Curveballs for Jobu is Offbasepercentage's daily trip around the ballparks.
Today's honorary bat boy is Eddie Gaedel.
CFJ was canceled yesterday while MTD discovered the true meaning of the day after Christmas. But we're back with plenty of Miguel Cairo talk.
Yankees 4, Twins 3. One of NY's biggest projects coming in the offseason, besides alerting the authorities about my P.P.P. (Pantsless Pavano Protest) in February, was trying to get Alan James Burnett straightened out. So far it's working as the righty is 2-0 after tossing six innings of two-run ball. So we don't need the wagon and the padded room for Anthony in Poughkeepsie just yet. Also, Derek Jeter passed Rogers Hornsby for 33rd on the all-time hit list with a 2-for-3 day. I'm pretty sure we're the first site to mention that.
Astros 3, Reds 2. The crowd of 20,014 included a walk-up sale of 6,301, presumably to see Matt Downs hit. Downs delivered, ripping the go-ahead double in the ninth to send Houston to its first win of the season and hand Cincy its first loss. Miguel Cairo just keeps padding his all star game resume: pinch-hit single in the fifth, .400 average through Thursday.
Whitesox 5, Devilrays 1. The 2011 debut of KenHarrelsonVoice:
"Edwin Jackson was humming, tellyouwhat. Johnny Damon-he gone! Matt Joyce-he gone! Ben Zobrist-he gone! Sean Rodriguez-he gone! 13 whiffs in all for Eddie Jacks and the Palehose offense got cooking right away. Juan Pierre with a duck snort in the first got things started, attaboy Juany. Then Alex doubled in Juany and Gordo. Later, Pauly singled in a run, attaboy Pauly, and the good guys added two runs late to keep the bad guys winless at 0-6. Today the Sox send Johnny Danks to the slab against Tampa. Come on, Johnny, little bingo."
Indians 1, Redsox 0. Rafael Perez got the win and Chris Perez picked up the save for the 4-2 Tribe. In other Perez news: Horatio Perez went to the bathroom, Luis Perez replaced the light bulb in the bedroom closet and Manny Perez drove his uncle, Jorge Perez to his dentist appointment.
Phillies 11, Mets 0. Brad Emaus: 0-for-4.
Brewers 4, Braves 2. Dan Merklinger cleared waivers and was sent down to Double-A Huntsville Thursday, so I'm just a little too emotional to talk about this game.
Offbase editors Derwood Morris and MTD haven't had much luck previewing things lately-MTD incorrectly predicted Gary Discarcina would come out of retirement to help the Angels win the 2009 World Series and Derwood thought Teen Wolf 3 would be the 2010 summer blockbuster. But here are division previews anyway.
Today we take a look at the AL East, a long-ignored division. It's about time these guys got some attention.
Yankees (2010: 95-67) The wild card winners from a year ago didn't land free agent pitcher Cliff Lee and Andy Pettitte retired, forcing Anthony from Poughkeepsie to nearly overdose on linguine with clam sauce and the Yanks to move Phil Hughes and A.J. Burnett up in the rotation and audition less-desirable options for the Nos. 4 and 5 starters during spring training. The trio of Ivan Nova, Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia have been battling through camp for those two spots and it looks like all three will make the opening day roster. It's not clear which two will grab rotation spots, but the Yankees did sign Kevin Millwood to a minor league contract.
Sidney Ponson was unavailable for comment.
Here's something I can guarantee: if Colon makes more than 10 appearances, I'll eat one of my socks. But forget about what's going on at 4 and 5; the Yankees will go as far as ace C.C. Sabathia, Burnett and Hughes will take them. Offensively, New York brings back virtually the same lineup (Jorge Posada to DH, Russell Martin behind the plate) that led the majors in runs scored in 2010 and several players, including Mark Teixiera and Alex Rodriguez, are looking for bounce-back years (they did combine for 63 HR in '10). The emergence of Robinson Cano as the best second baseman in baseball (sorry, Aaron Hill) has added to an already-potent middle of the order, though Joe Girardi refuses to bat Cano third where he belongs. The bullpen is improved as Rafael Soriano was added to set up for King Mariano. Elsewhere in the pen, Joba Chamberlain has some new tattoos. One more thing to talk about:
1. Derek Jeter had a tough 2010 season and is approaching 3,000 hits. I'm not sure if you were aware of those two news items.
Boston (89-73) The Nation of Redsox (Est. January, 2005) had an exciting off-season as the team added Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, which goes against Boston's recent history of employing the ugliest people in baseball (see: John Lackey, Jonathan Papelbon, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Clay Buchholz). Crawford and Gonzalez will only add to an offense that scored the second-most runs in baseball, though the starting pitching after perennial Cy Young candidate John Lester is suspect. Plenty of questions in that rotation:
1. Will Josh Beckett add another extension cord to his neck in time for neck extension cord season? 2. Did Clay Buchholz pass 10th grade chemistry or what?! 3. Can Tim Wakefield become the first 83-year old in baseball history to allow 10 or more stolen bases in a single game? 4. Is that Oil Can Boyd at Radio Shack?
Tampa Bay (96-66) Last year's division winners lost a ton of talent in Crawford, Jason Bartlett (traded to San Diego), Carlos Pena and Matt Garza (both signed with the Cubs) and Rafael Soriano (signed with the Yankees), but there's some good stuff left for no one to see at Tropicana Field. David Price and Evan Longoria are two of the finest young players in the game and Ben Zobrist (.295/.405/.543 in 2009, .238/.346/.353 in 2010) should be able to bounce back. Tampa also reunited Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez, though league rules don't allow a team to DH two players at once, so one of the two will have to play left field some days.
After Price, the pitching is thin as When's The Last Time I Pitched Big In A Big Game James Shields got lit up a year ago and Jeff Niemann will need to improve on his decent 2010 numbers. The bullpen was one of the best in the game in 2010, but is now missing Soriano. Lefty Randy Choate, now with the Marlins, appeared in 85 games last season and amazingly, Joe Torre was not his manager. Either way, Choate is in Florida, so those 85 games will have to go to someone else. For all three Rays fans' sake, hopefully not to Kyle Farnsworth.
1. If you're going to start babbling nonsense, start a baseball blog, like we did. That way you won't have to backtrack and look like an idiot.
2. Climb above fifth place and then maybe you can take unnecessary shots at the faces of the top two franchises in the division. So, in other words, we'll talk in 2018.
A few times a week Offbase will recap the day in Spring Training. We'll call it Putting a Stamp on Camp until we think of a better name.
Let's start with a flashback from our buddy Jose Canseco, unofficially the Offbase mascot. We can't get enough of this guy.
The Yankees had some controversy on their first day of camp! Unbelievable, I know. Why must people keep bothering this quiet, little franchise? Can't everyone just let them go down to Tampa and train in peace? Anyway, C.C. Sabathia hinted Monday there was a chance he could opt out of the final four years of his contract and test free agency after the 2011 season, even though he had said previously he wasn't going to do that. If Sabathia opts out, it's the right thing to do because he could get a new and longer deal on the open market after the '11 season, and he'll still be younger than Cliff Lee, who was the prize of this past winter's free agency class. I also think the big lefty would end up staying with and extending his contract with the Yankees because he likes playing in NY. So, Anthony in Poughkeepsie and Vinny in Jersey should put the whale sounds CD on and have a canoli.
Meanwhile, in Jupiter, Albert Pujols set a new deadline-Wednesday-for the Cardinals to sign him to a new contract or he's playing the 2011 season and then testing free agency in the winter. Here's Cards manager Tony LaRussa talking about Pujols and distractions and engine coolant.
Elsewhere...
* John Lackey dropped more than 10 pounds in the off-season, but this is still his face:
First jab at a Redsox in 2011. Baseball is back! Tomorrow: what's so great about Jacoby Ellsbury anyway?
* Maury Brown explained on Twitter that Toronto was postponing arbitration talks with outfielder Jose Bautista "to allow further negotiation between the player and the club." Before the Jays go crazy, remember: Bautista's 2010 season was excellent (166 OPS+, 5.3 WAR, .617 SLUG, 54 HR), but it's the first even pretty good season of his seven-year career. Career highs prior to 2010:
OPS+ - 99 WAR - 2.0 SLUG - .420 HR - 16
There were thousands of Bautista-Brady Anderson comparisons last year, but Anderson had two more really good seasons after he hit 50 home runs in 1996 (which bested his career high in long balls by 29). I say we leave poor Brady Anderson out of this and start making some Dan Pasqua comparisons.
After an off-season of speculation on whether he had pitched his last game in a big league uniform, Andy Pettitte will officially announce his retirement later today. Pettitte broke in in 1995 and was a big part of the Yankees dynasty in the late-1990s. I sat in the right field bleachers at old Fulton County Stadium and watched Pettitte shut out the Braves in game five of the 1996 World Series. One of my two greatest live moments as a Yankees fan. He went to Houston from 2004-2006, or what I like to call The Three Years I Spent Mumbling In The Attic, and finally returned to the Yankees before the 2007 season.
Since we're not discussing his time with the Astros-I'm down to just one patio chair and I need it for possum surveillance-his best season as a Yankee was 2007 when the lefty had a 7.6 WAR, 2.88 ERA and helped lead NY to the playoffs. One of his best years was in 2010 (1.27 WHIP, 3.28 ERA), which turned out to be his last.
I know the Pettitte-for-HOF discussions have already started, and despite my love for No. 46, I think he may fall a little short. A 50.2 career WAR is really good, but I don't think it's hall worthy. Still, as a Yankees fan I remember a lot of HOF Pettitte moments in the post-season. To name a few: 1998 division series; '98 World Series clincher in San Diego; '03 division series with NY down 1-0. He was fantastic in the 2003 World Series, which was canceled right before it ended; no winner declared. Pettitte won all three clinching games in the 2009 World Series run, and he was excellent in the final two post-season starts of his career (four ER in 14 innings against the Twins and Rangers last fall).
And I'm not sure if you heard, but the Yankees rotation has a bunch of question marks heading into the 2011 season. Mainly
1. Sergio Mitre?
Pettitte going one more season would've calmed Anthony in Poughkeepsie's nerves a little bit, yet for Pettitte's sake it's probably a good time to call it a career. 38-years old, 16 seasons, over 3,000 innings, and that left elbow seemed ready to explode. The wear and tear takes its toll on a player. I should know: I played one season on the JV team at age 15 and retired before the next season's try outs when Coach Smith pretended to speak Spanish and sprayed me with a house.
Pettitte will go down as the second-greatest left-hander in Yankees history, behind Whitey Ford and just ahead of Ron Guidry. Not bad for a 22nd-round draft pick.
I'd like to begin this post by stating how big a fan of Derek Jeter I am. He's been a very good-to-great player for the Yankees since he broke in with the 1996 championship team-the first title for my generation of Yankees fans. We've grown up with Jeter at shortstop every day and have trouble imagining the day when he, and Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada, aren't wearing pinstripes. This isn't about what Jeter has been. This is about what Jeter is and what is about to become of him. First will start with three things you may or may not know about No. 2:
1. Jeter is the captain of the Yankees. 2. He's been a Yankee his entire career. 3. He makes a lot of money.
Now that we've gotten everything out on the table, the Yankees and their fans know what 2010 means: it's the last year of Jeter's contract that paid him $21.6 million from 2007-2009 and $22.6 million this season. So I'd like to introduce a new segment here at Offbase entitled It's Time for Yankees Fans to be Honest With Themselves , brought to you by The People to Convince Delusional Yankees Fans in 2005 that Alex Rodriguez is 75 billion Times Better Than 75 Billion Scott Brosius' Stacked On Top of Each Other.
$22.6 million is an absurd figure for any player, including people like Albert Pujols, but for Jeter it's almost laughable. While a very good player for many years-.314/.385/.454, 120 OPS+ career through Sunday's games-and a great player in six different seasons (1998, '99, '00, '03, '06 and last season)-Jeter is not worth twenty-two million dollars per season. His 2010 numbers are really down, but I'm not piling on the NY shortstop because he's having his first bad season (.716 OBS, 97 OPS+). But it does present a problem the Yankees organization is going to have to deal with in three months when Jeter becomes a free agent: either over-pay Jeter, again, or see him GASP! go to another team for much, much, much less than he would make with NY.
Do I want Jeter to finish his career for another team? No. I do not. I think Derek Jeter has meant a great deal to the Yankees organization, on and off the field. He deserves to get to 3,000 hits and try to win more championships with the New York Yankees. But it's going to come at a huge cost and I just don't think anyone, in his age-37 year coming off a sub-par season, is worth tens of millions of dollars.
"But Derwood, the Yankees can afford it! Money is no object to them!"
Settle down, Anthony in Poughkeepsie. Despite the Yankees' high payroll, money IS an object to them. OK, it apparently wasn't an object when they signed Kei Igawa, but we all make embarrassing mistakes. This may sound ridiculous coming from a team that is going to have to pay Alex Rodriguez until he's 83-years old, but money is an object when, instead of giving $21 million to Jeter, they could give Jeter $5 or $6 million and take the other $15 million and
1. Improve the pitching staff 2. Improve the bench 3. Give me some
I'm not trying to say that Jeter isn't worth retaining for the remainder of his career. I'm not here to condemn Jeter for his rough 2010 and send him packing once free agency hits. The point of this post is to try and put some rational thoughts into certain Yankees fan's heads. A man with a 1.1 WAR who can't field a ground ball to his left and is closer to 37 than 36, isn't a $22 million-a-year player.
Louie Fatchabroote in White Plains, and millions of his closest friends, including dozens of dumb broadcasters and commentators, think the Yanks should just give Jeter whatever he wants this off-season because he's a true Yankee and he shouldn't wear another jersey and his mom and dad are always shown in the crowd cheering. Apparently, Jeter is the only player in the history of baseball who played for the same organization his entire career and has parents.
Tim McCarver said on a FOX broadcast earlier in the season that if Jeter didn't sign with the Yankees after the 2010 season it'd be a "travesty." But this isn't about how much of an idiot Tim McCarver is. That's tomorrow's post. No, this is about the Jeter situation: a career Yankee who has all of these invisible contributions like "clutchness", "leadership" and "intangibles" and has put himself in a situation where he can basically name his price and if the NY organization doesn't oblige, they'll have to listen to fans who only listen to Tim McCarver. You wouldn't want to be in that room. And I don't blame Derek Jeter at all. He's the most-famous baseball player on the richest team in the most-famous city in the world. Good for him for getting as much money as he can, but the Yankees are in a situation where they have to pay Jeter Pujols money-times-two for the next two or three years, and I don't think that's the right move for my favorite baseball team.
