2010 New York Yankees Discussion - Page 3

This shit's depressing.

Another killer double play by Jeter.

Teixeira is 3 - 19 with 1 RBI since his paternal sabbatical. He was 9-21 with 3 homeruns and 7 RBI before.

Losing to Detroit, a terrible road team, is unacceptable. They were lucky to not get swept in Texas and struggled in KC.

This team is looking very, very old. Nobody can hit with any consistancy other than Cano. Teixeira is tentative with the bat and would rather try to work a walk. The catching situation, a strength in the beginning of the year, now is a gigantic weakness. Posada and Cervelli are automatic outs. Arod is a shell of his former self, still good, but not great and not nearly the dominant player he once was. The new additions have mostly been a negative thus far and the bullpen outside of Riviera is a joke. Of course Joba gives up the soul crushing 9th inning shot last night.

And then there is Derek Jeter. The man will always have a special place in my heart and he has been a great, clutch player for the bulk of his career. But that shit is over, or at least on hiatus. Superman is getting old. He is slow. If he comes up with runners on base and less than two outs he is a lock for the double play. A LOCK. I never thought I would see a day where I didn't want Jeter in that situation, but that day is here. Gardner practically bodyslammed the guy at second with his slide and Jeter still got thrown out.

God damn do I love the "The Yankees are 12-0 without Alex Rodriguez in the lineup" stat. I could hear that over and over.

You just had to jinx it.

I'm calling a Toronto sweep, by the way. Cashman missing out on Lee and Haren is going to come back and bite the Yanks in the ass. The Yanks currently have one dependable starter.

My bad.


Last night was the first time that I ever remember a player taking a curtain call after hitting a tiebreaking homerun in the 8th inning of a 3-2 game. Keep your ass in the dugout Bautista, it wasn't that big of a deal. We are all pretty sure you are dirty, anyway.

Toronto has had the Yankees number all year (or so it seems), so a sweep wouldn't shock me, but I expect them splitting the next 2 games.

Tough September on the horizon:
Home for a ten game clip (Oak, Tor, Balt)
at Tex for 3
at Tampa for 3
at Balt for 3
home for 4 against the Rays and 3 against Boston
at Tor for 3
at Bos for 3

I'll say it again, one dependable starter.

Tampa has four. Boston has three. This could get ugly.

Team with a $200 million payroll and you have Ivan Nova, Dustin Moseley, AJ Burnett and Javier Vazquez making up most of your rotation. But lets go ahead and trade for another DH. If only Lance Berkman could pitch.

AJ Burnett:

27 ER in his last 30 IP.

It's a good think we're not in a pennant race!

Train wreck. AJ either needs another pitching coach, or a shrink. His talent seems to have evaporated.

And Jeter might want to stop swinging the bat with a runner on first. Better one out than two.

I can't believe the immortal Dave Eiland can't figure out what's wrong with Burnett. Or Vazquez. Or Joba. Wait, why is Dave Eiland the pitching coach again? How come we haven't made Dave Duncan the Godfather offer yet?

And if Girardi wants to keep up this flirtation with the Cubs job, I say don't let the door hit you on the way out. In fact, the Cubs can take Girardi and the Yanks can bring in Lou.

I liked what I saw out of Nova yesterday. It was the first time I have seen him pitch but he's got an easy motion and throws mid-90s with a nice hook. It is kind of depressing to think that he might be the Yanks second best starting pitcher at the moment.

Just finished reading this. A fantastic book, and you're 100% correct about Thurman's personality. His dad was an amazing bastard. I knew a lot about the crash, but obviously not this much detail. Like Jerry Anderson, I felt better after hearing that Thurman was better off dying as he had broken his neck, but one has to wonder if he would have lived, and been OK, had it not been for that tree stump.

Thank you for the recommendation.

I just don't understand Girardi. He is so quick to pull the hook on just about every other pitcher but Burnett. Burnett was lucky to get thru 6 giving up only 3 runs, had just come off an inning where he was lucky to only give up only one and then goes on to surrender the go-ahead run in the seventh. You have a bullpen that is actually pitching well, why not turn it over to them to start the 7th? And watching Jeter bat these days is painful.

Boy, do they need Pettitte to come back and pick up where he left off. I don't even know who starts game 2 of a playoff series right now. Hughes, I guess. The bullpen better keep it up, whoever it is.

What is the going rate for a 36 year old shortstop with ever decreasing range, average speed and limited power, coming off a year where he was (presumably) healthy yet hit around .270? Guess we'll see in about 2 months.

Couldn't agree more. Girardi seems to bend over backwards trying to prove that the Yanks didn't waste a fortune on a below average pitcher like Burnett. Meanwhile he seems to have no problem throwing Vazquez under the bus even though the guy is pitching w/ a dead arm and has had a more solid season than Burnett.
As they stand right now, the Yanks are headed to the playoffs with 2 reliable starters (IF Pettite is healthy) and a bunch of long relievers. Good thing that Cliff Lee deal didn't happen.....
And what do they do with Jeter? Everyone knows he will be re-signed at seasons end, but they can't possibly let his rotting corpse stay at short, right? Is it too late for him in his career to switch to the outfield?

Not that Jeter needs the money, but I think he has cost himself a ton of it this year. Had he gone on to have a normal Jeter year, he probably gets a 4 yr/80 mil golden parachute deal. But how do you pay that money to the WORST HITTER IN YOUR LINEUP? And he is the worst right now, not even close. He should be batting 8th or 9th in this lineup but I don't think Girardi has the balls to do that. I love Jeter, he has a lifetime supply of credit to burn with me and maybe he goes on to play well in the post season but he is killing the Yankees now.

Complicating the matter is ARODs contract. AROD has 100 years left on his deal and also has shown signs of breaking down. How do you think Jeter would take getting short years and short money playing next to a rapidly aging 3B without the rich Yankee pedigree making $30 mil a year?

Problem is, I think, the Yankees have to pay whatever Jeter wants. The question is what he is going to ask for. Who knows how long he wants to play for, though. There was a little chatter last year about the possibility of him making a run at 4000 hits, and then Rose's record (which seemed ridiculous even when he was hitting .320 or whatever last year). Now that seems to be pretty much impossible. He'll blow by 3000 and settle halfway between there and 4K, but he's not getting to 300 home runs and probably not 1500 RBI, so stat wise there really isn't any reason to linger. He's made mention of matching Yogi with ten rings, but the Yankees would need another dynasty for him to sniff that. Is there a real difference between 6 rings and 8? 0r 3250 hits and 3500? He's a first ballet Hall of Famer if he retires ten minutes from now.

I think Yankee brass would do backflips if he walked into Cashman's office the first week of November and said 3 yrs/$75 million. Because the possibility of him asking for 2x that (years and dollars) exists.

And the back end of that contract better be for him playing leftfield. He's not vacated the top half of the batting order, though, I don't think.

I certainly could be wrong but I can't see them giving him anywhere near $25 mil a year. I want to believe that Jeter will be reasonable with his demands. And by reasonable I mean 12-15 mil a year. It's still way way way too much for the production you will get from him on the field but this contract was always going to be about past performance and all that. Plus, whose to say that he can even play the outfield? Whose to say that there will even be a spot? I think Gardner and Swisher have proven their worth and there is a sense that the Yanks are going to be in the market for Carl Crawford, not to mention they already have Granderson. It's in Jeter's best interest to stay in NY and it is probably in the Yank's best interest to keep him, but there is no way I pay him anywhere near $25 million.

If the Yanks pay Derek Jeter $25 mil a year over the life of his next contract, it would be one of the worst contracts ever given to anybody. 90% of the reason for giving the contract would be name recognition and past performance. He is already the most overpaid player right now, and you can argue he has been one of the most overpaid players for the past 4 or 5 years. Jeter doesn't really have a leg to stand on IMO. He will be coming off his worst statistical year. He is 36. He is not going to play for the Reds or Dodgers. The Yankees will have pressure to sign him, no doubt, but Jeter doesn't want to leave either.

Thank god for Swisher.

I'll take 5 - 4 on this road trip - split the six in Texas and Tampa and 2 of 3 in Baltimore.

That being said...the pitching match-ups don't look promising on paper for the next 2 series:
Vazquez (10-9) Wilson (14-6)
Burnett (10-13) Hunter (12-3)
Moseley (4-2) Lee (10-8)

Sabathia (19-6) Price (17-6)
Nova (1-0) Garza (14-7)
Hughes (16-7) Shields (13-12)

3-3 will be tough based on recent performances.

Fun Fact: Jeter has had exactly one two-hit game over the last month. That's a lot of 1's and 0's in the hit department on the 'ole box score. My new nickname for him is "binary angel".

And I have to say, Friday's game was probably the worst I've witnessed this season. Girardi drives me nuts, if the Cubs want him, the Cubs can have him as far as I'm concerned. He's a butcher with the bench and the bullpen.

- He pitched Joba, Robertson, Wood and Logan, the four best relievers in the pen other than Rivera, 3 total innings. Would it really kill Wood or Joba to pitch 2 innings. This lead to...

- He pitched Hughes (who had a start skipped and was well rested) for one easy inning the proceeds to pitch Rivera two. Why not pitch Hughes two or three? (Of course Rivera blows the game the next night...think this had anything to do with him pitching two innings the previous night?) This left Gaudin (he of the 5.37 era) to give up the game winning shot.

-Jeter and Posada cannot be trusted to get a runner home from third. They are automatic for the weak popout to second or the double play grounder to SS. It's uncanny. And when is Girardi going to realize to never ever pinch hit Posada for anybody. And speaking of pinch hitting...

- ITS NOT FUCKING NECESSARY TO PINCH HIT AND PINCH RUN ALL THE FUCKING TIME. In this game he pinch ran for Swisher (clutch hitter, more on this in a moment), Thames (clutch hitter who already had 3 hits) and Cervelli (who had been on base four times already in the game). Girardi does this shit all the time. By the end of the night Chad Moeller and Colin Curtis were getting key at bats because Girardi had nobody else to hit. And back to Swisher, Swisher was pinch run for by the supposedly fast Greg Golson. Why make this move, if not to steal a base and get a guy into scoring position? Two batters later AROD hit a two out single sending Golson to second. If Golson had already been on second he probably scores on the single. If you were just going to keep the guy on first base to begin with, why pinch run for Swisher at all?

Just another reason to hate the Yankees:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39206923...ew_york_times/

Last night's game almost killed me. Posada (of course) couldn't get the winning run home from third with one out and I was convinced Miranda was going to hit into the DP an inning later. Its painful how fundamentally bad this team is.

Ya, Jorge did not have a great game, but at least he still has some pop in his bat. Jeter? It's just painful to watch at this point.

At least Burnett is consistent.

Wow. Burnett is something else, eh? Got a pitcher making $85 million who won't come anywhere near a ball in the post season. Amazing.

Sounds kind of like John Lackey and Josh Beckett. I kid, I kid. Burnett is all sorts of bad, but man can he deliver a pie to the face.

From Keith Olbermann (Baseball Nerd):

I am happy to be able to report that the Yankees' failure to anoint Juan Miranda with a pie-in-the-face for his walk-off walk at the witching hour Sunday night against the Red Sox owed simply to the fact that A.J. Burnett had left earlier in the day, so that he'd be fully rested for his cameo in Toronto.

The pie was not skipped because it was assumed if Burnett had aimed it at Miranda, he would have missed.

One of the years Mid-Dynasty( '99 or '00, it obviosuly wasn't the year they won a bazzillion games) that the Yankees won the World Series they have a terrible, terrible September.

I keep telling myself this. Over and over.

ETA : I just checked (not sure why I didn't before I first posted, but moving right along). It was 2000. On 9/13 they beat Toronto to go to 84-59. They ended up 87-74 , including dropping seven straight at the end (at one point they were lambasted 44-7 in 4 games against the lowly Devil Rays* and Orioles).

* I don't know if they were still the Devil Rays in 2000.

I hate this team (as much as I can hate any team I love). They really are no fun to watch. They can't move runners over. They can't hit sac flies. They have trouble holding leads and lately they have trouble getting leads. They hit into too many double plays. If they aren't hitting 3-run homers they aren't winning games. They win because they have so much raw offensive talent and prey on weak pitching. The late-90s team didn't have 1/2 the talent of this team but I would pick that team in a series vs this team eight days a week.

There's no kidding about it. Lackey and Beckett are big reasons why the Sox got eliminated tonight. Both shat the bed this year, Burnett style.

Congrats on clinching tonight. I hope the Twins / Rangers are at least able to win a game in the ALDS, but I know better.

I don't even think I give a fuck if they lose. I mean, I do, but I wish I didn't. What a joyless fucking year. And weird, really. I can't figure out how they won 90+ games. Thin pitching and a bunch of .260 hittin' superstars. The fuck happened?

Non-Yankees fans reading this thread, which do you hate more: When we gloat about winning, or when we complain about winning?

Complaining about winning.

I get why those that complain about it, do, though. You're incredibly spoiled. Any other franchise would kill for a run of 14 playoff appearances in 16 years. If the Red Sox did it, it would never, ever get old. But no one has the history of the Yankees. Their winning tradition. So when a team like the 2000 team or the 2010 team squeaks in, they didn't win good enough. Makes want to laugh and puke, but I get it.

Yup. At this point I agonize more over how terrible the NY Giants are rather than AJ Burnett giving up 8 runs. I equate this Yankees team to the schoolyard bully, bigger muscles than everybody else, picking on the weak kids but getting their ass whipped when somebody of equal strength stands up to them.

You can't tell me this has been a fun team to root for.

I think Yankees will find it hard to defend their title this post-season, because aside from CC they don't have any reliable starter, and AJ has been nothing short of disappointment. Pettitte is still not 100%, and Hughes hasn't been consistent. Next season, when they get Cliff Lee from Texas, I think Yankees' rotation will be alot better to compete against teams like Phillies.

Despite the Yankees being a wildcard, this was probably the best possible scenario for them. They just own the Twins. CC does just enough to win again. Not pretty, not easy, pretty much a microcasm of the entire year thus far.