

“One day when I am visiting Simon at the Brill Building, we go off to throw a baseball. Simon picks a guitar with his right hand, but on a baseball field, he goes the other way. ‘That’s something I remember about my father,’ he tells me. “I was five or six and we were having a catch. He got me a glove. A righty glove. I’d take it off to throw it back. He’d say, ‘No, no. We do it this way.’ Eventually he came into the house and told my mother, ‘Belle, we got a lefty!’ There’s incredible pleasure in throwing a ball. Having a catch with your dad is having a conversation. As you throw the ball back and forth it’s heavenly.”

I don’t have any fond memories of having a catch with my father–those were uncomfortable moments, filled with impatience, anger, and tears–but I loved having a catch with my younger brother (still do though I can’t remember the last time we had one). There is an intimate connection when you are having a good catch that is unspoken but powerful. The rhythm is easy, contemplative and soothing.

[Photo Credit: Bruce Davidson]

I was at the game last night in the Todd Drew box seats with Ted Berg. It was cold and the game was a dud but we had a good time. The crowd was mostly absent when Derek Jeter grounded out to end the game so I figured I might have a shot at catching a gypsy cab back home. I found a guy who was willing to take me uptown for $20. Good dude, from the west coast of Africa. We spoke French for a few minutes and then he told me in English that he’s been in the States since 1989 but that his entire family is still back in Africa. He sends them money and talks to them four or five times a week but he hasn’t been home in seven years.

He has a lot of friends in New York, almost all African. A bunch of them drive cabs too. They line up a block north of River Ave, across the street from the doughnut shop where Todd and his wife Marsha stopped before each game, and listen to the game on the radio. “John and Suzyn,” he said. I imaged them talking in their native language, standing outside parked cars with the windows open and the sounds of Sterling filling the air.

The cabbie’s favorite Yankee is Jeter. Through his thick accent, I heard “Geeduh.”

Business was slow last night. “It’s better when they win,” he said. That’s when people hang around the local bars until 2  in the morning or later so the cabbies can make three or four trips from the Stadium.

“Tomorrow they will win,” he said.

“What makes you say that?” I said.

“I just have a good feeling.”

I gave him $25 and he said, “Have a good bed.”

[Picture by Jozef Baláž]

The Times with the story.

ESPN with a follow-up.

Good times over at Pitchers and Poets where they are hosting a 1990s First Basemen Week:

I wrote a brief memory of Kevin Maas.

Here’s more…

Mo Vaughn by Kris Liakos.

Carlos Quintana by Josh Wilker.

Tony Clark by Drew Fairservice.

Jeff Bagwell by Ted Walker.

Straight Shooters by Glenn Stout.

Jeff King by Joe Pos.

John Jaha by R.J. Anderson.

Rafael Palmeiro by Rob Iracane.

The Big Cat by Tom Ley.

Mark Grace by Jesse Thorn.

Perfect Rangers by Larry Herold.

Wally Joyner by Reeves Wideman.

Searching for the Typical ’90s First Baseman Season by Kenneth Morgan.

Pedro Guerrero by Will Leitch.

J.T. Snow by Eric Freeman.

Bags and the Big Hurt by Jonah Keri.

Missed it by that much…

More than any other sport, baseball is firmly rooted in numbers. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason why, but for well over a century, fans of the game have obsessed over various statistics and worshipped the records they create. This has led to countless debates about who is best and sometimes even who is worst. Rarely, however, has much attention been paid to the average.

Ironically, sabermetrics has helped to rectify some of this neglect. Because so many new stats rely on a baseline to define relative value, the common player has gained some extra notoriety, at least in conceptual terms. In fact, average has become a benchmark of sorts. Several metrics, such as OPS+ and ERA+ (both of which measure performance relative to an average baseline of 100), not only serve to herald the game’s best players, but also trumpet the mediocre by exulting them over the laggards.

Although it doesn’t take a mathematician to know that Babe Ruth was one of the game’s best hitters, it’s still fun to put a number on his superiority.  For example, Babe Ruth’s OPS+ of 206 tell us that the Sultan of Swat was more than twice as good (106% to be exact) as the typical major leaguer of his day. Meanwhile, his ERA+ of 122 reveals that he was also a well above average pitcher (22% above the mean). If the legends aren’t enough to convince you of Ruth’s epic greatness, there are plenty of stats that can back them up.

Babe Ruth is almost universally regarded as baseball’s greatest performer. Just about every stat developed, both new and old, ranks the Bambino ahead of all others, leaving the remaining 17,543 to find their place in line.  It’s easy to lose track of the thousands of players that pale in the shadow of Ruth’s excellence, but there must be someone who epitomizes the game’s underappreciated mediocrity? Who is the champion of the average?

Currently, there are 42 players with at least 1,500 plate appearances and a career OPS+ of 100. From this group, the most obvious poster boy for the average player seems to be Willie McGee, who regressed all the way to the mean over a career spanning 8,188 times to the plate. McGee’s downtrodden appearance, with hunched shoulders and a bowed head, also seems to be a fitting tribute to the common man, but alas, the speedster could not pitch.

Middle of the Pack: “Top-10” Players with an OPS+ of 100

Note: List contains the 10 players with the most plate appearance from among a group with an OPS+ of 100.
Source: baseball-reference.com

From among the list of 42 average hitters, only one player also qualified as pitcher: “Wabash” George Mullin. A Toledo boy who literally made a name for himself pitching semi-pro ball in Indiana, Mullin was an eccentric man prone to superstition. However, the one thing he took very seriously was pitching.

After escaping the Western League (quite literally, in fact, as the owner of Mullin’s minor league club actually tried to have him arrested for jumping over to the majors), the strong-armed right hander racked up almost 3,700 innings in 14 seasons, most of which came with the Tigers. Throughout his career, there were many notable achievements, like his Fourth of July no-hitter against the St. Louis Browns in 1912, his league-leading 29 wins and three World Series complete games in 1909, as well as his one-time record of 12 straight consecutive victories. For the most part, however, Mullin was, you guessed it, rather average. When the right hander retired in 1915, his ERA+ of 102 was a testament to his dual mediocrity.

Because he was so common, Mullin turned out to be so unique. Although it’s probably a stretch to call him the poor man’s Babe Ruth, it’s worth noting that he was a precursor to the two-way threat that the Bambino would become. Mullin just did it on a much smaller scale.  Wabash George may not have been one of the greatest to ever play the game, but being the most average doesn’t seem like such a bad consolation.

The Tigers’ George Mullin (left) was a “poor man’s Babe Ruth” in many ways. Like the Babe, Mullin also had a mascot (middle), a young African American boy named “Li'l Rastus”.

Over the past five-plus years, I have been reading and commenting at Bronx Banter on almost a daily basis. In many ways, it has become my internet home. So, needless to say, when Alex Belth invited me to contribute to this forum, I was both humbled and deeply honored. The next step, however, was deciding upon a topic.

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in some circles, statistics are more than just numbers on a page. They are the lifeblood of baseball’s epic history: both guardians of the past and milestones to the future. Statistics have the ability to not only spotlight greatness and shame futility in the present, but also resurrect long forgotten names from the past. It might seem silly to ascribe to numbers the evocative powers of poetry and prose, but in baseball, statistics provide the color between the lines that make the picture complete.

It’s my hope that “Color by Numbers” will not only inject more statistics into the discourse at the Banter, but also provide some leeway to tell a few stories along the way. I can’t promise to live up to the incredible standards of excellence established by writers like Alex Belth,  Matt Blankman, Cliff Corcoran, Jon DeRosa, Diane Firstman, Bruce Markusen, Emma Span, Hank Waddles and Will Weiss, and certainly won’t even try to reach the level of the late, great Todd Drew, but I know I can at least be average. Just like good old “Wabash” George.

Boogaloo baby.

[Picture from The Girl Can’t Dance]

Speaking of the Seventies…how about the Cobra?

Here’s Roy Blount, writing in Sports Illustrated about Parker back in the spring of 1979:

“He’s like the 10th man in Softball out there,” says First Baseman Stargell. “On a ground ball he’s backing up first before I’m there to take the throw. We were both after a foul ball one time with our arms outstretched, and we came together face to face like two big pairs of scissors. It was the only time I ever kissed him. We hit and flew apart by yards and yards.” Parker covers second on infield pop-ups, he gets involved in rundowns between second and third, he is everywhere. Pete Rose may be Charlie Hustle, but Parker hustles just as hard and considerably faster.

On the bases, too, he takes all he can get. Says Parker, “The highlight of the game to me is scoring from first on a double in such a way that people look at me in amazement, as if they’re saying, ‘My, how fast that big man can move.’ ”

Big he is—6’5″, 230 pounds. His legs terminate, after a lengthy run, in an upper body that looks like two Doberman pinschers bound tightly together. In addition to his speed afoot, he has general quickness—hence his nickname, Cobra—and a rifle arm. “He’s one of those rare individuals who come along every 15 or 20 years,” says Stargell. “Rare, and unique, and strong.”

Gene Monahan will retire after this season…Rafael Soriano doesn’t appear to be seriously hurt…A.J. Burnett is on the mound tonight…

Score Truck anyone?

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Stella Simon]

John Schulian is one of our most gifted storytellers and a wordsmith who has been compared to Red Smith and A.J. Liebling. He came of age as a newspaper reporter and sports columnist in the 1970s, part of a generation of young turks that featured the likes of David Israel, Leigh Montville, Mike Lupica, Jane Leavy, Tony Kornheiser and Tom Boswell. Then he left sports behind and went to Hollywood where he wrote for “L.A. Law,” “Miami Vice,” “Wiseguy,” “JAG,” and numerous other series–including “Slap Maxwell,” the short-lived Dabney Coleman show about a sportswriting hack. He was also the co-creator of “Xena: Warrior Princess.” Before, during and after his foray into show business, Schulian wrote long-form articles for Sports Illustrated and GQ. His work has been collected in “Writers’ Fighters and Other Sweet Scientists,” “Twilight of the Long-ball Gods,” and the forthcoming “Sometimes They Even Shook Your Hand.” Schulian has been featured in “The Best American Sports Writing,” and, on ten occasions, the old “Best Sports Stories” series. He also edited “The John Lardner Reader” and co-edited (with George Kimball) “At the Fights: American Writers of Boxing.”

Last fall I sat down with John to talk about his career and what came out was more than just an interview but an oral history of the newspaper business, of the sporting scene and of Hollywood.  So I am proud to present John’s story, in his own words, “From Ali to Xena,” which will be posted in column-like segments twice a week.

You are in for a treat.

–Alex Belth

From Ali to Xena

By John Schulian

PREAMBLE

Good things have happened to me all my life, whether I deserved them or not, and “At The Fights”is the latest of them. When George Kimball and I started working together, we had nothing more in mind than a modest book of stories by writers who had won awards from the Boxing Writers Association of America. The way we looked at it, no sport has inspired more wonderful prose than the Sweet Science. But for every great piece we found, there was another one that even a generous critic would have had a difficult time calling mediocre. I won’t say we were ready to give up, but the bloom definitely was off the rose.

Then, out of nowhere, George’s literary agent, Farley Chase, called and said the Library of America was interested in having us edit an anthology of great boxing writing. “The same Library of America that does Twain and Poe and Raymond Chandler?” we said. “That’s the one,” Farley said. So we wrote a proposal and talked to LOA’s big cheeses and lobbied like a couple of Tammany Hall politicians. And we got the gig.

It turned out to be an incredible amount of work that was definitely pleasurable. You don’t have to ask me twice to read Heywood Broun, W.C. Heinz, and Carlo Rotella, and I know George feels the same. But there was also more than a little pain in the process because we didn’t have room to include all the pieces we love and all the writers we admire. The book we wound up with, though, is one we believe in wholeheartedly. “At the Fights” reflects both our personal tastes and the importance of boxing in American nonfiction. Just think of the big names whose work we’ve showcased: Mailer, London, Baldwin, Schulberg, Plimpton. Maybe George expected to be to sit in judgment of them at some point in his career, but it’s a complete surprise to me.

Honestly, I never expected any of what has happened to me over the last four decades. Not the big-city sports column or the magazine work or the books, not Hollywood and the modest success I had in TV, not the fascinating projects that still fall in my lap as I enter my golden years. Sure, I dreamed about it when I was a kid, but dreaming is far different than expecting. There were guys I met on newspapers who fairly radiated their expectation of success and became wet-behind-the-ears sensations. I, on the other hand, moved at a far slower pace, forever unsure of what lay in store for me.

I don’t mean to be disingenuous. That’s just a natural fact. I knew I wanted to be a newspaper reporter and columnist, but I thought I might just as easily wind up as a copy editor. (I can hear the copy editors I worked with saying, “You never could have cut it.”) If I saw myself doing anything, it was bouncing around to a lot of different newspapers — but not papers in glamorous cities and not papers with glowing national reputations. I was thinking more along the lines of Toledo for a couple of years, then maybe see what was available in Portland or Albuquerque. The only thing I was sure of was that I had a shot at an interesting life.

(more…)

Will the Heat finish off the Celtics tonight? I’d like to see it but I think the Celtics will win.

Can the Thunder beat the Grizzles tonight in Oklahoma City to go up, 3-2. Sure, they can, but I’m picking the Grizzles. Hope I’m wrong but I’ll believe the Grizzles (and Celtics) are done when I see it.

[Picture by Patrick Joust]

Hubba hubba Part II.

Grace Kelly: Eternal Style.

Click here for a photo gallery of the one and only Gordon Parks.

Mariano Rivera didn’t look to have his best stuff last night. But with one out and a runner on first, he snagged a hard ground ball and quickly pivoted his body around to second base. In that instant I thought of the 2001 World Series, 9th inning, Game 7. That was when Rivera didn’t turn a double play. It wasn’t the worst performance of his career but it may have been the most painful as the Diamondbacks scored twice to win the Serious. I couldn’t sleep that night. I replayed the inning over and over. I wondered if a loss like that would break Rivera. It didn’t, of course. The Sandy Alomar home run in the 1997 ALDS didn’t, and neither did Game 4 and 5 of the 2004 ALCS against the Red Sox.

Now, it’s almost ten full years after the loss to the Diamonbacks and only a handful of players who appeared in the Serious are still active. None of them are performing on Rivera’s level. He’s embodiment of excellence, still graceful, a later day Fred Astaire as we like to think of him around these parts, and one of the most beautiful athletes in pro sports.

Rivera was quick enough to field the hard ground ball last night and he made a difficult throw to second base look easy. It was right on target. Cano caught it and threw to first in one smooth motion,  in time for a game-ending double play. Close play. Yanks got the call.

The Yankee players smiled as they gathered to shake hands. Smiled at an old man who still has a few moments left. He was smiling too.

And so were we.

The Royales with Cheese are in town for a three game series and they are an improved team.

Cliff has the series preview.

We kick back and cheer:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Over at PB, Jay Jaffe looks at Brett Gardner’s turnaround:

Gardner has reached base in 10 out of his last 11 starts. As hitting coach Kevin Long said last week, “He’s turned it around. He’s had several good games as of late, and he seems like the Brett Gardner we saw last year. Getting on base, causing havoc, playing great defense.” More specifically, Long noted that Gardner had shifted in the batter’s box: “Basically he moved up closer to the plate. In a nutshell they were pitching him away, and he was coming out of his swing and not able to stay tight and compact on the outside pitch. So he’s moved up on the plate, and that’s helped him a great deal.”

Tellingly, Gardner’s strikeout-to-walk ratio in those two small samples has improved, from 14/4 in the first to 10/10 in the second, and so has his rate of pitches per plate appearance, from 4.13 during his cold spell to 4.46 in his hot one. Overall, he ranks eighth in the league in P/PA at 4.30, down from last year’s league-leading 4.61, though that figure had more than a little something to do with his midseason wrist injury. Interestingly enough, the remade Curtis Granderson currently ranks a surprising second in the AL at 4.48 P/PA.

[Picture by Joseph Holmes]

For all the hand-wringing regarding Derek “4-3ter” Jeter, the Yanks are getting even less out of their DH, mainly in the form of Jorge Posada.

Posada’s current .152/.257/.354 line in 113 plate appearances is ugly enough.  Of the 173 players who have amassed at least that many plate appearances this season, Posada ranks dead last in batting average (Kelly Johnson is next in line, at a comparatively gaudy .175), tenth-lowest in OBP (though still higher than the $142 million man Carl Crawford’s .250), and 118th-best in slugging (between Michael Cuddyer and the recently-exiled Milton Bradley).

If we consider only DHs, Posada fares no better. Of the DHs with 75 or more plate appearances, Posada is last (out of 13) in BA, next-to-last in OBP (ahead of only Magglio Ordonez) and fifth-worst in slugging.  And its not like its all about age, as 4 other DHs are 37 years old.

We all know that offense is down again in 2011, and DHs are not immune to this, as they’ve hit a composite .257/.339/.394 so far.  But the question remains, could someone (anyone) provide more offense for a role that is ONLY about offense?

We know the Jeter slippery slope towards (and below) mediocrity still has a while to play out.   The Yanks have no better internal option in the near-term.  But what about Posada?  The Yanks owe him nothing after this season, and swallowing the remainder of his 2011 salary (roughly another $11 million) would certainly sting a bit, even for the Steinbrenners.  But the Yanks do have a viable DH option down in Triple A, and we all know Jesus Montero’s value is heavily tilted towards his bat.

Looking forward towards the July 31 trade deadline, promoting Montero to full-time DH now would allow for roughly 70 games/280 at-bats to showcase what he can do at the major league level.  Assuming the Yanks will throw enough money at Russell Martin to bring him back for 2012 (when he’ll still be only 29), Montero can be safely dealt for whatever needs the Yanks may have at that time (starting pitching most likely, and middle infield help better than Pena and Nunez).

Or . . . the Yanks could hold onto Montero through the end of the year (presuming he’s putting up a 800+ OPS), and then value the free agent market before involving him in a deal.

Rob Neyer wonders the same wonder as I do, and comes down on the status quo side:

. . . nearly all of Montero’s value as a hitter this season is due to his batting average … and batting average is highly subject to luck. Which isn’t to say Montero’s not a high-average hitter; he’s got a .315 career batting average in the minors. But he might not really be a .337 hitter in Class AAA, and he might not be a .300 hitter in the American League. And given the paucity of walks and power, if he’s not hitting .300 he’s not creating many runs. Not yet, anyway.

That said, I do not think the timing is a real issue. Since when do the Yankees care about someone’s “Super 2” status? Plus, the rules regarding such things might well be different after this season, since they’re a part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement that expires soon. What the Yankees probably do care about is Montero’s development. Do they want a 21-year-old catcher serving as their primary DH? Alternatively, do they want their primary catcher learning on the job, while Russell Martin or someone else is DHing?

No, probably not.

Opinions?

Couple of days of hubba hubba.

[Picture by Jean-Francois Jonvelle]