Neil Keefe

May 13, 2015

Podcast: 610 Barstool Sports New York

For the third May 13 in a row, the Rangers have a chance to win a Game 7 and extend their season and they’re looking to do it in comeback fashion once again.

Two years ago today, the Rangers beat the Capitals in Game 7. One year ago today, the Rangers beat the Penguins in Game 7. Tonight at Madison Square Garden there will be another Game 7 between the Rangers and Capitals and the Rangers have never lost a Game 7 at Madison Square Garden.

610 of Barstool Sports New York joined me to talk about the Rangers’ come back in the series to force a Game 7, the unusual calm feeling of Rangers fans this postseason, Alex Ovechkin’s guarantee and role in Game 7 and what will happen in Game 7 at the Garden.

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

May 12, 2015

Alex Ovechkin and the Over-the-Top Guarantee

Once upon a time a guarantee meant something. It meant something in the 1993-94 playoffs when Mark Messier told said “We’ll win tonight” in anticipation of Game 6 against the Devils, and it should mean

Once upon a time a guarantee meant something. It meant something in the 1993-94 playoffs when Mark Messier told said “We’ll win tonight” in anticipation of Game 6 against the Devils, and it should mean something that Alex Ovechkin guaranteed a Capitals win over the Rangers in Game 7. But it doesn’t.

“We’re going to play our game and we’re going to come back and we’re going to play Montreal or Tampa.”

That’s what Ovechkin said after the Rangers’ Game 6 win, after the Rangers staved off elimination for the second straight game and after they solved Braden Holtby by scoring four goals, which is something he hadn’t allowed in over a month.

“We almost tie the game and the character of this group, it shows a lot,” Ovechkin said. “We’re going to come back and win the series.”

And there’s the second part of his guarantee.

Ovechkin is the captain of the Capitals and the face of that franchise, so of course he’s going to be optimistic about his team’s chances even if they blew a two-game series lead, blew Game 5 with 1:41 left and lost Game 6 at home. I wouldn’t expect Ovechkin to think anything other than that his team will rebound after back-to-back losses and win Game 7 on the road in Madison Square Garden where the Rangers have never lost a Game 7 in the history of the team. But I said “think” those things, not say them.

In the first part of his guarantee, he says, “We’re going to play our game,” as if the Capitals playing at their best means they will win Game 7. He doesn’t say, “We’re going to play our game and the Rangers are going to play their game and we’re going to come back and we’re going to play Montreal or Tampa,” as he disregards the idea that the Rangers might also play their game, which was eight wins and 12 points better in the 82-game regular season. I guess Ovechkin was trying to say that if the Capitals play their game they won’t lose, but if you look at this series, what exactly is their game?

In Game 1, they won thanks to a last-second play made by possible by a non-boarding call. They lost Game 2. They won Game 3 on a lucky and fortunate bounce off Keith Yandle’s skate. They won Game 4 in an evenly matched game. They blew Game 5 and lost Game 6. From the first six games of this series, it seems like the Capitals’ game is to block shots, lean on Holtby and wait for an Ovechkin goal (that hasn’t happened since Game 2) or score on an incredible bounce. If that’s the “game” Ovechkin is talking about for Game 7, I’m not sure that will be enough to beat Henrik Lundqvist, the Garden and momentum.

“We almost tie the game” is how Ovechkin begins the second part of his guarantee. Since when is “almost” doing something a reason to be Almost coming back after trailing by three goals, but never completing the comeback is an unusual way to support a guarantee. If anything, I would think coming to close to completing a comeback at home and not completing it would be demoralizing knowing that the next game would be a win-or-go-home game on the road, but not to Ovechkin.

Ovechkin had nothing to lose by making this guarantee. If the Capitals win, Washington will consider him their Messier for the time being and if they lose, well, that’s what the Capitals do. They blow leads in the playoffs and lose in the first or second round. The Capitals not making the conference finals would be the same old storyline out of Washington since the last time they reached it in 1997-98.

Ovechkin was already wrong once this series when he told Lundqvist, “All series, baby, all series,” after scoring on him in Game 1. He followed it up with another goal in Game 2, but since then he hasn’t scored. He hasn’t even had an assist. No points in the last four games for the player who promised to continue to provide offense for the Capitals for the entire series. That’s one empty guarantee already this series. Expect another one in Game 7.

Blogs • Email Exchanges • Yankees

May 4, 2015

The Yankees and Blue Jays Continue AL East Battle

The Yankees’ early-season AL East schedule continues on to Toronto for the first time this season against the Blue Jays.

The Yankees are on fire. After a weekend sweep of the Red Sox in Boston, the Yankees have now won their last five series after dropping their first three series in what was a disastrous start to the season. The AL East-heavy schedule to start the year continues on with a trip to Toronto this week.

With the Yankees and Blue Jays meeting for the first time in Toronto, I did an email exchange with Tom Dakers of Bluebird Banter to talk about Jose Bautista’s early-season struggles, the emergence of rookie Devon Travis and the continuous health issues with Jose Reyes.

Keefe: The last time we talked was before Opening Day. The Blue Jays took two of three in that series and would have swept if not for an late-inning implosion in the second game of the season. The Yankees looked like a bad baseball team during that series and continued to for another week, falling to 3-6 on the year. But the Yankees have won 13 of 16 to improve 16-9 and take over first place. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays have gone 10-13 since the opening series and have struggled to find consistency.

What’s been the Blue Jays’ problem after a month of baseball?

Dakers: Pitching, pitching and pitching. The pitching has been every shade of awful imaginable. The starters have been terrible and the relievers haven’t been that much better. The starters have been so bad that the Jays have made a little cottage industry of calling up whoever was to start the next day’s Triple-A game, to throw long relief out of the pen. None of the starters have been good.

Keefe: Devon Travis is leading the Blue Jays in average, home runs, RBIs, OBP and SLG. He’s a rookie second baseman, who only has 88 career at-bats. If he were a Yankee, they would still have him in the minors the way they do Jose Pirela and Rob Refsnyder.

How fun is it to watch a rookie get the chance to play and succeed in your team? I only ask because the Yankees are against it.

Dakers: Devon Travis has been so much fun to watch. There was a bit of luck involved in him winning a starting job. Going into spring the idea was that Maicer Izturis was going to be the second baseball, at least to start the season, with Travis getting some more development time in Triple-A, but Izturis suffered a “groin strain” a couple of weeks into camp and still isn’t play rehab baseball, so the way was cleared for Travis.

Travis started out spring very slowing, going hitless in his first 5 games, but soon after started crushing the ball. He’s become my favorite in record time.

But the whole “watch a rookie” thing hasn’t gone all that well for the Jays. We started the season with six rookies on the roster, but three of them have been optioned to the minors already.

Keefe: When Jose Bautista didn’t tear apart the Yankees in the opening series, I figured he would go off after he left the Bronx, which would be a nice change. But after a month of games and with a shoulder strain for a few days, Bautista has yet to look like himself every game. I still don’t want him up in a big spot against the Yankees, but he looks off. Is Bautista healthy? What’s been the issue with his slow start?

Dakers: Jose hasn’t been terrible, but he hasn’t quite been Jose Bautista yet. He does have 5 home runs and he is getting on base. Part of his problem is the sore shoulder, he’s been just DHing for the last 7 games, after missing a couple.

He also seems to be getting more than his share of bad strikes called against him. There seems to be at least one a game, where the ball is clearly 6 inches or so off the plate but it is still called a strike, and it seems to happen at the worst times, like when he’s at a 1-1 count. Having those calls go against him makes him feel the need to go after pitches off the plate more than he normally would. He has a very good eye at the plate, but you get a bad call and you think that you have to swing at everything.

He has been doing a better job at controlling his temper on those calls. In the past he might have given the umpire a blast, but now he’s more just shaking his head and trying not to show his displeasure as much.

Keefe: Living in New York and dealing with the Mets and Mets fans I know how frustrating it can be to watch Jose Reyes since it seems like he’s always hurt. Reyes is on the DL with a rib injury and even when he was playing he wasn’t his old self.

Are you frustrated with Reyes’ health issues? Is he losing his abilities?

Dakers: He isn’t a good defensive shortstop anymore. He doesn’t have the range you’d like to see at short. Offensively, he actually started the season hot, and was hitting .417/.444/.500 after the first week of the season, but trying to play through the cracked rib was a mistake.

The Jays seem to have this habit of hoping guys can play through painful injuries, instead of giving the players time off to heal up. I wish they would stop that.

Keefe: Before the season started I thought the AL East would be a six-month fight that would come down to end of the season with no team ever really running away and hiding with a division lead. After almost a month, 4.5 games separate the entire division, which is the smallest gap of any of the league’s six divisions.

After a month of baseball, what are your feelings on the division and how it’s projecting for the summer?

Dakers: It really doesn’t look like there is a team that is ready to run away with the division, at least at this point, which has been good news for the Jays, because they could have buried themselves by now if one or two of the other teams had a hot start. I think the division is likely to start close, no team seems good enough to rattle off a 6-10 game win streak and get themselves a bit of space.

If the Jays want to stay on the edge of the race, the pitching, especially the starting pitching, will have to come around. They are in a bad spot, about all they really can do is hope that their starters figure things out.

Mark Buehrle has been particularly terrible, and when he looks this bad, you start thinking that maybe he’s lost it and maybe he just can’t compete in the MLB anymore, but he was awful to start the 2013 season too. At about this point in 2013, he had an ERA over 7 and then he turned things around and had a normal Mark Buehrle-type year. The Jays have to hope that he, and the other starters can do that again.

Blogs • Yankees

May 4, 2015

Yankees-Red Sox Weekend Diary

In 2006, I missed my chance to be at the Yankees’ five-game sweep of the Red Sox, but I didn’t miss their most recent sweep in Boston over the weekend.

I bought two tickets to Yankees-Red Sox at Fenway Park for May 1 and May 2, 2006. It was the first two times those team would meet that season and it was Johnny Damon’s debut in Boston as a Yankee.

The first game of the series was a disaster. The Yankees led 3-1 before the Red Sox tied the game at 3 in the fifth. Then in the bottom of the eighth, the Red Sox took a 4-3 lead and with one out and two on, David Ortiz hit a three-run shot off new Yankee Mike Myers, who the Yankees had signed in the offseason for the sole purpose of getting Ortiz out.

The second game of the two-game series was postponed due to rain. It was made up in August as part of what would become a five-game sweep by the Yankees over the Red Sox that would permanently end the Red Sox’ season. By the time that game happened in August, I was home for the summer in college and unable to attend, so I sold the tickets and missed out on being at Fenway during something positive since I have pretty much only seen horrible Yankees losses there.

That five-game series was the last time the Yankees swept a series of at least three games in Boston and I had tickets to it and I missed it. But that changed this weekend.

I decided to go to the diary format that I used for a Yankees-Red Sox series in April for this past weekend. Just pretend like you’re reading this in one of those black-and-white Mead composition notebooks.

FRIDAY
I will never agree with Joe Girardi’s lineup decisions and days off for the everyday players, but now in his eighth season as manager, it’s something I’m just going to have to get used to and accept. He’s not going to change his ways, so I need to change my ways. But after seeing A-Rod’s 500th and 600th home runs in person and after being at the Stadium on Thursday only to see him go 0-for-6, I wanted to see him hit it over the weekend at Fenway. Girardi deciding to not start him in Friday night’s game didn’t help my chances.

When A-Rod’s 660th career home run, a pinch-hit home run on a 3-0 count in a tied game in Boston, cleared the Green Monster, I was ecstatic. I didn’t care about his PED past or his off-the-field issues or any negative storyline linked to him since becoming a Yankee in February 2004. All I cared about was that the Yankees had just taken an eighth-inning lead over the Red Sox in Boston with Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller waiting in the bullpen and that I had seen history.

PEDs or steroids or whatever or not, A-Rod is the fifth person in the history of everyone to ever play baseball to hit 660 home runs. It was the perfect moment in the perfect situation in the perfect setting for A-Rod to tie Willie Mays on the all-time home run list and after seeing No. 500 on Aug. 4, 2007 and No. 600 on Aug. 4, 2010, I got to see him hit No. 600 on May 1, 2015 at Fenway Park.

SATURDAY
Where would the Yankees be without Chris Young and with only Carlos Beltran? Not in first place, that’s for sure, and who knows how far down in the standings? Young’s home run let me breathe a sigh of relief on Saturday afternoon, but the Yankees were only in that spot thanks to an impressive start from Nathan Eovaldi.

Eovaldi went 6 2/3 innings, allowing seven hits and two earned runs in what was considered to be a big test against the Red Sox’ lineup in Boston. He needed 111 pitches to get there and allowed seven hits, which isn’t exactly what you want to see in hopes of progress from the hard-throwing righty, but the result was a win for the Yankees.

Most importantly, Eovaldi left just one out to get before the eighth inning and once you get to the eighth inning against the 2015 Yankees, the game is over. However, Girardi decided he was going to give Andrew Miller the day off and that meant a temporary bridge to Dellin Betances would need to be built. One out from Chris Martin and two outs from Justin Wilson ended up being that bridge and then in came Betances for a four-out save.

I told my friend with me at the game that I would bet him Betances would strike out everyone he faced and set the line at +700. I wish he had taken the bet because I could have won the money I eventually lost on the Kentucky Derby.

Mike Napoli: strikeout on four pitches.

Brock Holt: strikeout on three pitches.

Xander Bogaerts: strikeout on four pitches.

Blake Swihart: strikeout on three pitches.

Another seven-inning game for the Yankees. Not the patented Betances-Miller seven-inning game, but with this bullpen this season, it doesn’t always have to be just them.

SUNDAY
If Nathan Eovaldi is Phil Hughes 2.0 then Adam Warren is actually Phil Hughes. Not only because he also lacks a true strikeout pitch and gets himself in deep counts and pitch count trouble, but because he actually looks like Phil Hughes. If you put number 65 on Warren’s jersey and watched his delivery, his release point and even how he rubs the ball after getting a new one, he’s Phil Hughes. The difference between Eovaldi and Warren is that you know what you’re going to get with Warren. He’s going to struggle to pitch six innings and give up somewhere between two and four earned runs. It’s who he is at this point of his career as a starter and it’s who he might always be.

Hanley Ramirez is not the smartest person. I’m not sure why Ramirez would think that Warren would be throwing at him in a blowout, but a lot of players in the majors aren’t the most sane people and Ramirez is one of them. Ramirez looked ridiculous getting upset over getting hit in the butt or side thigh by Warren, given the score and situation, and the fact that Ramirez had done absolutely nothing over the weekend against the Yankees. This wasn’t the Yankees hitting Manny Ramirez 10 years ago or the Yankees avenging a hit by pitch of their own, it was just Hanley Ramirez trying to be a tough guy and looking like an absolute idiot on national TV.

I have seen a lot of bad things happen in Fenway that I know that no lead is safe and when the game was 8-0, it wasn’t over. When it was 8-2, I started to worry. I was probably a 4 out of 10 on the Worry Scale. When Joe Girardi decided to bring in Esmil Rogers, who is 29 years old and has a career 5.42 ERA, to get Mike Napoli out, I was a 6. When he hit the every-Yankees-fan-saw-this-coming home run, I was an 8. When Chase Headley made an awful ninth-inning error to extend the game and bring David Ortiz up with the bases loaded and two outs against Andrew Miller on a night when the closer didn’t have his best stuff, I was a 10. And when Ortiz made solid contact against Miller and drove the final out of the game at Ellsbury, I’m pretty I had a minor heart attack.

I might have missed out on the legendary five-game sweep in 2006, but being at Fenway this weekend for the latest Yankees’ sweep in Boston was also good. So good, so good, so good.

Podcasts

May 1, 2015

Podcast: Brian Monzo

This year the Kentucky Derby is part of the best sports day of the year and maybe the best sports day ever.

Saturday might not just be the best sports day, it might be the best sports day ever. Rangers-Capitals into Yankees-Red Sox into the Kentucky Derby and then Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao to end the day.

WFAN Mike’s On: Francesa on the FAN producer Brian Monzo joined me to talk about the Kentucky Derby, which horses to bet and which to avoid, which horses have the best value, who to pick and the best sports days of the year.

Author: Neil Keefe

Podcast: 610 Barstool Sports New York

Alex Ovechkin and the Over-the-Top Guarantee

The Yankees and Blue Jays Continue AL East Battle

Yankees-Red Sox Weekend Diary

Podcast: Brian Monzo