Tagged: Mark Teixeira
Yankees vs. Rays: 4/13/09 Starting Lineups
By Jon Lane
YANKEES (3-3)
Derek Jeter SS
Johnny Damon LF
Nick Swisher 1B
Jorge Posada C
Xavier Nady RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Hideki Matsui DH
Cody Ransom 3B
Melky Cabrera RF
Chien-Ming Wang.P
RAYS (3-3)
B.J. Upton CF
Carl Crawford LF
Evan Longoria 3B
Carlos Pena 1B
Pat Burrell DH
Dioner Navarro C
Gabe Gross RF
Akinori Iwamura 2B
Jason Bartlett SS
Scott Kazmir P
Notes and storylines
Mark Teixeira (sore left wrist) remains sidelined and day-to-day, but apparently it’s nothing to be concerned about. Nick Swisher starts again at first base and the way he’s swinging the bat, that’s a good thing. Swisher is 8-for-16 in five starts and batting .471.
Chien-Ming Wang is eager to rebound from a brutal performance last Wednesday in Baltimore, when he was tagged for seven runs on nine hits in 3 2/3 innings. With Wang it’s simple: If his sinker is moving, he’ll be on his ‘A’ Game. If not, well ….
Alex Rodriguez (remember him?) worked out today in Tampa, Fla., and is now dedicated to baseball, reports Peter Abraham
B.J. Upton returns to the Rays after rehabbing a shoulder injury, just in time for the defending AL Champions’ home opener.
It’s a very sad day in baseball. Legendary and beloved Philadelphia Phillies announcer Harry Kalas died this afternoon after collapsing in the broadcast booth while preparing for the Phillies-Nationals game in Washington D.C. I met Kalas at Shea Stadium years ago while working with the Phillies production crew and remember him as a kind, down-to-earth and amazing person with a passion for the game and love for his job. At least he got to see (and call) the Phillies winning one more World Series before leaving us.
David Wells – the David Wells – has joined TBS as a color analyst.
Easter, Yankee baseball and The Masters
By: Joe Auriemma
First and foremost, Happy Easter to everyone out there that celebrates it. I’m a Catholic, so I do celebrate Easter with my family. However, I don’t get how this holiday became celebrating a bunny, coloring and hunting eggs and eating chocolate. I guess there are certain things in this world that I’ll never get. In any event, Happy Holidays to everyone who celebrate Easter and Passover.
Now onto the good stuff. Doesn’t everyone out there just love sports Sundays? There are certain sports holidays for me throughout the year and today happens to be one of them. Isn’t it fitting that we are celebrating this holiday and later on in the day we’ll be holding our breath when the field of golfers comes to Amen Corner. The Masters is truly a wonderful event and what makes it even better these days is watching it in HD. Man, I feel like I’m actually there.
I know that Tiger and Phil Mickleson, as of the time I’m writing this blog entry, are seven behind the leaders. Angel Cabrera and the feel good story 48-year old Kenny Perry are on top of the leader board at -11. I also know that Tiger has never come back from this large a deficit on a Sunday to win a tournament. Wouldn’t it be fitting that today Tiger makes more history and comes all the way back to win? The chances are very slim, but you never know when it comes to Tiger Woods.
What makes this Easter Sunday even better is that I have Yankees Baseball sprinkled into it. Coverage on YES today starts with the Batting Practice Show at 1 P.M. and first pitch is just after 2 P.M.
A couple of stories that should be interesting to watch today. The Yankees have won three in a row in convincing fashion, Nick Swisher is seeing a beach ball size baseball at the plate right now, Joba Chamberlain is making his season debut and Mark Teixeira didn’t play yesterday with a sore left wrist. He is listed as day-to-day, so we’ll know by game time if he’s ready to go. I’m sure that Joe Girardi and his staff are monitoring this closely. Hopefully it’s nothing to worry about.
Speaking of Mark Teixeira, happy belated 29th birthday. He celbrated this milestone yesterday.
To everyone out there, be safe on this holiday and enjoy your time with your family. Just remember to have the remote in one hand going back and forth between two great sports events today.
The Best is Yet to Come
By Joe Auriemma
The best is yet to come, and won’t that be fine.
You think you’ve seen the sun, but you ain’t seen it shine.
— Frank Sinatra
I start my blog today with one of my favorite lyrics, from one of my favorite songs, by one of my favorite artists. The chairman of the board knew that the best is yet to come, so why can’t people be more like the cool, calm and collected Ol’ Blue Eyes. Everyone, especially in New York, jumps to conclusions after the smallest of sampling sizes.
On Tuesday, every paper I read already anointed CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira as bust signings. How? Why? Are you kidding me? IT’S ONE GAME!
Sabathia and Teixeira are known slow starters. Their career track records tells us that this is not unexpected, but with Yankees fans it’s always time to hit the panic button.
If you don’t know the respective histories of these two players in the first month of the year, here it is:
Teixeira’s career in March and April is a .256 average with 19 home runs and 64 RBIs. For the rest of the season throughout his career he hits .295 with 184 home runs and 612 RBIs. In fact, this was evident last season when he hit .273 in March and April with four home runs and 17 RBIs, and after that he was a .317 hitter with 29 home runs and 104 RBIs.
Sabathia has a career record of 11-10 in 34 March and April starts with a 4.51 ERA. For the rest of the season over his career, he has a 106-63 record with an ERA that’s one full point less at 3.53.
Again, going back to last season, if you look at his first four starts, Sabathia was 0-3, with a 13.50 ERA. He walked and struck out 14 batters, while hitters had a robust .390 average against him. In his last 31 starts, he was 17-7 with a 1.88 ERA and had a little better walk to strikeout ratio, 45-237. Opponents only hit .222 against him over that span.
Some players are slow starters. I don’t know why this happens. There are many factors that go into being a successful professional athlete.
So please before you make any judgments about the two major offseason signings, just remember to sit back, put on some Sinatra, calm down and know that the best is yet to come.
Tonight’s Lineups
Yankees
Derek Jeter SS
Johnny Damon LF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Hideki Matsui DH
Jorge Posada C
Robinson Cano 2B
Xavier Nady RF
Cody Ransom 3B
Brett Gardner CF
Chien-Ming Wang P
Orioles
Brian Roberts 2B
Adam Jones CF
Nick Markakis RF
Aubrey Huff 1B
Melvin Mora 3B
Luke Scott DH
Felix Pie LF
Gregg Zaun C
Cesar Izturis SS
Koji Uehara P
Meanwhile, in Dunedin ….
By Jon Lane
It’s 1-0 Yankees in the top of fifth thanks to a Mark Teixeira single. Andy Pettitte has whiffed five and as of this writing retired seven straight batters. Apparently, the veteran left-hander is already in midseason form. He won’t pull a Mike Mussina, winning 20 games coming off a down season, but he’ll be much better than last year as a No. 4 starter.
You’ll get to see Pettitte in person, or on the tube, when he splits Saturday’s exhibition game with A.J. Burnett. The YES Network will air it live at 1 p.m.
The photo to your left isn’t Pettitte, but it’s a cool shot of Derek Jeter. His range is supposedly diminished, but can anyone duplicate his patented leaping snap throw to first base? I think not.
3:07 p.m. Think Mark Teixeira is ready for the season? His RBI double put the Yankees ahead 2-1 in the seventh and he’s accounted for both of the Yankees’ runs so far.
Teixeira is 2-for-3 and is batting .408. Pettitte pitched 6.2 strong innings, allowing five hits, one run (earned), no walks, seven strikeouts and one wild pitch while throwing 92 pitches.
3:15 p.m. Angel Berroa doubled home a run to provide the Yankees some insurance, but was gunned down as third base attempt to stretch it into a triple. Still, he continues to make his case that he and not Ramiro Pena, should head north.
3:35 p.m. That’s a wrap from Dunedin. Edwar Ramirez froze Jose Bautista for strike three to secure a 3-1 Yankees win. One step closer to coming home.
Back in Clearwater
By Jon Lane
Down the home stretch of their Grapefruit League schedule, the Yankees are back in Clearwater, Fla., for another game against the Phillies (YES HD, 1 p.m.). Joe Auriemma and Chris Shearn are at Bright House Field, where bright and early, Auriemma sat down for exclusive interviews with Brad Lidge, Miguel Cairo and Ryan Howard. You’ll find these conversations with members of the reigning World Champions, as well as a chat with YES’ own Ken Singleton and a lot more, on YESNetwork.com later this afternoon.
Yankees Lineup
Derek Jeter SS
Johnny Damon LF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Hideki Matsui DH
Nick Swisher RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Cody Ransom 3B
Jose Molina C
Melky Cabrera CF
Pitching: Joba Chamberlain, Phil Coke, Brian Bruney, Jose Veras, Edwar Ramirez and Jon Albaladejo.
After a brutal beginning to Spring Training, Chamberlain (2-0, 3.48 ERA) is in a groove. The last time he faced the Phillies he held them to two hits over three scoreless innings in a 12-0 Yankees victory on March 16.
Cabrera has picked up his game too and is batting .295, but Brett Gardner (.409) is riding an eight-game hitting streak (8-for-18). All indications are that Gardner will be in center field Opening Day, but you never know.
This feature on Mark Teixeria, written by Howard Bryant, is a must-read. As Bryant writes, Teixeira is “the latest to try to climb the baseball equivalent of Mount Everest: playing in New York as the top-dollar free agent and coming through on the other side.” It’s a mission where many others, including Alex Rodriguez, have failed.
9:42 a.m. Joe Girardi made the inevitable official when he named CC Sabathia the Yankees’ starter for Opening Day April 6 in Baltimore. Sabathia will also christen the new Yankee Stadium when he takes the mound for the building’s first regular season game on April 16.
Chamberlain will start the sixth game of the season April 12 in Kansas City.
Meanwhile, Girardi will be tinkering with the idea of Derek Jeter leading off and Johnny Damon batting second, an idea Damon endorsed.
1:28 p.m. With one swing, Hideki Matsui staked Chamberlain to a 2-0 lead. With two swings, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard each went yard of the right-hander to tie the game at two. Let the Joba back-to-the-pen cries resume.
1:36 p.m. Great point by play-by-play man Bob Lorenz. Unless the Yankees are blown away, it’s not a wise idea to trade Melky Cabrera yet. Should Brett Gardner lose his hitting stroke, or Johnny Damon be felled by injury, you never know when you may need him. If Cabrera isn’t on the Major League roster, there’s a strong chance the Yankees will lose him because he’s out of options, so why not keep him in reserve and see where his value lies come July?
The Blob, incidentally, is a unique read.
2:09 p.m. Cody Ransom goes yard in the fourth to put the Yankees back on top 3-2. Peter Abraham offered a suggestion to John Sterling for a home run call: “Pay the Ransom!” Here’s one from me: “Handsome Cody Ransom!”
How nasty is Chamberlain’s breaking ball, BTW? Ryan Howard, who homered off him earlier, was left fooled.
2:24 p.m. Through 4 1/2 innings here’s how the revamped top of the order is doing:
Jeter: 2-for-3, two runs scored
Damon: 1-for-3 with with an RBI single that pushed the Yankees’ lead to 4-2.
My colleague, Joe Auriemma, has more on why this can work. Jeter has hit from the top spot before and has enjoyed success.
2:30 p.m. Chamberlain was pulled with one out in the fifth after putting two runners on and with his pitch count in the high 70s. This has been his biggest bugaboo. The Yankees want to see him working quicker innings and there’s a way to go about it. Throughout the spring, Chamberlain has picked the brain of A.J. Burnett, who while in Toronto learned how to pitch effectively and economically from a pretty good source, Roy Halladay.
2:45 p.m. Bad news courtesy of Newsday: Longtime Yankees public address announcer Bob Sheppard is not expected to work Opening Day at the new Yankee Stadium. Sheppard, in his late 90s and the Yankees’ P.A. since 1951, missed the entire 2008 season recovering from a bronchial infection. His wife, Mary, tells Neil Best that warmer weather hopefully may ease her husband’s return.
2:49 p.m. Cabrera works his way back from an 0-2 count to poke an RBI single to right field. Girardi wants to make a decision on who will start in center field by the weekend. While it’s expected to be Gardner, Cabrera is looking like he’ll earn a role on this team.
3 p.m. Edwar Ramirez and his change-up made mince meat out of the heart of the Phillies’ order. I wrote this earlier this spring: When he’s bad, he’s really bad, but when he’s good, he’s real good.
3:28 p.m. This game is officially in the silly stage. Yankees lead 10-2 thanks to a home run from Cabrera. To his credit, the Melk Man didn’t bury his head in his locker after Gardner’s hot start to the spring.
The heat will be on Teixeira
By Jon Lane
Courtesy of Peter Abraham, the state of the 2009 Yankees, taken from the point of view of what awaits Mark Teixeira.
All this for $400 million. What you have looks like a big mess, but it’s not even spring yet! Let’s see how this latest Alex Rodriguez tale plays out. A-Rod had additional tests done on his injured hip today, Hal Steinbrenner told reporters, but the Yankees’ co-chairman wasn’t revealing any details.
“Everybody is concerned, of course,” Steinbrenner said after meeting with general manager Brian Cashman and manager Joe Girardi for about 15 minutes. “No decisions being made. Just being cautious. We’re going to take it slow.”
Which brings up the importance of Teixeira to this team. Buster Olney writes that Teixeira is the only sure thing the Yankees have going at the moment. Right now you cannot argue with this. A-Rod as the No. 4 hitter that’s the glue to a machine that when operating at 100 percent has Teixeira batting third and a healthy Hideki Matsui fifth. Now with A-Rod’s season possibly on the brink, Teixeira will have to waste no time in earning the $180 million he’ll be making over the next eight years – perhaps without the benefit of A-Rod’s protection in the lineup.
If history is any indication, however, Teixeira will not get untracked immediately. As Olney writes, “Any hiccup on his part will be devastating for the Yankees. A slow transition to New York, which has been typical for most of the big-name players acquired by the team in the past decade, might crush the Yankees’ playoff hopes. They need him to hit early and hit late; they need him to hit all season.”
Problem is, Teixeira has annually been a slow starter (see the chart six paragraphs down in Onley’s blog). But as Sweeny Murti indicates, A-Rod’s injury turns the heat up on Teixeira, CC Sabathia, and A.J. Burnett. Even the most knowledgeable fans and astute sabermetricians won’t cut Teixeira any slack should he post some of the paltry numbers listed in Olney’s chart.
Tonight’s lineup
Johnny Damon LF
Brett Gardner CF
Nick Swisher 1B
Jorge Posada DH
Shelly Duncan RF
Cody Ransom 3B
Jose Molina C
Angel Berroa 2B
Ramiro Pena SS
Now let's move on from it
By Jon Lane
Alex Rodriguez issued a mea culpa to the media, his team, his superiors and his viewing public Tuesday afternoon.
Great. Thank you A-Rod. Now we can move on.
Easier said than done. A-Rod lied about PEDs and Selena Roberts. He came across very strange with this story about “the cousin” and how they brought this over-the-counter substance from the Dominican Republic to the United States, and how his “cousin” injected him with this stuff for THREE seasons without any knowledge of potential side effects or long-term damage.
With A-Rod there are always more questions, and you know that this story – unfortunately – just will not go away. But quite frankly, I don’t want anymore. A-Rod is not going to give you anymore. His teammates are sick of talking about it; players who have been Yankees for a few years are fed up with the annual distractions that have descend upon Yankeeland like midges.
And you can debate until you’re dark blue about whether or not A-Rod belongs in the Hall of Fame. Let me break it down for you: The fact that he admitted he did it – unlike Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens or Mark McGwire – is a step in the right direction. Let this play out – and hopefully go away one of these years – for the rest of his career, wait five years after that and then decide.
Today, right here, right now. I’m through with this BS. Everyone I speak with are done with it and are anxious to talk baseball, talk about how this Yankees team is loaded on paper and whether it will translate to ultimate success on the field. Put it to you this way: The New York Daily News was forced to pull two of Anthony McCarron’s features, one on how Jesus Montero is Jorge Posada’s heir apparent at catcher and Phil Hughes’ approach to Spring Training 2009 – thanks to Alex Rodriguez.
The Yankees spent $400 million on people in the offseason. Nobody has cared. There’s heavy anticipation with the move into the new palace and excitement over what should be a hotly-contested battle for the AL East title between not two, but three teams, one which by the way is the Tampa Bay Rays, the reigning AL Champions. Few people are talking about it or anything else baseball-related, so time to change the subject.
Here’s my 2009 prognosis on Alex Rodriguez the baseball player.
A-Rod will have another HUGE season. The last time he got a heavy burden off his chest was 2007 when he admitted that he and Derek Jeter were no longer close friends. That season he batted .314 with 54 home runs (a franchise record by a right-handed hitter), 156 RBIs and 143 runs scored. This time King Kong is off his back (you’d like to think), he’s batting cleanup between Mark Teixeria and a healthy Hideki Matsui, and it’s an odd year. A-Rod won his MVPs in 2003, ’05 and ’07.
A couple of anecdotes from 2007: Gary Sheffield, traded from the Yankees to the Tigers that offseason, had a hunch about A-Rod in the spring, predicting a monster season. Then on Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, A-Rod misplayed a pop fly that dropped behind him in foul territory with two out in the first. He was 0-for-3 when he led off the seventh, fresh off the Yankees’ sixth-inning rally that tied the game. He poked a single to left, and then decided to take the game in his own hands by stealing second base – on his own – before scoring the tiebreaking run. In the eighth, his two-run homer iced the game. Fans who jeered him for the error and a strikeout about 90 minutes earlier showered him with cheers.
Doug Mientkiewicz, his Yankees teammate in ’07 who played with Rodriguez at Westminster Christian (Fla.) High School and is great with the media, told me this after the game:
“No one can ever possibly fathom what he has to go through, and I will never sit here and try to speak for him,” Mientkiewicz said. “The biggest thing for Alex is to relax and understand that you’re surrounded by 24 other guys who know how to play the game too.”
A-Rod’s insecurities need to be coddled and massaged. The Yankees will do that, like it or not, because they need a relaxed A-Rod who is “simply a baseball player” to win. And you know the deal in Yankeeland: Win or else.
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