Keefe To The City

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.

Podcasts • Rangers

Apr 30, 2015

Podcast: Adam Herman

The Rangers’ five-game win over the Penguins in the first round felt easy despite the four one-goal wins, but things aren’t going to get harder against the Capitals.

Everything about the Rangers’ first-round series against the Penguins seemed easy. Despite winning all four games by a score of 2-1 with two of them going to overtime, it never felt like the Rangers were going to lose momentum or control of the series against the Penguins, even after their only loss of the series. Things aren’t going to be so easy in the second round for the Rangers against the Capitals.

Adam Herman of Blueshirt Banter joined me to talk about the Rangers’ easy first round, the reaction to small sample sizes in the playoffs, the way to stop Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals’ power play and the confidence level of Rangers fans against the Capitals.

Podcasts • Rangers

Apr 30, 2015

Podcast: Brian Monzo

The Rangers have a huge advantage in the first two games of the series against the Capitals and they need to make sure they use their layoff and rest to win.

When the Rangers play the Capitals in Game 1 on Thursday night at MSG, it will have been six days since the Rangers eliminated the Penguins in Game 5 of the first round. A six-day layoff is always nice to have at this time of the year and with the Capitals having played two more games and needing to travel, Games 1 and 2 of the upcoming series seem to heavily favor the Rangers.

WFAN Mike’s On: Francesa on the FAN producer Brian Monzo joined me to talk about the Rangers’ first-round series win over the Penguins, Rick Nash’s postseason performance, the level of confidence against the Capitals, the end of the Best Team in New York’s season and predictions for the second round.

Blogs • Yankees

Apr 29, 2015

Everyone Is a Doctor When It Comes to Masahiro Tanaka

Everyone seems to have an opinion on Masahiro Tanaka’s right arm even though not everyone is a doctor or a surgeon.

Tuesday ended up being “that day”. “That day” is the day I have feared since Masahiro Tanaka returned from an elbow tear on Sept. 21. of last season. “That day” is the day Tanaka would land on the disabled list again.

I ranked Tanaka No. 1 on The 2015 Yankees Order of Importance and I said:

At the end of Good Will Hunting, Ben Affleck’s character (Chuckie Sullivan) tells Matt Damon’s character (Will Hunting), “You know what the best part of my day is? The ten seconds before I knock on the door ’cause I let myself think I might get there, and you’d be gone. I’d knock on the door and you just wouldn’t be there. You just left.”

You know what the best part of my day is? Every day when I sign online or go on Twitter or turn on the TV or the radio or check my phone and I don’t hear bad news about Masahiro Tanaka’s right arm.

Tanaka and Pineda are the 2015 Yankees. The success of this season and making sure the Yankees don’t miss the playoffs for a third straight time lies in the health of those two. If they stay healthy, the Yankees have the best 1-2 punch in the AL East. If they don’t, the Yankees don’t have a season.

Well, April 28 ended up being the day when I heard the bad news about Tanaka, and now that he is out of the rotation for at least a month, the first-place Yankees are in trouble. Not as much as trouble as the 2014 Yankees were in without Tanaka because they couldn’t hit, but enough trouble that it’s to rely on Chase Whitley again.

This time it’s not an elbow issue, it’s a forearm one that Tanaka thought was a wrist one when he went to the doctor. His latest MRI didn’t show any new damage to his already-damaged right elbow, but it did show a forearm strain that may or may not be related to the tender wrist Tanaka also has.

The moment George King tweeted that there could be an issue with Tanaka, you could feel the smiles of the old guard, the lazy newspaper columnists in the city, grow bigger and their Grinch-like hearts enlarge at the idea of turmoil around the Yankees and their ace. And when Brian Cashman held a “press conference” with reporters at the Stadium, everyone quickly earned their medical degree and a lifetime of knowledge in orthopedic surgery.

I used to think you had to be really smart, get into a good college, do extremely well there, apply to med schools, get into one, do extremely well there, graduate and then do a residency to become a doctor. I didn’t know you could just write for the Daily News or Post to become one. There are a lot of doctors out there that could have saved a lot of time and money and who wouldn’t be paying back hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans if they had only gotten a job on the copy desk with either of the two tabloids out of college and then worked their way to columnist to achieve their dream of being a doctor or surgeon.

If you have read the columns written by Dr. John Harper of the Daily News or Dr. Kevin Kernan of the Post, which both read like the flaming bag of dog crap that Billy Madison leaves on old man Clemens’ front steps, you would know they are clearly as qualified as someone like Dr. James Andrews or Dr. David Altchek to diagnose an elbow tear or even suggest Tommy John surgery. Dr. Harper and Dr. Kernan probably don’t know what MRI stands for let alone have the ability to read one or understand what goes on in a human elbow, but every chance they get, they’re quick to let you know that “Masahiro Tanaka should get Tommy John surgery!” and that he should have gotten it last July. Somehow they write under the impression that Tommy John surgery is a very simple procedure with a 100 percent recovery success rate.

On Wednesday in the Daily News, Dr. Harper had a column titled “Future of Masahiro Tanaka’s elbow could be doomed as Yankees’ ace head to disabled list” (the typo on “head” is there, so I left it in). In the opening sentence, Harper cites fellow doctor Pedro Martinez, who must have used the $146 million he made in his career to attend medical school after retiring in 2009 as a source for Tanaka needing surgery. Later on, he cites Dr. Curt Schilling, in trying to prove his point. And in between, he filled his word space with a timeline of Brian Cashman’s “press conference” and quotes from the Yankees general manager, who said he will follow the doctors’ orders. The real doctors. Not the newspaper ones.

Kernan’s “column” (if you consider 693 words of bad one-liners and quotes and tweets a column) on Wednesday in the Post was titled “Why Tanaka Needs Tommy John Surgery”. With a headline like that, I expected the byline to be of someone like Dr. Andrews or Dr. Altchek or someone who has performed the surgery or someone who is an expert on the surgery or someone with a medical degree. But nope, “By Kevin Kernan” was right there.

Tanaka is now on the 15-day disabled list. Brian Cashman said we likely won’t see him back in the rotation for a month. If everything goes right, Tanaka should be healthy and back to putting up zeroes by the end of May. But that’s if everything goes right, and when it comes to arm injuries, things rarely seem to go right.

If Tanaka ever gets Tommy John surgery, it will be because a real doctor decided he needs it and not someone who plays a doctor in the newspaper.