Gm 12. Robbie’s blast carries Yanks, 4-2.

Robbie Cano’s 3-run HR in the 4th carried the Yanks to a 4-2 win tonight. It was Robbie’s 4th HR of the year.

Ivan Nova struggled, and although he got the win, he struggled. He went the minimum five, 2 R, 7 H, 2 walks and 6 K. He threw 94 pitches in the 5 IP.

Boone Logan went 1 1/3, Joba 2/3, David Robertson 1. All scoreless.

Mo came in and got save #611 of his career, #3 for the year.

Pat Summerall, former NFL player and great broadcaster, died today at the age of 82. Summerall was himself an alcoholic, as Mantle was (the two were good friends). Despite going sober in 1992, Summerall still needed a liver transplant in 2004.

S.T. Game 32. Yanks beat O’s 11-8

The Yanks beat Baltimore 11-8 tonight to run their S.T. record to 13-18-1.

Mason “Classical Gas” Williams was 1 for 2 with 2 RBI. Eduardo Nunez was 2 for 3 with an RBI. New 1B Lyle Overbay was 2 for 5. Brennan Boesch had a 2-run HR. He and Francisco went back to back. Addison Maruszak and Bobby Wilson each had 2 rbi.

Dave Phelps went 5 1/3, 3 R, 4 H, 2 walks and 9 K. He was great until the 5th.

1 R in 2/3 for Spence, 4 R in 2/3 for Pinder.

Cedeno 1/3 scoreless. Goody and Claiborne each with a scoreless inning.

Hughes will miss his first start of the season, DL. Jeter will not play in  another spring game— even if Minor league — until next week.

Tim McCarver  (who a lot of us don’t like) is packing it in after this season.

S.T. Game 31. Yanks tie Houston, finalize Wells deal, give Overbay a shot.

The Yanks went against Houston tonight and finished in a 4-4 tie. Their record (after 31 games, and I include [most don't] the game against the D.R. WBC team) is 12-18-1. Maybe this is why Buster Olney and Jayson Stark are predicting the Yanks to finish last in the A.L. East. Of course on Monday they start the season at 0-0.

CC struggled, giving up 3 in the first. He lasted 5, 4 R, 6 H, 3 walks and 4 K. He’s next scheduled to start the opener against Boston at the Stadium next Monday.

Mo went 1, his usual. Scoreless. It’s rare when some team touches up Mo in spring training, 43 or not 43 years old.

Robertson, Joba, Logan and Nuno each pitched a scoreless inning.

Down 4-0, the Yanks got a run in the fifth on a Nunez walk, SB and a triple by Gardner.

The Yanks tied it in the sixth. Cano led off with a single and Youk doubled him home. Hafner singled and Hafner advanced on an error. Vernon Wells groundout plated a run. A few batters later, Stewart singled in a run to tie it while Juan Rivera was gunned down at the plate.

Gardner was 2 for 3 with an RBI. Travis Hafner, who was having a bad spring, went 3 for 4.

The Vernon Wells deal was finalized. The Yanks will pick up about $13MM of the $42MM Wells has left on his deal. In return the Angels get two low level minor leaguers who really didn’t do much or seem to have too much of a future with the Yanks: OF Exicardo Cayones, 21, who was in A- (short season) ball with Staten Island last year (.228-1-15 in 47 games) and LHP Kramer Sneed, 24, who was 0-7, 5.37 at High-A Tampa last year.

The Yanks also “dumpster dived” for 1B Lyle Overbay and will see what he has left. The lefty hitting 1B is 36 and was just released by Boston. The lefty hitter averaged 145 g., .270-16-68, OPS+ 110 from 2004-2011 for MIL/Tor/Pit/Az. For his career, a .270 hitter, OPS+ 108. Pop, but not a lot of it. .259-2-10 in 116 AB last year.

As Olney and Stark mentioned, some of these moves smack of desperation and patchwork. It doesn’t seem like the Yankees doing this. Which is why each predicted the Yanks to finish last in the A.L. East. It smacks of 1965 or 1966. Aging and/or injured greats (think of Mantle, Howard, Ford, Maris and compare them to Jeter/A-Rod/Teix/Granderson) with no farm system coming up. Ugh.

Once promising, the Yanks released IF Dave Adams. They signed RHP reliever Dan Otero (0-0, 5.84 in 12 g. w/SF last year).

Jeter finally admits that he won’t make Opening Day.

 

 

Hope he’s wrong…

I heard part of a discussion between Buster Olney and Jayson Stark over the internet. In it, Stark picked the Yanks to finish last in what appears to be a very competitive A.L. East. From division champs, best record in the A.L. to last in the A.L. East. 1965 revisited?

We can hope he’s wrong.

But…   aging players, injuries, etc.

It doesn’t look good.

Meanwhile, I drove to work through a snow shower trying to convince myself that Opening Day is next week. It doesn’t feel or look it.

S.T. Game 30. Yanks walk-off with 7-6, 10 inning win.

Ronnier Mustelier, fighting for a place on the team, hit a walkoff HR leading off the bottom of the 10th as the Yanks won 7-6 over the Rays to increase their S.T. record to 12-18. Mustelier may have trouble sticking despite a good spring because apparently the Yanks are making a deal for Vernon Wells from the Angels (see the next post).

Long-time readers of this blog know I wanted Mustelier up last year and wanted Andruw Jones cut. Jones hit .197-14-34, OPS+ 88 and his D (10 GG) diminished. Mustelier’s D is a “?” but he did hit .314-15-69 in 114 games between AA and AAA.

Kevin Youkilis hit two two-run HRs in the game, but also made an error that led to four unearned runs. Travis Hafner, having a rough spring, also homered.

Eduardo Nunez was 2 for 3 with an RBI triple.

Adam Warren started, went 3 2/3, 5 R, 1 ER, 6 hits, 2 walks, 2 K. Vidal Nuno 1/3, 0 R, 2 H a walk, no K (the out was on Cervelli catching a runner trying to steal. Cervelli nabbed two runners today).

Eppley, Mo, Joba and Logan combined for four shutout innings (one each) before Aardsma allowed the Rays to tie it in the top of the 9th (1 IP, 1 R).

Josh Spence (1/3) and Preston Claiborne (2/3, W) combined for a scoreless tenth before Musty’s walkoff.

John Sterling is a bit over-the-top, but his HR call of Play Musty For Me is a good one.

Yuniesky Betancourt has been released by the Phils. You wonder, given Jeter’s problems, if the Yanks may take a flyer. More on Wells and Betancourt in the next post.

 

Can Yanks dump Alex? Yanks looking at Hafner

Joel Sherman today reported that the Yanks’ brass (and some of his teammates) have had it with A-Rod. As I stated yesterday, if A-Rod did dope it up AFTER his mea culpa in the spring of 2009, then he is a bigger dumb-ass than we thought.

He is too big of a distraction. Not only this, but the hitting on a model in the middle of a playoff game… the Yanks are looking for ANY reason they can find to void the $114 MM and 5 years left on his deal. They’ve had enough.

I can say that if he’s gone, good riddance. Especially if it helps them get under the cap.

Meanwhile, the Yanks are supposedly interested in Travis “Pronk” Hafner of the Indians to fill the DH role. Hafner will be 36 next June. He hit .228-12-34 OPS+ 121 in 2012 in 66 games. His lefty bat plays well in Yankee Stadium, but Hafner has not played the field since 2007. Since 2007, Hafner has averaged just 86 games a season, .259-12-43, OPS+ 117. His 162 g. ave for his career is .278-30-102, OPS+ 137 (great) but he never plays. I mean, 86 g. a year since 2007?

Hafner did finish 5th & 8th in MVP voting in 2005 & 2006 but that seems so long ago.

Hafner has been compared to Fred Flintstone in the way he looks and runs. I wonder, should he join the Yankees, if John Sterling’s HR call will be “Yabba Dabba Doo!”.

Sportsman of the Year?

I’ve written about this before, but thought it would be a good time to rehash this based on Lance Armstrong’s confessions this week.

SI hasn’t had a good track record with its Sportsperson of the Year awards recently.

1975 Pete Rose
1986 Joe Paterno
1996 & 2000 Tiger Woods
1998 Mark McGwire & Sammy Sosa
2002 Lance Armstrong
2008 Michael Phelps (remember the bong incident?)

Hopefully the other winners don’t join this list.

Forgetting the past.

I can’t root for Ray Lewis or the Ravens. First of all, I’m a Steelers’ fan. But mostly, I can’t root for Ray Lewis because of this (from Wikipedia):

Murder trial

Following a Super Bowl XXXIV party in Atlanta on January 31, 2000, a fight broke out between Lewis and his companions and another group of people, resulting in the stabbing deaths of Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar. Lewis and two companions, Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting, were questioned by Atlanta police, and 11 days later the three men were indicted on murder and aggravated-assault charges. The white suit Lewis was wearing the night of the killings has never been found. Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard alleged the blood-stained suit was dumped in a garbage bin outside a fast food restaurant.^[36]

Lewis’ attorneys, Don Samuel and Ed Garland, of the Atlanta law firm Garland, Samuel & Loeb, negotiated a plea agreement with Howard, where the murder charges against Lewis were dismissed in exchange for his testimony against Oakley and Sweeting, and his guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction of justice.^[12] Lewis admitted he gave a misleading statement to police on the morning after the killings. Superior Court Judge Alice D. Bonner sentenced Lewis to 12 months’ probation, the maximum sentence for a first-time offender,^[37] and he was fined $250,000 by the NFL, which was believed to be the highest fine levied against an NFL player for an infraction not involving substance abuse.^[38] Under the terms of the sentence, Lewis could not use drugs or alcohol during the duration of the probation.

Oakley and Sweeting were acquitted of the charges in June 2000.^[39] No other suspects have ever been arrested for the crime.

The following year, Lewis was named Super Bowl XXXV MVP. However, the signature phrase “I’m going to Disney World!” was given instead to quarterback Trent Dilfer.

On April 29, 2004, Lewis reached a settlement with four-year-old India Lollar, born months after the death of her father Richard, pre-empting a scheduled civil proceeding. Lewis also reached an undisclosed settlement with Baker’s family.^[39]

 

Now Lewis may have tried to make amends since, and may have been a good citizen since. I can’t answer that.

What I wonder about is his degree of culpability in what happened. Should Lewis have gone to jail? Did he commit murder or manslaughter?

What I don’t wonder about is this:  that the Ray Lewis farewell tour media suck-up disgusts me.

The kissing up that the media is doing disgusts me completely. It’s one thing to call him the greatest middle linebacker ever. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.

But ask yourself, outside of what you just read, have ANY of the media that is currently sucking up to Lewis and kissing his ass in his final games mentioned ANYTHING about what happened those many years ago? Has any media outlet mentioned it at all?

That’s what disgusts me. There are two sides of the coin here.

Praise Lewis for his football career, but don’t forget his involvement, whether major or minor, in the deaths of two people.

BBWAA elects no one this year….

So we see the effects of PED allegations. No one, not the greatest HR hitter in history (Bonds), a 7x CYA winner who won 354 games, an MVP and is one of the greatest pitchers ever (Clemens), a player with 609 HR (Sosa), another with 583 (McGwire), another who may be the greatest hitting catcher ever (Piazza), two big-game pitchers (Morris and Schilling), a perfect game pitcher with over 200 wins (Wells), a 2x MVP (Murphy), probably the second greatest leadoff man ever (Raines), a player with 3000 hits and 569 HR (Palmeiro)  and two other players with over 400 HR (McGriff and Bagwell) did not get the 75% to make it into the Hall of Fame.

There are other worthy players (Bernie Williams, Don Mattingly and Alan Trammell for instance) but NO ONE got the 75% to make it in.

To show you how much the writers took alleged PED usage into account, if you added the vote totals of Bonds AND Clemens, it STILL would be short of the 75% needed to make it into the HOF.

Personally, if someone had a WHIFF of PED suspicion attached to their name, I would NOT vote for them.

Craig Biggio, who I did NOT list above, and who had over 3000 hits, over 400 SB and almost 300 HR, got the highest vote total, 68% of the vote. He fell 39 votes short (You must get 75%, NO rounding up).

David Wells and Bernie Williams didn’t get the 5% to remain on the ballot. They drop off.

Next year, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine (both 300+ winners), Frank Thomas (521 HR) and Mike Mussina (270 wins) come onto the ballot. I think Maddux, Glavine and possibly Thomas get in. Mussina deserves it (in my opinion) but will have to wait a few years.

As for the people on this ballot that didn’t get in, maybe someone like Biggio or Raines gets in in the future.

But not today.

It’s hard for the BBWAA to try and sift through guesstimates of who used and who didn’t.

But if someone has a whiff of suspicion attached to them, I say keep them out.

One other thing… if someone is voted in who is proven years later to have taken PED’s?

Eject them. There no law saying that once in, you are always in.

If found out later to have taken PED’s, treat them like the opening of the old TV show Branded.

Kick them out.

Will anyone make the HOF today?

There are lots of big names on the ballot, but will anyone make the HOF today when the BBWAA announces the results of its ballot?

Steroids allegations hurt many big name players, of which Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Palmeiro and McGwire are just several.

It’ll be interesting to see & hear whose name—if any—is announced as a new HOFer later today.