Yanks win it for the Boss

Last night the Yankees played for first time since the passing of George Steinbrenner. It was an emotional night filled with touching tributes, but as we know, the greatest tribute to the Boss would have been to win. And the Yankees did just that, and in dramatic fashion might I add. The entire night the Yankees battled behind CC Sabathia, who only allowed 3 earned runs despite not being on top of his game. Going into the bottom of the ninth inning the score was tied at four and Yankees were looking to finish off the Rays. Curtis Granderson led off the inning with a single and was moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Ramiro Pena. Following a walk by Brett Gardner and a strikeout of Derek Jeter, Nick Swisher came up to the plate. On the fourth pitch of Swisher’s at bat he lined a single to right field and Curtis Granderson came home to score the winning run. Start spreading the news, it’s time for pie. Nick Swisher sent the loyal Yankee fans home happy on an emotional evening, and somewhere up in heaven George Steinbrenner and Bob Sheppard were smiling.

"Nick Swisher wins one for the Boss" Photo Credit: Getty Images via Yahoo Sports

Send Swisher to California!

The 2010 All Star rosters were announced and six Yankees will be making the journey to Anaheim. Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano were selected by the fans as the two Yankee starters. Phil Hughes and Mariano Rivera were selected by the players. And Alex Rodriguez and CC Sabathia were selected by Joe Girardi, the American League’s manager. The first thing that I noticed was that Andy Pettitte was not selected, however, he could still go because some players (such as Sabathia) will need to be replaced on the roster because they are pitching the Sunday before the All Star Game. A second thing that kind of surprised me was Alex Rodriguez getting a selection. I mean that was Girardi’s choice and it makes sense to choose your own guys, but I think there are guys more deserving of the spot.

Speaking of guys who deserve a spot on the All Star roster, Nick Swisher is a “Final Vote” candidate. Swisher would really appreciate the honor to go to the All Star Game, and it would really mean a lot to him to be selected. So let’s send him California! You can vote here an unlimited amount of times. Oh, and head on over to the Yankees official site to see Swisher’s promotion video, it is quite entertaining. Vote Swisher!

A-Rod and Thames save Yanks from loss

Last night the Yankees defeated the Red Sox in a very exhilarating game. While I don’t want to waste all my time analyzing the entire game, I’ll try to break it down a bit.

This graph really shows how the momentum of the game really changed last night. First it was all Yankees, then all Red Sox, and then obviously back to the Yankees favor.

Pitching

If I had to sum the Yankees pitching last night up in three words, I’d say “not very good.” Fortunately, I’m not limited to three words.

Phil Hughes started last night’s game and only lasted 5 innings while giving up 5 runs and 2 home runs. He simply wasn’t very sharp. Although he threw a lot of strikes, they weren’t necessarily good strikes. In addition, it’s possible he didn’t have his best stuff. In the end, he didn’t pitch well, but he battled and that builds character and perhaps allows a pitcher to mature more than a dominating game does. I wouldn’t worry about Hughes yet, and remember young pitchers struggle.

Boone Logan followed Hughes and in one inning of work he allowed a home run to Victor Martinez. Logan may impress people with his velocity, but upon further look it’s clear his control is awful. There are tons of people who throw hard, but unless they can control the ball they aren’t very valuable. So far, Logan has fallen into that category. In addition, Logan (a lefty) has actually been worse against lefty batters this year than righties (not to say he has been good against righties). In my opinion the Yankees would be better off having Mark Melancon in the bullpen instead of Logan.

Chan Ho Park came in after Logan. Fresh off the DL Park looked good in his first inning of work. However, in the eight inning Park allowed 3 runs on 2 home runs. He looked very fatigued, and this was expected considering he hasn’t pitched multiple innings in over a month. I think in normal circumstances with the bullpen more deep, Girardi wouldn’t have turned to Park for two innings. I wouldn’t worry about this appearance at all, just remember his stamina is low coming of the DL and it certainly showed last night. Once he gets built back up he should return to form.

Damaso Marte took over for Park in the eight and got good results. In 1.2 innings of work Marte allowed no runs on 1 hit and 1 walk.

Javier Vazquez came in to get the last out in the ninth as it appeared Marte was tiring. Javy did the job, and actually picked up the win. Considering he only threw 4 pitches, Javy is still in line for his Friday start.

Offense

The Yankees scored 5 runs of Daisuke Matsuzaka in the first inning of last night’s ballgame, but they cooled down after that. Through the second to eight inning the Yankees only picked up 2 more runs. Going into the ninth inning the Yankees trailed 9-7. Would there be any late inning heroics like there were in 2009? Yes. With a man on and facing Jonathan Papelbon, Alex Rodriguez crushed one to left field to tie up the game. Then with Francisco Cervelli on base, Marcus Thames came up to the plate looking dead red. And he got red and took it deep to left for a walkoff home run. Ballgame over, time for pie! I don’t know about you but I never get tired of these unreal endings.

"A-Rod watches his home run leave the park." Photo Credit: Getty Images via Yahoo Sports.

"The look of pure happiness on Marcus Thames' face last night has to make you smile." Photo Credit: Getty Images via Yahoo Sports.

“Catching up with the blogging world”

Check out Matt Vereb’s exclusive interview with Nick Swisher. You can really see how nice a person Swisher is, plus Matt asks some good questions like “Who’s your best friend on the team?” I won’t spoil the answer, go check it out!

P.S. If there is a game tonight, you’re welcome to use this post to discuss it.

Game 36: Twins at Yankees

Last night the Yankees won the first game of this series in dramatic fashion. If you want to see the story of the game check out my game recap. Anyway, today the Yankees look to secure a series win on this fine Saturday afternoon. Here is the starting lineup via Chad Jennings…

SS Derek Jeter

RF Nick Swisher – I’m shocked that he is back in the lineup so soon.

1B Mark Teixiera

3B Alex Rodriguez

2B Robinson Cano

DH Jorge Posada

LF Marcus Thames

C Francisco Cervelli

CF Brett Gardner

LHP Andrew Eugene Pettitte

Photo Credit: Getty Images via Yahoo Sports.

Injury Updates

• Obviously Nick Swisher is back in the lineup today after leaving yesterday’s game early with a strain in his left biceps. Jennings reports that Swisher only feels pain when he hits left-handed, and since today’s starter for the Twins, Francisco Liriano, is left-handed Swisher will be batting right-handed.
• Chan Ho Park will likely return to the bullpen tomorrow which is really good news.
• Curtis Granderson ran a bit this morning according to Jennings, and he felt fine. That is a step in the right direction.

Nick Johnson still waiting

Chad Jennings has the latest news on Nick Johnson. Reportedly, after Johnson went on the DL he received a cortisone shot in his wrist and the Yankees are still waiting to see if it works.

“We’re hoping that works,” Brian Cashman said. “But if it doesn’t, we’ll have to take other avenues.”

If it does work Johnson could be back in about three weeks. If it doesn’t he will probably need some type of surgery and it will be at least 4-6 weeks before he returns.

The Field of Dreams for sale

If you have a few million dollars to spend, you can purchase the Field of Dreams. I think I’ll pass on the offer.

A-Rod leads Yankees to 8-4 Victory

After losing four out of their last five games, The Yankees defeated The Minnesota Twins tonight with the help of Alex Rodriguez. Let’s break it down…

Pitching

Allan James Burnett started tonight for the Yankees and he went 6.2 innings while only allowing 3 runs (2 earned). He wasn’t great as he walked 4 batters and only struck out 4 batters, but he held the damage to a minimum. Damaso Marte followed Burnett with two outs in the 7th inning, and with the Yankees leading 3-2 Marte gave up an RBI single to Joe Mauer and an RBI double to Justin Morneau. Marte did manage to escape the 7th inning, however. Joba Chamberlain came in to pitch the eight with the Yankees leading 7-4 and he struck out the side. PitchFX clocked Joba’s fastball in at an average of 95 MPH tonight with the high at 96, for those of you wondering. Chamberlain was awarded the winning pitcher for his effort. In the ninth, some guy named Mariano Rivera pitched a 1-2-3 inning and that was the end of the story.

Hitting

The Yankees offense had been kind of stagnant lately, but it seemed to awaken tonight. In the bottom of the 4th, with the Yankees down 1-0, Brett Gardner hit a solo home run. Later in the inning Robinson Cano doubled to score Mark Teixeira. In the bottom of the fifth Mark Teixeira doubled to score Brett Gardner. Then the big blow came in the bottom of the seventh when Alex Rodriguez came up to the plate with the bases loaded and The Twins leading 4-3. On the second pitch of the at bat Matt Guerrier gave Alex a pitch to hit and A-Rod took advantage of it depositing it into left field for a grand slam. The Yankees then led 7-4 and would never look back, but Francisco Cervelli tripled in the eight to score Juan Miranda just for fun.

Here's one of those cool Win Probability graphs for you.

Swisher ailing

Nick Swisher left today’s game with a strain in his left biceps which has been bothering him lately. fortunately, according to Chad Jennings the MRI came back negative.

New Look

So, as you can see 161st Street looks a little different, haha! This design obviously isn’t set in stone, I just didn’t feel like working on it anymore today, so please any suggestions to make it better would be great. By the way, I’ve noticed that depending on the size of your computer screen you may or may not see the full background image. Larger screens will display the blue background with pinstripes running down it, smaller screens will only display the blue background (because the pinstripes are cut off). Either way, let me know what you think about it.

Yankees even the series backed by Burnett

Last night the Yankees took game 2 of the World Series by the score of 3-1. The Yankees were opposed by Pedro Martinez, and while he pitched well, he did not pitch as well as Burnett did for the Yankees. A.J. went 7 strong innings allowing only 1 run, while striking out 9 and only walking 2 batters. A.J. really showed his worth last night, and depending on the situations the Yankees may consider starting him on short rest for game 5. On the offensive side Mark Teixeira got the Yankees on the board by hitting a solo homer in the 4th inning, then in the 6th Hideki Matsui hit another solo homer to give the Yankees 2 runs, and that’s all they would need. However, the Yankees picked up an insurance run in the 7th when Jorge Posada (pinch hitting for Jose Molina) singled to score Brett Gardner (pinch running for Jerry Hairston Jr.). Mariano Rivera came in for the 8th and 9th, and shut the down, albeit with some difficulty. Still, the Yankees won, and evened out the series 1-1 going into Philadelphia for 2 games.

Side Note

As you already know, Joe Girardi opted to put Jerry Hairston Jr. in right field last night in place for the slumping Nick Swisher (4-35 this postseason, a .114 average). I don’t disagree with the move to sit Swisher, but I’m not sure I think Hairston was the best replacement. I understand Jerry had good numbers against Pedro (1o-27), but Eric Hinske is 8-30 against Pedro, and Hinske is generally considered the better hitter out of the duo of Hairston and Hinkse. And if Girardi didn’t want to play Hinske, Gardner was an option as well, but I too probably would have chose Hairston over Gardner. What’s your take?

Pettitte flirts with perfection as the Yankees win 5-1

Andy Pettitte carried a perfect game into the 7th inning last night against the Baltimore Orioles, but with 2 outs in the 7th Jerry Hairston Jr. ,who was playing third base to give Alex Rodriguez a day off, allowed a ball to go through his legs for an error, ending the perfect game. The next batter, Nick Markakis, singled off Pettitte to end the no-hitter. Pettitte would go 8 innings and allow only 1 run. Brian Bruney came in to pitch the 9th, and while he got an out, he had to make way for Mariano Rivera because he allowed two base runners to get on. Rivera got the final two outs picking up his 37th save of the year.

The offense last night was led by Nick Swisher, who was a triple short of the cycle. Swisher hit a solo home run in the 3rd inning to put the Yankees up 1-0, then in the 5th he hit a double to score Robinson Cano, 2-0 Yankees. In the 8th inning Johnny Damon singled to right to score Derek Jeter, and later in the same inning Robinson Cano hit a two run double, scoring Johnny Damon and Mark Teixeira. Yankees win 5-1.

Since the All Star Break, Andy is 7-2 with a 2.56 ERA.

Game 72: Yankees at Braves

Let’s start off the post with tonight’s starting lineup for the New York Yankees via PeteAbe:

SS Derek Sanderson Jeter

LF Johhny David Damon

1B Mark Charles Teixeira

3B Alex Emmanuel Rodriguez

C Jorge Rafael Posada

RF Nick Thompson Swisher

CF Brett M. Gardner

2B Bryan Cody Ransom

LHP Andrew Eugene Pettitte

Do you like the full names? I’m not a fan of “Eugene.”

Cano a late a scratch

Robinson was in the lineup but right around 4:00 he was scratched from the lineup. No word on why. I will have updates as the come along

Melky sitting for the 2nd consecutive day?

This seems kind of strange to me, and if I read or see anything about it I will post updates.

The price of Jose Veras

Yesterday, the Yankees sent Jose Veras packing to Cleveland. Today via Tyler Kepner we find out that the Yankees received over 20,000 in return. Doesn’t seem like much to me, but hey it’s not as bad as what the Yankees paid the White Sox this off season to acquire Chris Stewart, Brian Cashman sent the White Sox 1$. I love Cashman’s quote: “Some people get cute and send 100 pennies, I don’t have time for cute.” Yeah I guess he was too busy signing CC, Mark, and A.J.

Hughes gets a tattoo

Yesterday was Phil Hughes’ birthday. His birthday present to himself was a tattoo of the Bible verse Philippians 4:13, according to Tyler Kepner. He got the tattoo from Nick Swisher’s tattoo artist in Atlanta, oh and Nick also got a tattoo. I don’t really recommend tattoos because almost everybody seems to regret them, but at least both Phil and Nick got the tattoos on the inside of their upper left arms where they shouldn’t be seen.

Update 4:36
Cano’s left wrist is wrapped up in tape. He should play tomorrow.

Update 6:00
Melky and Matsui have the flu. That’s why Melky hasn’t been playing.

Game 71: Yankees 8, Braves 4

Tonight the Yankees defeated the Braves by the score of 8 to 4. While it may look like an ordinary win, it was not quite. Through 5 innings the Yankees did not have a single base runner, and it looked like another night of losing to Cy Young. However, the story changed in the 6th inning. Brett Gardner led off the inning with a walk (the Yankees first base runner), then he got called out on a pick off on first. Joe Girardi immediately came out to argue. Gardner was clearly safe as seen on the replays, but from Girardi’s view he probably couldn’t really tell. Still, Girardi gave the first base umpire his money’s worth and was ejected. Seeing the manager ejected always seems to get a team fired up. Anyway, the next batter was Francisco Cervelli who hit a solo home run to tie the game at one (his first career home run). From there on almost everything went the Yankee’s way. They went on to score two more runs in the 6th, one in the 7th, two in the 8th, and then 2 in the 9th.

On the pitching side things also went well for the Yanks. Joba Chamberlain went 6.1 innings allowing 3 runs, 2 earned. Phil Coke came in to finish the 7th after Joba got in a bit of trouble. Then Bruney came into the 8th inning and right from the get go he didn’t look right, to me his fastball wasn’t there. Bruney allowed a run and could not finish the 8th after getting 2 outs. Enter sandman who stroke out the first batter he faced to end the 8th. Mo actually batted in the top of the ninth, he came up with the bases loaded and two outs and he actually hit a hard liner to center. In the bottom of the 9th Mo was smoking. He faced three batters, and struck out all three. So for the night Mo faced a total of 4 batters and stuck them all out. Vintage Mariano. So the Yankees won the game 8 to 4.

Side Notes

• The Yankees held a closed door meeting after last night’s game. Supposedly it was basically a pep talk. Jeter and Teixeira were the two guys to step up and talk during the meeting.
• Brian Cashman unexpectedly was in Atlanta tonight. He also had a little closed door meeting in Girardi’s office with Nick Swisher and Girardi himself. The original lineup posted tonight had Swisher on the bench and Melky in right field. After that little meeting with Cashman, Swisher was in the lineup and Melky was on the bench. The Yankees did not really comment on the situation, so we’re just left to speculate. All I could think off would be that Cashman and Girardi wanted to let Swisher know what the situation would be once Xavier Nady returns (which should be soon, he actually played right field tonight for Scranton). Maybe they told Swisher that he would become a bench player once Nady comes back. I really don’t know, but I would think there was more to Brian Cashman being with the Yankees on the road than just to tell Swisher something. But you know the Yankees, they are quite secretive.
• Cody Ransom is back with the team, Angel Berroa was DFA’d.
• Jose Veras was traded to the Indians for “cash considerations.”

Yankees win 15-0

It was a fun day in the Bronx. The Yankees roughed up Johan Santana for 9 earned runs, the most he has ever given up in his career. That pretty much tells the story, but I want to sum up the game with some pictures, and then the boxcore. It’s nice to win one with a blowout for once, especially against arguably the best pitcher in baseball (I personally think it’s Halladay).

Johan walks off the field in disgrace after giving up 9 earned runs and not being able to get an out in the 4th inning.

Swisher congratulates Hideki after a two run home run.

Roby Cano had a big day.

AJ went 7 strong innings giving up no runs. He loaded the bases in the third with no outs, but cam back and struck out the next 2 hitters, then got a lineout, escaping the inning unscathed. If he turns he season around I will point to this game.

Joba chases his son Karter after the game. Cute!

	Final		1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8		9		R		H		E
	NY Mets	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	6	0
	NY Yankees	0	4	0	9	0	0	2	0	X	15	17	1

WP: A.J. Burnett (5-3) LP: J. Santana (8-4) HR: NYY – R. Cano (11), H. Matsui (10) The Red Sox lost too so the Yankees are now only 2 games out of first. Final 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E Boston 0 4 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 6 11 2 Philadelphia 1 0 0 0 4 0 6 0 X 11 14 2 WP: C. Park (3-1) LP: J. Beckett (7-3)