"Send Swish" Succeeds... At Annoying The Sh*t Out Of Everyone

Hey Yankee fans! Check out the team's website this morning and tell me what the first thing you see is.

Is it a recap of last night's game, which most people who are up early on East Coast time would probably be interested in seeing? Why, no, it's yet another message from the Yankees telling you to vote Nick Swisher into the All-Star game to go along with the - not kidding - THIRTEEN other mentions of the Final Vote and TEN pictures of his face on the front page before you even have to scroll down.

We have:

1. A gaudy background design telling you to "Send Swish" and visit Yankees.com, even though you are already there.
   
   
2. A banner ad on top of the site.
   
   
3. Underneath the main picture, there is a link to this page created for the "Send Swish" campaign.
   
   
4. And a link to an article Bryan Hoch wrote about all the support Swisher is getting (with a video interview).
   
   
5. And a link to an article about Brian Cashman coercing children into stuffing the ballot box under the guise of charity work.
   
   
6. Another link to an article by Hoch on the status of the vote (Swish is in the lead!!1!). I'm sure Bryan is having a fucking blast writing all of these!
   
   
7. And a link to where you can vote under that.
   
   
8. And a contest (for two regular season tickets and an autographed ball! (/makes wanking motion)) that you could potentially have a 1:10,000,000 chance of winning if you vote for Swisher.
   
   
9. Another link to Swish's campaign headquarters.
   
   
10. On the right, there is the video with him and his surfboard that you would have to have been living in a hole not to to have seen ten times already.
    
    
11. Under that, there is a second link to the support article.
    
    
12. And a second link to the status article.
    
    
13. And yet another link to where you can vote.

This is in addition to the four or five emails the Yankees have blasted out, the shameless plug in the recap, the innumerable on-air mentions, more articles that Hoch has probably been forced to write at gunpoint, and pretty much every Yankee blog happily joining in this massive, elaborate PR circle jerk to maybe see Swisher play a couple of innings in an exhibition game over someone who is more deserving.

To be clear, it's not really the Yankees who are at fault here. They are just doing what they do best: flexing their considerable resources to gain an advantage over the competition. I'm sure the Red Sox campaign for Youk is equally exasperating. The true culprit here is the concept of the "Final Vote", which is baseball's equivalent of having a play-in game for the 64th spot in the NCAA Tournament - a stupid attention grab that means next to nothing.

Sure, all of the All-star voting is essentially a popularity contest and teams are all too happy to promote their own guys ad nauseam as soon as they have the chance, but the Final Vote takes everything that is wrong and irksome with the process and shoves it down your throat constantly for four days straight.

I get it, "Let's rally around our guy". Swisher is having an excellent year. In terms of WAR and wOBA, he trails only Robinson Cano on the team. He's never been an All-Star and since he's a corner outfielder, he's not going to get all that many chances to be one. From his perspective, the opportunity to rally the Yankees' massive fanbase around his candidacy is probably his best shot of ever being able to add the feather of playing in the Mid-Summer Classic to his cap. He seems to sincerely want it, too. But I don't care.

I'm not voting, and if I was - and I know this is tough to believe - I would vote for Kevin Youkilis (you know, the guy who is the best player among those available). He's been worth nearly a full win more than Swisher this year (with Paul Konerko, Michael and Delmon Young trailing well behind) and, as much as we hate him, deserves his third straight All-Star selection more than Swisher deserves his first. Furthermore, when push comes to shove, if the AL needs a pinch hitter in extra innings of the ASG to win homefield advantage in the World Series, I'd much rather see Youk at the plate than Swish. Wouldn't you?

New York Already One Up On Boston This Weekend

We're still about four hours away from the first pitch of game one of this weekend's series, but New York has already notched is first victory over Boston on the weekend. This morning, the annual media game was held at Fenway, with the New York writers laying a 20-3 beatdown on Boston.

Congrats go out to LoHud's Chad Jennings, the offensive star of the morning with a two run inside-the-park homer. The New York Times' Tyler Kepner hurled the first five innings, then Bryan Hoch of yankees.com/MLB Advanced Media played the role of Mo with a scoreless final frame. Friend of the blog Marc Carig had the hardest hit ball of the day, but flashed only warning track power. I've yet to see any reports on how old friend Peter Abraham did after pulling his reverse-Johnny Damon last year.

Kepner was the Times beat writer through last season, but was promoted to national columnist after shortstop Jack Curry took a buyout and joined the YES Network. No word on whether Boston will protest Kepner's eligibility.

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More links? Why not?

According to this tweet and this grainy photo, David Ortiz was grilling for students at my alma mater earlier today. I'm dubious about the picture, but if anyone should know when something is totally cooked, it's gotta be Big Papi, amIright?

After touching on the same topic twice already today, let's go for three. RAB passes along that AAA Scranton has activated catcher P.J. Pilittere, possibly indicating that Chad Moeller could be on his way up. Or since Posada is out taking earlier BP, maybe he's fine.

If you never want to think of Joe Torre in the same light ever again, read this story passed along by Deadspin's Drew Magary.

And with a tip of that to Moshe Mandel from TYU, Mystique and Aura has a post on 2008 first round pick Gerrit Cole, the one that got away.

Back with the preview in a bit.

On Jeter's Newfound Range

If you ask an average Yankee fan in the stands to rate Derek Jeter's defensive abilities, their answers would probably skew towards good or even great. He looks athletic, doesn't make a lot of errors, does the jump throw... superficially, it's the obvious conclusion. However, if you asked the typically baseball blog reader to give their opinion, they would probably end up on the opposite end of the spectrum, towards poor or even terrible. Of course, there are blog readers in the stands and casual fans who read this site, but the point being that the subject of Jeter's fielding abilities is simultaneously foreign to the masses and nearly passé to the baseball blogosphere.

Interestingly, this season, Jeter has made the crowds look wise and all of the idiots who were talking about the demise of Derek's defense (ahem, myself included), look somewhat foolish. Bryan Hoch of MLB.com recently took a deeper look into Jeter's play at shortstop this season and attempted to explain how his Ultimate Zone Rating has increased at age 35 to it's highest level since they began tracking UZR in 2002:

Thanks to a number of variables, Jeter has continued to find ways to turn back the hands of time defensively this year. He continued to follow the program outlined by Yankees strength and conditioning coach Dana Cavalea, but he has also been assisted by aggressive defensive positioning on the part of infield coach Mick Kelleher.

Better health has also been a factor, as Cashman said there was "no doubt" at times that Jeter's health inhibited him in past seasons. So has adding a Gold Glove first baseman and receptive target in Mark Teixeira.

While player's defensive performance is certain to vary from year to year, it seems less likely for someone to have a sudden improvement in their fielding in their mid-30's than it would be for them to have a career year at the plate. With defense, the outcomes are mostly binary; the play either gets made or it doesn't. With offense, there are vary degrees of success or failure a batter can attain, ranging from a double play to a home run, creating a wider gap between failure and success. Luck is also a bigger factor for hitters as they can't control where a batted ball goes to anywhere near the extend a fielder can position themselves to catch one.

There is also an inherent assumption that defense is the bastion of the young and agile. It's based on quickness, agility and reaction time, all attributes which inevitably fade with age. Production at the plate can improve with patience, power and experience, most of which players do not possess when they first enter the league.

So how is it that Jeter is enjoying this renaissance now?

Of Hoch's four points above, one stands out as being the most significant: His positioning. UZR is calculated by dividing the field into 64 zones, and tracking whether or not players get to balls in what areas of the field. If Jeter is in fact being positioned better, which David Pinto also believes, it's going to appear that his range is increased when in fact he simply doesn't have to cover as much territory as he once did. (See here for a hilarious anecdote by the legendary Repoz of BBTF.)

Teixeria's glove probably helps, but Jeter has never made many throwing errors. He is on pace for 5 this year and has averaged 6.5 per season since 2001. His arm isn't the issue. I'm sure his improved health and conditioning regiment (which was intended to improve his explosiveness and lateral agility) have helped as well.

However, it's much easier to believe that Jeter is simply in better position to field balls hit his way than it is to think the Yankees hold the secret to a rejuvenating exercise program, or that he was playing badly injured over the last 8 seasons. Which is most certainly a good thing, because defensive positioning is much easier to control than health or lateral agility.