how do you get that far without knowing the rules?

It boggles my mind what happened in Saturday's Indians v. Orioles game. For those of you that didn't see it there were men on the corners with one out in a one-run game when Grady Sizemore, the Indian CF, made a diving catch on a line drive off of the bat of Ramon Hernandez for the second out of the inning. After the catch Nick Markakis tagged from third base and scored ahead of a throw that doubled Tejada up as he attempted to return to 1B. Every high school coach and umpire knows that this is a different type of double play ball than the 6-4-3 type that has a force play that is being completed. In this case, even though Tejada was mandated to return to 1B, it isn't by book rule a "force play" and the events described above should have led to a run for the Orioles. The umpires blew it and didn't allow the run, that is disturbing, the manager of the Orioles was shown after the play oblivious to the fact that his team should have gotten a run and didn't say anything until long after the inning was over. The score was changed by the umpires approximately three innings later. I am all for "getting it right", but so many things had transpired at that point that could have been different if the score was changed immediately. You can't go back three innings and change something that you got wrong. It is too late. There are plenty of times that the wrong call is made, in all sports, and if play continues and they don't catch it, then they don't compound the mistake by making another one. That is what you deal with when you have human error involved. It is part of sports. The fact that they made this change so much later in the game is atrocious. The umpires should be suspended and the Oriole manager should be fined by his team for not knowing enough to go out and support his team. Indian manager, Eric Wedge, protested the game and he has every reason to win this protest. It was an embarrassment!!

Joe Torre should stay

Why in the world would people be calling for Joe Torre's firing? It isn't his fault that the starting pitching was compiled poorly and it isn't his fault that the already questionable rotation has had a rash of injuries. Although I don't always agree with Torre and his decisions, I can't imagine what he could possibly have done about the current Yankee state. I have advocated before on this blog a change in lineup, but that is far from their problem right now. Their problem is all about the pitching. If anyone should be held responsible for the breakdown of the team, it would have to be Cashman. Even that is a bit of a stretch. There isn't much pitching out there, and you can't necessarily just go get it when you want it. He is the one that needs to be on the hot seat. Maybe that motivation will get him to be creative and to go and get some pitching. Perhaps they can package a few of those young arms that they stockpiled to get Willis from the Marlins? Maybe there is even a blockbuster deal out there somewhere. What about talking to the Giants about a Matt Cain and Randy Winn for Bobby Abreu, Rasner and Karsten? This might make you laugh at first, but look at the lack of protection behind Bonds in that lineup. I think that he got intentionally walked three times last night. The 2 pitchers could immediately improve their rotation. The Yanks could have Cabrera be the every day RF and have Winn be the 4th OF. The rotation would be greatly improved with Cain in there.

A telling statistic

This has been a frustrating season thus far. Here are some quick observations:

• The Yankee pitching staff has 109 appearances in 21 games. For those of you that are math impaired, that is an average of over 5 pitchers used per game.
• Michael Kay quoted a stat tonight that they Yanks have used 5 or more pitchers in 8 consecutive games, tied for the most in 50 years and one behind the all time MLB record.
• You need your starters to go deep into the games on a regular basis. The problem is that they don't have anyone in their rotation that can provide that for them. Their overworked bullpen is suffering because of it. 5 Yankee relievers have pitching in over half of their games. They have used 9 starting pitchers already this year.
• The Yanks team ERA going into tonight was 4.83 (and it got worse after tonight's game), that is fourth worst in the AL ahead of only Seattle, Texas and Tampa Bay.

This staff as it is currently constituted is horrible. I just don't see a lot of light at the end of the tunnel. I don't think that Clemens and his 5 innings per start will help the situation. Even when they are all healthy Wang, Pettitte, Mussina, Karstens and Hughes isn't going to strike fear into any lineup. They need a power arm or two in the rotation and they need some starters that can pitch into the 7th. I just have no idea where they are going to find either of these.

Phil Hughes

The stats don't tell the whole story. If you are just looking at the pitching line for Hughes tonight you aren't going to be all that impressed. However, watching him pitch I saw some promise, especially for a 20 year old pitcher making his debut. His first inning was pretty poor and it looked like he was very nervous, but after that he settled in and looked like a very different pitcher. He had good command of his fastball, his curve and his change up. He threw all three pitches in non-traditional counts and showed some guts. I liked how at one point when he had two strikes on Lind in his third at bat he shook off Posada several times finally going back to the initial sign that was given. You don't see a 20 year old that can think the game like that. To me he was trying to make the batter think that he was going to a pitch that he hasn't thrown much, and then went to the fastball up and away for the K. He didn't really put the Yanks in a position to win tonight, but he surely showed why the Yankees are so high on him. I think that he deserves another start next week in Texas.

the 20 year old savior?

Obviously I am kidding when I intimate that Phil Hughes (he prefers Phil now rather than Phillip) is the savior of the Yankee pitching staff. I am a bit nervous about how his start on Thursday will go. I would hate to see him have an outing like Chase Wright did this weekend and kill his confidence. You see it happen all the time, Red Sox fans can reference Hansen's last couple of seasons, where the young pitcher is brought up too early and their confidence is shaken beyond repair. On the other hand he could turn out to be Papelbon or Felix Hernandez. I think that it was smart to start him on Thursday against the D-Rays rather than Friday against the Sox. Not that the Rays lineup is anything to sneeze at. They are a good, young, fast offensive team. But there are no Ortiz nor Manny's in their lineup.

I will be watching intently because he just might be able to infuse some needed innings into the starting rotation, but I will be hoping that the "panic move" by the Yanks doesn't have long lasting negative effects if he isn't successful.

This weekend’s series

My first reaction to this weekend’s series is that the Red Sox looked like a team built for the playoffs and the Yanks did NOT. Let’s look first at the pitching matchups:

Schilling vs Pettitte
Beckett vs. Karsten
Dice-K vs Wright

With the possible exception of game one of the series the Sox had a major advantage in each of these match ups. In all three games the Sox starter didn’t have his usual stuff, but battled deep into the game. The Yanks had one decent start from Pettitte and he got the hook earlier that necessary. You can’t go to battle with guys like Karsten or Wright in the rotation. In fact, Igawa, Pavano, and Rasner don’t exactly inspire confidence either. I know that we have Wang coming back as of Tuesday, and Mussina some time in the coming week or two, but that still leaves a questionable rotation. Wang will be fine, Pettitte has looked good thus far, but neither of them are #1 pitchers. They are each #2s at best. Mussina is a back of the rotation type starter at this point and then choose whomever you want from the list above for the last two spots, but it isn’t pretty. The problem here is that there isn’t much out there to try to improve. Clemens is aging and hasn’t pitched in the AL in a few years. He isn’t that ace anymore. Phil Hughes might be an ace down the road, but he hasn’t done anything at the major league level yet. I think that we have seen with Chase Wright what can happen if we try to rush him to the bigs too soon. So who is out there? You hear rumblings about Sheets in Milwaukee or Willis in Florida, but they both are going to be costly. The Yankee bullpen is a strength, but it is already starting to crack from overuse. The starters need to go deeper into the games, so the bullpen isn’t dead by the all star break.

The baseball fan inside of me is pining for the days of the mid to late 90s with fewer all stars and more “ballplayers”. Give me the O’Neils, Brosius, Tino Martinez of the world in the field, and the Cones, Keys, and David Wells on the hill. Those were winning baseball teams. I question whether this version of the Yanks has that chemistry that is so underrated in baseball.

The bottom line is you can’t go into battle with Ryan Thompson, Wil Nieves, Mankiewictz and Phleps along with the aforementioned starting pitching and expect to be champions. That is the metric, good or bad, against which every Yankee team is measured.

That being said, the Yanks will get healthy, and hopefully find some help for the rotation and then we’ll see. But come October it is going to be difficult to match up with Schilling, Beckett, Matsuzaka and Wakefield with the rotation as it is currently constituted. Big bopping lineups might win a lot of games in the regular season, but rarely do they win world series. That accomplishment is reserved for teams with strong pitching and defense.

A major disappointment

If there was one game that the Yanks had a good shot at this weekend it was this Friday night game. Pettitte vs Schilling was about an even matchup. Papelbon was unavailable to pitch since he pitched the last two nights. ARod hit two big HRs and the Yanks held a 6-2 lead. All of that makes this loss a major disappointment. I am among the biggest of Joe Torre's fans, but he blew this game big time. Some of his mistakes:

1. Pinch running for Giambi in the 8th inning. In my opinion Torre does this way too often. I can see doing this if the Yanks are down a run and the pinch runner could possibly make a major difference in the game. But what advantage does this give you when you are up 4 runs? It only leads to yet another situation where Giambi's spot in the order comes around and someone like Ryan Thompson is grabbing some lumber rather than Giambi. This doesn't just hinder them in that spot in the order but also by not protecting ARod in the lineup. He didn't see a decent pitch to hit because they knew that they had a much lesser batter on deck. If Giambi is still in the game, ARod might see better pitches. So really by pinch running you are hurting two spots in the lineup.

2. Bringing in Mariano in the 8th. Mariano has been anything but dominant in this young season. Torre needs to have confidence in his bullpen to get him to the 9th, when it is Mo's time. This loss could play head games with Rivera for blowing his second save opportunity tonight, but also it could have ramifications to the confidence levels of people like Brunei, Farnsworth and even Vizcaino who he took out after only three batters.

3. Taking Pettitte out of the game in the 7th inning. Why take him out in this spot? He was around 100 in his pitch count, had just struck out Pena, and about to face Lugo who he retired a couple of times already tonight. You have to show some faith in someone. Either you have faith in Pettitte and let him work to Lugo (and perhaps save some bullpen arms for the two rookie starters that you have in the remainder of the weekend series) or you put faith in the bullpen arms, and don't bring in Mariano to try to get 5 outs. The Mariano thing still irks me when you think that they were going into the bottom part of the lineup, and still had a three run lead.

It is hard to understand what Torre was thinking. It seems like me might have outcoached himself. Now the Yanks have to hope that they can catch lightening in a bottle with either Karstens or Chase Wright or they will find themselves 4 games behind the Sox with another weekend series on the horizon.

update on Wang

Chien-Ming Wang had his second, and hopefully last minor league rehab start on Thursdsay night. If he responds well today, he will probably be in line to pitch on Tuesday. That would also put him on proper rest to pitch the following Sunday in the second consecutive weekend series agains the Sox. I don't put a lot of stock in the stats from minor league rehab starts. That being said (or typed in this case) he did coax a lot of ground balls in this last outing. That might lead one to believe that he is throwing his usual stuff, a good sign. He would be a welcomed addition to the rotation and likely would bump Chase Wright back to AA. That is unless Wright has another good outing agains the Sox on Sunday, then someone else's spot might be in jeopardy. These next couple of weekends should be interesting.

On another note, I don't like the unbalanced schedule. While it is nice to see the Yanks play the Sox 19 times (or 18 times this year), it takes away some of the spark by playing too often. It also is unfair when the wild card gets determined that some teams have more difficult schedules than others. I still get psyched when there is a rivalry weekend, but when you know there is another one right around the corner, in this case next week, it just isn't as big a deal.

what a finish!!!

In the interest of full disclosure I must tell you that, even though I am a huge Yankee fan, I went into this season NOT being a fan of Alex Rodriguez. Even before he joined the Yanks I was an ARod hater when he was asking for all of those perks to go with his quarter of a billion dollar contract that he signed with the Rangers. His contract demands, including an air conditioned tent at spring training and a personal staff and office at the stadium really rubbed me the wrong way. After he joined the Yanks, his post season and late game failures just cemented my feelings about him. But so far this year he has gone a long way to winning me over. He has two monster walk off HRs to dead center including the one this afternoon against the Indians. That last inning was vintage Yankees from the mid to late 1990s. They just "kept the train moving" by not trying to do too much. After the first two batters made outs, the Yanks are down to their last out and just start pecking away at that 4 run lead. A Phelps HR, Posada single, Damon walk, and then RBI singles by Jeter and Abreu put ARod in that situation to be a hero, and for the second time in this young season he came through with a big hit in a big spot.

I am not saying that he has won me over 100%, but I have to admit when he comes to the plate in that big situation, I don't have that pit in my stomach that I used to have.

when Matsui comes back

The Yanks should consider putting Giambi back at 1B when Matsui is healthy again. Their everyday lineup should be:

Damon CF
Jeter SS
Abreu RF
ARod 3B
Giambi 1B
Matsui LF
Posada C
Cano 2B
Cabrera DH

That is a nasty lineup. Cabrera can spell each of the OF once a week and have them DH. Once in a while Giambi can DH and have Mientkiewicz play 1B. Mostly he can be Giambi’s caddy and be a defensive replacement late in games where the Yanks have a lead. Along with Mientkiewicz the Yanks would have Cairo on the bench to play any IF positions and OF if they are in a pinch, and Nieves as the backup C. Aside from the 1B caddy, the yanks don’t need a deep bench on an everyday basis. If they sent Phelps down to AAA they would open up a roster spot to carry an extra reliever. I am advocating the 8 man bullpen because of the injuries that the rotation has already endured. Also, the starters that they do have are all 6 inning pitchers, leaving a lot of work for the bullpen.

Mark Buehrle

The first no hitter in the majors this year was thrown tonight by Mark Buehrle for the White Sox against the Texas Rangers. It is the first no-hitter by a White Sox pitcher since fellow-lefty Wilson Alvarez in 1991, the 16th in team history, and the first by at White Sox pitcher at home in 40 years.

Buehrle faced a tough Ranger lineup tonight that included Michael Young, Mark Teixeira, Sammy Sosa and Hank Blaylock. He faced the minimum 27 batters. The only batter to reach base was Sosa with a 5th inning walk and then promptly picked him off. He struck out 8 and threw the no-no with only 106 pitches, or an average of less than 12 pitches an inning.

Buehrle is looking to rebound to his 2005 form after having an off year last year. In 2005 Buehrle went 16-8 with a 3.12 ERA, but in 2006 he slumped to a 12-13 record with an ERA of 4.99. Buehrle was the starting pitcher for the AL in the 2005 all-star game, when he pitched 2 shutout innings. In two starts this season before tonight's game, he lasted a total of only 8 and 1/3 innings allowing 7 hits and 4 earned runs. He also went 2-0 in the post season that year with an ERA of 3.47.

In his post game interview he was talking about how he bucked baseball tradition and talked openly about the fact that he was throwing a no hitter. Baseball tradition says that in order to avoid "jinxing" the no hitter you aren't supposed to talk about the fact that it is going on, and most people won't even talk to the pitcher in that circumstance. You often see the pitcher going for the no-no sitting alone on the bench, with everyone else smushed onto the other half of the bench. He didn't want that to happen, so he brought it up to avoid that cold shoulder.

As a nice touch, he wore a Virginia Tech hat in the official post game press conference.

The Sox have the right idea

Much props to Theo Epstein on how he built this pitching staff. Terry Francona deserves a lot of credit about the decisions that he has made as well. The hardest thing to find in baseball right now is power pitching for the rotation. The Sox have three of them at the top of their rotation. Schilling may have lost some mph off of his fastball, but he is still capable of dominating a game. Dice-K has looked like he is going to be the real deal in his three starts, and Beckett has looked like he finally "gets it" after stubbornly relying on his fastball last year. Wakefield is a nice complement to these three power pitchers and can throw a lineup off track with the knuckler. Honestly, it doesn't much matter who the #5 guy is. Tavarez is fine for now. Jon Lester is likely to take over in the spot by the all-star break.

Their bullpen looked to be their achilles heal as the end of spring training neared, but the smartest decision they made was to move Papelbon back to the closer role. That moved everyone else in their flawed bullpen down a spot. This year's version of Donnelly, Pineiro, Timlin and Romero are all shells of what they were a couple of years ago. Despite giving up a HR on his first big league pitch, Okajima has looked like a decent middle man. The Sox are just hoping that Delcarmen and Hansen can find their stuff at AAA and become setup men at some point this summer.

The Yanks Starting Pitching

All of these injuries are creating havoc on the Yankee rotation. Fortunately most of the injuries won't be long term. The timing just stinks with two series against the Sox in the next two weeks. Wang should be back next week, with Mussina not too far behind. In the mean time we got to take a look at a potential contributor to the 2009 Yankee rotation. Chase Wright had a successful major league debut. Granted, the Yankee offense put him in a situation where 3 runs in 5 innings was good enough for a win. Still, Wright pitched pretty well for a guy that has only 2 weeks of AA experience under his belt. This start was a nice reward for a pitcher that was off to a monster start at Trenton. In his two starts there this year he pitched 14 shutout innings allowing on 4 hits, 1 walk and struck out 19. At this rate, he might even be ready next year.

Finally the future looks bright for the Yankee rotation. Along with Wright we have Phillip Hughes and Ross Ohlendorf getting some seasoning at AAA. Neither one is having a great April, but both showed signs of being contributors down the road during their grapefruit league outings. Humberto Sanchez is another minor league arm to keep an eye out for, although he is on the DL right now.

The big questions now are:
1. Can the Yanks hang in there and not let the Sox or Jays build up a big lead while they heal (although the Jays have injury problems of their own)?
2. What will the rotation look like in a couple of weeks when people are healthy?

I would like to see Wang, Mussina, Pettitte, Igawa and Karstens be their long term rotation once they are healthy. We must know by now that Pavano can't be counted on. As long as the Yanks don't start falling too far behind in the AL East, The Boss should be able to be held off in acquiring Roger Clemens. I don't know if Clemens is an American League quality pitcher any longer. He has had success in the NL, but he is a 5-6 inning pitcher at this point.

Thankfully, the bullpen has been much improved so far this year. I like the way that things have played out in the pen. Regardless of Mariano Rivera's last outing against Oakland, he is still one of the top closers in baseball. Farnsworth has had his issues since becoming a Yankee, but he throws hard and is not the 8th inning type setup guy any more. That role is being earned by Luis Vizcaino. Bruney and Proctor are both worthy of stepping into that role if Vizcaino needs a day off. Myers is certainly a good lefty matchup reliever and Sean Henn has made the transition from starter to the bullpen nicely. This is the best bullpen that the Yanks have had in quite a while.