There Is No Such Thing As '07 Joba

Like many fans who adamantly believe that Joba Chamberlain was born as a relief pitcher and should stay in the bullpen forever and ever, Steve S. over at TYU looks at the one inning Joba pitched last night and sees him re-emerging as a dominating force:

The first batter he faced was Scott Sizemore, and he went 96-97-97-97 and struck him out on three swings and misses. The next batter was Gerald Laird, who managed to see 6 pitches and foul off two but struck out looking. The final batter was Adam Everett, who looked completely over matched, striking out swinging on 4 pitches. All totaled Joba threw 14 pitches and hit 98 three times during Adam Everett’s at-bat.

Scott Sizemore (OPS+ of 74 this season), Gerald Laird (35) and Adam Everett (28) - talk about a Murderer's Row! They've combined to strike out 20% of the time this year and have 14 extra base hits (two homers) in 231 plate appearances.

Questions were raised on air by Kay about the radar gun, which also seemed to have every Detroit reliever throwing somewhere between 97-101 MPH. But don’t shortchange that Tigers bullpen, it’s currently the best in Baseball and the best in the AL by a wide margin. Zumaya throwing triple-digit heat should surprise no one, he’s been doing it for years. Gameday had Joba sitting at the same 96-98 MPH with little variation pitch by pitch. It was for real, and hopefully was a sign of things to come.

Just because the Tigers' bullpen is the best in baseball doesn't mean they all throw extremely hard. The wind was blowing in from center all night long so the readings - be they from PitchFX or YES's radar run - were probably accurate in a technical sense but not indicative of how hard guys were really throwing or are likely to their next time out.

Jose Valverde usually sits around 95 and was living at 97-98. Phil Coke is typically around 92-93 was up to 95. Ditto for Boone Logan. Zumaya averages about 99 and was consistently in triple digits, running it up to 102. It was 50 degrees last night, there's no way all of these pitchers just happened to be pitching with significantly more velocity than normal. Is '06 Zumaya back too?

It was not "for real", just like it wasn't after the second game of the season. Examples of confirmation bias don't come much clearer than this. Joba struck out the side, and that's great, but he did with the wind at his back against two veterans who have never been able to hit and a rookie that has struggled to thus far.

Chamberlain is who he is now - a guy that throws about 95 (sometimes a little higher, sometimes lower), gets a lot of strikeouts but has somewhat spotty control. He's not all of a sudden going to become the pitcher he was for 24 innings one shoulder injury and three years ago, no matter how much we'd love him to.

“This is not just a stadium for baseball”

That's what Lonn Trost thinks of the New Yankee Stadium:

"This is not just a stadium for baseball," Yankees COO Lonn Trost said. "It's a stadium for college and university football."

To refresh, this is Lonn Trost, the man whose fingerprints are all over the New Stadium and who was more responsible than anyone else for designing it. Got it? Now take a look at this:

See how well the football field fits into the dimensions of the baseball configurat... wait, I'm sorry, what's that? It doesn't fit at all and the dugouts might have to be filled-in during these games just to accomodate the corners of the endzones? Just look at how the stands unnecessarily jut away from from the 50 yard lines! I like what you did there, Lonn. There's hardly a good seat in the house!

You'd think that if someone with Mr. Trost's "appreciation of the history" of the Old Yankee Stadium might have thought of this beforehand, if they truly had wanted to play college football games there. Perhaps the need popped up after the Yankees' revenue projections fell short for this year and they are taking steps to cover their behinds just in case the economic conditions don't improve.

But the fact remains that it IS a Stadium just for baseball, which explains what it was explicity fucking designed for it without taking any other events into consideration. You can try to shoehorn a football grid into it or put a stage for a concert in centerfield, but it's going to be completely awkward because baseball parks aren't meant for anything else. Just like football stadiums weren't meant to house baseball games. Again, historically, this was done out of necessity. Now it's being done out of nostalgia and greed and I'm not sure which of those is worse.

November 2010... FEEL THE EXCITEMENT!!!1!

If you watched last night's game from the beginning on YES, then you probably experienced the excruciating half inning sit-ins by Rich Ellerson and Charlie Weis. The head coaches of the Army and Notre Dame football teams were there to promote the meeting between the two powerhouses of modern college football in November 2010, verbally excrete as many cliches as possible and slowly lull anyone watching the broadcast to sleep before three outs were recorded.

I have mixed feelings about having football games played in the New Yankee Stadium to begin with. The reason that they played football there in the past was out of necessity, since there wasn't a football stadium in the area. However, now there most certainly is, and by the 2010 season, there's going to be a brand new one in the Meadowlands (where Notre Dame already has plans to play Navy that year). It's yet another example of Lon Trost & Co. making misguided, nostalgic attempts to celebrate the history of the Old Stadium. You can acknowledge the past with out reliving it, Lon. This is a brand new billion dollar baseball stadium, they can play football in the brand new billion dollar football stadium across the river.

These guest visits were another issue all together. It was little more than self-congratulatory back slapping for the Yankees and the YES Network and served no purpose to the fans who tuned in to, you know, watch a baseball game. Why distract from a sporting event that's actually unfolding right in front of our eyes? They did nothing but promote an event that isn't going to happen for 16 months and figures to be totally lopsided, unwatchably boring or both when it's finally played. Save the date, folks!

There was already a press conference about the football game. Isn't that enough? Let's be realistic, no one is making plans for the game yet. Yes, it raised the awareness. But we are going to be battered over the head with promotions for the next year and third and most people aren't going to decide until that day or possibly during that game if they are going to watch it.

Especially after the amount of innings spent ignoring the action on the field with visitors in the booth yesterday, you'd think that YES would have refrained from doing two more today. Instead we got to hear Ellerson talk about his team's practice schedule and Weis go on about how he always wanted to be a Yankee announcer in the most lifeless drone ever heard in a broadcast booth. I can't imagine why that didn't work out for you Charlie.

Enough with the guests. We just want to watch the game.

Game 75: I Wish You Wouldn't Say That

For the players, it seems, being on Sunday Night Baseball is a fairly big deal. Only once a week during the regular season does the baseball world grind to halt and showcase two teams in a nationally televised game without any others running concurrently. The ESPN banners get put up on the packed camera wells down the first and third baselines and the personalities of the Worldwide Leader in Sports roam the clubhouses. The atmosphere is at the ballpark is undoubtedly elevated

Conversely, most fans at home dread Sunday Night Baseball. It might be because they have to wait until 8PM to watch their team play and it keeps them up later than they'd like. It's probably not because it overlaps with Law and Order SVU or Extreme Makeover: Home Edition or Million Dollar Password, although that might be part of it. It doesn't matter to Yankees fans that the team gets national exposure, because if anything, there's already too much of that. I think you know where I'm going with this.

Jon Miller and Al Michaels are both smooth and competent play by play guys who do their job and set the table the Joe Morgan and John Madden, respectively. For all the fun that people have at Madden's expense, I think most can agree that that his understanding of the game of football runs far deeper than the average fan's, even if in his effort to transmit it, all the clumsy chuckles and "booms" get in the way. That has never seemed to be the case with Joe Morgan. Plenty of man hours have been dedicated to explaining how and why Morgan is a terrible baseball analyst and an even worse broadcaster. He's overly nostalgic and unabashedly anti-intellectual and it comes across crystal clear in every broadcast, but I think the real difference between the two guys comes down to the differences between the sports.

Baseball is easy to digest because it unfolds slowly in front of you, one play at a time. The average viewer doesn't need to have an RBI double to left center broken down by the TV crew in order to understand what is happening. The best broadcasters provide context when it's necessary, but otherwise step aside and let the game unfold. Each play in football, on the other hand, occurs like an explosion, while the announcers work frantically in between snaps to piece together what happened.

Since baseball is played 6 or 7 days a week, fans are much more familiar with the team than the broadcast team who is stopping by to do just one game. The context is far more important to fans and the Sunday Night Baseball crew, as it is currently composed, it's terrible at providing any sort of valuable insight as to how this game fits into the season thus far. Instead Morgan tries too often to relate what's happening to his own playing experience and the newly added Steve Phillips offers insipid big picture "insights" that are either factually incorrect or painfully obvious to any regular follower of either of the teams involved.

Yes, the broadcast is meant for a national audience, but it's at the expense of the fans of the teams on the field. I'm not Michael Kay's biggest fan, but listening to a Yankee game with him behind the mic is infinitely more enjoyable than one with the ESPN crew.

Tonight, expect Miller and Morgan to laud the Mets for signing Livan Hernandez and point to his 5-2 record and 4.05 ERA as proof that he is in the middle of a resurrection. Never mind the fact that last year he started out 6-1 with a 3.90 in Minnesota before watching his ERA balloon two runs northward, his WHIP expand to 1.667 before getting DFA'd. His numbers might look decent right now but Livan is only one start away from being the rubber-armed base hit machine he's been for the last three years of his career.

Don't expect any grand insights into Chien Ming Wang's lack of success this year aside from his inability to "keep the sinker down" and recover from his foot injury last year. Wang has taken small steps towards being not historically terrible, coming off of back to back 5 inning, 6 hit, 3 run, four strikeout outings against fellow National League East members Washington and Atlanta. Perhaps the spacious confines of Citi Field will be home to Wang's first quality start of the season.

Derek Jeter returns to the line up tonight, but Johnny Damon is still down with the flu.

Miller and Morgan aren't so much "talking heads" as "disembodied voices", but you get the idea...

There are places that I won't forget,
And I guess I'm never going back,
Guess it's information that I lack,
I've told lies without a hint or regret.

Big Papi Is En Fuego

No, I'm not talking about the fact that his average has reached a stratospheric .204 and has an OPS 30 points lower than David Eckstein.

The magic of Google Adsense brought me this gem.

/clicks link

AAAAAAAH! Papi, your beard is on fire!

But before you put that out, tell me more about what is in that snazzy-looking bottle...

Baseball star and fan favorite, David Ortiz launches Big Papi En Fuego, a new lifestyle hot sauce, which is never off season! Ortiz, a lifelong hot sauce enthusiast, was inspired to create the perfect hot sauce that was both spicy and flavorful. Big Papi En Fuego is made from a secret recipe, and while we can't give it away, the sauce does include fresh, natural ingredients such as habanera peppers and fresh lime. Big Papi En Fuego makes a great addition to marinades, cooking and cocktails. It is not just a hot sauce, but a way of life!

No... it's just a hot sauce. A hot sauce that could nevah compayah to Youk's fackin' hot sauce. Early reviews indicate it's not nearly as spicy as it used to be. Perhaps you could could use it to enhance some of Ortiz's Big Papi Salsa.

Papi's culinary empire also includes a red wine, but he's clearly got a ways to go before he attains Youk's status in the food industry.

Given his performance this year, all these red and hot items don't really fit his image from a marketing perspective. Perhaps he might want to partner with Ben and Jerry's for an ice cream. They could call it "Papi's Plunge" and have it feature sour grapes, humble pie and a sense of nostalgia. It would taste worse than vanilla but cost ten times more.

Game 10: Time To Move On

[Even if you don't feel like reading this whole post, feel free to use it as a game thread, as many of the usual suspects will be around providing the obligatory John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman jokes.]

Thanks to the heroics of the one and only Derek Sanderson Jeter last night, the Yankees come into their home opener with a winning record. The pitching match-up today squares up the 2007 & 2008 AL Cy Young winners, both of whom picked up the award with Cleveland. CC Sabathia had Cliff Lee both had poor first starts this year, but in their second appearances Sabathia shut down the Royals, while Lee continued to stumble against the Blue Jays.

In other news, Xavier Nady is scheduled for an exam on his injured elbow today, which all signs indicate lead to season ending surgery. We along with many others have been clamoring for Nick Swisher to be given the starting RF job, but it's unfortunate that is what officially precipitated it. The injury to Nady weakens the bench pretty dramatically this year and Jason from IIATMS looks into the long term implications. The Yanks still have four guys in Swisher, Gardner, Melky and Damon who could all play any OF postion if necessary, but the removal of Nady means more Melky Cabrera, which pretty much no one beside his mother is looking forward to.

-----

Most importantly, however, is that today marks the opening of the New Stadium. We gave you our impressions from the first exhibition game against the Cubs, and since then a number of other posts have been far more critical of the place. I understand these view points and of course there are some things I don't like about the place either.

Reading some of those posts, however, I felt like there was a certain sense of pride in not liking the New Stadium. Like that's what makes you a real Yankees fan. We're pretty cynical and irreverant around these parts, but forgive me if I'm the only one who is a little excited about having a beautiful brand new building to watch one of my favorite teams at. I went to a decent number of games at the Old Stadium (50+), which is probably a drop in the bucket compared to some other people, so maybe I just don't have the same connection or nostalgia associated with it.

The New Stadium isn't perfect, and it's never going to be the Old Stadium, but I think it's pretty fucking nice. Let's not forget that a lot of things that are better:

• There are more and better options for food
• The concourses in the Upper Deck are open-air
• You can see the game when you are walking around and take in a ton of different vantage points
• The big screen in CF is incredible
• It's clean, bright and well lit
• The entrance way looks like part of a museum
• The bathrooms aren't nearly as disgusting
• The bleachers have been transformed from a holding cell in CF to, in my opinon, the best part of the park all things considered
• The facade is prominently featured, and pretty beautiful
• The Bleachers Cafe is a pretty awesome place to grab a bite to eat

As New York sports fans, we've been walking the corridors and sitting in the seats of shitty, outdated Stadiums for a long time.

It's time to move on, time to get going,
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing,
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing,
It's time to move on, its time to get going.

(It's a cover version. Sorry)

[Note: We've embedded a drunken correspondent, Big Willie Style, to capture some images and the atomosphere of the game today. The best part: He's bringing an actual camera this time, so if he somehow infiltrates a luxury box again, it won't look like there was a fog machine running!]