In Favor of a Catching Competition This Spring

In 2003, Bernie Williams looked to be about done manning centerfield. He was only one year removed from a tremendous 2002 campaign, but after only playing 119 games in 2003 and with bad knees in centerfield to boot, the Yankees weren't content just letting Williams flounder around in center (his UZR was -20.2 in 2003 after -16.2 in 2002) and in the off-season they brought in Kenny Lofton as a free agent and told Williams he could fight it out with Lofton for CF and Ruben Sierra for DH. That's tough love for one of the most important Yankees of the past few decades, but it was just what Williams needed. That tough love--that competition--lit a fire under Williams. Williams would never be that pre-2003 player again, but at least in 2004 he gave the Yankees what he had given them in 2004, beat out Lofton in CF*, and, more importantly, he worked hard to win the job--and stuck around for two more years after that.

Montero will righfully have to earn it this Spring (LoHud)

The Yankees are in a similar situation with Jorge Posada. They have a very important player to their organization, a player who has probably been one of the top catchers of all-time (at least on the offensive side), a border-line Hall of Famer. But Posada's defense has gotten so bad and his hitting isn't anymore to the point where you can excuse that defensive liability just because of the hitting he provides. Having gone through the entire slate of external back-up catchers and realizing that Posada was eventually was going to turn into a pumpkin like Williams did, Brian Cashman and the Yankees organization has done a good job of stockpiling catching prospects. Jesus Montero, Austin Romine, Francisco Cervelli, Gary Sanchez, JR Murphy and others fill the Yankees organization throughout and provide themselves with an opportunity to not go out there and pay for old, mediocre players (as they did with Lofton in 2004).

But they shouldn't just hand the reigns of the DH to Posada nor the hands of the catching game to Montero, Romine, or Cervelli. After the 2007 season, the Yankees decided to hand the pitching over to a youth movement without any competition. Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes managed to win zero games in 2008 as the Yankees back-of-the-rotation starters. Now this would be fine if the Yankees could afford a rebuilding year because look at what Hughes and Kennedy did this past season--they won a combined 27 games in each of their first full years as starters. But this is the Yankees and with most of their top players on the wrong side of the baseball age, they need to field a team next year that will make the playoffs.

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Quick Hits: FanGraphs Event, Yankee Bullpen, Mets, Cervelli, CC, Granderson, and Other Baseball Thoughts

It's time to play some catch-up on the blog. A little of a lot here on a Monday. Some quick hits for you:

- The FanGraphs Live event last Saturday in Manhattan was awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed the conference and the panels were all extremely engaging. Amanda Rykoff has a great review of the whole event at The OCD Chick, and Dave Cameron and Carson Cistulli of FanGraphs both have great recaps. A few observations/conclusions from the panel:

The FanGraphs live event was awesome

• I may be a nerd (Amanda did label this a "mini-dorkapalooza")
• Ben Kabak of River Ave Blues dislikes Francisco Cervelli as much on Twitter as he does in real life (and Jay Jaffe of Pinstriped Bible dishes out some dislike as well)
• Mike Axisa of River Ave Blues argues that the strength of the AL East pushes each team to get better
• Reporting on Twitter discourages analysis and makes it more about a personal brand
• The Wall Street Journal has a great formula for their sports section: smart, funny and analytical
• The game story is slowly leaving the papers (and with it, the need for the box score as well as Tim Kurkjian wrote on ESPN)
• Bloomberg Sports has an awesome fantasy sports tool that can even show video of Jeff Francouer drawing multiple walks
• Statistics are now for a wider audience than just nerds (though Tim Marchman of SI looks at the problems with defensive stats)
• The biggest myth in sports (according to one panelists) is that the pitcher stopping his windup mid-motion has led to a lot of injuries 
• I now own a FanGraphs t-shirt
• "Accept randomness"
• It was nice to finally meet in person people like Ben and Amanda who were, until now, just Twitter avatars and bylines on blog posts. This type of thing should occur more often.

- Joel Sherman of the New York Post asked today (re: the Yankees bullpen): "Do you believe in this group?" At one point the answer would most certainly have been no, but Joba Chamberlain, David Robertson, Boone Logan and Kerry Wood have joined together to form a nice "Bridge to Mariano". The Yankees bullpen in August is 1-1 (the one loss came from Mariano Rivera) with a 1.02 ERA in 35.1 innings and has a WHIP of 0.991. Since July 2nd, they've only allowed 16% of inherited runners to score (which was a bugaboo for a while with this team as they were at 30% at that point). With Andy Pettitte coming back (forcing Dustin Moseley back to the bullpen), and Alfredo Aceves and Damaso Marte on the mend, this is looking like a pretty good group. And despite his latest glitch, Mariano Rivera is pretty great/probably the greatest ever. The Yankees are 62-0 when leading after 8.

-CC Sabathia is getting less strikeouts as David Golebiewski of FanGraphs pointed out today and Dave Cameron pointed out last week. Here's my theory: from 2005 to 2010, Sabathia's thrown more innings than anyone in baseball. Maybe he's resting his arm a bit knowing he has plenty of years left to pitch in baseball. While strikeouts are the surest way to prevent outs, groundouts are usually a good way as well and they usually require less pitches. That's probably a good thing for someone who will have over 20,000 pitches in a 6-year span. Like Girardi told Chad Jennings of LoHud: "we don't want to wear the big guy down."

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The Yankee Clipper: Gardner, Montero, Rivera, Cliff Lee and the Bullpen

Let's take a break from debating about what is a sport (or not, the dialog has been quite fascinating) to talk about the Yankees for a while, shall we? Let's head into our Yankee Clipper on this "Dog Day of August" Wednesday in New York (and, by the way, not much is actually wrong with the Yankees; they're still the best team in baseball. Deep breath and move on):

The Yanks need to find Jesus...and bring him up (Times-Union)

1. Brett the Jet has been grounded. Brett Gardner on July 4th: .319/.401/.434. Brett Gardner since July 4th: .169/.302/.213. I know I sometimes am not so objective on Brett Gardner--man crushes can do that for you (if I could clone Brett Gardner and have the second one run errands for me, I would...and the errands would get done really quickly). But he's lost his way. You can't steal bases if you can't get on base. The team has gone 19-11 in those 30 games, but Gardner hasn't been a main part of the cause with only 4 XBH in 89 ABs. He's still playing great defense and has an excellent WAR of 2.8 for the season, but you need to worry if he's hit a wall or teams are now adjusting to him better. Gardner is a slap hitter who can ill afford a large amount of Ks yet he's struck out over 30% of his official ABs since July 4th. His weighted on base average (wOBA) for August is .093 and he still hasn't walked in the month. Gardner needs to get himself straightened out--and fast (though the latter part of the wish is not a hard thing for the Speediest White Man).
2. Jesus rising? Matt at TYU says that we're stuck with Francisco Cervelli but down on the farm the Yankees are seeing their top prospect, Jesus Montero CRUSH the ball at Triple-A. Hopefully in 6 years the Wall Street Journal will be writing about how the Mariners passed on Montero like Brian Costa of WSJ wrote today about how the Texas Rangers passed on Robinson Cano. Sean at Pending Pinstripes says it's still too soon. Brien @ IIATMS defers to the Yankees management. Rebecca at This Purist Bleeds Pinstripes says it's time. Here is video proof (H/T River Ave Blues) of Montero crushing a game-winning home run two nights ago. I can agree right now not to call him up (there's no spot for him), but if Jorge Posada lands on the disabled list with his cranky shoulder (or really anyone goes on the DL), I think Montero should be in the Bronx. At the very least, he should be up in about 2 weeks when rosters expand. This is a team that has a .297 wOBA in August as Larry from Yankeeist points out (though, to be fair, he also points out how good the pitching they've faced has been). No excuse for Montero not to be a September call-up.  For now, we need to just pray for Francisco like many pray for Jesus--Montero, that is.

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The Yankee Clipper: Catcher and Designated Hitter

So far in our post-All-Star Break Yankee Clipper series we've covered the Yankees' infield and outfield so far in 2010. Now let's take a moment and look at their catchers and DHs. I felt like this went together since Jorge Posada has spent so much time at DH this season. Let's take a look at how these two groups have performed and see if the Yankees may need to make some changes before the July 31st non-waiver trade deadline:

1. Jorge Posada. If you were to give Posada's year an overall grade, what would it be? I think it would have to be someplace in the B- range. Since Posada's 6th place MVP finish in 2007 (and subsequent contract extension), the Yankees backstop has missed quite a lot of time with injuries. He played in only 51 games in 2008, 111 games in 2009, but is on pace to play in 134 this season. Posada's value is almost solely in his bat behind the plate (his catching has regressed with age) so when he has to spend a lot of time at DH, it hurts his value somewhat. So far in 2010, Posada has played 36 games at catcher, 20 at DH and 1 at 1B. Those 20 games at DH blow past his previous high of 15 in 2008. Posada's .265/.373/.464 slash line is down from last year or 2007, but some of that could be attributed to trying to play through injuries. His power numbers have suffered as well as his pace of 27 doubles, 20 HR, and 65 RBI would be one of the poorest outputs of a full season in his entire career. According to FanGraphs, Posada is crushing fastballs and hitting sliders well, but any other pitch has been getting him. Posada's home-road splits have been quite pronounced this year as he's hitting exactly 300 OPS points higher in New Yankee Stadium (which reflects last year's numbers as well when he hit 253 points higher). He's also hitting lefties at a .914 OPS while hitting righties at only .784. Still, there is tremendous value in Posada's bat being in the lineup regardless of who is pitching or the location of the game and the bet here is that the Yankees will try to keep Posada in the lineup but well-rested through DH stints. The biggest problem with this is Posada is not a good career hitter as a DH. As a catcher, he's hit .280/.381/.489 for his career--and as a DH, he's at .220/.341/.352. Some players can't adjust to just playing half the game and a catcher such as Posada who is involved in every pitch thrown would seem to be the most affected by that. And 2010 has been no different as his OPS is 116 points lower when he DHs (which he's done 20 times, the most on the Yankees). If Posada can't find a way to make himself into an effective DH, the Yankees may have some troubles in 2010 and 2011. Best Month: April .310/.394/.638 with 5 HR and 12 RBI.
2. Francisco Cervelli. "The Cisco Kid" had a tremendous start to the season but has since fallen off. He's been pretty good behind the plate and looks like he has a good rapport with the pitchers, but his bat hasn't quite been keeping up. His .266/.338/.333 line and .305 wOBA looks pretty rough after a fast start. His 30 RBIs, however, is quite impressive. His caught stealing rate has also dipped a lot. Last year he threw out an unbelievable 43% of the runners who tried to steal. This year he's at 14%--which is worse than Posada's 19%. I'm not surprised to see Cervelli struggle with the bat, however. He never showed a great bat in the minors (except a brief stint in 2008 at AA) and there was little reason to think that he suddenly would have become a great hitter in the majors. But when Cervelli woke up on May 15th, he had a .415/.483/.528 line and 14 RBI. Since May 15th, he's hit .202/.277/.250 with 16 RBI. And the last month he's been dismal with a .167/.167/.250 line and 1 RBI. The problem really becomes with Cervelli how much Posada can catch. If Jorge can squat more in the second half, then Frankie's issues at catcher don't get shown as much because of the limited amount of PAs. But if Posada were to suffer another injury or will be spending more time at DH, the Yankees may be in trouble having Cervelli playing every day. Though, when you factor in that Jose Molina was a worse hitter, the Yankees are actually improved in 2010 at the backup backstop. Best Month: April .360/.448/.400.

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The Yankee Clipper: We're Going Streaking

The Yankees have hit their soft part of their schedule and after taking 3 of 4 against the Indians, the Yankees just finished off a sweep of the Baltimore Orioles. After the bats had gone silent for a few weeks, health has come back to the Yankees and so has their Bronx Bomber persona. Those bats mixed with great pitching has allowed the Yankees to take advantage and beat up on bad teams. Let's take a look at how we got here:

1. Javy Vazquez, Curtis Granderson, and a break in Game 1. ESPN's TMI blog summarized why Javier Vazquez won and it was pretty simple: he threw first pitch strikes (73% of the time), he kept the ball down (set season-highs with 64 pitches down, 9 ground ball outs, and 52.9% of balls in play resulted in ground-balls), and he got swings and misses (27.5%, his second-highest mark this year). I know that this was "only the Orioles", but pitching is really that simple: keep the ball down, throw first pitch strikes and get swings and misses. As Mark Feinsand of The Daily News points out, the one run that Vazquez gave up was on a pitch up to Corey Patterson. The overall numbers are ugly, but since they skipped his start in early May, Vazquez has pitched in 5 games has a 2.77 ERA and has a .202/.270/.348 line against. Granderson is also out to prove people wrong by hitting lefties and he continued that movement in Game 1 by hitting a home run. As LoHud's Chad Jennings pointed out, Joba Chamberlain also bounced back nicely. And a costly error by Miguel Tejada gave the Yankees the extra runs needed to seal a 3-1 win.
2. Phil Hughes, Robinson Cano, Nick Swisher and Granderson in Game 2. I was at this game and wrote about it from there. ESPN's Buster Olney gives us more details about why Hughes won: "He held Orioles hitters to just 1-for-15 after the count got to two strikes, including 0-for-9 against his fastball. Hughes registered five of his seven strikeouts with the fastball on the night. Hughes challenged Orioles hitters with his fastball up in the zone with success. Hughes got four of his five strikeouts on the fastball on pitches in the upper third of the strike zone. Hughes went to three balls on just one hitter and to a 2-0 count on only two hitters."
3. Today was about CC Sabathia returning to form and A-Rod and Brett Gardner getting in on the power game. CC Sabathia wasn't great today, but what he did well was keep runners off base. The Yankees have been getting great pitching from AJ Burnett, Phil Hughes and Andy Pettitte but this team really took off last season when the hefty lefty was at his best. As Mike from Yankeeist writes, the Yankees made it a lot more interesting than it needed to be, especially Mariano Rivera in the 9th inning but Jay from Fack Youk points out that despite the fact that the Orioles brought the tying run to the plate it never felt like the sweep was going to get away from the Yankees. The Yankees have to be happy to see Gardner and A-Rod starting to swing the bats well again.

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The Yankee Clipper: Another Series Win In Beantown

Even though it feels like the Yankees haven't really gotten hot, they have started at an all-time pace. They won their first give series to match the 1926 squad for the best mark in team history. Coming into the series, they had won eight of their first nine series. The last time they had done that was 2003. Now, after taking two of three in Boston, the Yankees have won nine out of their first ten series. The only two Yankees teams to do that? The 1939 team (11 of 12) and the 1928 team (14 of 15). And at 21-9, the Yankees are off to one of the best 30-game starts in the Derek Jeter Era (in 1998 and 2003, the team went 23-7 to begin both seasons). Last year after 30 games the Yankees were 14-16, 5.5 games out of first, and A-Rod had just returned from the DL the game before. So this team is a little bit ahead of last year's pace. Let's talk a little bit about the series that was in Fenway Park this past weekend:

1. Mark Teixeira and A-Rod started to wake up. It was only a matter of time before the middle of the Yankees lineup got rolling. It was this time last year when A-Rod came off the DL so it's really a year since they were this cold. Now they're heating up. Tex had 3 home runs on Saturday (though the last one was off of an outfielder) and A-Rod had a .556/.615/1.000 mark for the weekend at the plate and seemed to look more comfortable at the plate. A-Rod's home run yesterday was number 586 for his career, tying Frank Robinson on the all-time home run list. ESPN New York's Andrew Marchand says this could signal more A-Bombs ahead. Moshe at TYU says they were getting plenty of consistent offense even without those guys. That was, until Robinson Cano stopped hitting in May.
2. The "Sore Four" expands. The Yankees injuries are starting to pile up. Curtis Granderson is out a month. Chan Ho Park hasn't been seen in a month. Nick Johnson is on the DL. Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera are battling issues. Jorge Posada missed a week. A-Rod missed a few games. Alfredo Aceves left Saturday's game with an injury. Robinson Cano left Friday's game with an injury. The wild card for the Yankees was always their health with a veteran team. They've gotten great contributions from guys like Francisco Cervelli and Sergio Mitre helping to fill in for others. But the Yankees need to work on getting guys healthy ASAP and the Post's Joel Sherman writes that these injuries should give the Yankees pause before committing too many more years to older players this off-season.

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The Yankee Clipper: 5 April Surprises

Another series, another series win for the New York Yankees. The Yankees had a chance to sweep this series, but lost the rubber game behind another weak outing from Javier Vazquez (and BP's Jay Jaffe does a great job of breaking down Javy's troubles so far). But they bounced back last night in the rubber game and beat the White Sox 12-3 behind another strong pitching performance from Phil Hughes and some big games from their surprise bats. Let's take a look at some of those early-season surpises so far as we turn the calendar from April to May:

1. Brett Gardner - Patience was a virtue for this gritty, gutsy outfielder. Many fans were clamoring for Johnny Damon, Matt Holliday or Jason Bay to come to the Bronx to play left but the Yankees stuck with Brett Gardner and the results have been excellent so far. And while I thought that Gardner would be fine in leftfield because of his glove (UZR of +20.8 for his career) and his speed, he's so far been showing that given enough playing time, Gardner can impress with his bat. Gardner is 6th in the American League in batting average at .342, 10th in OBP at .415, 9th in runs scored at 18, tied for 9th in wOBA at .411, and 1st in stolen bases at 11 (which leads the Majors and is great in comparison to his one caught stealing). He is now on pace for 80 steals for the season. As the New York Times writes, the most important play in Sunday's win may have been Brett Gardner's infield hit in the second inning which drove in the game's first run. As a bonus, the little guy hit a home run too. Gardner, a slow starter at all levels over his professional career, has come on strong this season with his selectivity with the bat, seeing 4.43 P/PA good for 3rd in the AL. Oh, and those who thought that Gardner should face a strict platoon to guard him against lefties are looking off so far: he's hitting .409 against lefties so far this season. The one cause of concern? Gardner's .381 BAbip may be unsustainable (even with his speed). But so far, it's been a great start for the man who replaced Johnny Damon in left...and now Curtis Granderson in center.
2. Phil Hughes - I want to repeat: my preference of Joba Chamberlain being a starter had nothing to do with Phil Hughes' ability; I really though, eventually, he'd be a solid starter...but even I didn't see this coming. Hughes is becoming everything that the Yankees thought he would when they refused to package him in a deal to get Johan Santana. And after their starts yesterday, the Yankees look somewhat justified--a place that no one thought they'd be after Hughes' dismal 2008. Well he's showed them so far. He's 3-0 so far and looked like an ace. Hughes is 2nd in the AL in ERA (1.44), 3rd in wins (3), 2nd in WHIP (.880), 1st in H/9 (3.600), 9th in K/9 (8.640), 8th in HR/9 (.360), and first--in the majors--with a .122 BA against. Although his FIP (3.13) and xFIP (4.24) show that maybe he's been the bearer of some good luck, Hughes has looked as good as he did in the bullpen last season. You hope that players take bullpen assignments like that as motivation to trust in their stuff and use their fastball to get ahead and Hughes is certainly doing just that so far in 2010.

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The Yankee Clipper: Same 'ole in Anaheim

No matter how much things change, they always seem to stay the same. The Yankees overcame their inability to beat the Angels in last year's American League Championship Series, but they still are unable to beat them in Anaheim (or is it Los Angeles?). Even last year, en route to winning the series, the Yankees dropped 2 out of 3 in California. The latest iteration was no different--a loss, followed by a win, followed by a tough loss. Let's review:

1. Javier Vazquez was not good. Listen, I'm a Javy Vazquez fan and I think he'll be fine, but this is not the start that helps me to prove that. Not even to myself anymore. How bad is it? Well consider this stat from ESPN's TMI blog: "Vazquez's ERA jumped to 9.00, matching the worst-ever April ERA by a Yankee who pitched at least 20 innings." For my friend Paul who is NOT a Javy fan, I will say this: BRUTAL! That's a horrible start. Jason @ IIATMS debates whether this is a result of a small sample size (and maybe bad luck) or time to panic. Chris at TYU defends Javy a little, saying, at the very least that he's probably not a "gutless bitch". Vazquez claims to be embarrassed by all this and Joe Girardi thinks it's mechanical. Let's hope so. At least that can be corrected.
2. What exactly happened before the Kendry Morales home run? I'm still confused. And, although some will sweep it under the rug, it was a big at-bat in a one-run game. It was runners on 1st and 2nd for Morales vs. Damaso Marte with David Robertson ready in the bullpen and Juan Rivera on deck. Girardi left in Marte. Francisco Cervelli rose from the catcher's stance like they were intentionally walking him and took ball one. Now this seemed like an odd move to me and the rest of the Twitter universe took the task of asking why the Yankee would walk someone when 3rd base was the one that was open. I guess Girardi was checking out his Twitter feed because he decided that they were going to now pitch to Morales. So Marte threw ball 2...and then ball 3. Right before the next pitch was going to be thrown, I saw Girardi signal something to Cervelli. I thought that signal was to let him know to just put Morales on base. Instead, the signal was to let Cervelli know that Morales will swing 3-0 and not to groove one over. Instead, Marte grooved one over and it was crushed out for a three run shot. A close one-run game became an easy four-run lead for the Angels and they never looked back. Girardi looked upset at the time and took all the blame for the Yankees. I know it was just one play, but for a team that prides themselves on professionalism and fundamentals, that was a big hiccup in a bad spot. The New York Times' Ben Shpigel talks about how out of character that was for Girardi.

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Yankees Over/Under: Bullpen, Bench and Coaching Staff

This week we looked at the New York Yankees Starting 9 and their Starting Rotation but now it's time to do the over/unders for their bullpen, coaches, and bench. I'm going to put out the list but I want you to chime in within the comments about where you would bet these will fall in 2010 (again, with details about those numbers in parentheses):

1. Mariano Rivera - 73 regular season innings pitched (his innings have dropped every year since 2004 but 73 was the average amount over the past 6 years)
2. Phil Hughes relief appearances - Joba Chamberlain relief appearances - 0 (so if you subtract one form the other, what will you get? For their careers, this number would be -6)
3. David Robertson - 10 K/9 (he led the league with 13 K/9 last season and has 12 K/9 over his young career)
4. Alfredo Aceves - 80.2 innings of relief (his relief total from 2009)
5. Chan Ho Park - 4.35 ERA (his career ERA)
6. Mark Melancon - 22 games (he had 13 last season)
7. Damaso Marte PA vs. LHB - Damaso Marte PA vs. RHB - 0 (will he be truly used as a lefty specialist in 2010?)
8. Randy Winn - 10 stolen bases (he's averaged 17 a season over his career)
9. Marcus Thames - 7 HR (his low for a season while in Detroit)
10. Francisco Cervelli - 101 PA (his total from last season)

And now a few non-stat related ones:

11. Nick Swisher - 0.5 appearances on the mound (he had a memorable inning in April last season)
12. Francisco Cervelli - 0.5 concussions (let's hope for under here)
13. Joe Girardi - 50 TV shots of him during 2010 looking into his infamous binder
14. Brian Cashman - 3 trades during the season
15. Rob Thomson - 7 runners thrown out at home

Put your thoughts in the comments below. I'll tally up the results and we'll see how we did in October. Thanks for playing!

Picture from the New York Times

A.J. Burnett and His Catchers

Everything that A.J. Burnett and Jose Molina do tomorrow is going to be criticized and analyzed and broken down. Why? Because Burnett and potential Hall of Fame catcher Jorge Posada did not have chemistry and Joe Girardi felt he needed a change. Let's take a look at what opposing hitters did vs. Burnett in 2009 by catcher courtesy of Baseball-Reference:



Before you jump up and down and say Francisco Cervelli should start over Jose Molina, let me remind you that 2 games is too small of a sample size. I feel like 11 games (Molina's games with Burnett) and 16 games (Posada's games with Burnett) are also too small of a sample size. But we work with what we have.

Can we determine from this that Molina is a much better catcher for Burnett than Posada? Well ever one of the slashes (BA/OBP/SLG) and, therefore the overall OPS, favors Jose Molina. The one caveat here is that the batting average of balls in play BAbip is about 22 points higher which does suggest that the opposing hitters got a bit more lucky with Posada catching.

But the glaring number for me is the strikeout to walk ratio and the strikeout rate. Burnett was much more efficient at striking out people and--almost as importantly with AJ--not walking people with Molina as his backstop.

Let's look at A.J.'s two starts vs. the Twins this season. The first game was Kevin Cash (I was surprised to see he caught that many games with Burnett) and Fransisco Cervelli and the second game was Jorge Posada:



Both games were Yankees wins where Burnett pitched into the 7th. He allowed two runs in each game, but gave up way too many hits and walks. In total he allowed 23 base runners in 13 innings. They won the games but Burnett labored too much in each (his 123 pitches on May 7th was a season-high). He needs to improve his command and keep focused, especially when he inevitably has runners on base. Maybe the issue is that he worries about them stealing too much

Let's hope that having Molina back there tomorrow night will make the difference, because while Jorge Posada is a Hall-of-Fame-caliber hitter, Molina is one of the worst hitters in the game.

Better To Be Lucky Than Good

Nick Swisher's home run hit the top of the wall and ended up bouncing over. Cano got hit with an easy double play ball and a run scored. Brian McCann had another error on a steal from Jeter and an Atlanta pitcher forgot to cover first base with Johnny Damon running. The difference in the game wasn't much more than luck and sloppy play from the Braves.

But as the Yankees have learned lately, it's better to be lucky than good.

Good signs:
-Joba pitched well and walked no one (a big F.U. to Mike Francesca's minions who think he's "ruined")
-A-Rod had a big two-run single and Tex a big RBI single
-Mariano Rivera still is Mariano Rivera

Bad signs:
-They had a perfect game going against them (by two different pitchers) through 5 innings
-They still squandered chances (at times) while the game was close
-Derek Jeter looks awful out there and Cano looks great one day a week and awful the rest of them

Overall, though, it's all good things for the Yankees. Francisco Cervelli hit his first homerun and looked so happy to do so that you really feel good for him. Mariano Rivera came up for his second career at-bat and looked pretty good swinging the bat to the humor of much of the Yankees' bench. And, finally, Angel Berroa is off this team.

I know it's one game, but it's worth enjoying it right now when times have been quite tough.

Just Like It Always Is

The Yankees failing against a no-name and succeeding against a potential Hall of Famer is nothing new. They made Pedro their daddy, they beat up Trevor Hoffman in 1998, and they never let the Oakland A's trio pitch past them in the ALDS. But they've been horrible against rookies or other pitchers they haven't really seen. My theory is that they're intelligent bunch of ballplayers who spend a lot of time reading scouting reports and guessing and when they don't guess correctly, they have a rough day.

So when I heard the prognosticators say it was really important to win on Saturday because Santana was pitching on Sunday, I knew that was ridiculous. And so it occured. They couldn't touch Fernando Nieve and they couldn't seem to miss against Johan Santana.

The key play to this game was the two out hit that Francisco Cervelli had against Johan Santana to get the Yankees going. And once he got that hit, the Yankees never looked back. Cervelli has been a pleasant surprise for this team and once again showed that he can be a good catcher as well, guiding AJ Burnett to his best game in a LONG time.

Hopefully this game will help this team break out and start winning some games. You never say they need to sweep, but with the MLB-worst Washington Nationals in town, they need to continue what they started today.

And those who were worried the Yankees can't win in this ballpark should realize that they've now won 14 of 19 and look pretty comfortable there. It wasn't the prettiest way to do it, but this was another series win for the Yanks.

Unrated It's Just "Embarassing"

Here's a series recap:

G version: We were awful. We lost every way possible (blown out, comeback fell just short, lead blown)

PG version: We played like crap. We are 0-8 against the Red Sox. We just can't beat this team. I feel like we're cursed.

PG-13 version: Shit. Fuck. Ass. RISP in the series: Game 3: 1-11, Game 2: 2-15, Game 1: 0-2. For those scoring at home that's 3-28. You can't win if you hit just over 10% with RISP. Cano 0-6, Jeter 0-4, Damon 0-4, Posada 0-2, Teixeira 0-2, Cervelli 0-2, Matusi 0-1. Only A-Rod 1-3, Melky 1-3, Swisher 1-1 got hits. And A-Rod was 0 for the rest of the series, and Swish made two horrible baserunning plays and one extremely bad defensive play.

R version: We sucked balls. No way around it. We came in as the best team in baseball and came out as a joke. There was not one player who had a good series besides maybe Phil Coke. We were undressed by the Red Sox. Big Papi looks steroids enhanced again when facing us (he doubled his homerun and curtain call totals this series). Aceves was not the answer to close the game. CC Sabathia tried to carry this team tonight but there's a reason why Pedroia was the MVP last year: he beat him.

This is why I drink.

Just embarassing. The Red Sox are a better team. But this is just insanity.