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Tag: Jose Pirela

Blogs • Monday Mentions

Sep 7, 2015

Monday Mentions: Mark Teixeira vs. Jacoby Ellsbury

Who is tougher between Mark Teixeira and Jacoby Ellsbury? That questions leads off another week of Yankees-related questions for the stretch run.

Mark Teixeira and Jacoby Ellsbury

Unfortunately, the seven games left against the Blue Jays are going to decide the division. For as well as the Yankees have played for the last two weeks, they haven’t been able to overtake the Blue Jays in the AL East. And since it seems like no team is really going to give the Yankees enough help to get past the Blue Jays and create separation to avoid the one-game playoff and avoid me having to experience a one-game playoff, well, the Yankees are going to have to do it themselves.

Here is another installment of “Monday Mentions” focused on questions and comments from Twitter about the Yankees in the final month of the season.

This is the hardest question I have ever been asked and there probably isn’t a right answer to it, but surprisingly, I’m going with Mark Teixeira.

For the most part, Teixeira has suffered some injuries over the last few years that have been real. He really had wrist surgery in 2013, he really hurt his hamstring at the beginning of 2014 the way he tore it in the 2010 ALCS and he really fouled a ball off his leg a few weeks ago that his left him with a bone bruise. If these had been the only injuries that had kept Teixeira off the field, I wouldn’t even have a problem with anything other than him not trying at all to hit the ball to all fields since 2011. But when you include the time he missed for rib cage, knee, lat, tired legs from being on the bases(!), light-headedness, pinky and neck injuries, which were all since the beginning of 2014, well, it’s ridiculous. Even after compiling this list, I’m somehow calling him tougher than Jacoby Ellsbury.

Ellsbury has yet (knock on wood) a significant injury with the Yankees. Last year, he played in 149 games, missing 13 for a few Girardis (these are unnecessary days for healthy players) and some minor things, but playing 92 percent of the season when you’re known as an injury-prone player is impressive. This year, however, Ellsbury has been the softest player in the league. He missed nearly two months with a mysterious leg injury and when trying to come back he kept getting fatigued from running, which postponed his return. He has missed games for getting the wind knocked out of him(!), running into the wall on a catch in which he claims he wasn’t hurt and most recently for a sore hip after an innocent sliding catch.

My choosing Ellsbury is also about him hitting .271/.335/.371 with seven home runs, 30 RBIs and 17 stolen bases this season and playing in just 64 percent of the team’s games this season. Ellsbury already isn’t good and this is his age 31 season. The next five years should be awesome.

How could I have forgotten this one?! Ellsbury left Friday’s game because he was sick and then Girardi gave him Saturday off only to use him from the seventh inning on. Five more years!

My favorite part about CC Sabathia being on the disabled list is the way YES has covered his rehab like it’s 2009. The videos they have shown of his bullpen and simulated game work as if anyone is anxiously waiting for his return to the rotation has been remarkable.

Sabathia has made 24 starts this season. He has won four of them. Four. FOUR. F-O-U-R. He is 4-9 with a 5.27 ERA, which is .01 points worse than his career-worst 5.28 ERA in eight starts last season. He hasn’t just been bad, he has been horrible and if his name were anything other than CC Sabathia or if his contract didn’t still have $25 million on it for 2016 with a $25 million vesting option for 2017, well, Sabathia would not only not be in the rotation, he wouldn’t be on the team.

The problem with Sabathia is that you can’t just take him out of the rotation and then hide him in the bullpen because he has never been a reliever and has one relief appearance in his career, which came in Game 5 of the 2011 ALDS. He pitched two innings out of the bullpen in that game, and gave up the run that would turn out to be the game-winning run.

When Sabathia comes back on Wednesday, it’s not going to help the team. It’s hard to imagine that a couple of weeks on the disabled list made him turn some corner and that he will return finally realizing how to pitch with diminished velocity. I guess the only good thing to come out of this is that he will miss facing the Blue Jays in the four-game series at the Stadium that starts on Thursday.

https://twitter.com/StephenDrewsAvg/status/639860626584694784

Every time Stephen Drew is about to get benched or possibly even designated for assignment, his bat comes alive. Every single time. And with September call-ups waiting, surely enough, his bat came alive on Aug. 30.

In four straight days, Drew went 9-for-12, with two doubles, two home runs and nine RBIs. He raised his average from .192 to .211. This led everyone to say he finally turned it around, that Rob Refsnyder and Jose Pirela weren’t needed and that Drew was getting hot at the right time. No one said he was beating up on pitching of two last-place teams in the Braves and Red Sox. Instead of thinking that might be the reason for Drew’s four-day success, I saw countless headlines and stories suggesting the Yankees should already bring him back for 2016. So yes, Mugatu, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Since the series finale at Fenway, Drew has returned to being himself, going hitless on the current homestand with his average dropping back down to .203 and headed home to south of the Mendoza Line again.

I understand that Refsnyder and Pirela are unknowns and defensive liabilities, but at worst they would be Drew with the bat and considering he’s as low as it gets offensively, they could be better. Just because the Yankees have managed to stay within a game of the loss column against the Blue Jays for five months with essentially a pitcher hitting in their lineup every night isn’t a good thing. I’m willing to trade some defense for offense in a lineup that seems to score only one run every three games and could use anything that remotely resembles consistency at second base.

We are six days away from Giants season, so I have started to think about football, and how I was forced to turn to it the last two seasons in early September because even though the Yankees were in the playoff race mathematically, they weren’t really in it. This season, the Yankees are going to the playoffs, so I won’t have to count down the minutes until the next Giants game while the Yankees play somewhat meaningless baseball.

The scary thing about the 2015 Giants is that once again no one expects them to be good. In 2013, even after they went 9-7 in 2012 and blew the chance to win the NFC East, the expectations turned out to be right with a 7-9 season. In 2014, it was the same way with a 6-10 season. If the Giants are going to continue to rack up the injuries and be a bad, non-playoff team for the third straight year then the Yankees have to make it to the ALDS. If they’re going to the one-game playoff, they better win it because I don’t want the Giants and Rangers to be the only things to watch in October.

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Blogs • Yankees

Jun 22, 2015

Alex Rodriguez and the 3,000th Hit Ball

If I had caught A-Rod’s 3,000th hit, I would have returned it. Why? Because what am I going to do with A-Rod’s 3,000th hit? Put it on my mantle as if it’s my 3,000th hit?

Alex Rodriguez

I was fortunate to be at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 4, 2007 for Alex Rodriguez’s 500th home run, at Yankees Stadium on Aug. 4, 2010 for his 600th home run, at Fenway Park on May 1, 2015 for his 660th home run and at Yankee Stadium on May 7, 2015 for his 661st home run. So when I decided to not go to the Stadium on Friday night with A-Rod’s next chance at reaching 3,000 career hits, I watched from home for history to be made.

A-Rod’s first-inning solo home run off Justin Verlander made him the 28th player in baseball history with 3,000 hits, doing it in the best way possible, the way Derek Jeter did nearly four years ago. But looking back on the moment, A-Rod would have been better off with a seeing-eye single between short and third or a broken-bat bloop over the the first baseman’s head or a swinging bunt down the the third-base line because hitting a home run where A-Rod hit it was the worst imaginable result.

If I had caught A-Rod’s 3,000th hit, I would have returned it. Why? Because what am I going to do with A-Rod’s 3,000th hit? Put it on my mantle as if it’s my 3,000th hit? Show off A-Rod’s ball like I achieved something by being lucky enough to have it land in my hands? I would return it to A-Rod, after shaking the legend’s hand and asking him to join my Central Park Softball League team upon retirement. But before that I would hand over a list of demands to the Yankees front office:

1. I want to take batting practice with the team at the next home game, shag fly balls and throw a bullpen session. I would take jersey number 86 (Sidney Crosby/Patrick Kane style) since all of the single-digit numbers are retired and Masahiro Tanaka wears 19.

2. I want Legends season tickets. Yes, I love and enjoy sitting in 203, but sitting between the bases for free every game would be more enjoyable.

3. I want a night of beer and baseball storytelling with Ken Singleton, David Cone and Paul O’Neill.

4. I want Stephen Drew designated for assignment. The Yankees have proved they aren’t going to go with my plan of moving Drew back to shortstop, playing either Jose Pirela or Rob Refsnyder at second and benching Didi Gregorius, so the only move is to DFA Drew.

5. I want to trade Nathan Eovaldi and Garrett Jones back to the Marlins for David Phelps and Martin Prado.

Those would be my demands, and once they are met, then I would gladly give A-Rod his ball. If he wants to throw some cash my way, or let me join his entourage (which would likely be just me), I wouldn’t say no. But unfortunately, for me, and more unfortunately for A-Rod and the Yankees, I didn’t catch A-Rod’s 3,000th hit.

Of all the people in the world, Zack Hample (known as “Foul Ball Guy”) would be everyone’s last pick to catch a meaningful home run. A 37-year-old baseball collector, who still brings his glove to games, has made a life out of catching and collecting everything from batting practice balls to foul balls to balls ticketed for a kid’s hands that he has stepped in front of and taken. So of course A-Rod’s 3,000th hit would be a home run and of course out of all the hands it could have landed in at Yankee Stadium, it landed in Hample’s, who was supposedly in the wrong seats, waiting there with his glove like a Little Leaguer taking in big league action, all while wearing a hat with the MLB logo on it.

Hample has said he has no plans to give the ball to A-Rod, because in his words, “It’s kind of like, well, I don’t like you and I have something you want and you can’t have it. I wanted you to not take steroids and be the greatest of all time and you disappointed me.”

Those are real-life words from Hample, who apparently has the mentality of so many nerd beat writers and reporters that feel lied to and disrespected because a baseball player and entertainer that they don’t know outside of asking him questions with a microphone in his face used performance-enhancing drugs. Hample, like those with Hall of Fame vote, feel as though A-Rod owed it to them (as if he owes them anything) to not make the choices in his baseball career he has made, which is an opinion so insane I can’t even wrap my head around it. How dare a baseball player who once signed a 10-year, $252 million contract and opted out of it to sign a 10-year, $275 million contract let everyone down. We should all expect more out of someone who made $197,530.86 per game for two years (2009 and 2010) to play baseball.

Now Hample is doing every TV and radio interview he can, thinking he is the celebrity in the situation and believing he is the one who achieved 3,000 hits with an opposite-field home run rather than a grown man wearing a glove at an MLB game, who happened to be in the right place (which was actually the wrong place for his ticket stub) at the right time. So the “baseball collector” who is holding A-Rod’s 3,000th hit hostage for either very strange (he’s 37 and collects baseballs), very odd (he thinks A-Rod should have not disappointed him personally) or very scummy (he wants a payday from the Yankees since collecting baseballs probably isn’t keeping the power on) reasons.

Maybe Hample will continue to use someone else’s personal achievement as his own crowning moment or maybe he will ultimately decide to return it to A-Rod and the Yankees once their price tag grows high enough for him. Either way, now on it’s third day, this charade has gone on for too long and Hample is the one everyone should be disappointed in.

 

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Podcasts • Yankees

Jun 9, 2015

Podcast: Bald Vinny

This Yankees season has been built on streaks. After a 3-6 start, the Yankees won 18 of their next 24 games. Then they fell apart in May, losing 10 of 11 for the first time

Brian McCann and Dellin Betances

This Yankees season has been built on streaks. After a 3-6 start, the Yankees won 18 of their next 24 games. Then they fell apart in May, losing 10 of 11 for the first time since 1995, but they have rebounded to win 10 of 13 over the last two weeks, including six straight wins heading into a two-game series with the Nationals.

Bald Vinny of the Right Field Bleacher Creatures and Bald Vinny’s House of Tees joined me to talk about the Yankees’ streakiness this season, meeting A-Rod and how the perception of him has changed, Mark Teixeira’s impressive start to the year, Bernie Williams Day at the Stadium, what to do with Didi Gregorius and Stephen Drew and missing Robinson Cano.

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Blogs • Yankees

Jun 4, 2015

The Yankees’ DFA Waitlist

David Carpenter was finally designated for assignment. Now that he’s gone, it’s time to to turn to the next three Yankees in line on the DFA Waitlist.

Esmil Rogers

On Wednesday, after 22 games and 18 2/3 innings, David Carpenter was designated for assignment. It was the start of a pleasure-filled day with the removal of one of Joe Girardi’s most-trusted, yet horrible relievers, followed by the return of Masahiro Tanaka pitching a gem in a 3-1 win. After looking like the team that pissed away a nine-games-above-.500 record for most of May, the Yankees have gotten back on track in June with three straight wins and a sweep of the Mariners to remain in first place in the AL East. But back to Carpenter …

Carpenter had been bad for most of the nearly two months he was a Yankee. The Yankees traded once heralded prospect Manny Banuelos to the Braves in the offseason for Carpenter and left-hander Chasen Shreve, who has climbed the Joe Girardi Bullpen Pecking Order. Carpenter’s strikeout numbers had drastically declined this season, and after striking out 10.1 per nine innings in 2013 and 9.9 in 2014, that number had dipped to 5.3 this season. He failed to record a strikeout in his final five appearances for the Yankees, facing 12 batters over that span, and with an increase in walks and an increase in contact against him, four of his last six inherited runners scored. Carpenter had just one perfect appearance in May. It was time to go and so he went.

The move had been long overdue, but when it comes to Girardi and Brian Cashman, no move is ever made on time or before disaster strikes. The Yankees are all about second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh chances for players with limited ability or players who clearly not working out or players with no future or who have reached their ceiling or who have a history of being bad. It’s why Esmil Rogers, a 29-year-old with a 5.50 career ERA, is still on the team. It’s why Stephen Drew, who has hit .163/.235/.301 over his last 482 plate appearances is still a Yankee. It’s why Chris Capuano, a career starter who has been detrimental to the team in all four of his appearances this season, is still a Yankee. And it’s those three that are on the DFA Waitlist.

UP: Esmil Rogers
Esmil Rogers has made 16 appearances for the Yankees. One of those has been perfect. That appearance came on Opening Day when he faced one hitter (Jose Bautista) and struck him out. Since then, Rogers has been the same old hittable Esmil Rogers that has pitched to a 5.50 ERA in 452 career innings.

On Opening Day, Rogers was the long man, but now with Capuano being forced to the bullpen, he doesn’t have a role anymore. In 10 of Rogers’ 16 appearances this season, he has either allowed at least one earned run or at least one inherited runner to score. So you can scratch the idea of him being trusted as a right-handed middle reliever in a big spot. His role now is to wake up every morning and thank God he is a Major League Baseball player for the New York Yankees making $1.48 million (!!!) this season.

Unfortunately, the only two right-handers in the bullpen for the Yankees now are Rogers and Dellin Betances. Girardi would rather pick a right-handed person out of the crowd to face a right-handed hitter prior to the eighth inning than let one of his left-handers face the righty, so this is a problem. As long as Rogers is on the roster, Girardi is going to find work for him, and if the situation calls for a righty and it’s not the eighth or ninth inning, it’s going to be Rogers getting the call until Girardi realizes that ability matters more than the arm you throw with.

If the Yankees designate Rogers for assignment (I say “if” because they let Sergio Mitre and Chad Gaudin hang around forever), I would bet heavily against another team picking him up.

ON DECK: Stephen Drew
I said Stephen Drew had full-season “Ladies and gentlemen” immunity after his grand slam in Baltimore in April, but I didn’t say he had “DFA” immunity.

The Yankees finally sat Drew down on the West Coast to give Jose Pirela a chance to play more than once a month and just when it looked like Drew was playing himself off the team, he came up with a game-saving hit against Fernando Rodney on Tuesday night. But like Stephen Drew does, he followed it up with an 0-for-3 on Wednesday to drop to .165. He hasn’t seen .200 all year with his highest average of .193 coming on April 27.

Drew has been lucky that he is the only player on the team that can play both second and short with Didi Gregorius only being able to play short and Jose Pirela only being able to play second. But Brendan Ryan is on his way back and he can play anywhere, so Drew will now have to play with some urgency, even though I would take Stephen Drew over Brendan Ryan every day of the week and twice on Sunday because the best Brendan Ryan is going to do for you is hit a single. At least Drew can hit for some power.

If it was my call, I would play Drew at short, Pirela or Rob Refsnyder at second and sit Didi Gregorius down, as he has been a disaster in the field, at the plate and on the bases. Put Drew back in the only position he ever played before becoming a Yankee and let him try to regain the comfort level he had with the Red Sox in 2013. However, Cashman will never admit to his mistake of trading for Gregorius and likely still views the player who lost his starting job with the Diamondbacks in 2014 as the shortstop of the future for the Yankees, so that idea is out of the question.

If Drew doesn’t start to hit with some consistency, he is going to lose his job. And he is going to lose it to .234 career hitter with 19 career home runs.

IN THE HOLE: Chris Capuano
The Yankees should have never re-signed Chris Capuano. The Yankees should have never done a lot of things they have done in the last two offseasons, but they did. Capuano made three starts for the Yankees going 0-3 with this line: 12.2 IP, 18 H, 11 R, 9 ER, 4 BB, 12 K, 2 HR. For $5 million, which is what Capuano is making, I could have made three starts for the Yankees and lost all of them.

Now that Tanaka is back, Capuano is in the bullpen, which is where he was for all 28 of appearances for the Red Sox last season before he was designated for assignment by them. Capuano’s only job will be as a long man since he doesn’t have the stuff to translate into a middle reliever or late-innings role. If he pitches the way he did in his three starts as a reliever, he will be designated for assignment for the second time in as many years.

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Blogs • Yankees

Jun 2, 2015

I Still Miss Robinson Cano

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.

Robinson Cano

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.

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