Showing posts with label tommy bennett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tommy bennett. Show all posts

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Thursday Afternoon Linkarooski

Like seemingly everyone on the Yankees, these links are day-to-day.
A recent calculation by Forbes determined that the Yankees have the most valuable brand of any sports franchise in the world. At least internationally, I think this has more to do with this association with New York than their history as a baseball team.

I'm sure others who have traveled abroad have had the similar experiences, but I've talked to a good amount of people in counties like China and South Africa who were wearing caps with the interlocking NY and had no idea what the Yankees even were. To them, the hat stands for New York City and not the Yankees as a baseball team.

On Monday, Curtis Granderson wrote about his road to recovery - which included a case of strep throat - at Big League Stew.

Thanks to everybody who sent this one in: the NC State baseball team's media guide had a fantastic misspelling of "Wolfpack" that us Fackers were all too happy to see.

Apparently Matt Garza hasn't stopped being a complete cock between last July and now.

Still down about last night's loss? The first comment on this page should cheer you up.

Both Larry from the Yankeeist and frequent commenter Jimmy suggested the same thing this morning: moving Derek Jeter out of the lead off spot. As Matt said in the comments, it wouldn't be worth the media backlash and given how many balls Jeter has hit on the ground, particularly to short, he would be on a record setting pace for double plays this year.

So it appears that Josh Beckett is really hurt, unless putting him on the 15 day DL is just another part of the Red Sox elaborate ruse.

The Yankees are purportedly interested in Yunesky Maya, a 28 year old, right handed Cuban pitcher who has recently been unblocked after defecting nine months ago.

Ross from NYYSI discovers the seedy underbelly of Yankee Stadium's Bat Day.

Here's a puff piece from USA Today about George Steinbrenner and his contributions to the city of Tampa.

Joe Posnanski wrote a post explaining his contention that it's "just barely above possible" that Derek Jeter will break Pete Rose's hit record and then made some more predictions about which career numbers players including A-Rod, CC Sabathia and Mariano Rivera will reach.

The WSJ says that Rivera is the best Yankee pitcher of all time. I don't agree with their methodology because Mo has a distinct advantage in categories like ERA and I'm not sure how they are isolating his "impact on attendance", but it's hard to argue with their conclusion. Mo is the man.

By now you know that Hanely Ramirez was benched for jogging after a ball that he booted into left field and was back in the lineup last night after apologizing to his team. Morgan Ensberg took him to task for it, David Ortiz told him to apologize, Bert Blyleven thinks how he dealt with it in the media was the real problem, and Posnanski mined some comments from his readers who imagined what Derek Jeter would have done in that situation, such as:
Jeter wouldn’t have chased the ball. The ball would have chased Jeter.
Plenty of words have been spilled about Ramriez think already, and it's basically over, but very quickly, I think it's kind of amazing amazing that we expect athletes to give maximum effort (or at least act like they are) on every single play, and for the most part, they do. We are imperfect as humans but we are capable of trying pretty damn hard.

Theo Epstein went to a Pearl Jam concert during a Red Sox game. Wearing a disguise. No big deal, Matt did the same thing when he saw them in Hartford. Gotta find a way to deflect all the attention from the roving hoards of Fack Youk Floozies, you know?

Ryan Wilkins explored what exactly the addition of historical WAR to Baseball-Reference.com means for the future of baseball history.


Dave Cameron wonders why the respect for Ken Griffey Jr. is a one way street.

Ultimate Zone Rating just got a facelift. Over at FanGraphs, MGL lays out the updated primer and David Appelman announces the introduction of home/road splits for UZR (which unfortunately will be a small sample size minefield and probably only useful for outfielders).

Carson Cistulli's series at FanGraphs rolls on with Why Tommy Bennett Writes. It's both incredibly well-written and a veritable tour de force in one downsmanship. Here is Will Leitch's installment as well.


Ben Jacobs from THT was at the game Stephen Strasburg started against the Rochester Red Wings last night and wrote about the phenom's performance.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Links With Moose

We aren't going to devote a full countdown piece to Moose Skowron, but luckily someone put together a video that more or less does it for us.



Speaking of #14, we did a post on Curtis Granderson's choice to wear the number for the upcoming season the day of his press conference in New York that would have fit nicely into our series as well.

And speaking of Granderson, Alex Remington at Big League Stew takes a look at whether or not he can improve his performance against left handed pitchers this year.

Can you name the 45 players who appeared in at least one game for the New York Yankees during the 2009 season? I could only come up with 41 during the six minute allotment but Matt got 44 of them.

Joe from River Ave. Blues debunks the opt-repeated concept of replacing a player's production from one year to the next.

Our pal Tommy Bennett has a piece up at ESPN explaining why Chase Utley, because he didn't get caught stealing once in 2009, should have attempted to swipe more bags.

Larry from Wezen-ball keeps on doing what he does best - churning out interesting, original, interesting and exhaustive posts about baseball. Today's topic? Ranking the best stadium statues in the MLB.

Jonah Keri shares some of the ups and downs of writing a book and a fantastic anecdote about Babe Ruth, Moe Berg and a geisha house.

Rich Aurilia has openly campaigned for a minor league deal with the Mets and Yankees. Mike from RAB took a look at the pros and cons from the Yankees' perspective. Spolier alert: there aren't too many pros.

One thing Mike didn't mention: Luis Sojo is fresh out of a job as the Yanks High-A ball manager, so Aurilia might have some competition for that non-existent "old and completely useless" utility spot.

The Baseball-Reference blog continues their interesting series on final score differentials throughout the history of baseball, this time focusing on one run games.

If you're in a masochistic sort of a mood, NYaT lists off the worst case scenarios for Yankee position players.

If you've got some time on your hands, Callum from the Blue Jays blog Mop Up Duty has a post about his Cuban baseball experience bursting at the seams with pictures and videos. Highly recommended.

I still haven't seen Sugar and reading Bryan Smith's review of it at FanGraphs makes me want to see it more.

Star-Ledger beat writer Marc Carig started up a personal blog. Among the topics so far: former Major League switch-pitcher Greg Harris, the video game Bases Loaded and a brief phone interview that led to - or at least didn't prevent him from getting - an internship at the Washington Post.