Tuesday Linkstavaganza

Can you tell what that pile of rubble used to be?

In the news department, as expected, Juan Miranda has been called up from AAA. We should have something a little later when the Yanks announce who is getting sent down.

Mike from the Yankeeist was at the game in Detroit last night. Not only did he make it to Comerica but experienced the city, from the partially-abandoned neighborhoods to the plush suburb of Grosse Pointe. Mike does a great job of describing the state of Motown and even though it's sort of depressing, it's well worth the read.

Joe DeLessio from New York Magazine went up to Boston for a game and compared to Mike when he was in Detroit, was treated quite kindly by the Fenway faithful. Having been to a decent number of games on Landsdowne during my college years, I can tell you that the people there aren't that bad. Like anywhere else, there are the occasional horror stories, but if you're not being obnoxious, you most likely won't have any problems.

If you are planning on heading to a game when the Yankees return to town or during the next homestand after that, check out the special "e-saver" deals listed by NYYSI.

If the Yankees keep signing catching prospects, they are going to have to start adding some more minor league affiliates so they all have a place to play.

Speaking of catchers in the system, Chad Jennings talked to Mark Newman who confirmed that, as was widely speculated, Jesus Montero was benched for not running out a ground ball. Some have made a big deal out of this, but the kid is 20 years old and it probably won't take more than one benching for him to get the message. And it's not like he was dogging it in the Majors. As Matt mentioned last night, Scranton has been without an actual starting pitcher for two out of their last four games. The emphasis just isn't on winning as much as it is in the Bronx and it might be easy to lose focus during a loss like the one the team suffered on Friday.

As Rebecca pointed out over at TYU last night, Randy Winn left seven men on base (I should have noted this in the recap, so I'm atoning for that omission here). Winn came up with runners on the corners in the 2nd and hit a foul pop out to first. The bases were loaded for him in the 6th but he flew out to end the inning. And in the 8th, he had runners on the corners and made the second out of the frame without getting the run home. Of course, the one time he came up when there was no one on, leading off the 5th, he notched a single. Good timing, dude.

On Friday, Larry from The Yankeeist did an excellent, in-depth interview with Moshe from TYU, touching on all sorts of personal and blogging stuff.

And one more from the TYU crew: Stephen R. shares a Kevin Youkilis story from 2008.

Via BBTF, if you've got $25K, you can buy the generator from the Old Yankee Stadium.

Chris Carter, the player the Yankees claimed off waivers to throw a wrench into the Red Sox/Mets Billy Wagner trade, has finally made his way to Flushing. The original move was little more than an inconvenience to the Sox but it screwed over Carter, who would have had a chance to get some playing time for the Mets last year. Hopefully he can make good on his opportunity this time around.

The Detroit Free Press is running Ernie Harwell's final interview in three parts: One, Two, Three.

CitiField has a garbage problem and it's not even Omar Minaya's fault!

Here's an interesting AP story on how teams are scouting umpires.

Congrats to Sky Andrecheck of Sports Illustrated and Baseball Analysts who just accepted a job in the Indians' front office.

The Honorable Morgan Ensberg presides over the case of Evan Longoria and his attempt to break up Dallas Branden's perfect game with a drag bunt. His verdict is basically that doing it when you are trying to help you team win (which he thinks Longoria was) is okay, but doing it when your team is down by a lot and it's late in the game, just to break up the no-no/perfecto is not.

Larry from Wezen-Ball lines up the career of Ken Griffey Jr. side by side with the 20 year run of The Simpsons and finds a lot of parallels. I've never been a huge fan of The Simpsons, but I'm sure some of you will appreciate the level of detail Lar went to in his analysis.

Dave Cameron thinks the fact that two players told reporters about Griffey's mid-game snooze indicates that the he doesn't have the respect of the clubhouse (otherwise they might have woken him up). He argues that you have to actually be a good player to be a leader.

Yesterday was the first day along the road to the U.S. Open for John Smoltz. Unfortunately, it was also the last. Smoltz shot a 76 and missed out on being one of the nine people to qualify for the next level by six shots. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he had a gallery of about 30 people at all times and took time to sign a bunch of autographs after he was done playing.

How could anyone fwah-get when Jason Varitek split the uprights and sent the Patriots to the Supah Bowl? Nawt the fackin' May-uh of Bahston! Manny Ortiz is rolling over in his imaginary grave right now.

This might be more egregious that the "Natinals" disaster. Less visible to be sure, but still completely inexcusable.

Is Adonis Cardona the best name for a baseball player ever? Probably not, but it's awesome as shit and has an awfully nice ring to it.

That's it for now, we should be back with something on the Miranda move in a bit, but if not we'll still have the preview at 5.

Monday Afternoon Linkdown

Why is it that no one ever bothers to think about the other side of the foam finger transaction?

Ross from NYYSI reconsiders some of the previous recommendations he made for standing room only and cafe seating tickets at Yankee Stadium.

I know the demolition of the Old Stadium is going on, but every time I see a new picture of it like this one over at Baseball Think Factory it's still hard to believe how little of it is left.

Quite relevant to these linkarounds, Dave Allen at Baseball Analysts put together a diagram displaying how the top 200 baseball blogs (according to Ball Hype) are related. We are mentioned in the post because of all the links we give out - one of just a few blogs that do a comprehensive round up of other sources. Here is the visual with all of the blogs named (we are "FY"). Allen plans to explore the interrelation of baseball blogs further and I'm looking forward to him continuing the series.

First Ozzie Guillen pulled the cheapshot move of making Javier Vazquez change his glove because it had three colors on it and then he complained about Nick Swisher pumping his first after he hit the go-ahead home run on Saturday (h/t BBTF). For good measure, Guillen also said that Swisher was a "horseshit player" for him in Chicago. In a related story, Ozzie Guillen is a petty bitch.

Did the '09 Yankees have an inflate fly ball rate because they were swinging for the fences at the New Stadium? Pat Andriola from THT revisits one of his old posts with some new data.

Tommy Rancel from Bloomberg Sports takes a look at what's wrong with Javy Vazquez. Frankie Pilere's opinon: probably something mechanical.

Tim Marchman thinks the same thing is causing Jake Peavy's struggles.

Why is Alfredo Aceves owned in 37% of Yahoo fantasy leagues but only 5% on CBS and 2% at ESPN?

What is it with old columnists starting an article with a one sentence sentence? In this case, it's a really, really bad one to begin with.

Who wants to tell Rob Parker that Austin Jackson is going to come crashing back to earth really soon so he probably shouldn't be gloating about the Curtis Granderson trade just yet.

Drunk Jays Fans uncovered video of people doing the wave at Wrigley Field. Is nothing sacred anymore?

Red Sox fans think their team has a better chance of winning the AL East than the Yankees (via Jonah). Alternate title: why text polls during baseball games are still terrible.

Ken Rosenthal wears little boy pants. Literally.

At Big League Stew, Dave Brown uses a dubious assumption to demonstrate the problems with a flawed statistic.

This seems like a pretty sweet option, but for $3000 you could buy you own pool table and have it for the rest of your life.

I'm not sure if he knows it, but Morgan Ensberg just FJM'd Tracy Ringolsby.

Andy from the Baseball-Reference blog reviewed the MLB At Bat iPhone app and comes out a little lukewarm on it. I don't have it, I just use the one from FanGraphs.

Tom Tango wonders how good scouts really are. Not baseball ones, the people who review and rate products for Consumer Reports.

Dan McQuade at Walkoff Walk lampoons the pointless "Keys to the Game" segment that seemingly every network does. I'm with you, Dan.

Spencer Hall did the Kentucky Derby and came back with some great pictures.

This probably came one leg of the Triple Crown too early considering the Preakness takes place in Baltimore, but Deadspin captured a fantastic phenomenon on Twitter: #WireDerbyHorseNames. My favorites from the ones that Deadspin mined out: Proposition Joe, Where's Wallace? Money Be Green, Much Obliged, 40 Degree Day, PAN-demic and Tweedy Impertinence.

I could probably spend on day on this, so here are a few of my suggestions:

Preach On Walon, Stringer's Bells, Brianna's Burden, Miss Anna, Yvette's Brisket, Wassup Latrice?, And I'm Not Even Greek, Cutty's Jim, The Western District Way, Come At The King, Butchie's Bar, Leakin' Park, No Lake No Trout, Girls In The Can, Mr. Lyon, Entrapping Bodie, McNulty's Lumina, The Boy Marlow, Trifilin' Bird, Ain't Gotta Dream No More, Goodnight Hoppers...

If I ever own a horse, I'm coming back to this post to name it.

Back in a while with the preview.

Monday Afternoon Linkdown

Yesterday was International Penguin Day. Here are some fun facts on the fat, feathered fackers that you might not have been aware of.

On to our regularly scheduled linkification:

Happy 93rd birthday to the oldest living former Yankee, Virgil Trucks.

The numbers say that Andy Pettitte is off to the best start of his career.

On the day when the Yankees are scheduled for a visit to the White House, Lisa Swan at Subway Squawkers asks why the 1996 Yankees never made that trip.

Ryan Howard just got PAID to the tune of 5 years, $125M. The deal also contains a $23M option for 2017 with a $10M(!!) buyout. It's questionable whether Howard will be worth what he's making this year, let alone five or six years from now. But don't worry, Jon Heyman thinks it's a good deal. That sound you are hearing? Albert Puljos' stock entering the mesosphere.

Javier Vazquez ≠ Chien-Ming Wang. And making that comparison shows that you have an astonishingly short memory or a stunning lack of perspective. After three games in 2009, Chien-Ming Wang had given up 23 runs in 6 innings and had an ERA of 34.50. Opponents were hitting .622/.667/.1026 off of him. By contrast, through four starts, Vazquez has given up 20 runs in 20 innings and an opponents line of .309/.398/.580. Granted, that's pretty terrible, but it's not in the same multiverse of suckitude as Wang was last year.

EJ from TYU took a look at Yanks prospect Graham Stoneburner and attempted to establish some standard criteria by which we can evaluate minor league pitchers.

Christian Garcia underwent Tommy John Surgery and will be attempting to recover from it for the second time. As Matt said when the news of Garcia's injury first broke, the could be the final blow to his career, but if all goes well he should be back on the mound next May.

The Hardball Times started up a new Twitter feed for the sole purpose of linking to interesting baseball writing all over the web. I'm guessing it will be pretty similar to kind of stuff you can find in these link dumps.

Joe Posnanski wrote a characteristically thorough and interesting take on why it's easy for people to hate A-Rod.

Richard Sandomir writes explores the history of the theme songs of the Mets and the Yankees, Meet the Mets and Empire State of Mind. Oh, I'm sorry, is that not the Yankees official song?

This has been linked far and wide, but for posterity's sake, here is Flip Flop Fly Ball's graphical interpretation on A-Rod's spat with Dallas Braden.

A few current and former players have weighed the War of Rodriguez & Braden. Tim Hudson and Chipper Jones called it "silly" and "childish" while David Wells went in the opposite direction, calling A-Rod full of shit. Bronson Arroyo (of all people) said he "wouldn't think twice" about A-Rod running over the mound and Morgan Ensberg called Braden's tantrum a "full blown loss of mind". (h/t to Lisa for some of the links)

Speaking of Mr. Ensberg, he and Tom Tango had an interesting conversation about players' arbitration clocks and some of the differences between the way the NHL and MLB handle contract buyouts and service time (among other topics).

The Wall Street Journal used some of Larry's data and ganked his idea without linking back to him, but they did make the sweet graphic above, averaging the Yankees' home run trot times.

Greg Fertel explains why pinch hitting for Nick Johnson is not a good idea.

They're a bit outdated by now, but Kevin Dame at THT created some visuals illustrating the performance of the rotations of the AL East teams.

Consternation from Red Sox Nation. Is there a more enjoyable combination?

Harvey Araton wrote a piece for the NYT about the "elegance" of Marino Rivera that has no business being in the sports section because it focuses mostly on his role as a male model for Canali.

If you spent a good amount of the weekend listening to Gang Starr, you might want to check out the piece that Guru's brother - who happens to be a drama professor at Stanford - wrote about him for the Boston Globe. D.J. Premier also made a mix in memory of the man.

In addition to penning his L.A. Times obit and a piece that aired on NPR embedded below (click through if you are reading via RSS), Oliver Wang from Soul Sides put together an appreciation of Guru's work on his blog. Even if you aren't a fan, checking out any of these pieces should give you a healthy respect for the man's work.

That's it for us today. Catch you folks in the morning.