Yanks and O’s on YES tonight.

[Picture by Bags]

The Yankee-Red Sox game was blacked out in most of the Metropolitan area last night, but Manny Banuelos didn’t pitch badly:

“That guy’s 20 years old?” Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia asked. “He’s really good, and he seems to have an idea. Shoot, when I was 20, I was swinging with an aluminum bat [in college].”

“I think for this young man’s future they should go slow with him, very slow,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona said with a smile.
(Costello, New York Post)

Alfredo Aceves started for the Sox, who beat the Yanks, 2-1.

The clocks sprung forward yesterday which means we are inching closer to Opening Day.

Cliff recaps yesterday’s game over at PB:

Freddy Garcia hit 92 with his fastball and sat around 89, which is a lot of velocity for him, but it didn’t help as he gave up four runs on six hits, a pair of walks, and a hit-by-pitch in just 2 2/3 innings. Andrew Brackman, in just his second spring appearance, was all over the place, and lacked his best velocity. He broke off a few nice curve balls, but didn’t make it through his two innings at the tail end of the game before hitting his pitch count. A dropped ball in right field didn’t help, and he only gave up one unearned run, but beyond the two walks and two hits (one a double by Justin Huber), he just didn’t look right out there. Eric Wordekemper finished the third inning for Garcia and was about to strand runners on the corners in the fourth when Derek Jeter dropped a pop-up, which allowed one run to score. Then, the next batter, Dinkelman, cracked a three-run homer. All four runs were unearned, but a homer is a homer, and Dinkelman was all over what looked like a hanging slider from Wordekemper.

Over at River Ave Blues, Ben Kabak picks up on an ESPN rumor that the Yanks are scouting Carlos Silva.

Mariano Rivera pitched in an exhibition game for the first time this spring–he threw 12 pitches and struck out the side.

The peaceful, easy feeling continues, even when the score doesn’t count. Chad Jennings has the skinny.

Ben Shpigel has an excellent piece on Derek Jeter’s revamped swing this morning in the New York Times:

Through 24 spring training at-bats, Derek Jeter is hitting .333. Results are nice, but Jeter’s average is not what excites Kevin Long, the Yankees’ hitting coach. This does: On Friday, when Jeter was 1 for 3 with an infield single against Atlanta, he swung at the first pitch every time up. That he fouled them all off was irrelevant, at least to Long.

“Early on, he told me, ‘I’ll probably take a lot of pitches during spring training until I get comfortable,’” Long said of Jeter, who is known as a first-pitch hitter. “He’s not taking those pitches anymore. That tells me he’s getting comfortable with what he’s doing and where he’s at.”

…“He’s not smothering the ball anymore,” Long said. “He’s able to get to it. He’s created a path and a lane for the barrel to get to it a lot easier. Before, a ball might be on the corner and he’d have to fight it. Now, as long as it’s on the plate, he’ll get to it.”

Yanks are on YES this afternoon at 1 p.m.

Here’s Mark Feinsand writing about Ivan Nova today in the Daily News:

Nova’s confidence is unwavering, making it difficult to tell whether he’s just pitched a great game or a ghastly one. Some mistake his attitude as that of a cocky kid, but Joe Girardi sees something else.

“I don’t see him walk around here like, ‘I belong here, I’m the No. 1 guy here,'” Girardi said. “I don’t see him short-change his work. He works extremely hard. Those are things that tell me he knows what he needs to do to be good.”

Nova is one of the guys I am really looking forward to watching this season.

The Yankees made a bit of news on Thursday when they played Jorge Posada in the field for the first time this spring. It wasn’t at catcher, but at first base, where Posada actually looked good in catching a line drive and starting a double play.

I’m glad to see the Yankees use Posada at first base, giving them another option on days when Mark Teixeira needs a rest. (Ugh, there’s that word again.) But they have yet to use Posada as a catcher this Grapefruit League season, and have indicated they have no intention of doing so. I think that’s a mistake. By giving Posada just a few reps behind the plate, they could ensure his availability as a third-string, emergency catcher during the regular season. If Russell Martin were to miss a few games on a day-to-day basis, the Yankees would then have Posada available to back up Jesus Montero (or whoever the No. 2 catcher is). This would give the Yankees more flexibility, prevent an unnecessary call-up of someone like Austin Romine, and give the proud Posada the satisfaction of knowing that he might still do some catching in 2011.

The Yankees seem to think that Posada could get hurt if he catches at all this spring. That’s always a possibility, but it seems like an awfully negative way of thinking by which to operate a team. Imagining worst case scenarios at every turn can lead to some strange managerial decision-making. It’s also an odd way of thinking for a team that was willing to put Posada behind the plate in critical postseason games just five months ago…

(more…)

Yankee single-game tickets go on sale today at 10 AM.

Once again, I can’t afford to buy more than a few upper-deck or bleacher seats, and will be relying on the kindness of friends, StubHub, and occasionally press passes to get to games in person this year. There’s not much sense in complaining about the price of tickets, or anything else in New York City, really – it is what it is, which is expensive, and either you can afford it or you can’t; if the market couldn’t bear it, they’d go down, but apparently it can. And Yankees tickets have never been what I’d call reasonably priced in my adult life, so I’m used to it. Still, I always read books and articles where people talk about just walking up to the Stadium and paying a few bucks for a ticket and heading inside, back in the day, and feel a twinge. Leave it to baseball to succeed in making me nostalgic for things I never even lived through.

Mets tickets are, for obvious reasons, much more affordable these days on the whole (plus, they have Shake Shack. I wouldn’t argue that it’s one of the absolute best burgers in the city if only because they only offer American cheese, which is pathetic, but it’s better than anything I’ve gotten at Yankee Stadium, for sure). And truly affordable are Brooklyn Cyclones games, which are actually faster to get to from my Brooklyn apartment, cost $10 for perfectly nice seats, and are lovely and relaxed experiences even though the quality of play is far from major league-ready. I have a great picture of me and Sandy, their seagull mascot, from last season but after careful deliberation I’ve decided it’s too embarrassing to post. Anyway, the point is, I’ll still get my live baseball in one way or another.

Maybe this is the year I finally set foot on Staten Island for a Staten Island Yanks game. Amazingly, though I have spent nearly three decades living in New York or close outside it, and though I have been to Queens and the Bronx hundreds of times, I’ve never made the journey to the city’s 5th borough. Cue up your Staten Island jokes.

Meanwhile, Trenton is a place that I have set foot in, but only by accident, and I vowed never to make that mistake again. But should I make an exception for Manny Banuelos, who recently received the Mo Rivera seal of approval in a major way? Maybe, maybe.

What’s your ticket situation this year?

The Yanks lost to the Phillies today. Cliff has the recap.

[Drawing by Mary Byrom]

Miguel Cabrera’s swigging-scotch-in-front-of-the-arresting-officer DUI last month was already firmly in the bad news category, but details are emerging – as details will – that make it seem even scarier. According to the Detroit News:

Before his drunken driving arrest last month, Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera threatened to “blow up” a bar that refused to serve him and then told police to shoot him, according to a police report released Wednesday that reveals new details….

…Cabrera walked into the Cowboys Bar-B-Q & Steak Co. after last call and was asked to leave, bar manager Fletcher Nail said in a statement to police.

The ballplayer ignored the manager and walked up to a table of strangers and began talking to them, said Nail.

When Nail again asked him to leave, Cabrera patted a bag on his shoulder and leaned down close to the manager’s face.

“You don’t know me,” Cabrera told him. “I will kill you. I know all of you, and I will kill all of you and blow this place up.”

The News also has video of the arrest, but I felt uncomfortable watching; it’s too embarrassing. Anyway, you don’t even know what’s really going on with a public figure lie Cabrera, but if he doesn’t have a serious problem he’s doing a great impression of someone who does, and I hope the Tigers are doing what’s best for him.

Meanwhile the Mariners recently started giving players and employees key fobs with the number of car services on them. That’s one of those good common sense sort of things that can only help, and can’t hurt, but I always wonder how much responsibility – if any – clubs have, or ought to have, for their players’ extracurricular behavior. A guy who drives his Rolls Royce drunk despite having a truck of security professionals with him is probably not going to be reasoned with.

My main concern with spring training is that nobody on the Yanks gets seriously hurt. Otherwise, I avoid watching games and I don’t follow the stories out of Florida too closely, because I don’t want to know too much. I crave the element of mystery and surprise and I want to be fresh once the season begins. There are other sports to keep me busy now–it’s hoops galore these days–and other interests, book and movies, that I’ll put aside once the regular season starts.

This is will be the ninth season for me at the Banter and, as you can tell, baseball alone, never mind the Yankees, is not enough to sustain my interest. Writing is hard, even when it is a quick blog post, and it is important for me not to become jaded and bored. Which is why I’m lucky to have a great crew of contributors as well as a cherce group of regular readers.

Here’s hoping this season turns out to be a fun one. I’m counting on it.

According to George King, Joba Chamberlain looks top notch to scouts. Good news, indeed.

A.J. Burnett had a good outing today. Chad Jennings has the skinny.

Say what you will about Peter Gammons, but I love him. There was a time, when Gammons was a regular on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, when I encouraged my children to refer to him as Uncle Peter. (My wife, incidentally, was not a fan of this.) Sure, his Boston Globe columns could be long-winded–perhaps even elitist, if a baseball writer can aspire to elitism–and there were the nagging questions about the accuracy of some of his reporting, but it never really mattered that much to me. I’m not a journalist, after all, I’m just a baseball fan, and Gammons always gave me exactly what I wanted. Heck, I even liked his guitar-nerd habit of dropping in bits about the Moody Blues or Third Eye Blind.

Anyway, like him or not, he’s got an interesting column about the Yankees over at MLB.com. In a nutshell, Jeter’s working hard, Ruben Rivera was a bust, Jesus Montero is the real deal, and Joba (gasp!) looks like the old Joba. Enjoy.

[Photo Credit: Justine Hunt/Boston Globe]

Dear Alex, please don’t break.

In the Daily News, John Harper has a piece about Alex Rodriguez.

The foul ball that nailed Francisco Cervelli’s foot earlier this week has turned into a worst-case scenario, as further tests reveal a fracture.  Cervelli will miss a minimum of four weeks, with some estimates extending to eight weeks.

Paging Jesus Montero!

Today’s game, brought to you by Cliff Corcoran and Chad Jennings.

[Photo Credit: 24-7 A Painting a Day ]

The light continues to change. The Sun is high in the sky now when I get off the subway and walk a few blocks east to my office building. People shield their eyes as they move. It is winter cold today but the spring is near.

Down in Floriday, A.J. Burnett pitched yesterday and showed off his new delivery.

It’s been an eventful offseason for the Yankees’ various relationships with Scott Boras. First he picked up Robinson Cano as a client – in time for Cano’s first really big payday. Then it was reported that Nick Swisher had switched to Boras, but that turned out not to be true (he actually went with Dan Lozano). And today Mark Teixeira told reporters that he’s dropping the man. From Marc Carig in the Star Ledger:

“Now that the contract is over with, I don’t want to be ‘Scott Boras client,'” he said. “I want to be Mark Teixeira, baseball player, helping this team win championships.”

Teixeira has contemplated a switch for more than a year, even hiring another agency to handle his off-field charitable efforts. Though their business association has ended, Teixeira said Boras will continue to collect his percentage of the first baseman’s salary.

“Scott did a great job getting me my contract,” Teixeira said. “I wanted to be in New York from the beginning, and everything that I’ve asked for has come through so far. And from here on out, there’s no reason to worry about the contract. It’s all about winning championships and helping out the community.”

Given how Alex Rodriguez’s relationship with Boras went, it seems that while Boras is clearly the most effective agent in the game for getting big money contracts, he’s not particularly sensitive to his clients’ other desires.

Now, a ton of baseball players talk about “helping out the community” and then just set up an unspectacular charitable foundation on the side and leave it at that, but the Yankees at the moment have a few players who seem to take it very seriously (most notably Sabathia, Granderson, and Swisher), and maybe Teixeira is really serious about doing a lot in that area. He’s such a carefully bland guy in interviews that’s it’s hard to get a sense of what he’s actually like, or what he really cares about – but I can’t write him off as entirely dull because on the field, he often reacts to opponents like a real red-ass. And it takes some guts to fire Scott Boras, I’d imagine. Anyway, another footnote in the Boras saga – one day, though maybe not til well after he’s retired, there’ll be a fascinating book written about that guy.

George King on the improved fielding of Jesus Montero:

[David] Robertson’s eyes widened when asked about Montero, who went 0-for-3 and is 1-for-6 in two games.

“I first saw him when I signed here and it’s amazing how much better he has gotten,” Robertson said. “He sets up good, blocks balls in the dirt and stays down. He looks good.”

…“I like Montero, I think he is going to be a big-time player,” a scout said. “I know he is big (6-foot-4, 225 pounds), but he will be fine. All he has to do is just keep on catching.”