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.

Angel Pagan hit and inside the park homer and started a triple play yesterday. And the Mets still lost.

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.

Bronx Native Randy Ruiz has been released by the Blue Jays and is heading straight for Japan.

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.

Humpday Linkaround

This links came up a little short, kind of like Nick Johnson trying to leg out a double last night:

Ben from River Ave. Blues joined Cliff and Alex from Bronx Banter to do a video preview of the 2009 season. The first part (about pitching) is here, the second one (focusing on the offense) is here and the final installment (concerning the competition) is here.

Two of the characters from that series (Cliff and Ben) join Steve Lombardi from Was Watching and Justin Sablich of the New York Times for part one of a written preview over on their dot com.

Good news: Mark Teixeira is scheduled to take batting practice today.

Mike over at The Yankeeist has rounded up the Spring Training stats for both hitters and pitchers. Nothing to get worked up about - we'll have plenty of time to make a big deal out of small sample sizes when the regular season starts - just something interesting to scan over.

Joe from River Ave. Blues cranked out some excellent pieces yesterday including this one on the delicate balance the front office has to find between winning now, winning later and appeasing the media and this one that looks at the back up plans for each position.

The Yanks are set to spend 16 times more than the Blue Jays on their starting rotation this year. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, but that's like, a lot.

I should have done this a while ago, but if you'd like to thank Tom Tango for the excellent sabermetric work he's done over the years, head over here and fill out a playing time forecast for the Yanks. Somehow, they are pretty underrepresented at this point and it doesn't take long to do. If you feel like you are familiar enough with another team, do one for them too.

Add Mike Cameron to the list of Red Sox who is inahguably nawt appreciated for his true talents. When will the rest of the country finally acknowledge the players in Boston for their incredible production and work ethic? It's borderline criminal!

Joe Posnanski is asking for help in selecting players for the Bad Baseball Hall of Fame and the nominations are rolling in. The cut offs are 462 1/3 IP for pitchers and 843 PAs for hitters. Any Yankees come to mind?

Ross from NYY Stadium Insider has the scoop on an iPhone app called Venuing that will have features specially designed for sporting event and concert experiences. It will be live in Yankee Stadium, Fenway, Citi Field and Citizens Bank Park when each of them opens this season.

Time Warner is now offering a package that will allow you to watch all of the 127 games that YES carries on your computer, provided you are in the Yanks' market. I'm sure there are some select circumstances where this would be convenient (you don't have cable, but do have high speed internet, etc), but for most of us it doesn't apply. It does, however, illustrate why MLB.tv is blacked out within local areas - because cable companies want the opportunity to charge people themselves. If there was one price people could pay to watch any game, anywhere, these subscription services would be a lot more popular. Not that I'm going to hold my breath for it...

Will Leitch did an excellent review of the movie Fantasyland for New York Magazine's website. I hadn't heard much about the movie before but I definitely want to see it now.

Man, the Mariners have some good advertising and promohshonz.

Finally, I'm not sure if this guy is still taking emails, but if you left a briefcase with $78,383 on the Lower East Side the other day, you might want to claim that.

Maybe you could use some of it to buy a piece of Yankees/television memorabilia.

That's it for now. Our AL East Q&A's roll on at noon.

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...

Late Links

Sorry, I'm a little (lot) late with this post. I got a chance to play Albany Country Club this afternoon and bailed on my bloggerly duties. It's a fantastic track, measuring 7054 yards from the tips with a lot of elevation changes, tough tee shots and beautifully undulated greens. We got caught in a bit of a storm but I was able to snap this picture when it cleared up.

Double rainbow, suckas. That means you can take two shots off your score, in which case I kept it under 80. Boom.

On to the links:

Jason is officially live over at ESPN. You can find him in the same place as always, but's he's now ESPN Certified©. Also be sure to check out Jason, Will and Tamar's respective favorite moments from the season.

Is Mariano Rivera's other fastball a one seamer?

Zell's Pinstripe Blog compiled every Yankees Sports Illustrated cover.

Will Leitch on Jeter. He also penned a playoff preview for the Yanks on Deadspin.

Does UZR really fluctuate wildly from year to year?

A-Rod accomplished a 30-100 season in the 10th fewest games played of all-time and the least since 2002.

The Yankees can make life a little more difficult on the Red Sox by not announcing which series they want to take until after tomorrow's play-in game. That way, the Sox won't know what day they are starting in Anaheim until Tuesday night. If the Yanks unexpectedly take the shorter series, the Sox might have to rush out to L.A.

Happy Birthday, Bill James.

If you must subject yourself to the unlimited and unbearable Brett Favrery, at least you'll have this drinking game.

Until tomorrow, y'all...

Wilpon: Money Ain't A Thang

Rob Neyer quotes Will Leitch in more depth than I'm about to, but here's what Will's blog post for the New Yorker boils down to:

The Yankees are opening a new stadium and, as a result, changing the economic infrastructure of baseball with their spending. The Mets are opening a new stadium and are being outbid for their target free agents. Bernie Madoff might not to be blame. But something must be.

I'm sure there is some feeling of impending doom when the future $400M sponsor of their new digs is depending on a $20B fix from Uncle Sam. But the Mets have the same built-in advantages, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, that the Yankees do. They are moving into a brand new ballpark, they play in a gigantic market and have public transportation piping fans right into said park. They have a share in a major regional sports network and are owned by a family whose wealth stretches far beyond their baseball team-related holdings. The $300M Fred Wilpon lost in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme really had no effect on their offseason spending? None? Really?

Yes, they acquired K-Rod and J.J. Putz to shore up their porous bullpen. Excellent work. But both Leitch and Neyer point to a distinct lack of starting rotation depth. Let's start from the top:

1. Johan Santana - Awesome.
2. Mike Pelfrey - Great last year, but threw 50 more innings than the year before. As Neyer points out, has an alarmingly low strikeout rate.
3. John Maine - Good when healthy but had shoulder problems at the end of last year and has never thrown more than 191 innings in a single season.
4. Tim Redding? - Don't look at his (NL!) numbers if you've eaten recently. And no, I don't think he sucks because of the one inning of six run ball he "pitched" for the Yanks in 2005.
5. ????
6. Ron Darling

Were they waiting for the guy to change his name to Derek Lowez? Derek Lowe would have been a terrific stabilizing presence in the middle of their rotation. For similar money, they still could probably sign Oliver Perez who, like basically every other free agent this offseason is looking at potential deals far smaller than he expected. But Perez is the model of inconsistency, while Lowe is the exact opposite.

Perez gives up fly balls and walks while Lowe gives up neither. You can count on Lowe to put together a competent start almost every time he takes the mound, where Perez is bound to have a 5 walk, seven earned run shitshow where he gets pulled in the 2nd inning once in a while, like this one. Lowe only had 3 games where he went fewer than 4 innings last year and one was in his last appearance of the season when he had yet to give up a run.

The Mets' corner OF spots are occupied by Ryan Church, who is a pretty big question mark coming off his concussion shortened season last year, and Fernando Tatis/Nick Evans/Daniel Murphy? I would probably avoid Manny since they are in the NL, but Adam Dunn and Bobby Abreu are pretty nice fits at the prices they are going to end up at, despite their marginal fielding.

If I'm a Mets fan, I don't know who I hate more: Bernie Madoff for stealing Fred Wilpon's money or Wilpon for saying that losing $300M doesn't matter, then not taking the necessary steps to improve the team after two Hindenburg-ian late season meltdowns. All I know is that Bernie Madoff didn't just steal the Wilpon's money, he stole Derek Lowez, Adam Dunnito and their graphic design budget.