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Tag: Jeff Samardzija

Blogs • Email Exchanges • Yankees

Aug 7, 2015

Yankees-Blue Jays Feels Like Fall Baseball

The Yankees-Red Sox series was supposed to be a meaningful late-season series, but it’s the Blue Jays series this weekend that is actually the more postseason-like series.

The Yankees-Red Sox series the last three days at the Stadium was supposed to be a meaningful late-season series, but for the third straight year, the Yankees and Red Sox haven’t really played anything resembling a series of importance in August or September. Instead, the Blue Jays series this weekend is actually the more postseason-like series.

With the Yankees and Blue Jays meeting this weekend in the Bronx for the biggest series in three years at the Stadium, I did an email exchange with Tom Dakers of Bluebird Banter to talk about the Blue Jays acquiring Troy Tulowitzki and David Price, if Blue Jays fans are worried about sacrificing their future, the mood in Toronto with the team winning and if Blue Jays fans want to win the division or are content with the wild card.

Keefe: The Blue Jays didn’t just tinker with their lineup at the trade deadline, they basically changed their entire roster and in the last week or so they have become a different team. When the Red Sox having just left town in what was another late-season letdown series between the rivals, it’s actually the Blue Jays series this weekend that will have a playoff feel.

The Blue Jays haven’t lost with Troy Tulowitzki in the starting lineup, going 8-0, and they have now gone 8-2 in their last 10 games and riding a five-game winning streak coming into the weekend.

Were you surprised by the Tulowitzki trade? I know I was.

Dakers: Yeah I was surprised, stunned, almost knocked off my feet.

We had Jose Reyes and he was perfectly acceptable as a shortstop. Sure, his range was limited and he was making more errors than you would like to see, but he’s making a ton of money and I figured that he was untradeable. And he could be very exciting on offense. I didn’t think of shortstop being a problem position, at least not in the way that starting pitching was.

But, if you get a chance to get a player like Troy Tulowitzki, you really have to take it. He is much much better on defense and also an improvement offensively. He gives us another power hitting right-handed batter. You can’t turn down another great player just because you already have others of the same type.

Keefe: I was hoping the Yankees would trade for David Price given instability of their rotation, but the Yankees held on to their top prospects and decided against adding a true ace and giving themselves the chance to sign him to a long-term deal before he would become a free agent this offseason. Instead, he went to the Blue Jays and is back in the AL East and I have to worry about him being the difference in a possible division title.

After years of having inadequate pitching to go with their incredible offense, the Blue Jays finally have an ace. Price allowed one earned run in eight innings with 11 strikeouts in his first start

Like the Tulowitzki trade, were you surprised by the trade for Price?

Akers: Yeah, surprised would be the right word. We needed another starting pitcher, but I expected, especially after the Tulo trade, it would be a lesser name. Maybe someone like Tyson Ross, from the Padres, or Jeff Samardzija, from the White Sox. Good pitchers, but not an Ace like Price.

I’m thrilled that was got Price. If we were to make it to a one-game playoff, we have a pitcher I’d trust for that game. If we were in a longer playoff, we have a game one starter.

Keefe: The Blue Jays gave up a lot to change their team for the stretch run this season and when it comes to Price, there’s a good chance they might only have him for two months.

Are you worried that the Blue Jays went over board with their moves to make a run at a possible division title or a wild card when it could mean destroying their future? Or was enough enough with missing the playoffs since 1993 and needing to get back to the postseason and makes any and all moves at all costs?

Dakers: Yeah, we gave up some good pitching. Jeff Hoffman and Daniel Norris could turn out to be very good pitchers. But then, how often do we have a good shot at making the playoffs. The only ‘rental’ players they picked up are Price and LaTroy Hawkins. Hawkins is planning to retire at the end of the season. Price? Well he does seem to be enjoying being in Toronto. He said that the atmosphere, for his first start at Rogers Centre, was the best he’s ever seen in a regular season game. Maybe he can be convinced to stay?

Keefe: Here in New York with Mets fans there is a rejuvenated fan base that is now expecting to make the playoffs with their new-look roster.

What is the mood in Toronto? I have a feeling is similar to that among Mets fans since those are the two hottest teams in baseball right now.

Dakers: Yeah folks are pretty excited. Price’s first start was a sellout. TV ratings are way way up, right across Canada. The Jays said that the day the Price trade was announced the team sold 35,000 tickets and 29,000 the next days. And, on the weekend after the trade, the team sold 1,400 jerseys and t-shirts with either Price or Tulowitzki’s name on.

It has been a long time since the Jays were making this sort of news in August. People seem to be talking about the team everywhere you go. It really is kind of cool to think we could have playoff baseball in Toronto again, after all this time.

Keefe: When we talked in April, you thought the Blue Jays could win 89-90 games and contend. When we talked in May, you thought they would stay involved in the AL East race. Well, here we are on Aug. 7 and they are 4 1/2 games out of first in the division and 1 1/2 games up.

The good news for me is that the Yankees have a six-game lead in the loss column over the Blue Jays. And if the Yankees play just one game over .500 for the rest of the way and go 28-27, the Blue Jays would have to go 31-21 just to tie them. I’m scared of the Blue Jays, but I shouldn’t be that scared. The Yankees just need to win at least six of their remaining 13 games against the Blue Jays to keep them at bay.

Are you looking at the Blue Jays winning the division or are you content with the wild card?

Dakers: Oh wouldn’t give up on winning the division yet. The team has gone from being 8.5 back to 4.5 back in less than two weeks, so clearly there is a chance still. I wouldn’t start thinking that the wild card is the only possibility until a week or two into September.

The Jays have a great offense (kind of an understatement, they have scored 59 more runs than any other team in baseball) and the pitching seems to be coming around. Over the last month the team has a 2.94 ERA. The starting rotation and the bullpen are both looking much better. And adding Tulowitzki, at short, Ben Revere in left has shored up the defense at our two worst positions.

I don’t see why the team shouldn’t be able to put together two good months of baseball.

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Podcasts • Yankees

Jul 31, 2015

Podcast: White Sox Dave

The Barstool Sports White Sox blogger joined me to talk about the division of baseball fans in Chicago, the 2005 World Series, David Robertson, the perception of Hawk Harrelson and which team should be the “Sox”.

David Robertson

For the first time in forever the Yankees catch a break when it comes to facing an opposing team’s ace and one of the best pitchers in baseball. The Yankees will miss Chris Sale by a day this weekend (though that nearly wasn’t the case with rain in Boston on Thursday night) and have a chance to get back on track after back-to-back losses in Texas against the weakest part of the White Sox’ rotation.

White Sox Dave of Barstool Sports Chicago joined me to talk about the White Sox’ big plans from their offseason, the division of baseball fans in Chicago, the 2005 World Series, David Robertson closing for his new team, the differences between Ozzie Guillen and Robin Ventura, the perception of Hawk Harrelson and which MLB team should be called the “Sox”.

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Blogs • Email Exchanges • Yankees

May 28, 2015

The Yankees Are Getting the A’s at the Right Time

The Yankees are headed to the West Coast for a seven-game road trip and it starts with a four-game series in Oakland where the A’s are in last place.

Sonny Gray

The last six games are a good indication of the 2015 Yankees as they were swept at home by the Rangers and then swept what might be the best team in baseball in the Royals the following three days. After being nine games over .500 and erasing that in two weeks, the Yankees appear to be back on track and are headed to Oakland at the best possible time.

With the Yankees and A’s meeting for the first time this season, Alex Hall of Athletics Nation joined me to talk about what happened down the stretch to the A’s last year, the trades for Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija and what’s gone wrong for the A’s to start this season.

Keefe: Last year in our email exchange, I asked you this:

When it comes to the A’s, what are the year-end expectations, especially after the team’s resurgence the last few years? Is just making the postseason enough for you, or are you tired of “just” making the postseason?

You answered with this:

This team is built to win right now and has actually mortgaged a little bit of its future to do so, and a failure to bring home a title, much less a league pennant, would be severely disappointing.

The A’s ended up blowing their AL West lead, settled for the second wild-card spot and then blew a late lead in that game to the Royals. Along the way there, they crushed the trade deadline and sacrificed potential future stars for Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija, and neither of them are on the A’s this year. (We’ll get to that in a little.)

How disappointing was the finish to the 2014 season?

Hall: It was almost a worst-case scenario. The new pitchers helped a lot and the A’s probably wouldn’t even have made it to the wild-card game at all without them, but the rest of the team just fell apart. With the exceptions of Josh Donaldson, Josh Reddick, and Eric Sogard, the entire lineup either got hurt and stopped hitting or got hurt and just went on the DL. Meanwhile, the starting pitching was always just good enough to not win and the bullpen continued to be lights-out right up until it was time to seal a save. Everything that could go wrong did.

The wild-card game was much the same — two A’s left with injuries, including the catcher who was there specifically to halt the Royals’ running game, and they ended up losing one of the most heartbreaking games in MLB history despite scoring seven runs. The only way it would have been worse would have been finishing one game lower in the standings and missing the wild-card game completely — even a heartbreaking loss is better than not making it at all.

Keefe: I was ecstatic when the A’s traded for Jon Lester and took Boston’s homegrown ace in the middle of another last-place season for the Red Sox. Red Sox fans stupidly thought they would just end up re-signing Lester in the offseason and that it was just more of a loan to Oakland and that in 2015 they would have Lester back and have Yoenis Cespedes in the lineup, but they don’t have either player now.

That trade seemed to change the A’s offense down the stretch of the season and they were never really the same team after it. Cespedes had been a middle-of-the-order presence and had helped them climb to first place and distance themselves from the rest of the division, and was maybe a bigger part of the A’s than Billy Beane had thought.

Were you on board with that trade at the time? Do you think it destroyed the offense?

Hall: I will say that I wasn’t into the idea of trading for Lester before it happened. I wanted to roll the dice with the guys who had brought us to the top of the MLB standings. And there wasn’t a single person in Oakland who didn’t get sick when they woke up to hear that Cespedes was gone — he was massively popular here, as he will be wherever he plays. However, from a statistical standpoint, it did make logical sense to deal from an area of strength (offense) to beef up a weakness (thin rotation).

Even though I would not have made the trade, and even though I would undo it if I could go back in time, I still just don’t think it made any difference in the end. Losing Cespedes is not what destroyed the offense. That was accomplished when Brandon Moss’ hip turned to mush, when John Jaso got concussed, when Jed Lowrie missed time, when Stephen Vogt’s foot injury sapped his hitting, when Derek Norris wore down, when Coco Crisp’s neck injury knocked him in and out of the order, when Alberto Callaspo was an everyday player and even a DH, when Jonny Gomes failed to hit even one homer, when Craig Gentry got concussed, and when Adam Dunn OPS’ed .634 as an emergency replacement. The lineup was a juggernaut in the first half, and losing one guy did not destroy it — especially considering that, by the numbers, Cespedes was only the third-best hitter on the team after Donaldson and Moss. Losing him was one part of a larger puzzle, and it certainly didn’t help the offense when he left, but it took a lot more than that one loss to completely tank the entire unit.

Keefe: The A’s also traded for Jeff Samardzija last summer and had to give up Addison Russell to get him, who now looks to be the future of the middle infield for the Cubs. Then this past offseason, the A’s traded Samardzija to the White Sox to replenish their roster and try to salvage what was the lost in the trade for Cubs knowing that they wouldn’t pay Samardzija at the end of this season anyway.

Are you devastated that Russell was dealt last season knowing his potential?

Hall: It’s tough to see him begin to blossom so quickly in Chicago, but I’ve come to peace with that trade. I am 100 percent certain that the A’s season would have been even more disappointing if they hadn’t acquired a pitcher, and at the time it looked like the early bird might be the only one to get a worm. Plus, getting your guy in early July means you get an extra month of production out of your rental. It’s easy to look back now and say that Billy Beane should have waited longer for the market to develop, and I’ll admit that before the trade I was not interested in Shark nor Hammel, but it’s also true that Shark pitched like a legitimate ace in Oakland and so at least Beane got his money’s worth in that sense. He got what he was looking for in the trade, it just wasn’t enough.

On the other side, Shark was turned into four players from the White Sox. None of them are as good as Russell could be, but at least there is something left to show for him. If he builds on this promising start and becomes an All-Star then that will be a big bummer for A’s fans, but that’s the price of business if you want to take a big-time gamble for the big prize.

Keefe: Sorry to make you feel bad and harp on the end of the 2014 season (feel free to ask me about the 2013 and 2014 Yankees), but let’s talk about this year A’s team, which has gotten off to a horrific start, is 15 games under .500 and 13 1/2 games back in the West.

What has happened to the A’s team that was at times the best team in baseball over the last three years? Is there anything to feel good about right now other than Sonny Gray?

Hall; This has been a frustrating year to watch because the A’s have been playing pretty well but don’t have the wins to show for it. The rotation is among the best in baseball, and the lineup has been solid despite losing Coco and missing Ben Zobrist for a month. But the defense has been horrendous and the bullpen has been even worse, and every day they come oh-so-close to winning and then fall short in a new and amazing way.

The A’s are 2-15 in one-run games, and that kind of futility goes beyond a lack of skill or “clutch”-ness and into the realm of rotten luck. If the starting pitcher is good, then the lineup gets shut out. If the lineup scores, then the defense makes a major error. If the defense holds up, then the bullpen blows it with a big homer. It feels like flipping a coin and getting tails every time, and knowing that one of these days it’ll come up heads … but will it be tomorrow, next week, or next year?

Keefe: The A’s won the West in 2012 and 2013 and reached the playoffs as a wild-card team last year. It was the first time the team had made the playoffs in three straight seasons since they went to the playoffs in four straight from 2000-2003.

It seems like the window of opportunity for the A’s it always is so small and right when they are about to get over the hump, it closes and then it’s rebuilding mode again. After 94-, 96- and 88-win seasons over the last three years and now a 17-32 start, it looks like it’s rebuilding mode again.

What were your expectations for the A’s this season coming off three straight postseason appearances and what are they now after nearly two months of baseball?

Hall: The A’s looked like they were aiming for the playoffs again, but their sights weren’t set as hard on that goal as in the last couple years. They were willing to make a couple of win-now moves, but only after selling high on a lot of big names. This was a team with solid-but-not-huge playoff dreams, and while it’s shocking to see them lose this much it’s not like anyone was guaranteeing a postseason berth.

The A’s are still loaded with a lot of good players, and I’ve seen a lot of unlikely runs both from Oakland and from other teams in the last 15 years. I haven’t given up on the season, but I do realize that the chances of a comeback are slim and shrinking by the day. Realistically, the rest of this season should be seen as an audition for young players like Jesse Hahn, Kendall Graveman, Billy Burns, and Marcus Semien. On the other hand, big performances from those players would also be the path to the postseason, so one way or other my expectations are just to hope for the best from everyone and see what happens. Sonny Gray is pitching like he has Cy Young aspirations, so that will be something to watch regardless of the team’s record.

Oakland has a few pending free agents, so if they don’t turn things around more or less immediately then they could be sellers. But Zobrist already missed a month, Scott Kazmir just left his last start with shoulder soreness, and Tyler Clippard hasn’t had a chance to rack up many saves — it’s tough to say if the A’s could even get any good deals for those guys, or if they should hold onto them, hand out qualifying offers and see if they can retain any of them on one-year deals (or get draft picks as compensation).

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Blogs • Yankees

Jul 9, 2014

The State of Brian Cashman

Brian Cashman gave his most recent State of the Yankees to Mike Francesa, so it’s time to look at the State of Brian Cashman with the “first half” of the season almost over.

Brian Cashman

We are almost at the “halfway point” of the season. But when the “first half” of the MLB season ends, the Yankees will only have 68 games or 42 percent of their season left. Time is ticking for the Yankees to start playing like the Yankees or at least start playing the way they were two weeks ago. Luckily, the AL East has become what the AL Central and NL West were for so long and even at 45-44, the Yankees are a strong finish in Cleveland and Baltimore this weekend from possibly being in first place.

Brian Cashman talked with Mike Francesa on WFAN and gave a sort of First Half State of the Yankees, so of course it’s time to give a State of Brian Cashman for the first time since Feb. 20. Back in February, Cashman crushed my confidence about the 2014 Yankees a full 40 days before the season started, but rightfully so apparently since they are one game over .500 after 89 games. However, it’s a little odd that the person responsible for building this team and this roster is the person who entered the season admitting that they weren’t going to be that good, and his feelings haven’t really changed.

On the big picture for the 2014 Yankees.

“Frustrating so far. We’ve had underperformance; we’ve had injuries, inconsistency. It’s been a frustrating first part and it’s obviously my job to find ways to improve on what we’ve got and to make some adjustments and we feel we have to do that. I feel I have to do that.”

I’m glad that Brian Cashman feels he has to make some adjustments to the one-game-over-.500 team he built coming off an win and postseason-less season. That’s very nice of him. What’s also nice is using the word “frustrating” to describe the 2014 Yankees. I would have gone a different route in my choice of word, but “frustrating” is a very nice way to put. It’s kind of like when the Yankees get seven hits in a game, all singles of course, and Joe Girardi claims they swung the bats “well.” So yes, the 2014 Yankees have been “frustrating.” How frustrating? Let’s look at the Yankees’ season by month.

April: 15-11
May: 14-14
June: 12-15
July: 4-4

The Yankees are one game over .500 right now. When they were six games over .500 at 39-33 two weeks ago, Suzyn Waldman was telling John Sterling how Joe Torre used to like to say you need to move above .500 in increments of five and how the Yankees’ next stop was 10 games over .500. Since then, the Yankees have gone 6-12, so about that 10 games over .500 …

On why he chose to designate Alfonso Soriano for assignment.

He struggled poorly against left handed and right handed pitching. We got him because we were struggling so badly last year against left-handed pitchers and that’s something he’s always been good at .. this year the defense hasn’t been there clearly, the offense against righties and lefties hasn’t been there and this is a bad defensive club already … We’re at the halfway point. I can’t keep waiting. I have to all of a sudden make some changes if we feel there might be some better options and so the play kind of played the way off the club I guess.”

We’re not at the halfway point. We’re at the “halfway point.” The halfway point was last week when the Yankees were busy losing 4-3 in 12 innings at home to the Rays, which was the third loss in a five-game HOME losing streak. Two nights before that during Game 79 of the season, Cashman was (to steal a line from Tim Wattley in The Campaign) “playing hee-haw with the eff-around gang” in a private booth, canoodling with Kenny Chesney while his half-billion offseason dollars went a combined 2-for-12 with four strikeouts and made one terrible pitch to Mike Napoli. (That was the most I will ever get on Masahiro Tanaka and I felt bad even typing that sentence, but it went with the whole half-billion dollars thing, so I had to bring Tanaka into it. Sorry, Masahiro. Please don’t let your MRI come back with bad news.)

I said everything I had to say about Alfonso Soriano on Wednesday and Cashman only helped my argument by saying that Soriano believed he needed to be a full-time player to get on track, which he clearly did need. And Soriano was supposed to be an everyday player on Opening Day when he was going to be the full-time DH for the 2014 Yankees before Mr. The Knees Beltran needed to become a DH and Soriano became an outfield platoon with Ichiro.

On CC Sabathia.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty.”

CC Sabathia needs to see Dr. James Andrews, but according to Cashman, Andrews is at a convention in Seattle with every other big-time surgeon where I imagine they are all getting absolutely hammered and watching the ticker on ESPN hoping to see news about athletes that were injured and will need to undergo season-ending surgery. “Bronson Arroyo needs Tommy John! Next round’s on Jim!”

There are rumors that Sabathia might never pitch again because of the possibility of microfracture surgery, but until then, I can only hope that Sabathia does come back this year to bolster the back of the rotation. (That’s right, I said back of the rotation for the $700,000-per-start “ace.” No big deal.)

On the trade between the A’s and Cubs.

“We had a lot of conversations clearly with the Cubs about Samardzija as well as Hammel as well as both at the same time and I think that the Cubs liked a lot of the pieces that we had. I think we were certainly in the arena. The fact that Theo was engaging me as much as he was, I know he likes our players. I know that there were packages that had interest to him for one or both combined that could have worked.”

I had to really hold back the tears when I heard this because what Cashman basically said was,” Hey Yankees fans, I was right there to completely fix the rotation, get us two frontend starters and make us the favorite in the division, but I didn’t! But I was close! I was really close!”

I’m not sure what the Yankees would have had to give up to get the duo, considering what the A’s gave up to get them, but if the Yankees had gotten both of them, this would have been their rotation:

Masahiro Tanaka
Jeff Samardzija
Jason Hammel
Hiroki Kuroda
Brandon McCarthy

Instead it’s:

Masahiro Tanaka
Hiroki Kuroda
Brandon McCarthy
David Phelps
Shane Greene

I’m guessing if Cashman was looking to get both then that’s not good news for hoping that Michael Pineda will be back soon or in 2014, but now with the starting pitching market as thin as it is and the Top 2 starting pitchers on the market both gone, Pineda has to come back in August and be as good as he was in April.

I would have rather had Cashman tell Francesa he didn’t even know Samardzija and Hammel were available or that Theo Epstein recently got a new cell number and he only had his old number. But hearing him say the Yankees “were in the arena” makes me feel the way I did when Cliff Lee was about to become a Yankee before the Phillies ruined everything. (Cue the Cliff Lee Sad Songs Playlist.) I’m just going to pretend that Theo was stringing him along with his buddy Jed Hoyer and they were sitting in a room talking to Cashman on speaker phone all seven times, pressing the “mute” button anytime Cashman was talking and screaming with laughter like Larry David and Jeff Garlin looking at the “Freak Book” at Ted Danson’s birthday party making Cashman think he really had a chance to land either or both of the starters.

On Carlos Beltran.

“I think Beltran looks like he’s starting to come through it a little bit on the elbow. I think his swings definitely look healthier, but obviously we have to deal with the knees too that he’s had now for a number of years … We have to deal with protecting Carlos.”

I love that Cashman says Beltran has been dealing with “the knees” (not one knee, but both) for a number of years now. There’s nothing like signing a 37-year-old outfielder to a three-year deal (he currently can’t actually play in the outfield) when you know he’s been dealing with “the knees” for a number of years and then needing to “protect him” in the first one-sixth of his deal.

Beltran is hitting .216/.271/.401 and the whole idea of getting Beltran was because of his postseason success (51 games, 16 home runs, 40 RBIs, .333/.445/.683), but you have to get to the postseason to get Postseason Beltran. So far his regular season has been more Postseason Nick Swisher and his health and ability to play through injury has been Regular-Season Mark Teixeira. So far the Yankees have been like Beltran: an underachieving disappointment.

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