Gaudin Returns

According to Mark Feinsand of The Daily News, Chad Gaudin, recently released by the A's, will be rejoining the Yankees today and will be active for tonight's game.

The Yankees 40 man roster is currently full, so space will have to be made for Gaudin. It's unlikely that Alfredo Aceves will be transferred to the 60 day DL just yet, unless his tests in New York today revealed something more serious. Recently acquired Shane Lindsay could be removed, or outfielder Randy Winn could be DFA'd in advance of Curtis Granderson's Friday return.

Gaudin's presence gives Joe Girardi a few more options in the suspended game today. Knowing that he'll have a fresh new arm available for game two, Girardi may manage his bullpen a bit more aggressively over the final four frames of the first game.

Like fellow relievers David Robertson and Chan Ho Park, Gaudin's ugly numbers thus far (8.83 ERA, 5.94 FIP) are misleading. His xFIP is a far more palatable 3.92. He's posted an outstanding 10.38 K/9 through 17.1 IP, a career best, and his walk rate is at a career low 2.60 per nine. He's been burned by an unsustainably high BABIP (.432) and HR/FB (22.7%), as well as a low strand rate (60.7%).

While it's unrealistic to expect his K and BB rates to stay at career bests, they won't regress nearly as much as his BABIP and HR/FB will. Gaudin is due for a nice rebound, and just as he was last year, figures to be a versatile and valuable depth acquisition.

We'll have an update on the final roster moves in today's preview.

Unsolicited Opinions On The Yankees' At Bat Music

On Friday, Mark Feinsand of the Daily News talk to scoreboard operator Mike Bonner and wrote a post about the at bat music that each Yankee comes out to. Given how much we use music to enhance and bring life to our coverage of the team, it's only appropriate that we at least touch on it here.

I'm going to reproduce Feinsand's whole list but to add some value, I've linked up each of the songs to a YouTube video and made some snarky comments.

Position Players

Derek Jeter: “Candy” - Cameo

If you only watch one of these videos, make it this one. It looks like a spoof made by Chappelle's Show.

Nick Johnson: “Party in the U.S.A.” - Miley Cyrus

By now, you know that Johnson picked the song because his daughter likes it (and she has shitty taste in music).

Mark Teixeira: “I Wanna Rock” - Twisted Sister

A solid, straight forward classic rock tune. Fits Teixeira to a "T".

Alex Rodriguez: “On to the Next One” - Jay-Z

We used this one for a preview earlier this year mostly because I was stuck for ideas and the video is in black and white. It's alright, but I really don't enjoy what Jay-Z's style has devolved into. It seems like he now ends every line with a forced inflection. He's more about rhyming sounds as opposed to earlier in his career when he had more masterful wordplay and a steady, even-keeled delivery.

Robinson Cano: “Run this Town” - Jay-Z

This one also features Rhianna, Kanye West and some real distorted electric guitar. Better tune than the one A-Rod uses but not something I'm going to put on by choice.

Curtis Granderson: “Lookin’ for the Perfect Beat” - Africa Bambaataa

An old school rap song with a video almost as unintentionally hilarious as the one Jeter uses.

Nick Swisher: “Beat Street” - Grand Master Flash

It's got that typical, choppy, Grandmaster Flash "flow" to it. I would expect Swish to have picked something like Creed or Three Doors Down based on his brotasticness, so he gets bonus points for this choice.

[Update: It has been brought to my attention by Joe from River Ave. Blues that Gardner comes up to Run Like Hell and not On The Run as Feinsand said in his post.]

Brett Gardner: “Run Like Hell” - Pink Floyd

Easily my favorite choice out of all of these. Completely appropriate given Gardner's skill set and coming out to any Pink Floyd song is good by me, even if it is off of The Wall.

Randy Winn: “Just Chill” - Jon Young

Jon Young and J. Cash are apparently the highest selling hip hop act in Central Florida!

Marcus Thames: “You’re a Jerk” - New Boyz

Yeah, Marcus? Well you're a DH.

*Posada and Francisco Cervelli both supplied songs via CD (that are latin-flavored, if I recall correctly) and neither Bonner nor Feinsand were sure what they were called.

Starting Pitchers

CC Sabathia: “Big Poppa” - Notorious B.I.G.

Most obvious choice ever?

A.J. Burnett: “I’m a Man” - Black Strobe

Yes you are, sir. And so is Mike Gundy.

Javier Vazquez: “Until the Whole World Hears” - Casting Crowns

Christian rock. Whatever floats your boat, Javy, just pitch better after it plays.

Andy Pettitte: “La Grange” - ZZ Top

Like Teixeira's choice, this one is a staple of classic rock stations nation wide. Can't really go wrong but it's not exactly original.

Phil Hughes: “King Nothing” - Metallica

Because of Metallica's dickish views on copyright law you have to sit through a 30 second commercial to watch this one. Feel like doing that? I didn't think so.

I've often thought about what my at bat or warm up music would be and the decision becomes infinitely more complicated by the fact that, as Morgan Ensberg pointed out a while back, hitters are limited to 8 seconds. That's nothing. So the question becomes not "What song is going to get you fired up?" but "What 8 second snippet from a song are you not going to get totally sick of by the end of the first homestand?". That really cuts down on the options.

To make it slightly less impossible and pointless, let's assume that you are a pitcher and you get to choose a song or portion of a song to warm up to, but it can't be longer than 5 minutes. Here's a short list of ones that I would have to try extremely hard to decide between and truncate to the appropriate length:

• The version of Soul Serenade the Allman Brothers played in honor of King Curtis back in 1971.

• Derek Trucks' solo during Desdemona at the Beacon in '03.
  
  
• The Fire Inside by Bob Seger because the simple melody in it, and the relentless bass line underneath never fail to stir me up.
  
  
• A Phish song. Punch You in the Eye? Julius?

• This Atmopshere tune because I'm a sucker for hip hop with piano and the outro is awesome.
  
  
• Feel It by Sam Cooke from the famous Live at the Harlem Square Club show.

• Or pretty much any section of this version of Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad that Derek and the Dominoes played at the Filmore East during a two night stand they did there in October of 1970:

Yours in the comments if you so choose.

How Good Is Too Good?

Good morning Fackers. Yesterday, when I first heard about the Javier Vazquez trade, I had an inescapable, reluctant sort of a feeling. I knew the trade was one that would make the Yankees a better team next year without question, but I wasn't excited about it by any stretch.

It was unfortunate to see Arodys Vizcaino get sent to Atlanta just days after he been placed in the top half of the Yankees' top 10 prospects by both FanGraphs and Baseball America, but that wasn't what was bothering me. I had no particular attachment to Mike Dunn, so his loss certainly wasn't it. You don't want to part with a homegrown switch-hitting center fielder like Melky Cabrera who is only 25 years old and has already put in four years for the Yanks, but I don't think I'm going to miss him that much either.

Who we got back wasn't the issue. I don't expect Vazquez to have a year that in any way resembles his dominance in Atlanta, but he'll go a long way towards rounding out the Yankees rotation. What happened during his previous tenure in Pinstripes doesn't bother me at all.

The Braves were looking to unload payroll and the $11.5M Vazquez was making was the next best thing to dumping Derek Lowe. Regardless of what Mark Feinsand's source told him yesterday, this trade was a salary dump to some extent and I think that's what made the deal seem so uncouth. It's not to say that it wasn't a move that made sense for both teams - the Braves had six starting pitchers and the Yankees had four center fielders - but something still feels wrong about it.

The Yankees just won the World Series and they added a pitcher who was among the four or five best in the National League last year to be their third or fourth starter. With CC Sabathia making $23.5M, A.J. Burnett $16.5, Andy Pettitte $11.5, and now Vasquez another $11.5, their top four starters will make $62.5M in 2010, or more than the A's, Pirates, Padres and Marlins spent on their entire teams last year. Sure, the Yanks' total payroll bill for next year will probably come in somewhere near $200M, but staying close to that massive, arbitrary number isn't exactly something to be proud of.

Spending a ridiculous amount of money is nothing new to the Yankees - in 2005, they paid out $85M more than their closest competitor - but it's not as much the dollar amount as it is the players. Now that the Bombers are allocating those resources efficiently, it's hard not to understand how much money $200M actually is. Throughout the middle of this decade, the Yanks were continually paying the likes of Jason Giambi, Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Jose Contreras, Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano and Hideki Matsui far more than they were worth. Now survey the current roster. It looks pretty damn lean by comparison.

I know that it's borderline irrational for a Yankees fan to feel any sort of guilt about the amount the team spends. They make a ton of money - some of which comes from me - and if they don't spend it on players, it's just going to be sucked up into a corporate vacuum, never to be seen again. The more they spend on payroll, the more enjoyable it is going to be to watch them on any given day during the season.

And perhaps that's the issue. Maybe this is just an offseason problem. As the summer moves along and the season develops, it's likely that the Yankees won't actually be as good as they are on paper right now and it won't seem as unfair that they have assembled an absolutely ridiculous collection of current and former All-Stars and future Hall of Famers. Even if they win 110 games next year, they are still going to lose at a 32% clip. Given that a 94 win team loses 42% of the time, it doesn't seem all that different over the long run - one game out of every 10.

Everyone wants their team to be awesome. But I think people want to see their team come together and exceed expectations rather than attempt to live up to impossibly high ones. Ideally, you'd like your team to be better than others by virtue of something other than their relative willingness to shell out tens of millions of dollars. Being a bona fide Goliath doesn't take away from the satisfaction of winning a World Series, but it tempers the enjoyment of every step along the way.

As it stands, the 2010 season will end in one of two ways: an expected victory or a major failure. So while the moves the Yankees have made this offseason have ensured they have a better chance to win a World Series coming into the season than they have had in quite some time, they have also guaranteed that they will have more to lose than ever before.

News And Notes From Day One

Good morning Fackers. My head is spinning already. If you didn't brave the murky rumor waters flowing from the Winter Meetings in Indianapolis yesterday, we've reduced the day's worth of rumors, lobbytalk, hearsay, near trades and actual transactions into bullet point form:

• Early yesterday afternoon, there was a rumor that the Yankees were close to acquiring both Edwin Jackson and Curtis Granderson from Detroit. Joe at RAB did a nice job of debunking that one based on the dubious source and ambiguous wording, but a similar one popped up late last night. Ken Rosenthal reported that the Yankees, Diamondbacks and Tigers were trying to orchestrate a three way deal that would have sent Granderson to the Yankees along with a couple of prospects from Arizona, Ian Kennedy and Jackson to the D-Backs and Max Scherzer, Phil Coke, Michael Dunn to Detroit. However, Joel Sherman later reported that the talks were all but dead as both the Yanks and Tigers thought their prospect cost was too high. Although apparently, as of this morning, it still might be a possibility.
  
  
• Mark Feinsand of The Daily News tweeted yesterday that the PTBNL in yesterday's Brian Bruney deal will be the Nats' top overall pick in Thursday's Rule 5 Draft. Unlike picks in the Amateur Draft, Rule 5 picks can be traded. That's how the Rangers landed Josh Hamilton two years ago. Still, as Greg Fertel at Pending Pinstripes noted yesterday, this is an uncommon move for the Yankees, as the nature of their roster doesn't easily allow them to carry a Rule 5 player all year. So perhaps they plan on flipping this pick elsewhere as part of another deal, or they may have someone specific in mind. Don't forget, the Yankees wanted to pick Joakim Soria three years ago but the Royals beat them to the punch. They'll have the pick of the litter this year.


• Also from Feinsand, apparently the Yankees did not extend the rumored $10M offer to Andy Pettitte, and "they don't intend to lowball him".
  
  
• The Yankees apparently got in contact with Kelvim Escobar's people who might pitch in Venezuela this Winter to show that he's healthy enough to pitch. Escobar has been very effective when healthy, notching a 3.60 ERA in his time in Anaheim over 658 innings but only threw 5 innings last year and didn't pitch at all in 2008 due to shoulder surgery. File him under the "high risk, high upside" group with Rich Harden, Eric Bedard, Ben Sheets and the like.


• Marc Carig of The Star Ledger tweeted that the Yankees spoke to Mark DeRosa's representatives. As Ben at RAB pointed out last week, DeRosa could be a useful supersub if the Yanks choose to use a DH by committee next year. But Mike at RAB pointed out several potential red flags with DeRosa yesterday.


• Cashman apparently also spoke to Jason Marquis' agents. Circling the Bases explains why this would be a bad idea.


• Jorge Arangure tweets that Aroldis Chapman now may sign for $20M or less. That's a price that I'm more comfortable with than what was initially rumored, but still more than I'd want to see the Yankees commit to him.

Those are some of the loose ends from yesterday. I'm sure today will bring a whole host of new "news".

The New A-Rod

Good morning, Fackers. How are we feeling today? Better than yesterday I would imagine. Not only did the Yanks win last night, but they did so in dominating fashion behind a powerful performance by CC Sabathia with a 9th inning offensive outburst for a metaphorical cherry on top.

As discussed in the recap, A-Rod continued his blistering postseason by churning the Yankees' offense (along with Melky Cabrera and Johnny Damon) to a 10-1 victory. During his typical three minute chat with the press following the game, he was asked if the hardest part of his his day has actually become explaining how he's performed so well on the field to the media. He responded:

No, I don't really talk much anymore, so I don't ever have to explain myself. And that's a good thing.

It certainly is a good thing. This change in media strategy has been a direct result of handing over the reigns to Yankee's media relations manager Jason Zillo. Instead of being gassed up by agencies like William Morris or douchebags like Guy Oseary, A-Rod has optimized his P.R. strategy for the baseball media. He doesn't try to bear his soul for other people anymore and vowed to refocus his efforts towards baseball and not becoming a global brand.

As beat writer Mark Feinsand recently said in an interview with Will Leitch:

It seems like his biggest troubles started when he started listening to people like Guy Oseary, who may know how to handle this stuff for the likes of Madonna, but has no clue what sports media is like. Lining up Alex to do a photo shoot where he kissed himself in a mirror is the perfect example. That stuff is edgy and perfect in the music/entertainment world, but this guy is a ballplayer.

It's worked wonders this year, because after the firestorm this offseason, he's been relatively invisible.

I guess it's only natural that people in the media would want to attribute his incredible postseason to his new media strategy. But my question to them would be, "Why didn't it show up during the regular season?" That's not to say Alex didn't have an excellent season - he did - it's just that it fit right in line with the other great ones he's had in the past. Why didn't his new P.R. plan lead to huge numbers then?

The reality is that people in the media are going to stories about the media. That fact that he has limited the access reporters have to him has probably taken some pressure off of him in that he no longer is trying to be something he's not. But Jason Zillo isn't taking any at bats for him. A-Rod is mashing this postseason because he's a historically great hitter and was going to have a massive run in October eventually. We've all seen him go through streaks like this at times, it just so happens that this one is occurring at exactly the right time.

What's really great about A-Rod not having to explain himself (as he said above) is that people probably wouldn't understand him anyway. He's a bit of an odd duck, as displayed by his newfound hobby of dropping in on live interviews.

Michael Kay and Ken Singleton were talking about the man himself after last night's game when he thought it would be amusing to give Michael Kay a drive by tap on the shoulder.

And from the clinching game over the Twins...

[Last image via 3:10 to Joba]

The good news is that you don't have to be a normal person to be awesome at baseball. Maybe we'd like the best players on the team to be guys you could imagine drinking a beer with but what we really want are dudes who bash clutch home runs and steal bases too. As long as they aren't somehow offensive to our sensibilities in the 30 second sound bytes we get from them, it's fine. If that means A-Rod has to keep some things behind the curtain, or in this case, the plastic tarp, please, by all means...

Morning News and Notes

Good morning Fackers. Happy Humpday. Let's get over the hill with some news and notes:

• Chad Gaudin will take Sergio Mitre's turn in the rotation and start Thursday's series opener in Toronto. As you may recall, Mitre was spinning a gem in his start last Saturday when he took an A.J. Pierzynski liner off his throwing arm in the seventh. No word on yet on when Mitre will be available again.



• It's worth mentioning that Joba Chamberlain's next start will be Friday, in the game after Gaudin's spot start. Given the latest Joba plan, I wouldn't expect Joba to go more than three or four innings Friday. Since August 1st, Gaudin has made just 6 appearances covering just 17.1 innings. So over two days the Yankees will probably need eight or nine innings out of their pen and Alfredo Aceves is really the only Yankee reliever who can go more than two innings at a time. Thankfully, the Yankees currently have a ten man bullpen due to September call-ups, so they should survive.



• Speaking of September call-ups, yesterday I wondered why Jonathan Albaladejo wasn't included in the first round of additions. Turns out he took one to the eye while playing catch the other day and is currently day-to-day. He should be up once he's back to full strength.



• In other minor league news, three Yankees have taken home some hardware. Highly touted catching prospect Austin Romine was named Florida State League (high A) Player of the Year. At AAA, Shelley Duncan was named International League MVP and Austin Jackson was named IL Rookie of the Year.



• Mark Feinsand of the Daily News tweeted that both Duncan and Jackson will be recalled later this month. Remember, as we discussed yesterday, AJax would have to be added to the currently full 40 man roster first.



• Brett Gardner took live BP yesterday for the first time since his thumb injury and could begin a minor league rehab assignment as soon as Thursday.



• Nick Swisher's home run at Camden Yards last night was his fourth in that ballpark in 2009. He also has four at Tropicana Field and three at Comerica Park. Swisher has three home runs at Yankee Stadium this year.



• Carlos Pena leads the American League with 38 home runs. He has twenty home runs on the road. Nick Swisher is approximately 24th in the AL with 24 home runs. He too has twenty home runs on the road.



• Jerry Hairston Jr took over in left field as a defensive replacement in the bottom of the seventh last night. In the eighth, he had another defensive misplay, as he let an awkward hop by him, turning a Brian Roberts single into a double. Ken Singleton, calling the game for YES, intended to describe it as an "erractic hop", but initially mispoke, calling it an "erotic hop". Funny, but not quite as good as Michael Kay's "drop a deuce" line earlier this year.



• The George Steinbrenner Yankeeography premiers tonight following the game.



• ESPN normally functions as the root of all evil. Yesterday however, they made a gracious move, agreeing to allow the Sunday September 27th game against the Red Sox, to which they have the TV rights, to begin at 1 PM rather than 8 PM to accomodate Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown. No word yet as to whether Joe Morgan and Steve Phillips plan to use the opportunity atone for being a awful announcers.

We'll be back in a bit with more for you.

Game 127: Rangers At Yankees Live Chat

Happily Heading East

It was going to be a long flight either way, but the Yankees just made the red eye to Boston a whole lot more tolerable. Even though they lost back to back games on Sunday and Monday, they won both series out West and during a stretch where the Red Sox went 4-2, they picked up a half game in the standings.

The top third of the order accounted for bascially all of the offense against Brett Anderson or otherwise last night. Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon and Mark Teixeira each scored a run and Teix drove in all three on a groundout in the first and a two run shot to left in the second. The only other Yankee hit was Nick Swisher's single in the fourth.

Chad Gaudin put together a start in place of Joba Chamberlain which resembled something Joba himself might have done. He didn't allow a run, the only hit Gaudin gave up was a single to Adam Kennedy to lead off the bottom of the first and he struck out 5 batters. However, the five walks he issued drove up his pitch count and kept him from getting the win. Two of the walks came in the 5th inning and after 90 pitches he was lifted with the bases loaded and one out in favor of Alfredo Aceves.

I prefer to think of Gaudin's start tonight as a great long relief appearance which just happened to occur at the beginning of the game. Which isn't really a bad thing when you have a bullpen that has been pitching as well as the Yankees'. With a projected pitch limit of ~85 and the tendency to walk a lot of batters, Gaudin wasn't expect to go very deep into the game. In fact, before the first pitch Mark Feinsand predicted that he'd go exactly 4 1/3 innings on Twitter.

Aceves needed only two pitches to induce an inning-ending double play from Yankee-killer Kurt Suzuki and get the Yankees out of trouble when he was summoned from the bullpen. It wasn't all smooth sailing for Alf, though. Jack Cust chipped in with this first home run since July 20th and his first RBI since 7/23 on a solo homer off of Aceves with two out in the 6th. The A's picked up another two out run in the 7th after Rajai Davis singled, stole second and scored on a single by Mark Ellis.

In all, Alf went 2 1/3 and gave up 4 of the 6 hits and the only two runs the A's scored in the game, but didn't relinquish the lead. Phil Coke came on for the final out of the 7th, Phil Hughes worked into and out of trouble in the 8th and Mo mowed them down in the 9th. It was Rivera's 32nd consecutive save converted, the longest such streak in his career.

It wasn't the crisp pitcher's duel that a final score of 3-2 sometimes indicates, but it wrapped up in just over two and a half hours nonetheless. Each of the games in the series finsihed in under three hours, a fact which wasn't that the A's are 15.5 games behind the Red Sox in the Wild Card standings. It was much appreciated by those of us who stayed up to watch the games on the East Coast.

And they ended on a high note.

Afternoon Link Round Up

The All-Star break is a lonely time for baseball news. Here are a few links for the afternoon:

Joe Posnanski isn't done lamenting the Royals trade for Yuniesky Betancourt.

Rany Jazayerli weighs in as well. As you might imagine, it's not pretty.

Not surprisingly, Keith Law also thinks this was a bad, bad deal (ESPN Insider required)

We've talked a lot about Joba's attitude, approach, and performance of late. Here's some input from Rob Neyer, Mark Feinsand, and Tyler Kepner.

On Friday, the Giants' Jonathan Sanchez threw a no-hitter against the Pads. He fell a Juan Uribe error short of a perfect game. He K'd 11, and they say Sanchez' stuff was downright dirty.

As was first rumored when the Nats visited the Yankees last month, Manny Acta was finally canned as Washington's manager. Jim Riggleman takes over as interim manager just as he did in Seattle last year. Acta didn't do too well as the Nats skipper, but I think that's just as much a reflection of the ineptitude of Washington's Front Ofice as it is Acta's managerial skills. I still say Acta will be managing the Mets no later than Opening Day next year.

Former Yankee Tony Clark has been released by the D-Backs.

The Future's Game in St. Louis had a four hour rain delay yesterday. Jesus Montero went 0 for 2 with an RBI. Manny Banuelos did not pitch.