One week later

This is a fairly newish blog, so I don't feel particularly obligated to keep up with it.

I do intend to blog as much as possible about the Yankees, but life interferes sometimes.

In the last week, I went to the beach with my children and had a pretty difficult week workwise. Plus, I was not particularly in the mood to write (both because of the sucky Yankees play and generally).

In any case, by now it's fairly well known that the Yankees lost 7 straight, but finally beat the Red Sox today (3-1) to break that losing streak.

There's not much I can add to the hundreds of thousands of words that have been written about the Yankee skid, other than to say that it was one of those perfect storm situations where the starters are injured or can't pitch deep enough, the bullpen did its part except for one member who was gased (or in case of Mariano's BS of last Friday, rusty) and the hitters suddenly decided to pretty much go cold at the same time.

I can't help but notice, however, that A-Rod has absolutely disappeared from the Yankee headlines. That tells me that A-Rod earned some brownie points with his great batting in the frist 3 weeks of the season (he has been somewhat cold of late) and that he wasn't seen as the problem.

If there was ever a silver lining to a 7-game losing streak is that A-Rod is not news.

Other than that, you have to feel for Jeff Karstens. As I posted on Pete Abraham's Lohud blog ( http://yankees.lohudblogs.com/2007/04/28/karstens-fractured-fibula/#comments ), I liked the kid last year and was rooting for him this year.

He's still young, and hopefully he will be able to come back this year and reclaim his career.

Tomorrow, Chien-Ming Wang will have a chance to show why he was a Cy Young runner-up last year (and frankly, Wang pitched solidly against TB last week).

If the Yankees win 2 out of 3 against the BoSox, they will have cut Boston's lead back to a manageable 4 1/2 games. But more importantly, they will have built some momentum for the forthcoming weeks.

P.S. To add a new wrinkle to this blog, I'm thinking of doing entries in English and in Spanish.

The first Yankee-BoSox battle of 2007

There's not much I'm going to add before the first game of the Yankees-BoSox series that hasn't been added by others.

Yes, the Yankees are coming in with their pitching rotation somewhat in tatters.

Yes, the Pettitte - Schilling match-up is pretty much the best one for the Yankees.

Yes, it's not advisable to go into Fenway with 2 rookies.

Yes, it would have been nice to have all of the Yankee relievers rested for this series.

Yes, Pettitte better pitch long today, so the pen gets some rest.

But you know what?

IT'S APRIL!!!

Assuming every Yankee and Red Sox player leaves this series healthy, this is just a 3 game series, being played at a good time for Boston. But in April.

Let's not make it into something more important than it is.

In any case, as I posted on Pete Abraham's blog: a) If the Yanks get swept, it will be a mild disappointment;

b) If the Yanks win 1 out of 3, it will be an acceptable result for the Yanks;

c) If the Yanks win 2 out of 3, it will be seen as a very good result for the Yanks;

d) If the Yanks sweep the Red Sox, yikes, that would definitely be an upset (and a heck of a great result for the Yanks).

Other than that, play ball.

JRVJ

P.S. I get the feeling that if there were a rematch of the A-Rod - Varitek fight this weekend, A-Rod would lift Varitek with his pinky finger and throw him all the way to second base without flinching.

That's the kind of roll the man is in right now.

Two random thoughts after yesterday's 8-6 win

1. There's an old baseball tradition, wherein a team which is winning a game in what could be construed as a blow out, should not "run-up" the score.

According to this tradition, if a team is winning by 8+ runs (maybe even by 6 or 7 runs), its expected not to hustle full throttle to manufacture extra runs that may "show-up" the other team (things like stealing bases in blow-outs are frowned upon).

Well, I haven't done a study on this, but I have the distinct impression that baseball has gotten more chaotic of late (and by late I mean the last few seasons), and every so often you hear about a team coming back from a big deficit and winning a game that seemed lost. Clearly, MLB baseball is not operating in a 1968 mode, so a big inning is always lurking there somewhere.

While I suspect that the number of awesome comebacks in a season is still fairly small (probably not even 5%), seeing comebacks like yesterday's (with that amazing 6 run 9th, all with 2 outs), leads me to think that it's time to discard that old baseball tradition of not running-up the score.

2. It's become well established among Yankee fans that Joe Torre rides relief pitchers hard (see Quantrill, Paul or Villone, Ron).

Since relief pitchers are seen as somewhat fungible commodities (unless you are Mariano Rivera), riding relievers hard is not exactly a tragedy for the Yankees, provided that the Yankees have enough pitchers in line to take up Torre's high work load (this year would seem to be one of those years in which the Yankees have the relief arms and the need to use them).

What I don't understand is Joe Torre's philosophy when using Jorge Posada.

Watching Wednesday's game (April 18th, Yanks over Cleveland 9-2), I noticed that Joe replaced Alex Rodríguez with Miguel Cairo, Josh Phelps with Doug Mientkiewicz and Johnny Damon with Kevin Thompson (the first two in the top of the 8th, the latter in the waning part of the bottom of the 7th, when the Yanks were already up 9-2).

Why didn't Torre replace Jorge Posada for the top of the 9th inning?

The Yanks were up by 7 runs, and Torre had already bit the bullet on taking out some of his regular players, so it's not like he was studiously trying to avoid a comeback like yesterday's.

While I believe that teams should not assume that they're going to win blowouts (see point 1 above), if you're already putting in defensive replacements, shouldn't you at least spare Jorge an inning of going into his squat?

An inning in a 162 game season is not that much, but an inning here and there could well end adding up by the end of the year......

A-Rod, the Lord of Creation

With apologies to Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption, A-Rod has every right to feel like the Lord of Creation tonight.

Due to work commitments, I couldn't watch today's game.

I had ESPN's gamecast going, and was somewhat negative about the Yankees winning today, what with the score being 6-2.

Well, I get out of a phone call and check to see how the game ended, and notice that it ended 8-6, and that the last batter for the Yankees was A-ROD!!!

Game's like today are why I love baseball: long term, this wins means nothing more than any other run-of-the-mill win. In October, when the chips are on the line, this win means nothing (as the Yanks have learned the last few Octobers, it's not necessarily the best team that wins in October).

But the pure joy that this amazing A-ROD tear has caused me, and other Yankee fans, is why the 7+ months when MLB baseball is being played are my favorite time of the year.

JRVJ

P.S. Upon watching A-ROD's shot again ( http://tinyurl.com/2fxa7a ), what strikes me as interesting is that some of the Yankee players and fans KNEW that it was a HR from the moment A-Rod hit it.

Check 00:54 of the clip, and tell me if that's not the case.....