Game 94: Flashing Lights

In the three years my two friends and I had our Yankees Saturday package, we were only in our seats one time when the first pitch was thrown. The trek typically began from my apartment on the Upper West Side and it's tough to get three hungover dudes up, showered, out the door, on the subway, through the turnstiles, up into the upper deck in time for a 1:00pm start. We never left before the game ended, we just had real issues with getting there on time.

But August 4th, 2007, we decided we absolutely had be seated in Section 7, Row M, seats 15-17 before Phil Hughes through his first pitch. We took it somewhat easy the night before, got up early, ate breakfast and hopped on the train by noon. We were milling around outside the stadium at 12:45 and were in line to get beers when the National Anthem came on. It was a balmy summer day, probably near 90, and I remember removing my hat and listening to the recording play as the line momentarily stood still.

Phil Hughes worked a 1-2-3 first inning and after Derek Jeter singled and Bobby Abreu drew a walk, Alex Rodriguez came to the plate looking for his 500th career home run. This was the one and only reason we had been anxious to get there early - the chance that he came to the plate in the first inning.

He had gone eight games since his last homer and each night, what stood out - as it did during Jeter's pursuit of Gehrig - were the countless camera flashes that would go off when he was at the plate. Although the electricity surrounding each at bat - both literally and figuratively - had diminished by that Saturday afternoon, there was still a palpable sense of anticipation in the stands.

It wasn't there for long, because on the first pitch off of Kyle Davies, he launched a high, hooking drive right down the left field line. A-Rod was leaning on his right side, staring at the ball through his sunglasses to see if it would stay fair, but from our perfectly positioned seats, it was already obvious that it was gone.

As Joe Posnanski beautifully detailed earlier today, the milestone home run numbers have lost much of their luster over the past 20 or so years, but it didn't feel like it to us at that point. Just by shear luck, that homer came on a Saturday home game and we had the chance to witness something that, even though it's less rare than it used to be, still doesn't happen very often.

Just under two years, ninety-nine homers and some image-shattering PED revelations later, A-Rod is on the cusp of another big, round number. He hit his first Major League homer against the Royals and his 499th, 500th and 599th against them too. He has three homers in 10 plate appearances (seven ABs) against tonight's starter, Brian Bannister. He will be facing Davies - the man who served up #500 - tomorrow and Anthony "career 2.6HR/9IP" Lerew on Sunday. Perhaps his search for 600 will drag on like the quest for 500 did, but it seems likely that he'll pull it off sometime this weekend. If he does it tonight, you can be sure it will happen under plenty of flashing lights.

As you recall, you know I love to show off,
But you never thought that I would take it this far,
What do you know? Flashing lights, lights,
What do you know? Flashing lights, lights.

Yankee Lineup:

Brett Gardner LF
Derek Jeter SS
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Jorge Posada DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Francisco Cervelli C
Colin Curtis RF

RHP A.J. Burnett

A.J. Burnett RHP

Bud “Contract Year” Black Cashes In

In case you've been concerned in regards to the whereabout of the authors of this blog, fear not, we have not died in a boating accident or absconded the with considerable fortunes accrued from maintaining this site to search for traces of the last expedition of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett in the jungles of the Amazon.

However, Matt is at a conference for work and I have been tied up with some obligations of my own during the work week that have been keeping me away from the computer. And when the weekends roll around, both of us have been trying to enjoy our respective summers to the fullest, which leaves little time for writing things on the internet. We'll be back pretty soon, but the content is going to be a little sparse for the next couple of days.

Luckily, a long time commenter who would like to be identified simply as "Marmaduke Ramirez Washington" was kind enough to submit a guest post. It's not about the Yankees, but I think you'll still enjoy it. Take it away, 'Duke:

Following in the steps Vernon Wells, Kevin Brown and every other player that happened to have the best season of their life in their contract year, Bud Black received a 3 year extension to manage the San Diego Padres on Monday. After 2 years of leading his team to winning percentages of .389 and .463, Black has the Padres 17 games over .500 and in first place in the NL West.

Obviously he is putting a lot more effort into his managerial duties this year as opposed to the 2 previous seasons. The question is, “Why didn’t he try harder to make San Diego a winning franchise in 2008 and 2009?” Some baseball insiders think that Black saw a wide open free agent market for managers during the 2010 off-season prompting him to take his position as a manager much more seriously this year.

While not confirmed, rumors have been surfacing that Black took courses in “Advanced Statistics 101” and “Manage a Winning Sports Franchise on a Shoestring Budget 1a and 1b” at San Diego’s Mesa College during the winter. Other sources indicate that he attended a National League managers' convention during the offseason, which included a two day seminar on the double switch, because there’s obviously much more to it than checking who recently batted, moving the new pitcher to that spot in the order while inserting a new position player into the previous pitcher’s spot in the order.

One unemployed manager who wishes to remain anonymous is also questioning whether or not Black is taking performance enhancing drugs to gain an edge over other managers in the NL West. “How many 53 year old mangers have taken a team that has perpetually been in the bottom of the National League under his own watch and now, all of a sudden, they have the best record in the league? I’m telling you, that kind of improvement out of nowhere can only be the results of using copious amounts of PEDs - HGH, hGC, Adderall, Ritalin, whatever it is.”

He also added, “Have you seen the size of his head?” [Ed. note: The source may have been confusing Black with the previous Padres, and current Giants manager Bruce Bochy who reportedly wears a size 8 ¾ hat.]

Some people inside the game feel that Black has finally come into his own as a manager after years of limited success and is really stepping it up when the money is on the line. But is there more to his success than meets the eye?

The Ethics Of Adderall

Last night on 60 Minutes, they had a segment about the amphetamine Adderall. It's a drug that is typically prescribed for people with ADHD or other attention disorders but is commonly used by college students to study and do schoolwork along with other people looking to keep themselves focused on any number of tasks. The reason I mention it here is that the debate about it is incredibly similar to the one about performance enhancing drugs in sports.

One of the members of a panel of students from the University of Kentucky assembled by the show said:

Everybody's trying to get an edge. And I mean, and if you can take a pill that will help you study all night to get that grade you need, I mean, a lotta people don't see why they wouldn't do it.

As was the case when PEDs were first being used by athletes, there is some gray area in regards to their legality (it's much closer to black and white now). Adderall is a legal, but people often obtain the pills from others who have prescriptions, which is not. Alan DeSantis, a communications professor at UK explains:

About four percent of our college campus has, actually, legal prescriptions. But what we have found is that while they may get 30 doses, they very rarely would ever take a dose everyday. Which means, at the end of the month, there is always anywhere from 10 to 20 surplus pills left over. And these are the surplus pills that are doled out.

Baseball might have its own problem with drugs like Ritalin and Adderall. As a result of the Mitchell Report, we know that in 2008, there was a 7.6% increase in the number of players with prescriptions for attention-boosting drugs, which Newsweek attributed to baseball's ban on other amphetamines like greenies. Some of those are likely legitimate cases, but given the sharp increase, it's probable that a significant number of players are taking the drug who do not have diagnoses that would hold up under close scrutiny.

In addition to the possibility of addiction, Adderall carries health risks consistent with other amphetamines, especially when taken in large doses. Like steroids or HGH, those who are unwilling to take those gambles don't reap the benefits drug can provide.

Another one of the students on the panel offered an objection to the use of Adderall similar to what we've heard time and time again from opponents of PED usage in sports:

I feel that it is an unfair advantage. If the person next to me that has the exact same schedule takes an Adderall they can stay up the entire night knowing the material and come in and make a grade better than me.

I mean, it is somewhat tempting but at the same time I'm just so proud that I've come this far and I know when I look at my grades that it is purely by my own ability.

Students aren't in direct competition with each other to the extent that athletes are, but those breaking the law by taking other people's pills (or those bending them by faking symptoms to get their own prescriptions) are certainly gaining an unfair advantage.

As medical technology evolves, we are seeing more and more drugs that can make our minds function more efficiently and our bodies stronger. Like anything else, these carry their own risks and the people willing to mortgage their future health are going to be able to gain and edge and cut corners now. Is that inherently fair? Probably not, but there aren't immediate rewards for taking the high road and it's extremely difficult to prevent people from taking the easy way out.

Setting aside the legalities for a second, is there anything morally wrong with taking a drug that makes your brain more potent? Wouldn't you want the option of taking something that makes you ostensibly smarter? According the the show, Adderall is popular among truck drivers because it helps them stay more alert at the wheel, which could potentially save lives. If people can use it without forming an addiction or even a habit, what's the problem with it?

The ethics of this issue are awfully fuzzy, and they promise to become more complicated as drugs become more effective. I'm somewhat of a Libertarian when it comes to drugs, so I think people should be able to make their own choices in regards to the substances they choose to use. But I'm sure your mileage will vary.

Foggy Morning Links

Mornin' Fackers. Are you a little hazy from having burnt the "midnight oil" like Thor last night? Hopefully this small batch of heady links will rouse you from your herbally-induced malaise.

Curtis Granderson wrote about adapting to New York City living - off the field - over at Big League Stew. That's him at Target on the right. Any man who has ever shopped for bedding at a big box retailer has sported the same look on their face.

The Wezen-Ball Tater Trot Tracker has gone mainstream. It got linked by the excellent non-sports blog The Awl, has its own website and is now selling t-shirts whereby you can espouse your personal home run trot philosophy. I'm more of a "swing hard, run hard" kind of a guy.

Mike Fast at the Hardball Times looked at the difference in velocity between pitchers throwing from the windup and the stretch and found that there almost isn't one. Tango thinks that although the velocity might be comparable, pitching from the stretch could be an more inherently stressful motion. Over the winter, we wondered if Javy Vazquez might lose a little something from the stretch since he pitches poorly with runners on base. When I get some time, I will try to look at the data and see if I can find anything of interest.

Jonah Keri made his second appearance on the BS Report with Bill Simmons. I haven't listened to it yet, but it's going to be hard to top the first one wherein he singlehandedly converted Simmons to sabermetrics (only a slight exaggeration).

More podcasting: a new version of FanGraphs audio is up.

"Pardon my language, but f**k the Yankees."

Unlike every member of the Boston media, Patrick Sullivan took a look at the state of the Red Sox from a rational perspective. It's not all doom and gloom, but it ain't exactly cupcakes and ponies, either. Whether or not their first 14 games are indicative of how good they are or not, they've dug themselves a significant hole.

Further proof that Johnny Damon is a 6 year old boy in a 36 year old man's body: he's growing a mohawk.

Craig Calcaterra, who was at the forefront of the "NL Pitcher tests positive for PEDs" fracus yesterday notes that 10 of the last 16 PED suspensions have been handed down to pitchers and wonders while it's still the sluggers who are the primary targets of public shame.

You probably saw this yesterday somewhere else, but it's still worth noting that CC Sabathia stopped by his hometown and attended a Little League game at a field he helped renovate.

The first batch of UZR ratings are in. Proceed with small sample size freak outs... ZOMG Johnny Damon is now the greatest left fielder EVAR!

It might be a little slow around here today, but check back this later afternoon. If nothing else, we'll have the game preview for you this evening.

"Let's Move On"

Yesterday, I dropped the sentence above at the very end of the Manny and Ortiz post. It was met with some friendly disagreement in the comments so I just wanted to take a moment to clarify the point.

The overriding sentiment from the commenters was that the Sox fans had their fun with all the steroid controversy surrounding the Yankees and now it's time to give it back to them.

Sox fans were merciless with Jason Giambi until the day he left, no doubt. They got various steroids chants going for Andy Pettitte on the heels of the Mitchell Report, but those have largely subsided. They were anxious to point out that they had the "clean" years of Roger Clemens' career. But let's see how aggressive with the "You-Took-Ster-Oids" chants they are next time A-Rod comes to Fenway. Like any other fanbase Red Sox Nation has it's fair share of dickheads, but most people with a reasonable amount of frontal lobe activity are going to realize they are now the pot calling the kettle black. If any of the fackin' Sullies and Murphs do start to get mouthy, Yanks fans can counter with "So-Did-Pa-Pi". What are we going to do beyond that?

I'd be lying if I said there wasn't an element of personal satisfaction and Soxenfreude involved in all of this. There more certainly is. Aside from the Yankees, it's the most central theme of this blog, for fuck's sake. But any of the idiots who were foolish enough to point the finger at the rest of the league, and really thought they were going to skate away with no stars on the Red Sox being implicated in PED use, and thought that 2004 was a gift from God, pure as the driven snow, just took a shot to the solar plexus. And that's good enough for me.

This news doesn't change what happened in 2004 from our eyes, though. The '04 roster of the Yankees included A-Rod, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi and almost certainly some other guys who haven't been outed yet. Their cheaters were a microscopic amount better (or just luckier) than our cheaters.

What we are heading towards is a realization that almost nothing is free from the stain of PEDs, one player and subsequently one fanbase at a time. Very few individual accomplishments and absolutely no Championships in say, the last 15-20 years or so are going to above reproach.

Like always, the Yankees are at the forefront of this, like they are in almost every aspect of baseball. We as Yankee fans are again ahead of the curve. Whether you like dragging people into the mud with you is a matter of personal preference, but it don't get a whole lot out of it.

It's Cool Guys, Manny Was Just Trying To Get Pregnant

From ESPN:

However, two sources told ESPN's T.J. Quinn and Mark Fainaru-Wada that the drug used by Ramirez is HCG -- human chorionic gonadotropin. HCG is a women's fertility drug typically used by steroid users to restart their body's natural testosterone production as they come off a steroid cycle. It is similar to Clomid, the drug Bonds, Giambi and others used as clients of BALCO.

The Big G: A Retrospective

Now that Jason Giambi has signed a deal with his former team, the Oakland A's, worth slighty less ($4.5M) than his $5M buyout from the Yankees, the time has come to evaluate The Big G's tenure in pinstripes. Being a Red Sox fan, Brendan has voiced his dislike of Giambi and understandably so, considering we named this blog after our dislike of his obverse on the Sox. Up until the 2008 season, I really didn't know much about him, aside from the fact that he had a great set of initials. To me, he was the slow-footed, hard-hitting first baseman, with an intimidating left handed stance and a great eye.

The Yankees signed J. Gilbert Giambi coming off of back to back incredible offensive seasons playing in a pitchers ballpark in Oakland, finishing 1st and 2nd in MVP voting in 2000 & 2001 respectively. He put up OPS+es of 187 & 198 in the greatest offensive era of all time (league average OPS+ in any given season is always 100). It wasn't quite Manny Ramirez money (8yrs/$160M), but the 7 year, $120M deal he signed in 2002 represented what the Yankees thought was a commitment to a franchise cornerstone type of player.

Unfortunately, that's not what they got. Despite the looming short porch at Yankee Stadium helping him to 81 HRs in his first two seasons in pinstripes, Giambi never amassed the the all around offensive numbers he did with Oakland. His highest OPS+ with the Yankees was 171 in 2002 and the only other time he breached 150 was in 2005 with 161. In 2004 and 2007, injuries cut his seasons in half and in the games he did play in, his production was far below his career norms.

Regrettably, his most memorable moment as a Yankee was probably the press conference where he responded to the leaked BALCO testimony, during which he issued an (understandably) intentionally vague apology for using PEDs. This, of course, transcends the incident itself and casts a shadow upon every aspect of Giambi's shortcomings in his Yankees career.

The drop off in production from Oakland to the Yankees? Steroids. Injuries to a traditionally durable player? HGH. The benign tumor he had to have removed? Clearly a result of all that juicin'...

The problem with the performance enhancing drug stain on Major League Baseball is all the collateral damage it has caused. There are players who have used and not been caught and there are probably players that have been accused who have never tried to gain that edge. Who knows how much of Giambi's downfall was really precipitated by the corners he cut?

He was already 31 years old when he signed with the Yankees, and in hindsight it looks pretty damn ridiculous to pay a one dimensional player that kind of money at that stage of his career (especially in 2002 dollars). But at that point, Baseball was looking at player's decline phases (or lack thereof) through testosterone-colored lenses.

Shortly before the golden thong "story", but slightly after he grew the State Trooper Giambi 'stache, you could have told me he did anything absolutely anything during the offseason and I would have believed you. "Oh, yeah, he's the bassist for this sick death metal band"... Awesome! Have you seen them live? "My uncle shared a guide hunting Asian Elk with him in Mongolia"... Wow, did he get his autograph? "Rumor has it he dropped in during a huge swell out at Mavericks". No fucking way... Well, he is from California, right?

As a fan, you really don't know much about the players who you root for. I've never met anyone on the current Yankees roster, so I have to go on subtle indications of what kind of person they are. Besides their performance, which is first and foremost, you judge them based things like their body language, their minute long interviews with Kim Jones, how they interact with their teammates or whether or not they chat up opposing players on the field.

Around the time when he narrowly missed the All-Star game last year via the "Final Vote", I found out his personal motto was "Party like a rock star, hammer like a porno star and rake like an All-Star", the first part of which was affirmed by this picture, snapped during the All-Star break in his year-round hometown of Las Vegas.

But more interestingly, this season Peter Abraham shared a few stories about Giambi that really changed my perception of him, like this one:

Heard a great story today. After the rookies dressed up in their Village People outfits on Saturday and went back to the hotel, Jason Giambi invited them all to the hotel bar. After a few drinks, he paid for a bus to take all the rookies, a few other players, some staff members, assorted friends and a security guard to the Capital Grille for dinner. The Big G hosted a dinner for about 25 people, including the bus driver who he insisted join the group. He paid for the whole thing and dropped a huge tip on the wait staff.

On the way back to the hotel, Jason told the kids that he wished them a long and happy career and to always watch out for the rookies on their team.

Giambi told the other players he didn’t want any publicity for what he did. Tough break, Jason. People should know you’re a good dude.

Derek Jeter is the one and only captain of the Yankees, so you never heard about The Big G's leadership skills. I don't remember reading all that much about him as a "clubhouse presence" (probably because he never won a World Series with the team). Amazingly, the guy who made a tacit admission of using steroids, and underperformed his enormous contract ended up flying under the radar to some extent.

This seasons' emergence of the 'stache, his 32 homers in 2008 (including this pinch hit, two out, walk off home run against the Jays) all re-endeared him to the fans. He left the Yankees under the cover of a tumultuous flurry of offseason spending and slipped out the back door as quietly as a guy who didn't really live up to a $120M contract possibly could have.

I'll leave you with another quote from Mr. Abraham...

I wish I could tell you some of the great lines Giambi has had over the years but I’d get fired in a minute. Suffice it to say, he’s one of the few people I’ve ever met who can use a certain word as a noun, adjective, adverb and verb, sometimes all in the same sentence.

Good luck to Jason. He has some ups and down in pinstripes but he was never boring.