Seriously, now…got to love spring training.

[Photo Credit: The Best Way to Spend Time On Line]

On my way to the grocery store yesterday I stopped and tilted my nose in the air like I was a dog. It was warm in the sun and I thought I smelled it–the distinct odor of spring, which can only mean one thing: “Baseball.” It is the smell of soil, carried through the breeze. Eh, I think I might have been straining.

This morning, however, there it was again. Sure, this is a false spring we’ve got on our hands this week in New York (it is supposed to reach 50 degrees today), but I’ll take it.

Couple of Yankee notes fuh ya:

Brain Cashman has some tough love for Joba Chamberlain and Keith Olbermann is even tougher on Derek Jeter.

Update: Oh, and some cool news in the Yankee blogosphere–the Yankeeist and Yankee U have merged to form The Yankee Analysts. Be sure to drop by and check ’em out. I’m sure they’ll be doing some fine work this season.

[Picture by Richard Diebenkorn]

Okay, so I don’t entirely mean that headline. As usual, I’ve been looking forward to spring training since late November. In fact, I always have to stop myself from needlessly capitalizing it — Spring Training — because it seems like it ought to be some kind of official holiday, like Christmas or Independence Day.

So it’s not that I’m not happy that, starting this weekend, we’ll get something vaguely resembling real baseball news. It’s just that I don’t actually want spring training — I want real baseball. Spring training is a plate of carrot sticks and celery when you’re craving a huge hamburger and fries. It’s fine at first, but hardly a long-term substitute.

Sure, the first few days are blissful. Photos of Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada loosening up, stretching hamstrings and that sort of thing. Noting that someone got skinny and someone else fully enjoyed the holidays. Seeing all those shiny pitching prospects practically glowing with promise, before the real world tarnishes them. Seeing that, somewhere, skies are blue and the sun is shining, and the whole world isn’t like New York, covered in filthy gray slush. Yes, there is hope… yes, baseball is coming.

But: still not for six weeks. That’s the thing. Once you’ve looked at the sunny photos for a few days, and then a few weeks later once you’ve watched a few games, which are a pale imitation of real games in that no one really gives a hoot about them and the teams play accordingly, spring training is pretty much a six-week dry hump. If a player does well in spring training, it doesn’t mean he’ll do well in the regular season, so you can’t fully enjoy it. If he plays badly, you worry anyway even though, again, it doesn’t mean a thing. It’s good to see prospects you don’t normally get to see on television, but it’s no substitute for genuine baseball where the score is important, or at least as important as a baseball score ever is.

Of course, the good news there is that six weeks isn’t really such a long time. And I guess that’s why I still look forward to spring training… we’re not out of the dark yet, but it’s the light at the end of the tunnel.

Here’s some Yankeeness for you fiends out there:

Over at River Avenue Blues, Joe P links to a Wallace Mathews piece on Kevin Long.

And at IATMS, here’s a note via Buster Olney that C.C. Sabathia has lost 30 lbs.

Joba Chamberlain, on the other hand, has reportedly put on some weight. Check out this great Yankee weigh-in by Steve Goldman. And while you are there, dig the Aceves Challenge by Jay Jaffe.

[Picture by Bags]

Pitchers and catchers don’t officially report for a few days still, but Russell Martin and Jesus Montero are already working out in Florida. Here’s John Harper, writing in the Daily News about the kid Montero:

Baseball America editor Jim Callis, who ranks minor-league prospects based on seeing them himself and talking to more scouts and minor-league evaluators than just about anyone, says he would have a hard time dealing Montero.

“To me he’s the best all-around hitter in the minor leagues,” Callis said recently. “He might be another Mike Piazza, the way he hits for average and power. I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t have a great career as a hitter.”

…But can Montero catch? Callis says the answer might be a matter of how much a team is willing to sacrifice defense for offense at the position.

“It’s not like he’s a total butcher back there,” Callis said. “He has a strong arm, but his transfer when he throws is slow, and he’s not the best receiver in the world. He’s not real athletic, but he has worked hard to become more flexible behind the plate.

“Overall he’s a little below average defensively, and I’m not sold that in five years Montero will be a catcher.

Yeah, the Yanks have issues with their starting rotation but there is plenty to be excited about and it starts with the Jesus.

Over at Pinstriped Bible, our man Cliff takes a look at the Yankees starting rotation:

Of the pitchers who have yet to reach the majors, there are two basic groups, a quartet of middling arms that have reached Triple-A and the three Killer Bs, the team’s top pitching prospects, none of whom has spent a full season at Double-A. The former group consists of David Phelps, D.J. Mitchell, Hector Noesi, and Steve Garrison, all of whom will be 24 this season. Noesi and Garrison are on the 40-man roster. Phelps and Mitchell are not. Garrison is the lone lefty. Noesi is the only fly-ball pitcher among the bunch. Phelps is the most ready having posted a 3.17 ERA in 11 Triple-A starts last year with an outstanding 4.73 K/BB. Per a recent conversation with Baseball Prospectus’s Kevin Goldstein, Garrison is the weakest of the bunch, and none of them have stuff as good as Nova’s.

The other three arms, of course, are Dellin Betances, Manny Banuelos, and Andrew Brackman. I don’t expect the Yankees to jump any of the three of them to the majors given that they have combined to make just 20 Double-A starts, but if the Yankees get desperate enough during the season, and one of the above is simply dominating in Trenton, they may have no other choice, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, which we very well might given the fact that the Yankees would have difficulty fleshing out a four-man playoff rotation right now, never mind a five-man unit that will allow them to keep up with the Red Sox over a 162-game season.

[Photo Credit: Zimbo]

After all of that, the Yankees are going north with a roster that differs from the one I projected on February 22 by exactly one player. Sergio Mitre beat out Chad Gaudin, since released and signed by the A’s, for the final spot in the bullpen. Otherwise there were no huge surprises in camp. Phil Hughes winning the fifth-starter’s job over Joba Chamberlain was a bit unexpected, but both are on the roster, Joba in the bullpen, and all of the lip service about Alfredo Aceves, Gaudin, and Mitre being in the running for the rotation proved to be just that after Aceves and Mitre pitched so well and wound up in the bullpen. Marcus Thames didn’t hit and still made the team as a non-roster player, Boone Logan’s option proved more appealing that Boone Logan’s left arm, and Aceves (back), Damaso Marte (shoulder), Francisco Cervelli (hamstring), Jorge Posada (stiff neck), and perhaps most surprisingly, Nick Johnson (knee) all avoided the disabled list and are headed to Boston.

Still, there’s some organizational housekeeping to take care of. Mike Rivera, who was to be the third-string catcher, was released and replaced with 2008 third-stringer Chad Moeller, who spent last year in that role with the Orioles. Rule 5 pick Kanekoa Texeira made the Mariners’ bullpen, though they’ll have to keep him on their 25-man roster all season in order to avoid having to offer him back to the Yankees. A 24-year-old righty reliever, Kanekoa came over from the White Sox’s organization in the Nick Swisher trade (effectively for fellow righty reliever Jhonny Nuñez, who was acquired from the Nationals for infielder Alberto Gonzalez). He pitched well in relief in Double-A last year, but never got the call to Triple-A. Ironically, Nuñez was traded for Texeira in that deal in part because the Yankees didn’t have room on the 40-man to protect Nuñez, who made his major league debut with the Chisox last year. Lefty reliever Zach Kroenke, the Yankees’ other outgoing Rule 5 pick, because he was selected last year as well and returned, didn’t have to be offered back to the Yankees when he failed to make the Diamondbacks. Instead, he cleared waivers and accepted a minor league assignment from the D’backs.

With that out of the way, we’re all set for Opening Night tonight. I will post the full Yankee and Red Sox rosters as well as an extensive comparison of the two teams around 3pm this afternoon. The game thread should go up around 7:30. First pitch, from Josh Beckett to Derek Jeter, is scheduled for 8:05 pm EST. Hope to see you all here then.

There wasn’t much variation in their performances to this point in spring training. That Chad Gaudin had pitched his way to the bottom of the list of the five “starters” competing for the last four spots on the Yankee pitching staff was clear, as was the fact that Sergio Mitre had simultaneously pitched his way out of that elimination spot. Exactly what the Yankees were going to do about that was less clear until the Yankees placed Gaudin on waivers on Tuesday, effectively removing him from the 40-man roster.

Gaudin, who pitched relatively well down the stretch last year (3.43 ERA, 7.3 K/9 in 6 starts and 5 relief appearances), was actually the Yankees’ (unused) fourth starter in the 2009 postseason, earning that distinction over Joba Chamberlain, who instead made ten appearances out of the bullpen. In January, Gaudin avoided arbitration with the Yankees by signing a one-year deal worth $2.95 million, but the contract was not guaranteed, meaning that the Yankees will owe him just $737,500 if he clears waivers and they release him (if they send him to Triple-A, they’ll still owe him the entire amount, but if he’s claimed, they’ll be off the hook entirely). Given that all they sent the Padres for Gaudin last August was cash, there will have been little waste involved in Gaudin’s brief time with the team.

With Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, Alfredo Aceves, Jason Hirsh, and Zach McAllister all on hand and to different degrees ready to step into either the rotation or the bullpen, Gaudin is no great loss. Rather, Gaudin’s removal from the roster places increased emphasis on what Sergio Mitre has to offer.

With Gaudin out of the picture, it now seems likely that Mitre will be the twelfth man on the Yankees’ Opening Day pitching staff. His primary rivals are potential second lefties Boone Logan and Royce Ring, but Ring is a non-roster player and Logan has an option remaining, whereas Mitre is, like Gaudin was, a member of the 40-man roster on a non-guaranteed contract who would have to be passed through waivers to be sent to Triple-A. Mitre’s contract is small enough at $850,000 for the Yankees to eat the $212,500 they’d owe Mitre if they released him, but the club seems legitimately enthusiastic about how Mitre has been pitching this spring, and not without good reason.

I know that the prospect of Sergio Mitre on the Opening Day roster is anathema to a large part of the Yankee fanbase and the Bronx Banter readership in particular, but I still can’t completely hate on the Yankees interest in Mitre. I shrugged off the Mitre signing entering camp a year ago, remarking in my 2009 campers post that, “Mitre was never a high-ceiling starter, but rather a moderately successful sinkerballer, who had yet to put it all together in the majors prior to his [July 2008 Tommy John] surgery. He’ll be 29 next February and hardly seems worth even the minimal commitment.” Five months later, after Chien-Ming Wang had blow up twice and Phil Hughes had begun to establish himself as a dominant set-up man, I took a different view:

Mitre’s career line in the majors is certainly unimpressive (5.36 ERA, 1.54 WHIP, 5.4 K/9), but he was rushed to the majors in just his third professional season at age 22, jerked between the majors, minors, rotation, and bullpen in each of his three seasons with the Cubs, and came down with shoulder problems in May of his first season with the Marlins in 2006. Given all of that, I’m tempted to just toss out those first four partial major league seasons in which Mitre went 5-15 with a 6.01 ERA in 25 starts and 26 relief appearances.Instead, I look at what Mitre did with a healthy arm and a rotation spot in the first half of the 2007 season under manager Joe Girardi. In 16 starts (not counting one aborted start in which he tore a blister during the first inning), Mitre posted a 2.82 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, and a 3.1 K/9. Ten of those outings were quality starts and two others were scoreless but cut short by a tight hamstring. Mitre’s season fell apart in late July due to the elbow problems that led to his Tommy John surgery and wiped out his 2008 season.

As you can see, Mitre’s problems have had far more to do with health than effectiveness. That’s a red flag when a team throws $80-million, five-year contracts at a pitcher, but when the pitcher in question comes in on a make-good minor league deal, health concerns don’t concern me as there’s nothing there but upside.

Mitre posted a 6.79 ERA in nine starts and three relief appearances for the Yankees after I wrote the above, but his solid 2.46 K/BB, swollen .333 opponent’s batting average on balls in play, and absurd 22.2 percent home-runs-per-fly-ball rate (the major league average is around 8 percent) all suggested that bad luck played some role in that poor performance. Clearly Mitre was getting hit hard, but he was also unlucky and, theoretically, still building his arm back up after rehabbing from his TJ surgery.

In my campers post this year, I repeated much of the above about Mitre, but described Mitre’s 2009 K/BB ratio, which was a single-season career best for the right-hander, as “mildly encouraging,” later adding, “there’s some small hope that being two years removed from surgery could allow him to recapture some of his form from 2007, when over his first 17 starts he posted a 2.82 ERA with just five home runs allowed and a 3.10 K/BB.”

I don’t want him to be the fifth starter, and I don’t think there’s any real risk of that unless another starter suffers a significant injury, but I just can’t completely trash the Yankees continued interest in Mitre. I realize that spring training statistics are about as predictive as campaign promises, but Mitre really has been throwing the ball better this spring. Ignore his ERA, or even his slim hits total, and look at his 14 strikeouts in 14 innings against just three walks and one homer. Better yet, read the comments from Mitre, his manager, and catcher collected by Chad Jennings:

. . . what might have tipped the scales in Mitre’s favor?

He’s further removed from surgery: “Last year I felt good early when I was coming back from Tommy John and toward the later months of the year, I just kind of fatigued,” Mitre said. “The offseason really helped. Nothing hurts right now.”

His sinker is moving more: “I think the pitches are the same,” Mitre said. “I think the only thing that’s different is there might be more life to it as opposed to being flatter.”

He’s throwing harder: “His velocity is better,” Joe Girardi said. “He doesn’t seem to fatigue as easily. There is a difference.”

His command is better: “He’s a different guy,” Jorge Posada said. “You can tell that he’s healthy and the ball is just coming out of his hand a lot better. He’s throwing strikes. Location, that tells you that he’s back on track… He’s putting it wherever he wants.”

Mitre is a year younger than Chien-Ming Wang, further removed from injury, walked just 2.3 men per nine innings in his awful 2009 season, and now reportedly has more velocity and movement on his top pitch and is proving it with impressive spring training peripherals. There’s only one thing that upsets me about the Yankees taking another chance on this guy as the last man on the pitching staff, and it has nothing to do with how Mitre might pitch.

Going back to my campers post, I concluded Mitre’s entry by saying, “there are better, younger arms who deserve a shot at that last bullpen spot should it open up.” Gaudin’s struggles have opened that spot up, and 25-year-old fellow Tommy John survivor Mark Melancon, who has struck out eight in 6 1/3 spring innings against one walk and no homers, is more deserving than Mitre of that last spot, though I’m pretty well convinced at this point that Mitre will claim it.

I’m also convinced that Melancon will find his way into high-leverage work out of the the major league pen during the upcoming season the way David Robertson did last year, but there’s not as clear a path for Melancon as there was for Robertson last year when Jose Veras and Edwar Ramirez seemed ready to cough up their spots. Maybe Mitre is that guy this year, but right now the Yankees seem to think he could be the new Ramiro Mendoza, and I’m not particularly motivated to argue with them.

The Yankees and Tigers were rained out on Sunday, throwing the Yankees’ pitching plans into a bit of disarray given that they were already muddled by the need to dedicate innings to each of the fifth-starter candidates as well as the pitchers who have the staff made. A.J. Burnett was supposed to start Sundays’ game with Phil Hughes pitching in relief. They will now fill those roles in Monday’s game against the Phillies. Andy Pettitte, who had already been bumped from Monday’s game by the need to give Joba Chamberlain innings, was scheduled to pitch in a minor league game on Monday, but with Burnett and Hughes pitching against the Phillies, Pettitte’s game will now be an intrasquad contest between two teams of Yankee minor leaguers, and his mound opponent will now be Joba Chamberlain.

It seems telling that the Yankees are bumping Chamberlain to the intrasquad game, though I’m not quite sure what it tells us. I would think that, after Chamberlain’s early struggles this spring, the Yankees would be most eager to see him face a major league lineup and would rather let Burnett pitch in the minor league game. Are the Yankees showing excessive faith in Chamberlain by letting him face minor leaguers in what could be the most crucial start of the spring for him? Are they showing a lack of faith by not letting him face the major leaguers? Have they already reached a decision on Chamberlain without telling anyone? Am I reading too much into this? It doesn’t seem insignificant given that Joe Girardi has said he’d like to start eliminating pitchers from the competition this week and perhaps even choose a fifth starter by the end of the week.

The Yankees have now played a dozen exhibition games, more than a third of their spring schedule. So what have we learned thus far?

Over at LoHud, Chad Jennings reports that, in Tuesday’s game, Joe Girardi will start a preliminary Opening Day lineup that is likely to look like this:

R – Derek Jeter (SS)
L – Nick Johnson (DH)
S – Mark Teixeira (1B)
R – Alex Rodriguez (3B)
L – Robinson Cano (2B)
S – Jorge Posada (C)
L – Curtis Granderson (CF/LF)
S – Nick Swisher (RF)
L – Brett Gardner (LF/CF)

Nick Johnson hitting second is among the Yankees’ worst-kept secrets. It was obvious the day they signed him that he was brought in to replace Johnny Damon in the two-hole with ability to work deep counts and get on base. The pleasant surprise from Johnson this spring has been his team-leading three home runs (all of which have come against the Pirates). No other Yankee has more than one. Johnson also has a pair of doubles and is slugging 1.308  and leading the Yankees in most major offensive categories. That despite missing some time after tweaking his lower back when his spikes got caught in the turf rug the team uses to protect the batting circle during batting practice.

Robinson Cano hitting fifth is a direct challenge to Cano to improve his numbers with runners in scoring position. Last year he hit .207/.242/.332 with runners in scoring position, and Kevin Long, who keeps such stats on the Yankee hitters, said that Cano’s swings on pitches out of the zone spiked in those situations. Cano hit .376/.407/.609 in 343 at-bats with the bases empty last year, and one of his goals this spring has been to maintain the same approach with runners on.

I expected Curtis Granderson to be the fifth-place hitter, but with Cano fifth, Granderson seventh makes sense so as not to have lefties hitting back-to-back, particularly when one of them is as susceptible to left-handed pitching as Granderson.

Brett Gardner batting ninth seems to suggest that Gardner is well on his way toward winning a starting job, and to hear Girardi speak to the YES crew during Saturday’s home game, that does seem to be the case. That was the first spring game that featured Gardner in center field and Granderson in left field in the starting lineup, and Girardi said that he was just trying to figure out which arrangement (that or with Granderson in center and Gardner in left) allowed the two to work best together. That clearly implied that Gardner would be starting at one of those two positions.

Gardner has hit just .158 (3-for-19) this spring, two of those hits being bunt singles, and hasn’t stolen a base or delivered an extra-base hit, but he does have four walks and a .304 OBP. His three challengers all have even lower averages and have combined for just one-extra base hit, one walk, and no steals: Jamie Hoffmann .150 (3-for-19, 2B), Randy Winn .133 (2-for-15, BB), Marcus Thames .111 (2-for-18).

In the battle for the backup infielder spot, Kevin Russo has distinguished himself at the plate, hitting .385/.500/.538 (5-for-13, 2 2B, 3 BB) and has rotated through second, third and shortstop without a significant gaffe. I don’t know if he’ll be able to overcome the Yankees’ existing preference for Ramiro Peña, who has struggled at the plate save for an early homer but played outstanding defense, but Russo is certainly making a strong impression, showing a great approach in the plate, and making solid contact with regularity.

(more…)

One advantage of today’s game being canceled is that it gives me room to share this roundtable discussion about the fifth-starter competition and spring training competitions in general that Jay Jaffe and I participated in over at Steven Goldman’s Pinstriped Bible on YES. A quick sample:

Cliff: . . . what Girardi is looking for (I assume and hope) is execution of pitches, game planning, the ability to set-up hitters, work out of jams, miss bats, avoid hard contact, turn lineups over, etc. This is the one time of year when I agree with those who diminish the importance of statistics. The sample is indeed too small, thus one bad outing, due to the after-effects of the flu or fatigue toward the end of an outing in which the pitcher in question is extending his pitch count, can ruin an ERA. Also, as Girardi has said, the first couple of spring starts are really tune-ups in which starters don’t use all of their pitches and are just trying to build arm strength and get a feel for things. So for Hughes and Chamberlain, as well, the charge is to execute in a high-pressure situation, to show what they can do, but I don’t think that necessarily means the pitcher with the better ERA is going to get the job. If Joba continues to struggle but suddenly finds it in his last two spring starts and looks like the guy from 2007 again, I think the job will be, and should be, his.

Read the rest here.

A month into spring training has yielded little in terms of newsworthy occurrences in Yankee camp.

The team announced it would not discuss or negotiate contract extensions for Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, or manager Joe Girardi until after the season, which is consistent with recent club policy. Nick Johnson missed time with back stiffness (uh-oh), but then rejoined the lineup (phew!). Indications, per Girardi, are that Johnson will bat second and that speed isn’t important, since Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez are hitting behind him. That means Curtis Granderson, who Girardi hinted would be the team’s starting center fielder, will likely bat seventh or eighth, depending on Nick Swisher’s exploits. Granderson in center, coupled with Brett Gardner’s wet-noodle bat, means Randy Winn, um, win(n)s the left field job.

That brings us to the first of three major subsections of this week’s column.

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Welcome to my seventh annual spring training liveblog. This year we’re firing this thing up for the third game of the exhibition season. The Yankees enter today’s game against the Rays having beaten the Pirates on a three-run walkoff homer by Colin Curtis and lost to the Phillies on a walk-off infield hit by Wilson Valdez.

Here are today’s starting lineups:

Rays:

R – Jason Bartlett (SS)
R – Sean Rodriguez (LF)
R – Evan Longoria (3B)
S – Ben Zobrist (2B)
R – B.J. Upton (CF)
S – Dioner Navarro (C)
S – Elliot Dan Johnson (DH)
R – Justin Ruggiano (RF)
L – Chris Richard (1B)

LHP – David Price

Yankees:

R – Derek Jeter (SS)
L – Curtis Granderson (CF)
R – Mark Teixeira (1B)
R – Alex Rodriguez (3B)
S – Jorge Posada (C)
R – Marcus Thames (LF)
R – Robinson Cano (2B)
S – Nick Swisher (RF)
R – Francisco Cervelli (C)

RHP – Phil Hughes

Joba Chamberlain will follow Hughes on the mound for the Yankees, and we’re supposed to get a look at Jesus Montero behind the plate today. Nick Johnson is out with what is supposedly very minor lower back stiffness. Granderson has hit second in both of his starts this spring, but has yet to appear in a starting lineup with Johnson.

Outfielder Desmond Jennings, the Rays’ top prospect, did not make the trip for this game, much to my disappointment. Elliot Johnson, who slammed into Francisco Cervelli and broke is arm in a spring training game two years ago, did and is starting.

Pregame:

Thanks to my mom for watching Amelia this afternoon so that I can bring you all this liveblog. She’s a big Yankee fan as well, but a bigger fan of her granddaughter (as am I).

Tino Martinez is making his YES debut with this game. He always sounds like he has a stuffy nose. The announcers are in shirtsleeves rather than the pull overs they wore on Wednesday. So it’s clearly a bit warmer in Tampa, but it’s still quite windy.

Top 1st:

Fastball high and in from Hughes to Bartlett gets things going. The next pitch is a belt-high fastball on the inside corner and Bartlett hits it just foul over the left-field wall. He then rips another fastball to short, but Jeter makes a nice back-handed play to get him out. Hard contact from Bartlett who hit .320/.389/.490 last year out of nowhere.

Hughes’s first curve is the 0-1 pitch to Sean Rodriguez, well outside and low. Rodriguez is a second baseman who came over in the Scott Kazmir deal. He can hit, but the Rays have Ben Zobrist at second and are trying to make Rodriguez a utility man (he’s in left field today).

Another curve to Rodriguez is also low and outside. Hughes’ fastball is topping out at 91 mph. Rodriguez reaches out for a fastball out and over the plate. The wind lifts it to the center field wall and it hits on top for a homer. 1-0 Rays. Granderson was struggling to track that ball due to the wind. That’s more hard contact off Hughes.

Top 1st cont.

Rodriguez’s homer was on a 3-2 count.

Evan Longoria hits a hanging curve to deep left, right where Thames is playing. Two outs.

Hughes gets a nice swing-and-a-miss from Zobrist on an 82 mph changeup to even the count 2-2, then missed with another outside. Zobrists grounds out to Teixeira (unassisted, as usual) to end the inning.

1-0 Rays

Bot 1st:

The Rays’ BP caps are dark blue with sky-blue piping in all the standard places.

Yankees are in their blue BP tops and pinstriped pants. Rays in blue BP tops that say “Rays” across the chest and grey pants with dark blue piping down the leg.

Jeter singles to right on the first pitch from David Price. Michael Kay breaks out “Jeterian.” I gag on my sandwich.

Price is throwing easy gas around 95-96 mph. Granderson works the lefty for a full count, but flies out to left on a 96 mph fastball.

Bot 1st cont.

Price hits 97 against Teixeira, then comes back with a 78 mph curve. Tex fouls both off. That’s impressive on both counts. Less impressive, Teixeira swings at a fastball around his ankles and hits a would-be double-play ball, but Zobrist bobbles the transfer. Fielder’s “choice.”

I can’t tell if Tino’s any good in the booth because my Sun chips are too loud, though they also drown out Michael Kay, so I might keep eating all game.

Price paints the outside corner with a 96 mph fastball to set Alex Rodriguez down looking.

1-0 Rays

Top 2nd:

Hughes starts the second with another curve low and outside.

B.J. Upton, who is still just 25, grounds to Mark “Unassisted” Teixeira.

Hughes just doesn’t look sharp today. His fastball is slow (now upper 80s) and he’s missing with his off-speed stuff. Save for that one changeup in the first, I haven’t seen much that has impressed me.

He walks Dioner Navarro on five pitches, the last an 89 mph fastball that floated high and wide.

Lineup correction, that’s Dan Johnson, not Elliot who is the starting DH. Dan is the former A’s first baseman who spent 2009 in Japan. That makes more sense.

Johnson pops out to shallow second, where Robinson Cano makes an impressive over-his-shoulder catch running away from the infield.

Justin Ruggiano flies out to center to end the inning.

Hughes only gave up one hit, a wind-blown homer by Sean Rodriguez, but his stuff wasn’t nearly as good as his results.

1-0 Rays

Bot 2nd:

Jorge Posada hits a 94 mph fastball just foul over the right field wall, then strikes out on an 86 mph changeup.

David Price then starts of Thames with a 77 mph curve ball for a strike. He is good at pitching.

YES shows footage of Marcus Thames’ home run off Randy Johnson in his first major league at-bat. We’ll see that eleventeen million more times if he makes the team.

Thames taps out to shortstop.

Robinson Cano singles directly at the center field camera causing Price to flinch and making the ball appear to levitate in mid-air before curving a bit toward right field.

Cano moves up on a passed ball down and in to Nick Swisher (it’s ruled a wild pitch, but the ball was nearly a strike . . . it’s spring training for the official scorer as well).

Swisher works a walk and Price leaves having reached his limit an out short of two full innings.

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There’s not a lot of intrigue in Yankee camp this year. The team arrives as defending champions and, as I wrote in my campers post, the 25-man roster is fairly predictable given the players in camp. Joe Girardi does have to work out how he’s going to distribute playing time in left and center field and decide on a basic batting order, but the roles of the players involved aren’t likely to change much no matter what he decides. The only significant suspense March holds for Yankee fans, save wondering if Nick Johnson can survive the month with all of his bones and ligaments intact, is in the battle for the fifth spot in the rotation. Fifth-starter battles are typically slap fights among assorted marginal minor leaguers and veteran retreads, but the battle in Yankee camp this spring pits the organization’s top two young arms against one another in a four-week competition that could have significant repercussions for the futures of both pitchers.

That would be a lot more exciting if there wasn’t as much fan fatigue over Joba Chamberlain’s pitching role as there is over Brett Farve’s flirtations with retirement, but it’s important to note that, for all of the debates, role changes, rule changes, and innings limits, the Yankees have Chamberlain exactly where they want him this spring, coming off a season of 160 innings pitched and ready to spend a full season in the rotation without having a cap placed on his innings pitched. For that reason, I believe that the Yankees are looking at the fifth starter’s job as Chamberlain’s to lose, though they’d ever admit it. Chamberlain is nine months older that Hughes and a season ahead of Hughes in terms of his innings progress (Hughes threw 111 2/3 innings between the minors, majors, and postseason last year; Chamberlain threw 100 1/3 in 2008). If Chamberlain claims the fifth-starter job this year, and the Yankees can find Hughes 150-odd innings, Hughes can follow Chamberlain into the rotation as a full-fledged starter in 2010 on the heals of the free agency of both Andy Pettitte and Javier Vazquez. If that happens, the Yankees will have established both young studs in the rotation before their 25th birthdays. They’re thisclose.

There are just two problems. First, Chamberlain got his innings to the right place last year, but his head and stuff seemed to go in the opposite direction. Second, getting Hughes 150 innings this year with Chamberlain eating up close to 200 in the rotation could prove to be as challenging as limiting Chamberlain to 160 last year.

Taking the latter first, the flip-side of the fifth-starter battle is the assumption that the loser will move back in to the eighth-inning role that both young pitchers have excelled at in recent seasons. In his 50 career major league relief appearances during the regular season, Chamberlain has posted a 1.50 ERA and struck out 11.9 men per nine innings while holding opposing hitters to a .182/.255/.257 line. Hughes, in 44 regular season relief appearances, all from last year, posted a 1.40 ERA and 11.4 K/9 while opposing batters hit .172/.228/.228. That sort of late-game dominance is hard to resist (thus the endless Joba debates), but both pitchers would be more valuable throwing 200 innings a year than 60, and given the impending free agency of Pettitte and Vazquez not to mention A.J. Burnett’s injury history, the Yankees have to resist slotting the loser of this spring’s competition into that role to such a degree that they’re unwilling to stretch him back out during the season, as they were with Hughes last year. Doing so would reset the clock on that pitcher’s journey toward the rotation and thus could severely damage his career path.

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Pitchers and catchers report in less than a week, but there are already Yankees in camp working out. The Yankees have no players returning from major injuries (Chien-Ming Wang and Xavier Nady having both moved on), and it will be weeks before we’ll find out if Joba Chamberlain can find the missing ticks on his fastball and more than a month before Joe Girardi names a fifth starter or a left fielder. So, with pitchers and catchers somewhat anticlimactic, and spring training games still three weeks away, what are you anxious to see or hear about as the players begin reporting to camp?

The last week of March signals the beginning of the regular season like light at the end of a tunnel. In Florida, beat writers and their backups, many of whom have been stationed there since the beginning of February, are gathering the final roster notes and putting the finishing touches on their season preview specials for next Sunday’s paper, while the columnists, most of whom are based in New York, continue to track the off-field news and craft profiles of the key players involved in those scenarios.

It’s an exciting and stressful time for all the moving parts of a baseball operation, from the team itself to the media outlets covering the team, but if you work in sports and if baseball is the sport in which you’ve chosen to specialize, it’s the best stress you can have outside of being involved in the postseason.

STORY OF THE WEEK
Much has been made of Joe Girardi’s decision to flip Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon in the batting order. Much was written about this topic in the winter and spring leading up to the 2006 season, Damon’s first in pinstripes. At the Baseball Writers Association of America dinner in December of 2005, I remember asking SI’s Tom Verducci, who is a proponent of Sabermetric analysis, what he thought about putting Jeter in the leadoff spot. He agreed that the combination of Jeter’s ability to get on base more consistently (he was coming off a year with a .389 OBP to Damon’s .366), and Gary Sheffield batting third—which would have kept the righty-lefty-righty element in play that Joe Torre favored—made Jeter the better choice for the leadoff spot. But that spring, when the writers asked Torre about his plan, the Yankee manager was undeterred about keeping Damon as the leadoff hitter. Torre, in his way, usually deflected the discussion by saying, “You only have to worry about the leadoff batter for the first inning. Then the rest of the lineup takes care of itself.” It was as if the decision was predetermined from the moment Damon signed with the Yankees.

What we know as baseball fans is that the numbers rarely lie. Jeter’s lowest seasonal on-base percentage pre-Damon was .352 in 2004. Head to head, Damon, whose career has spanned the same exact time frame of Jeter’s, had a higher OBP than Jeter only once prior to his arrival in New York (in 2004: Damon .380 to Jeter’s .352.). The trend has held true since 2006, as Jeter has bested Damon in OBP twice: .417 to .359 in ’06, and .388 to .351 in ’07.

Adding further credibility to Jeter as a leadoff batter is the number of times that Jeter has grounded into double plays versus Damon. Over the course of their respective careers, Damon has grounded into 120 fewer double plays than Jeter (75 to 95), an average of nine fewer GIDPs per season.

Cliff Corcoran, through Pete Abe, did a great job of breaking down the numbers earlier this week.

Here’s a thought, though: If Girardi is adamant about Jeter in the leadoff spot now, did he think about this at all in 2006 when he was Torre’s consiglieri on the bench? If so, and if he had Torre’s ear, why didn’t he suggest it? By the numbers, and the fact that Damon is entering his Age 35 season and Jeter will turn 35 on June 26, this decision appears to be three years late.

OTHER THINGS WE LEARNED

• Alex Rodriguez not only wooed escorts and strippers and admitted his steroid use to them, now he doesn’t care what people think of him. (Does this list include WWE star John Cena?) The good news: the last time he adopted this M.O., he had an MVP season.
• FOX Sports.com’s Ken Rosenthal is a master of the obvious. On a similar note, the recent surge by Melky Cabrera may lead to a trade, as MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch reported
• Joel Sherman, while he’s on point in this article, is about two weeks behind Bronx Banter on the analysis of Chien-Ming Wang.
• Newsday’s Anthony Rieber is not a fan of Hideki Matsui, v.2009.
• Arthur Richman and Johnny Blanchard, two indelible links to Yankees history, will be missed.

Until next week . . .