Somehow Stephen Drew is still a Yankee. To recognize his improbable roster spot, here’s a conversation on Facebook.
Today is August 18 and Stephen Drew is still a Yankee. I’m not sure why and I’m not sure how, but he is.
I decided to make a fake Facebook conversation with Drew announcing to his teammates that he could be designated for assignment any day now in hopes that he actually will be. (I have been waiting for him to be DFA’d since the day Brian Cashman inexplicably signed him to a one-year, $5 million deal.) Here it is.
The trade deadline has come and gone and it was uneventful for the Yankees unless you like adding former highly-touted prospects that turned into busts and now can’t hit and have no position.
The trade deadline has come and gone and it was uneventful for the Yankees and Yankees fans unless you like adding former highly-touted prospects that turned into busts and now can’t hit and have no position. If you like players like that then you must like the Yankees’ trade for Dustin Ackley.
Here is another installment of “Monday Mentions” focused on questions and comments from Twitter about the Yankees now that the trade deadline is over.
So @Yankees get Dustin Ackley and he immediately becomes the worst player on our team. How many shitty 2b do we need Cashman? @NeilKeefe
— Christopher Lena (@SdotLENA) July 30, 2015
The answer is three since that’s how many the Yankees have now.
I’m not sure why the trade for Ackley was made. Is it because he was the second overall pick in 2009 and the Yankees think he will now develop into that talent at age 27? Is it because he hit two home runs against Masahiro Tanaka after the All-Star break? Is it because he is a lifetime .296/.397/.481 hitter at Yankee Stadium?
The most puzzling part of the Ackley trade is that the Yankees don’t see him as a second baseman, but rather as a first baseman and outfielder. As long as Robinson Cano was sad when Ackley informed his teammates that he was being traded to the Yankees then I’m OK with the trade since I want Cano to feel the pain I have felt with him in Seattle and the Yankees starting Brian Roberts, Kelly Johnson, Stephen Drew, Gregorio Petit and Brendan Ryan at second base since he left.
Garrett Jones DFA'd but Stephen Drew is still on the team @NeilKeefe #Yankees
— Brian Rappaport (@BRappy55) July 31, 2015
Apparently, you’re not aware that Stephen Drew’s dad and Brian Cashman’s dad were roommates in college and Brendan Ryan is married to Brian Cashman’s cousin. That’s the only explanation I have for these two to still be on the team at the SAME TIME while everyone else around them gets designated for assignment. Here’s to hoping Stephen Drew never touches .200 this season.
O's and Jays making moves. Hey @NeilKeefe are the Yankees the only ones who think they can't win the division?
— Alex Pabst (@ACP79) July 31, 2015
The Yankees definitely had an odd trade deadline strategy. They weren’t willing to give up any of their top prospects, which is fine, but then they were targeting Craig Kimbrel rather than a starting pitcher. Unless their plan was to pitch Kimbrel, Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller for three innings each every fifth day, I’m not sure how not going after a starting pitcher helped improve their shaky rotation.
If Kimbrel had been traded to the Yankees, it would have been intereting to see how the Yankees handled the ninth inning. Kimberl has always been a closer and has led the National League in saves the last four years, which were his first four full seasons in the league, but Miller has been a perfect 23-for-23 in save opportunities this season and dominant in the role. It’s an impossible decision and I’m happy it’s one that doesn’t need to be made now.
@NeilKeefe remember when the Twins wanted Hughes & Kennedy for Santana.
— Andrew (@Andrew_Rotondi) July 30, 2015
That’s a good way to make me cry. The Yankees could have had Johan Santana for three pitchers that are no longer with the organization.
Santana won 16 games in 2008 for the Mets with a 2.53 ERA. The Yankees went 89-73 and missed the playoffs by six games. Darrell Rasner made 20 starts for the Yankees, Sidney Ponson made 15, Joba Chamberlain made 12, Ian Kennedy made nine and Phil Hughes made eight. Those five pitchers won 12 games combined with Kennedy and Hughes winning none.
Santana gave the Mets three great years from 2008-2010 before missing 2011 and then making 21 starts in 2012, and he hasn’t pitched since. I would have gladly paid Santana to not pitch in 2011, 2013 and 2014 if it meant having him for 2008-2010.
On another trade note, remember when Brian Cashman wouldn’t include Eduardo Nunez in a deal for Cliff Lee in July 2010, so the Rangers got Cliff Lee, beat the Yankees in the ALCS and then Lee signed with the Phillies in December 2010? I don’t remember it either.
@NeilKeefe How much is CC making tonight? Please remind us.
— AceX (@0xAcexv) July 31, 2015
CC makes about $700,000 per start. That’s a seven followed by five zeroes. Here is what he has done in his last two starts:
5.2 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 2 K, 2 HR
5.0 IP, 9 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 3 HR
In years past, it would be an automatic loss with Sabathia facing the Red Sox at the Stadium like he is on Thursday, but it’s actually a blessing. The Yankees play the Blue Jays on Friday at the Stadium and the new-look Blue Jays missed out on facing Sabathia by one day. On Monday, the first four hitters for the Blue Jays were Troy Tulowitzki, Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista and Edwin Incarnation. However, the Yankees and Blue Jays have 13 games left this season, so while the Yankees might be able to hide Sabthia from the Blue Jays this weekend and next weekend, it’s going to be hard to hide him forever against the Blue Jays unless they remove him from the rotation.
@NeilKeefe Hey, was Jeter ever traded to Colorado for another shortstop?
— Michael Hurley (@michaelFhurley) July 28, 2015
Mets fans are always so quick to go from a laughingstock to the most overconfident irrational fans in the world. I was at Citi Field on July 23 for Clayton Kershaw’s near perfect game against the Mets and the team was an embarrassment and the fans couldn’t have been more quiet and Citi Field couldn’t have been less full with the best pitcher in the world pitching. Fast forward to Sunday Night Baseball with the Mets looking to sweep the Nationals and the Citi Field crowd chanting “OVER-RATED” at Bryce Harper, who is hitting .330/.454/.667 with 29 home runs and 68 RBIs, which are as bad and ill-timed as the “Yankees suck” chants that will be coming at the end of the month at Fenway Park with the Red Sox a million games behind the Yankees.
I remember the good old days of “Reyes is better than Jeter” debates, which were equally as funny as the “Nomar is better than Jeter” debates I had to listen to growing up. Reyes is 32 years old, now playing for his fourth team in five years and is owed $22 million in 2016 and 2017 with a $22 million team option of $4 million buyout in 2018. There’s a 100 percent chance that option gets bought out when Reyes is 35. When Jeter was 35, he won his fifth World Series. Good debate.
Despite his early-season struggles and the eight-plus years and money left on his deal, I still miss want Robinson Cano and wish he were a Yankee.
I never wanted Robinson Cano to leave. I said as much on Dec. 7, 2013 when his signing a 10-year deal with the Mariners became real. Coming off an 85-win postseason-less year, the Yankees let the best player on the team, in his prime, leave for money. Just money. The one thing that is supposed to separate the Yankees from every other team.
Cano left the Yankees after a .314/.383/.516 season in which he hit 27 home runs and 107 RBIs when his protection varied between Travis Hafner, Vernon Wells, Ichiro Suzuki and Lyle Overbay. He left for a 10-year, $240 million offer the Yankees were never going to give him, left the New York City life for the Seattle life and left behind Yankee Stadium for Safeco Field. But what he really left was a big gaping hole at second base and in the middle of the Yankees’ lineup.
Despite missing 14 games total over the previous seven seasons, being a career .309 hitter with four consecutive Silver Sluggers, two Gold Gloves and finishing in the Top 6 in MVP voting in the last four years, the Yankees decided to lowball their homegrown star with a $175 million offer while gladly overpaying Jacoby Ellsbury with $153 million. So instead of Cano continuing to hit third for the Yankees for the next decade, the Yankees turned a Top 5 hitter in the game, the best all-around second baseman in baseball and a Hall of Fame candidate into Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran.
Since Cano’s departure, second base has been played by Brian Roberts, Brendan Ryan, Yangervis Solarte, Dean Anna, Kelly Johnson, Stephen Drew and Gregorio Petit, a revolving door of reclamation projects and career bench players that have all failed and failed miserably. Roberts was designated for assignment after half a season; Ryan has been hurt and an offensive disaster; Solarte was traded for Brandon McCarthy; Anna may or may not be in baseball anymore (just kidding, he’s playing Triple-A for the Cardinals); Johnson was traded to the Red Sox in a garbage for garbage deal for Drew; Drew hit .150 for the Yankees last year and hasn’t seen .200 this year and hasn’t seen .190 since April 27; Petit was about as good as a 30-year-old with 62 career games entering this season could be. The Yankees remain too scared to permanently put Drew on the bench or move Drew to short and put Didi Gregorius on the bench and let either Jose Pirela or Rob Refsnyder become the full-time second baseman. This is due to stubbornness and also being worried that Drew might find his .253 career average stroke one of these days even if there’s a better chance of finding a section of seats between the bases at the Stadium completely filled.
The Yankees needed and still need Robinson Cano and Robinson Cano needed and still needs the Yankees. Unfortunately, both were too stupid to recognize this with the Yankees worried about pinching their pennies for their superstar and Cano worried about getting every last penny he could in free agency. Financially, both are better off in their current state, with the Yankees continuning to up the price of everything at the Stadium even without Cano at second and Cano making $24 million per year last year, this year and for the next eight years. But from an on-the-field product perspective and from a wins perspective, which is what every decision should be based upon, the Yankees are without their homegrown talent who was born to hit in the Bronx and their homegrown star is struggling for a second year to find his power stroke for a once-again underachieving team which is closer to last place than first place in the AL West.
In a perfect world, the Yankees would all go back to the beginning of the 2013 season and never let Cano hit free agency. They would never offer him a disrespectful $175 million, while gladly opening up the bank and handing a blank check to Jacoby Ellsbury based off one of his six-plus seasons in the league. Cano would be a Yankee right now, would have been one last year, and would continue to be one for the remainder of his career. Brett Gardner and either Martin Prado or Chase Headley could hit in front of him, Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira behind him and either Stephen Drew or Didi Gregorius wouldn’t be on the team. (Just writing it out brought a smile to my face.)
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in one where the Steinbrenners and Brian Cashman have made a series of bad decisions based off finances and incorrect talent and scouting evaluations. As a result, we’re left with a Yankees team that is currently first place in a division that will likely be won by a team with a mid-80s win total. It’s not a great Yankees team and compared to other teams in recent years, it’s not even that good, but it’s good enough to win the AL East in a down year, something that AL East hasn’t experienced in forever.
Maybe one day Cano will be back in the Bronx the way Alfonso Soriano made his way back when the Cubs no longer wanted to pay him and the Yankees need a power presence. There will come a day when the Mariners no longer want to pay Cano and with him hitting .246/.290/.337 with two home runs and 16 RBIs, they probably don’t want to pay him now. Maybe that day will come soon when the Mariners need salary relief and the Yankees can do what they should have done all along and pay Cano for the rest of his career.
This week, Cano said, “I would never regret my decision,” but he must and the Yankees must regret theirs. They needed each other and still do. Cano must miss hitting at the Stadium for half the season and the Yankees must miss having the best second baseman in baseball in the middle of their infield and the middle of their lineup. I know I still miss him.
The Yankees lost another winnable game in the middle of a pennant race and Joe Girardi’s decision making once again played a prominent role in the loss.
On Sunday afternoon, Paul O’Neill said the following about Joe Girardi, which left me with the same blank stare Dave Kujan had when he realized “Verbal” Kint was Keyser Soze.
“I think that Joe Girardi realizes where this team is. You have to win every single game you have an opportunity to win. You have an opportunity to win this game, you go all out. You don’t worry about tomorrow.”
What shocked me is how anyone, let alone Paul O’Neill, could think that about Joe Girardi. No one plays for tomorrow more than Joe Girardi, always worrying about hypothetical situations that will most likely never take place.
I did the first episode of the fifth season of The Joe Girardi Show back on April 21 and then I didn’t do the second episode until July 22 (one week ago). I finished last week’s episode by saying the following:
I always hope that my latest version of The Joe Girardi Show is the last one I will ever have to do because it would mean he wouldn’t have given me a reason to write another one. Unfortunately, I know that won’t be the case.
Here we are, seven days later and I’m writing the third episode. Like I said, I don’t want to have do these, but I especially don’t want to have to be doing them at the end of July with the Yankees in the middle of both a division race and wild-card race.
The Yankees could have won on Saturday if Joe Girardi didn’t carelessly and irresponsibly let Jeff Francis pitch the ninth inning of one-run game against a division opponent the Yankees are battling to win a playoff spot. But he left Francis pitch and the Blue Jays turned their one-run lead into a four-run lead rendering Carlos Beltran’s two-run home in the bottom of the ninth worthless.
On Sunday, Girardi let David Huff (DAVID HUFF!!!) pitch the seventh inning of a tie game against the Blue Jays. Well, he let him start the seventh inning and once Huff put the first two hitters of the inning on base then Girardi brought in Dellin Betances, who eventually escaped a bases-loaded jam, most likely making Girardi believe in his own head that he made the right decision. Like I have always said, Girardi is the guy who stays with a 16 in Blackjack with the dealer showing a 7 and when the dealer flips over a 9 and then pulls a 10 to bust, Girardi thinks he made the right decision.
But even after some inexplicable moves over the weekend against the team the Yankees are currently battling for divisional and wild-card position, Monday was the boiling point once again. I couldn’t take it anymore when on Monday, for the second time in as many Mondays, his decision making was at the forefront of a Yankees loss to the Rangers — the worst team in Major League Baseball.
So once again, it was necessary to fill in for Michael Kay on my version of The Joe Girardi Show.
Why did David Phelps face J.P. Arencibia?
The better question here might be “Why did David Phelps throw the 0-2 pitch that he threw to J.P. Arencibia?” but if Phelps hadn’t faced Arencibia then he never would have been able to throw that 0-2 meatball.
Here was David Phelps’ line for the game before the fifth inning started: 4 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 55 pitches. He gave up a single on five pitches to start the inning and then retired the next two hitters on four pitches. His updated line: 4.2 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 64 pitches.
After that, Elvis Andrus singled (first pitch), Alex Rios singled (third pitch), and Adrian Beltre doubled (third pitch). His updated line: 4.2 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 71 pitches.
At 8 p.m. last night in Arlington it was 88 degrees with 40 percent humidity and at 9 p.m. it was 86 degrees with 41 percent humidity. After giving up three hits in four innings, Phelps, who usually pitches in much different conditions, had just allowed four hits to the last six batters and after having thrown 37 pitches in the first three innings, he had now thrown 34 in the last 1 2/3 innings. Phelps was tiring and losing control of his pitches and the game, so what did Girardi do? He let him face Jim Adduci. And what did Phelps do? He walked him on four pitches.
Let’s recap: Phelps was cruising, having pitched four shutout innings and allowing just three hits and no walks on 55 pitches. He had now put five of the seven batters he faced in the inning on base and after giving up three consecutive hits, he had just walked a 29-year-old career minor leaguer, who entered the game with 73 career plate appearances in the majors, on four pitches. Would you say that David Phelps was fatigued, had lost control and should be removed from a tie game with one of the game’s best pitchers going against the Yankees? I would.
I know why Joe Girardi left David Phelps in the game. Arencibia entered the game hitting .147/.194/.305, and more importantly, he entered the game 1-for-11 with five strikeouts against Phelps, but this is where the binder backfires. Arencibia’s stat page against Phelps in Girardi’s binder says that he is 1-for-11 with five strikeouts against him, but it doesn’t say that the sun was melting Arlington on Monday night with Phelps laboring over the last four hitters and now having thrown 20 pitches already in the inning. Phelps had fully unraveled before he threw an 0-2 fastball to a hitter who loves fastballs, but Girardi decided a tired Phelps running on fumes was his best option in a pennant race with a rested elite bullpen. If Arencibia, having a horrible offensive year, has had so much trouble making contact against Phelps, who isn’t exactly a strikeout pitcher, wouldn’t he have even more trouble against a true strikeout pitcher out of the bullpen?
Single up the middle. 4-2 Rangers.
Why did Jacoby Ellsbury get the day off?
Before Monday’s game there were 58 games left in the season and the Yankees trailed in the division by 4 games and in the wild card by 1 game. On Monday, the Yankees were playing the worst team in the league with one of the best pitchers in the game on the mound, so you would think you would want to put your best offensive lineup together. If you want to rest someone, maybe give them a rest on Tuesday against Nick Martinez or on Wednesday against Colby Lewis. But against Yu Darvish? Why? Whyyyy?!?! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Ellsbury was eventually used as a pinch hitter to lead off the ninth, so his “day off” wasn’t a day off. But he wasn’t used as a pinch hitter with two on and two out in the eighth. Instead he used Zelous Wheeler in that spot because you have to have a right-handed hitter face a left-handed pitcher!
Jacoby Ellsbury signed a seven-year, $153 million deal in the offseason. He is making $21.1 million this season and is hitting LINE with HR and RBIs. He last stole He is one of several reasons that Robinson Cano is now playing in Seattle. He should be playing EV-ERY SING-LE GAME. Every one. He is 30 years old, not 40 and even if he has a history of freak injuries, and then babying those injuries, you can’t plan for freak injuries, and he needs to play every day.
Mike Francesa has repeatedly called Ellsbury “the Yankees’ best player” and in 2014 with a 40-year-old Derek Jeter, a bad Carlos Beltran, an inconsistent Brian McCann and Mark Teixeira being softer than ever, that’s not much of an accomplishment for Ellsbury. But if he is “the Yankees’ best player” he needs to play every day. That’s what “best players” do. Ask Robinson Cano.
If Mark Teixeira could pinch hit, why didn’t he play the whole game?
Mark Teixeira is the fraud of all frauds. He has received a free pass as a Yankee because the team won the World Series in his first year with the team thanks to Alex Rodriguez, who from 2004-2009 had to deal with the postseason ridicule that Teixeira should also have to deal with. If the Yankees were still looking for a championship since 2000, Teixeira wouldn’t be making appearances in Entourage and trying to be Johnny Carson for YES while on the disabled list.
Last February, Teixeira foreshadowed that he is breaking down despite at the time still being owed $90 million. He then got hurt preparing for the World Baseball Classic and played in just 15 games before undergoing season-ending wrist surgery. This season, Teixeira has missed time due to hamstring, wrist, rib cage, knee and lat injuries and also tired legs. The last time he played in a game was the series finale against the Reds last Sunday (July 20). After successfully taking on-field batting practice on Monday night in Texas it was made known that he was healthy enough to return to the lineup on Tuesday night.
Joe Girardi has this “rule” where once an injured player appears healthy enough to return to the lineup, they are given an extra day before returning. That would be a good “rule” to follow if there were a lot of off-days in baseball, but there aren’t and there aren’t any days that can be wasted when you’re chasing 4 (now 4.5) in the division and 1 (now 2) in the wild card. So if Teixeira was deemed eligible to play on Tuesday night, that means Monday was his “Girardi Day” where he would sit for no reason other than as an extra precaution like someone setting an alarm clock for their alarm clock.
One on, two out, trailing 4-2 in the eighth inning and Brian Roberts, who should no longer be on the team let alone in the lineup against Yu Darvish, is called back to the dugout for pinch hitter Mark Teixeira. He singled. What if Joe Girardi had played him the entire game?
I hope Paul O’Neill was watching Monday’s game because he would have seen how wrong he was on Sunday. Joe Girardi always plays for tomorrow. If he doesn’t stop, at the end of September, there won’t be a tomorrow to play for.
The Yankees lost the first two games of the 2014 Subway Series and have now lost six straight to the Mets, so let’s look at what went wrong in the Bronx.
The Rangers overcame a 3-1 series deficit to beat the Penguins and advance to the Eastern Conference finals and the Yankees lost two games in a row at home to the Mets and have now lost six in a row to the Mets going back to last year. Is it 2014? Is this real life?
Two years ago I did a Subway Series Diary for the Yankee Stadium portion of the rivalry to recap what I watched over the three-game series and I said:
I feel weird calling this a diary since I have never had a diary before. I remember in elementary school when we were forced to have a “journal” in one of those black-and-white Mead notebooks.
Well, here we go again.
MONDAY
With the Mets losing eight of their last nine and looking ripe for their annual free fall, I didn’t think there was a chance the 2014 Subway Series could go the way the 2013 Subway Series went. But when Monday started off with Mark Teixeira not being in the lineup due to “fatigue” and “tired legs” and the $23.5 million-per-year and $138,888-per game first baseman said, “I was on the bases a lot this week. Just a little tired. I’ll be fine,” doubt started to creep in. When the Mets took a 1-0 first inning lead and held that lead into the second and the Yankees loaded the bases with no one out only for Kelly Johnson and Brian Roberts to fail to drive a run in, the doubt grew larger. Then Brett Gardner saved Johnson and Roberts by hitting a grand slam to give the Yankees a 4-1 lead and I was relieved that order had been restored in the Subway Series. I thought “The Mets are the Mets” and started to think about winning three of four in the series, if not sweeping the series. And then the seventh inning started.
Alfredo Aceves’ second tour with the Yankees is going about as well as Javier Vazquez’s second tour with the Yankees went. Sure, Alfredo Aceves 2.0 is averaging 9.3 K/9 and 2.8 BB/9, but he’s ruined the last two games he pitched in (he blew Saturday’s game in Milwaukee and Monday’s game) and he’s only pitched in four games (he did pitch 5 1/3 scoreless innings against Tampa Bay on May 4 and maybe that’s the sign the Yankees need to put him in the rotation). But Aceves wasn’t the only wrong button that Joe Girardi pushed with a 7-5 lead and nine outs to go in the game. Here are the lines for the bullpen:
Alfredo Aceves: 0.2 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 2 K
Matt Thornton: 0.2 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 0 K
Preston Claiborne: 1.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 3K
Everyone loves to praise Girardi for how he uses his relievers and how he manages their workloads (he did a great job giving Mariano Rivera extended rest in his final season last year, so he could throw pitches to WFAN’s Craig Carton this week at Yankee Stadium), but Girardi’s biggest bullpen problem this season hasn’t necessarily been managing workloads as much as it has been determining who should pitch when. It’s not completely his fault since the entire league has dictated the idea of set bullpen roles, so that someone like David Robertson can no longer be the escape artist he once was when it comes to escaping jams for others. Because Robertson is the closer, he can now only escape his own jams. And that’s why Robertson was standing in the bullpen on Monday night ready to enter the game, but because it wasn’t the ninth inning and because the Yankees weren’t winning or the game wasn’t tied, he stayed in the bullpen watching the 2014 version of The Goof Troop light the game on fire like my great grandmother burning her trash in the backyard as if it were no big deal. If there are going to be set bullpen roles (and there are), then David Robertson pitches the ninth, Dellin Betances pitches the eighth and Girardi can mix and match the other innings and outs with his binder. That is the only acceptable pecking order after six weeks.
Even after watching the bullpen punch out early and after giving up nine runs, the Yankees had a chance to tie the game in the ninth with Derek Jeter on first with one out for pinch hitter … Mark Teixeira!
“All year long, they looked to him to light the fire, and all year long, he answered the demands, until he was physically unable to start tonight — with two bad legs.”
That’s how Vin Scully started his famous call of Kirk Gibson’s 1988 World Series home run and I thought Michael Kay might start to rattle something similar off, not because Kay likes to overdo it with drama more than any other baseball play-by-play man (which he does), but because it was nearly a miracle that hours after taking a seat on the bench due to tired legs, Mark Teixeira was hitting in the ninth.
And Teixeira got the job done with a single to right to put the tying run on base and the winning run at the plate in Brian McCann. But then McCann hit into the predictable game-ending double play and the Subway Series picked up right where it left off last May.
TUESDAY
For someone fighting for their job, Vidal Nuno basically did the equivalent of showing up to work an hour late wearing shorts and a T-shirt, streaming Netflix in your cube, taking a two-hour lunch, scrolling through Facebook pictures for the remainder of the post-lunch day and then accidentally forwarding an email containing a pornographic link to a company-wide list at 4:02 p.m. before leaving for the day. Nuno was given a golden opportunity to make a case that he could be a reliable starter in the rotation and replace Ivan Nova this year and also to throw his name in the mix for a spot in the rotation next year when Hiroki Kuroda leaves or if Nova still isn’t health. But Nuno has followed up every promising start with an A.J. Burnett-like egg and if it weren’t for CC Sabathia also landing on the disabled list, Nuno would probably be getting his seat back in the bullpen. Here is how Nuno has done over the last three weeks since joining the rotation:
April 20 at TB: 5 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K
April 26 vs. LAA: 4.1 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 4 K
May 2 vs. TB: 4.2 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 2 K
May 7 at LAA: 6.1 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 3 K
May 13 vs. NYM: 3.1 IP, 4 H, 7 R, 5 ER, 4 BB, 1 K
Sean Henn would have been proud of Nuno’s performance on Tuesday night, letting the Mets hang a 4-spot before the Yankees could even bat for the first time and then continuing to let the Mets add on to their lead with the offense trying to erase the deficit. The problem isn’t just Nuno, it’s that the Yankees needed two starters to replace Nova and Michael Pineda and Nuno and David Phelps have proven to be coin flips in their short stints in the rotation. And now the problem is even bigger with Yankees asking Chase Whitley to take CC Sabathia’s spot in the rotation on Thursday. The last time someone named Chase started a game for the Yankees, I was sitting at Fenway Park wondering if I wanted to watch baseball ever again.
After watching Aceves blow Saturday’s game and then Monday’s game, there he was again on Tuesday being called upon to stop the bleeding and give the offense a chance to get back in the game and there he was again ruining a game. Aceves gave up four earned runs in 1 2/3 innings before handing off the ball to Matt Daley, who actually did his job this time after taking part in the April 19 disaster in Tampa Bay.
Standing between a four-game losing streak and a seven-game Subway Series losing streak is Masahiro Tanaka and I’m happy he’s standing there. Right now, Tanaka’s not only the one Yankees’ starter who can be trusted, he’s the only Yankees’ starter who can win.