Mid-Monday Linkaround

Marty Foster originally called this linkaround out, but lucky for you guys he was overruled.

Just before the Yankees and Tigers got rained out yesterday (washing out yet another of Andy Pettitte's Spring Training tune ups) Robinson Cano hit a ball to deep left-center field. It was already raining pretty steadily and Austin Jackson was in pursuit of the ball heading towards the wall. He couldn't quite make the catch but recovered quickly and hit the relay man. Eduardo Nunez was on first base when the play started and was in between second and third when our old pal Marty Foster raised his hand to signal the catch had been made. Nunez saw this and scurried back to first base, passing Robinson Cano - who was standing on second, very confused - in the process. Nunez would have been out but the umps huddled up, acknowledged Foster's error and determined that Cano would be given first base while Nunez could stay on second. It was a pretty egregious mistake that certainly cost the Yanks a couple of bases and possibly a run but Joe Girardi didn't seem too concerned:

Marty said with the rain he just didn’t see it. I just (said), ‘Whatever, let’s just keep moving.’ It’s a judgment call I believe. I said, ‘You can call them both out as far as I’m concerned.’ Just keep going.

Something tells me we won't be hearing that again from Girardi anytime soon.

A.J. Burnett looked good against the Tigers on Saturday, throwing 6 2/3 IP, and allowing one run on 3 hits. It took Burnett 91 pitches to get it done and it would appear that he's pretty much ready to go. Just one final tuneup before he faces the Sox next Tuesday.

Chad Gaudin signed with the A's, joining Edwar Ramirez, Brett Tomko and Dan Geise as hurlers who have been cast off by the Yanks only to be picked up by Billy Beane in the last year. Is Oakland the new Pittsburgh? But there's already an Oakland in Pittsburgh. (/head spins, explodes)

Chris from i-Yankees suggests that the Yanks should trade Joba Chamberlain. In a way it would be the perfect time to flip him before his value diminishes as a reliever, but I'm not sure the Yanks could get enough in return to make it worth their while.

Coach thinks player will have a great year. Not exactly an objective take, but Kevin Long has high hopes for Brett Gardner this season.

Speaking of Mr. Long, he sustained an injury during the paintball outing on Friday illustrating exactly why it was a good idea to have the players go to the arcade.

Detailed in several different places this weekend was the fact that opinions within the organization differ widely on Joba Chamberlain's future. Brian Cashman, Joe Girardi, Dave Eiland and Billy Eppler have all had their say in the media in the last week or so and their thoughts on the situation certainly don't all align.

Cliff from Bronx Banter tried to use some Bomber Bucks to buy tickets to a few games this year and was less than pleased the results. Much of the backlash over the economics of the New Stadium has subsided but Cliff ends his post with some strong words about what the Yankees have done at the expense of the average fan. I can't say I disagree, but now that I live 2 1/2 hours away from the Stadium, I care significantly less about the ticket situation than I used to.

Jason added three new authors to the IIATMS brigade and only one of them is a Yankee fan. When you are affiliated with ESPN, you can make those kind of power moves. I'm looking forward to some interesting pieces from Larry, The Common Man and tHeMARksMiTh.

Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com offers up 10 Yankee prospects to keep an eye on this year. The once-highly-regarded Alan Horne is not one of them because he's going to need surgery to repair his torn rotator cuff.

For some reason, TMZ had the scoop that the Yankees would be receiving their rings during their home opener on April 13th.

Greg Fertel put together an excellent prospect profile on Zach McAllister over at Pending Pinstripes. Greg doesn't think we'll see ZMac in the Bronx until the rosters expand, but he's one of the few legitimate starting pitching prospects in the higher ranks of the Yanks' system.

Nick Carfado of Boston.com ranked all 30 of baseball's managers. The list is based more on results than tactical prowess to my eye so don't get too offended when you see Terry Francona five spots higher than Joe Girardi.

Steve Slowinski from DRays Bay expresses some frustration about the fact that Spring Training is dragging on but finds some encouragement before the post is over. Hang in there folks, we are inside of a week now.

And finally, for those Derek Trucks fans out there, the members of his new project with his wife Susan Tedeschi have been announced. There are some familiar faces from the dTb and ABB and they'll be making their debut at the Savannah Music Festival this Thursday.

Morning Linkaround

Back by popular demand....

While many of the original reports indicated that Cuban shortstop Adeiny Hechevarria chose the Blue Jays over the Yankees because he would have an easier path to the Majors sans Derek Jeter, it turns out that the extra $1.5M that the Jays offered might have had a little something to do with that as well. River Ave. Blues notes that the $8.5M the Yankees offered would have been by far the largest signing bonus they've ever given to a prospect. One one hand, it's a little disappointing to see a good player slip away, but on the other, the non-stop media chatter about when Derek Jeter is going to move off shortstop with Hechevarria nipping at his heels would have been played out by the end of the week.

Over the weekend, our pal Marc Carig asked Mark Teixeira what he would do improve sports on an executive level. In Sunday's paper, they talked about a College Football playoff, NFL overtime, the International Olympics Committee, Boxing, March Madness and Interleague Play. Yesterday, Carig ran the leftover questions on his blog. Teix has some intelligent opinions on all of the above, so be sure to check them out.

Cliff Corcoran at Bronx Banter has been doing an admirable job of keeping up with the goings on down in Tampa by recapping the games. Yesterday he offered a Status Report detailing the the performances of the players so far. If you haven't been paying attention, it's a nice cheat sheet.

Will Leitch previews the Yankees over at Deadspin.

A-Rod is sick and tired of being asked about Anthony Galea. So sick and tired that he apparently got up and walked away form reporters when someone said the words "Canadian doctor" yesterday. Can you blame him? Nothing new has come up and as Moshe Mandel pointed out last week, he has legitimate reasons for dealing with Galea.

I'm pretty sure that this means that Ronan Tynan will never be setting foot in Yankee Stadium again.

Our old buddy Chien-Mind Wang threw his first bullpen of the spring.

At FanGraphs, Matthew Carruth explores the differences between the Vegas over/unders and the win totals extrapolated from their site's Fan predictions. Of course, Vegas makes their odds on how people bet, not how they think the teams will do. So in comparing Vegas to FanGraphs readers, you get a contrast between how educated fans feel about a team versus how the betting public does. It will be interesting to revisit those at the end of the season.

Morgan Ensberg gives his side of the Lidge vs. Puljos story in much more depth than you usually hear from a player.

The newest Jim Bowden video is out and in it, the former Nats GM discusses the Roy Halladay trade with Ruben Amaro, Jr., Alex Anthopoulos, Jack Zduriencik and Billy Beane. I find these videos especially amusing because Bowden looks like a C-grade actor hired to play the part of a bad GM. And for all we know, that might have been the case.

Speaking of Roy, he bought a new house in Philly.

Finally, this is good for a couple of laughs:

As Jonah points out, Fernando Perez isn't your average baseball player.

Links For Lunch

Here are some items to keep you busy while we decide whether or not to devote another entire post to our hatred of the Randy Winn signing:

Speaking of the Winner, Rob Neyer doesn't think he's a particularly good fit with the Yankees. Cliff Corcoran ain't thrilled either, saying "If he has a bit of a dead-cat bounce in the Bronx, he’ll go from being a typical bench player to something of an asset".

The Yanks have some interest in Rocco Baldelli, Johnny Gomes and Marcus Thames but Joel Sherman says they won't offer any of them more than a minor league deal.

Joe Girardi says the configuration of the outfield isn't set in stone, meaning Curtis Granderson might end up in left field after all. /crosses fingers

On Twitter, Bob Nightengale announces that the Yankees are going to hire Kevin Towers like it's news, even though we were pretty sure we knew that three weeks ago.

Mike from River Ave. Blues tried to determine what (if any) correlation strikeouts had to overall offensive production. Sorry to all you Adam Dunn haters, but the answer is "not that much of one".

With his Yankee career all but over, Johnny Damon knows one thing for sure. He's "going to grow an incredibly douchey beard".

Craig from Circling the Bases exposes Scott Boras' failure to spin the Johnny Damon debacle into something positive. Take that for what it's worth though, as Craig is notoriously "irresponsible".

Andrew Katz thinks that Damon is the victim of a conflict of Boras' interest. I have to agree.

Walkoff Walk brings us the baseball tweets of the week. Props to Rob Iracane for using the word "brotard" to describe Nick Swisher.

Hank Waddles from Bronx Banter did an interview with Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post.

Also at BB, Cliff Corcoran grades each Yankees hitter on their 2009 season great detail. Spolier alert: there are a lot of A's.

Our pal Jason Rosenberg put together a volume of some of the dumber comments made in regards to steroids in baseball and lets you figure out who said them via the matching game. If you don't have that kind of patience, the quotes are paired with their speakers here.

Also, the IIATM,S Hall of Fame has a new member.

Can someone please tell John Harper of the Daily News that Randy Winn isn't replacing Johnny Damon? And that Brain Cashman's ego wasn't the reason Damon isn't on the team. And that his picture on the NYDN's website makes him look like Nick Nolte before he went off the deep end.

Sky Andrecheck takes a look at evolution of stolen base strategy over the years over at the Baseball Analysts blog.

Via Baseball Musings, a study shows that pitchers from the South are more likely to plunk batters especially in the name of "justice" or "protecting social identities", but only if the batter was white.

Everybody Do The Link Around

The Yankeeist has an interview with Alex Belth and Cliff Corcoran from Bronx Banter. It delves into the very beginnings of the Yankee blogosphere and gives some insight into the Banter Crew that you can't find anywhere else.

Big League Stew takes an in-depth look at BABIP.

A victory for potheads and statheads alike: Tim Lincecum wins the NL Cy Young.

Joe Posnanski hands out his special brand of anti-awards for managers, pitchers and the least valuable player in each league.

I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but Jason Bay is headed for pure, unadulterated free agency.

It doesn't much matter but Andy Pettitte finally filed his papers and is headed there as well.

Bud Selig says "some teams lost money" last year. He could have just said "the Tigers".

The Shyster breaks out a secondhand story about the corporate culture at GM as a way of explaining that Bud Selig might be trying to cut the fat out of the playoff schedule but he's the reason it's there to begin with.

This is why Ken Rosenthal gets paid the big bucks:

The [Yankees], according to one rival executive, plans to pursue free-agent relievers Rafael Soriano, a right-hander, and Mike Gonzalez, a lefty. The Yankees have liked both pitchers in the past.

However, another source with knowledge of the Yankees' thinking says the team prefers to address any bullpen holes from within, using the same strategy that they employed successfully last season.

He gives precedence to a quote from a "rival executive" over a "source with knowledge of the Yankees' thinking". How could you possibly justify citing an executive for another team when someone who knows what the Yanks are thinking offers a directly contradictory quote? Because Rosenthal knows that linking the Yankees - however tangentially - to free agents unequivocally equals pageviews. And that's what business aboard the internets is all about.

Just for good measure, let's take a look at how every pitcher who threw more than 10 innings out of the bullpen for the Yankees in 2009 was acquired.

• Mariano Rivera (international free agent)
• Phil Hughes (drafted - 2004)
• Alfredo Aceves (international free agent)
• David Robertson (drafted - 2006)
• Brian Bruney (signed as a free agent, assigned to the minors)
• Phil Coke (drafted - 2002)
• Damaso Marte (trade)
• Mark Melancon (drafted - 2006)
• Jonathan Albaladejo (trade)
• Edwar Ramirez (purchased from an independent league team)
• Chad Gaudin (trade)
• Jose Veras (free agent, assigned to minors)
• Sergio Mitre (free agent, assigned to minors)
• Brett Tomko (free agent, assigned to minors)

The only guys in there that were signed to multi-million dollar free agent deals were Mariano Rivera (who they were never going to let walk) and Damaso Marte who they locked up while they still had exclusive negotiating rights with last year. It's clear what the Yankees philosophy for their bullpen is and it doesn't involve acquiring expensive free agent relief pitchers like Soriano and Gonzalez.

/end rant

Now make like the NL Cy Young winner and, in the words of Ray Charles, go get stoned.

Some Perspective On Jeter And Gehrig

Today is Thursday and the Yankees are off, as they will be every Thursday for the remainder of the regular season. As such, news is hard to come by, so we will be given more and more of the Jeter/Gehrig Story.

While the mainstream media continues to beat that drum, in the Yankee blogosphere the narrative has turned to the coverage overkill by the mainstream media. It's a warranted criticism, perhaps best summarized by Bronx Banter's Cliff Corcoran.

Jay and I have both been guilty of giving this story more legs that it doesn't need. However, much like our friend Jason at IIATMS, Fack Youk is trying to supply a little perspective on this achievement. The mainstream media is making this out to be a little bit more than it is. The inevitable backlash from elsewhere is probably selling it a little bit short. As usual, the truth likely lies somewhere between.

Keith Olbermann had blog post earlier this week lamenting Gehrig once again being knocked from the record books, and fearing that the Iron Horse might some day be forgotten. I can appreciate Olbermann's sentiments, but I can't agree with them. As I stated this morning, Gehrig is amongst the best baseball players ever. Period. His peers are Ruth, Williams, Bonds, Aaron, Musial, Mays, Cobb, Mantle - the best ever to play the game. If Gehrig were ever to be forgotten, it certainly wouldn't be because Jeter passed him on a leaderboard that while glamorous because it belongs to the most celebrated franchise in the game, is relatively meaningless in the big picture of baseball history. If anything, perhaps the recent media storm will actually increase the profile of this all-time great.

Jeter's latest accomplishment is something to be recognized and is as good a reason as any to celebrate his remarkable career that has been at times both over and under rated. But lest we lose sight of just how incredible Lou Gehrig was, let's take a look at what Jeter and Gehrig did with their 2,721 career hits:


The point isn't to say that Derek Jeter isn't the slugger that Gehrig was. They are two very different players in that regard. The point is to illustrate that while Jeter will soon surpass Gehrig in total number of hits, the New York Yankees franchise will have received far more value out of Lou Gehrig's 2,721 hits than they did out of Jeter's 2,722.

Gehrig still sits comfortably atop the Yankees all-time double and triple lists, and is safely third on the all-time home run list. He sits behind only the imcomparable Babe Ruth on the franchise's total bases leaderboard. Jeter is fifth, within five total bases of Joe DiMaggio in fourth, but a good two seasons behind Mickey Mantle in third, and light years behind Ruth and Gehrig. Consider this: Derek Jeter has 718 career extra base hits. Lou Gehrig has 697 combined doubles and triples before even counting his 493 home runs.

Of course, the object of baseball is to score runs, and they key to scoring runs is reaching base safely. While hits are the most valuable way to do that, it's just one of three ways to reach base safely. Here's a look at the franchise's all-time leaderboard in times on base:


Jeter will likely sit atop this list one day as well, but it will take him a good two and half to three more years to get there. And that doesn't take into account his on base percentage, which is currently 7th amongst all Yankees with at least 4,000 career plate appearances. And as Steve Goldman pointed out earlier this week, Jeter's OBP will likely begin to fall as he enters the decline phase of his career.

None of this is meant to discredit what Derek Jeter has done over the past fourteen seasons, has done this week, or will do this weekend and over the remainder of his career. He is sure fire first ballot Hall of Famer and is undoubtedly the greatest Yankee shortstop ever. Lou Gehrig is amongst the select few members of the Hall of Fame who are deserving of their own wing. Jeter is on the shortlist of the greatest players in Yankee history. Gehrig is amongst the best players in baseball history.

Though people of my generation have been treated to all-time Yankee greats like Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and less recently Bernie Williams and Don Mattingly, more than any of them, Derek Jeter is the name in recent Yankee history. This milestone, and all the others Jeter will reach before his career is over, will be deservedly trumpeted. However, next time someone waxes nostalgic about Gehrig losing another record, or next time someone in the paper or on TV gets overly hyperbolic about Jeter setting this record, please try to remember the context.

Chalk One Up For The Bloggers

If it wasn't for Cliff Corcoran from Bronx Banter I might have lived the rest of my life thinking Shane Rawley was on the Yankees in 1980...


Not to disparage Kepner at all since his Twitter feed is a must-follow for Yankees fans, but more to praise Cliff because he gives a good name to us mother's basement-dwellers (even if he does write for SI.com too). Kepner's got 2,328 other followers and I doubt one of them even thought to double check that stat - myself included. If you are on Twitter, follow Cliff as well. He puts up some great stuff over there.