Come And Sit Down, I Made You Some Delicious Link Stew

After a stretch of 16 games during which the Yankees wen 13-3, we've come to another off night. As Matt pointed out this morning, summer is fading fast and the season is somehow already 3/4 over. But we've still got two and a half weeks 'til Labor Day and are sitting on the precipice of a series with the Red Sox that could leave the Yanks anywhere between 3.5 and 10.5 games up in the division with 38 to play.

The Sawx are in action tonight as Jon Lester faces Brett Cecil at the Rogers Centre, but unless you are within broadcast area of NESN or TSN, or subscribe to MLB.tv, you are out of luck.

If you are in the Hartford area and happen to like shitty music, you might run into some of the Yankees at the Creed concert at The Meadows Comcast Center New England Dodge Music Center The Meadows (once again).

If you elect to stay home, you can catch Mark Teixeira on the Late Night Show with David Letterman giving an outdoor batting demonstration. (h/t to PeteAbe on both of those)

A little while back we looked at Derek Jeter's defensive renaissance and surmised that of all the possible reasons he was a better fielder this year, his improved defensive positioning was likely the most important. Yesterday, Sweeny Murti of WFAN talked to first base coach Mick Kelleher and got some sound bytes concerning the adjustments he made to not only the Captain, but Cano as well. It's certainly worth a read/listen.

River Ave Blues points us to an E:60 segment on the Yankees' ambidextrous pitcher Pat Venditte (he has one glove that fits both hands, in case you were wondering). The Yanks drafted him in the 20th round of the '08 draft and he's yet to reach a level of minor league baseball he hasn't dominated. Even if it's just a Rudy-style moment, how great would it be if he got to the Big Leagues at some point?

David Robertson has the highest strikeout per 9 IP ratio of any reliever in the big leagues at 13.2. Marc Carig takes a look at how he's been pulling it off. I like Robertson, but he's been used almost exclusively in low leverage innings until recently, so we'll have to see if he's the next Edwar Ramirez, who saw his strikeout ratios fall as the league adjusted to him, or someone who can contribute in the long run.

Ken Davidoff talks with the man who invented UZR.

Football:

In light of the fact that one of the 10 trending topics on Twitter two days ago was "F-A-R-V-E", Joe Posnanski jokingly hypothesizes that perhaps Brett is really just on a quest to get people to spell his name right.

Plaxico Burress is going to jail for two years. I'm not sure if it's an "American tragedy", but it sucked to be a Giants fan when it happened. This is from the beginning of April, but it will do for now as well.

NYC:

As someone who used to live a block away from Central Park, I find this to be pretty sad. I'm not going to cry about it like the one lady in the article, though.

Here's an interactive graph of every homicide in the City by location since 2003. Over 6 years 3,488 doesn't really seem like that many, does it?

Other:

I'm not a MMA fan by any stretch, but I'm kind of fascinated by Fedor Emelianenko. At Slate, Tim Marchman talks about how his absence from the UFC might be the one thing that keeps the sport out of the big time. Money quote: "UFC may be to mixed martial arts what MLB is to baseball—but Albert Pujols doesn't play in Japan". If you've got some time on your hands, here's the first part of an interesting documentary on him. It'd be a lot better if Jay Glazer wasn't so annoying and the phrase "Baddest Man on the Planet" wasn't said 150 times, though.

Joba Attending The Ian Kennedy School Of Media Relations

Yes, I just made fun of Ken Davidoff's column, but if you can get past the "OMG" in the first sentence, he's making a good overarching point. Here's what Joba said after his performance last night (emphasis mine):

"It's a win at the end of the day," Chamberlain told reporters. "I didn't throw well at all, but at the end of the day, 10 to 8, the Yankees win. There's really not much to be mad about.

>8

"I did a good job today [of attacking hitters], I felt like," he said. "They're great hitters. I threw good pitches and they put good swings on it. They've been doing it all year. They're going to continue to do it.

(Until Alfredo Aceves comes into the game, of course...)


Yes, a win is always the bottom line, but there's "not much" to be mad about? How about your shitty performance coming the day after a 12 inning game which had obviously taxed the bullpen? What about being staked to a 4-0 lead and pissing it away? Perhaps the fact that you needed 86 pitches to get 11 outs? No one else on the Yankees has anything to be mad about because they put together a heroic effort to save your ass after you were already in the showers. But you? You should be a little ticked off.


Now here's what Ian Kennedy said last August 8th after getting blasted by the Angels two days before he was optioned back to AAA:

"I felt like I made some good pitches," he said. "I'm not too upset about it. What was it, a bunch of singles and three doubles? I'm just not real upset about it. I'm just going to move on and I've already done that."

As fans, we are disappointed when a starting pitcher has a poor outing, so the natural inclination would be to want the players to be unhappy with themselves as well. We want them to take responsibility for their mistakes or at least acknowledge that they messed up. There's no sign of any of that in either of these snippets.

Mariano Rivera is constantly lauded for his "short memory" and how he doesn't let one bad performance negatively impact his next one. The difference is that Rivera faces the media after a blown save or a loss and owns up to his poorer efforts.

Is it Joba's attitude that's keeping him from turning in quality starts? Is it like a 12-Step Program where you first have to admit that you have a problem before you can address it? I don't know, but his quotes certainly aren't good signs.

I still don't think he's boring to watch. But frustrating? You better believe it.

Like, No, SRSLY!1!!!

WTF?

Morning Mariano Roundup

I said my piece in last night's game recap, now let's hear what others are saying about Rivera's accomplishment on this Monday Mo'ning.

-----

Shysterball: Mariano Rivera got his 500th save. More impressive: he drew a bases-loaded walk, giving him his first career RBI in 15 seasons. Francisco Rodriguez gave it up, which in some cosmic way illustrates the vast gulf between those two pitchers in my mind. How do you walk Mariano Rivera? Nerves is all I can think, and you can bet your ass that if the situation was reversed, Rivera would never have walked Rodriguez, because Rivera's body temperature runs at a constant 57 degrees.

-----

PeteAbe: If you’ll permit me a personal aside, I’ve been doing this job since I was 17 and Mariano is the best athlete I have covered. He is the model of professionalism in how he approaches every aspect of his job, how he treats his teammates and how he treats those around the team, including reporters. [He's got some audio from the postgame as well].

-----

Emma Span (From Bronx Banter): Rivera closed out the game afterwards with a minimum of fuss for his 500th save, and while I think most everyone reading the Banter would agree that the save is a deeply flawed statistic, this is really just another opportunity to reflect on how freakishly awesome Mariano has been, is now, and hopefully will continue to be - for at least a while longer. You can’t really overhype Mo, and that’s saying something.

-----

David Pinto (As it was happening): If Rivera converts this save, he’ll earn his 110th long save, a save of more than one inning. That will double the next closest total from 1996 on, 55 by Keith Foulke.

-----

She-Fan: After he notched the final out, there was no fist pumping, no theatrics, just his customary classy, humble demeanor. His teammates gathered around to congratulate him, and I sat in my living room sobbing like a sentimental fool.

-----

Tyler Kepner: There was something poetic in the strange walk Mariano Rivera drew with the bases loaded in the top of the ninth inning on Sunday at Citi Field. It made the score Yankees 4, Mets 2 – the same score as it was in Flushing on Oct. 26, 2000, the fifth and final game of the World Series.

That was the last time Rivera closed out a championship, the last time he allowed himself to show much emotion after a victory. Rivera views everything through the prism of the team. Like Derek Jeter, part of his greatness is in his rigidly simplistic view of his craft. He never complicates anything.

-----

Ben K. (From River Ave. Blues): On Friday, he had just his second career at-bat, and he nearly managed to knock in a few with a line drive. Today, he was more patient. He saw seven pitches from K-Rod — including one foul ball — and the Yanks’ Hall of Fame closer worked out a bases loaded walk. It would be his first RBI of his career, and the timing — coming on the same night as his 500th save — could not be better.

-----

Joel Sherman: "I didn't expect any of this," Rivera said afterward.

How could anyone expect it? He barely made the team in 1996. But slowly -- with one success after another -- he gained then manager Joe Torre's trust, and moved from mop-up to long man to main set-up guy to Wetteland's fill on that May night.

-----

Ken Davidoff: Rivera's career, at a job in which the shelf life of most pitchers is a few years, has been remarkable. The milestone reminds us. Rivera's overall performance makes us look silly for questioning whether he was done.

Diminished? A little, at age 39. Done? Not even close.

These Aren't The Washington Generals

The Nationals are a bad team. I think we can all agree on that. Being 30 games under .500 at this point in the season puts them on pace to lose roughly 120 games. That is mind-bogginglingly awful. But it doesn't mean that anything less than a sweep against them is a disgrace.

Beat writers don't play the "sweep or die" card very often, but they have in spades for this series.

Ken Davidoff:

Big-picture usually dominates this column. No game, or series, exists in a vacuum - at least, before September. But this week at Yankee Stadium, we're tossing the big picture in the garbage.

The Nationals are so horrible that a Yankees loss to them is virtually inexcusable.

Joel Sherman:

I try hard never to talk about must wins unless games truly are must wins or to apply weighty proportions to games in June. However, I will say this: The Yankees can't just win a series against Washington starting tomorrow. Anything less than a sweep is abject failure.

Pete Abe:

It’s tough to say the Yankees need to sweep. The Nats do figure to show up, after all. But winning two out of three won’t be satisfactory against this team.

In 21 series this year, the Nationals have "only" been swept seven times. Not doing something that only one out of three teams that has faced them this year have been able to do would be an "abject failure"? Remember when the Pirates top prospects lost to Manatee Community College? It's still baseball, guys. I understand the temptation to demand a sweep, but as last night goes to show, it only takes one bad pitch (especially in the New Yankee Stadium) to turn a game around.

After last night's loss, the Nationals' record is 16-46. A wining percentage of .258 is a lot closer to .333 (1-2) than it is to .000 (0-3). As you might expect is the case with any historically terrible team, their Pythagorean record (23-39, .370) indicates that they have been somewhat unlucky in their run distribution, meaning that their current wining percentage sells them a little short.

Tonight the Nats send their best pitcher, lefty John Lannan to face Chien Ming Wang. Even if Wang turns in by far his best performance of the year, the Yanks could very easily lose.

If the Yankees won two out of every three games, they would finish with 108 wins. Taking two out of three in this series is not a failure... it would improve their winning percentage on the year. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. As CC said after the he notched his sixth win of the season last night, "This is the big leagues, you can't take anyone lightly."