Saturday, July 2, 2016

Live Game Updates: Yankees at Padres - 7/2

10:43 p.m., End 2nd: Nova works around a one-out double in the second. This one's still scoreless early on.

11:44 p.m., Mid 6th: After three innings of nothing happening, the Yankees finally grab the lead in the sixth. After back-to-back hits by Ellsbury and Gardner put men on the corners to start the inning, Castro plates a run with a groundout, and the Yankees can finally exhale. They're up 1-0, their first advantage of the series.

12:06 p.m., End 6th: Yankees give it right back. After Dellin Betances enters with a man on and one out in the sixth, Matt Kemp ties it with an RBI double. Just a suggestion, but maybe Betances isn't the best guy to insert in the middle of jams. It seems to be his achilles heal, and considering the season Miller is having, it might be time to turn DMC into MDC.

12:24 p.m., End 7th: Betances strands the go-ahead run at third in the seventh. Yankees will look to take the lead with A-Rod (presumably) leading off the eighth.

12:54 p.m., End 9th: Miller stays in for the ninth for some reason, and it costs the Yankees the game. Melvin Upton Jr. homers on the first pitch of the frame, and the Padres -- one of the worst teams in baseball -- beat the Yankees for the second day in a row.

Game Thread: New York Yankees @ San Diego Padres 7/2


Here we are Yankees fans, the game thread for the night as the New York Yankees face off with the San Diego Padres for the second time in their three game set. At least tomorrow is somewhat of an afternoon game, right? Anyway we make the best of a bad situation here and hopefully the Yankees can do the same tonight with one of their struggling starters Ivan Nova. Nova makes the start looking to turn his season around while the Padres counter with Drew Pomeranz who looks to keep the misfortune going for the right-hander. The game will be played at 10:10 pm ET inside Petco Park and can be seen on Fox Sports 1 and MLB TV.

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Nova is ready and the bats better be ready because it’s game time in beautiful San Diego. Go Yankees!

While We Wait: Link Dump from the BYB Hub


There’s some good and there’s some bad to the whole Yankees being on the West Coast thing and playing games well into the night without three-and-a-half hour rain delays I just struggle to find some of those good things most times. One of the few good things I have found though is it gives me an open slot on the blog to do a link dump while we wait for the games to begin. Tonight we will showcase some of the talent that is currently being offered on the BYB Hub.

If you’re not familiar with the BYB Hub this was the brain child of Robert Casey, the owner and my dear friend from Bleeding Yankee Blue, and it serves as a place for an up-and-coming blogger or just a guy with a website to get his articles and content read. When many of us were just starting out we didn’t have the sort of free exposure and advertising that the BYB Hub was designed to offer and Casey, myself and everyone else involved are looking to give to those what we only wished we had when we started. It’s really a great site and it’s full of great content, not just Yankees content either, so I suggest you check it out. BYBHub.Blogspot.com.


The Curse Of The Yankees Captains?

Kid Elberfeld served as the Yankees captain in 1906 and kept the title until the 1909 season was over with the Highlanders. Kid was nicknamed The Tabasco Kid because of his fiery temper and actions both verbally and physically on the field with the umpires. One time while in the minor leagues Kid threw a ball of mud into an umpires open mouth and later in the Major Leagues he assaulted an umpire physically and had to be removed by the police. This was not a stat that was kept up with back in the early 1900's but most historians say that Elberfeld was thrown out of more games than anyone else in his era. Elberfeld managed the Highlanders in 1908 and finished with the worst record in the league with a 27-71 record.


Hal Chase was considered to be the first official Yankees/Highlanders captain when he was named the captain in 1910 and kept the title until 1912. Hal was considered to be the best defensive first baseman in all of baseball and even drew rave reviews from the likes of Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson during his playing career for his glove. Hal's legacy is extremely tainted though with rumors of him betting on baseball games and suspicion in throwing baseball games and purposely losing. This kind of stuff is why we will never see guys like Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson in the MLB Hall of Fame but somehow Hal not only got away with it but is still a member of the hall.


Frank Chance was only the Yankees captain for one season, the 1913 season, and it did not exactly go as planned. The Cubs released him and negotiated to get him on the Yankees after multiple surgeries to remove blood clots in his brain that were caused by being hit in the head by pitches in the 1912 season. The Yankees signed him to a three year deal in 1913 and never played more than 12 games in a single season for the Yankees. The Yankees spent much of the 1913 season in last place but a late season push, including a win in the next to the last game, had the Yankees finish 7th in that season. Not exactly as planned for Frank and the Yankees.


Lou Gehrig was named the Yankees captain in 1935 and would remain the captain until he retired in the 1939 season due to a disease which is commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Lou retired at the young age of 36 so who would know how much more revered he would be had he been able to see the latter years of his 30's in baseball. The Iron Horse played in 2,130 consecutive games which was not surpassed until Cal Ripken Jr. passed it in 1995, a mere 56 years later. Gehrig finished with great stats in his career but was absolutely decimated by ALS. Lou would retire from baseball in the 1939 season at the age of 36 stating that he was "The Luckiest Man On The Face Of The Earth" and would die only two years later in 1941 at the age of 38.

Thurman Munson was named the Yankees captain in 1976 and kept the title until 1979. The Yankees would lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds in 1976 but would win back to back World Series in 1977 and 1978 behind the bat of Reggie Jackson. The Yankees would not make an appearance in the 1979 World Series with the Pittsburgh Pirates beating the Baltimore Orioles but what else happened in 1979 would hurt the Yankees and Munson more. Munson owned his own plane and was taking flying lessons because he got so homesick and wanted to be able to go to Cleveland to his family whenever he wanted. Thurman was practicing taking off and crashed his plane on August 2, 1979 and died.
Don Mattingly was named the Yankees captain in 1991 and would keep the title until he retired after the 1995 season. The Yankees were generally a terrible team when Don Mattingly was on the team only making the playoffs once in his tenure in 1995. A strike shortened 1994 season would have probably seen the Yankees in the playoffs as well but we will never know but the greed of the MLB Players Association is a discussion for another day. Mattingly injured his back in 1987 though and was never the same after that season and would prematurely end his career after allegedly horse playing with teammate Bob Shirley.

Derek Jeter has five World Series rings,a Rookie of the Year award, 13 All Star Game appearances, a World Series MVP award, has gotten an MVP vote in 12 seasons and finished as high as 2nd place in 2006, has five each of Gold Gloves and Silver Slugger awards, and would have earned $261,159,364 in his baseball career before any kind of endorsements and such by the end of the 2014 season. On top of all of that Derek Jeter has a pretty impressive spread of women to boast about as well, seen HERE on the Yankees Wives & Girlfriends section of the site, so yeah who am I kidding? What curse? Hannah Davis is a gift and a curse.

Revealing My 2016 MLB All-Star Game Ballot


Voting for the 2016 MLB All-Star Game inside Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres, is now over and I am now ready to reveal my ballot for the contest. Not that you guys care but that is just one of the many benefits to owning your own blog, you can do what you'd like. Go me! On a serious and less "tongue-in-cheek" note I wanted to reveal the ballot that I posted 35 times this season just to see how well I did. I went based on stats alone and less on popularity and such so I may whiff on a few of these selections but I'm okay with that.

American League:

C: Salvador Perez (KC)
1B: Miguel Cabrera (DET)
2B: Jose Altuve (because eff Robinson Cano) (HOU)
SS: Francisco Lindor (CLE)
3B: Manny Machado (I wanted to go with Danny Valencia) (BAL)
OF: Carlos Beltran (NYY)
OF: Mookie Betts (BOS)
OF: Mark Trumbo (BAL)
DH: David Ortiz (BOS)

National League:

C: Wilson Ramos (WAS)
1B: Paul Goldschmidt (ARI)
2B: Daniel Murphy (WAS)
SS: Corey Seager (LAD)
3B: Nolan Arenado (Matt Carpenter may deserve it more) (COL)
OF: Carlos Gonzalez (COL)
OF: Ryan Braun (MIL)
OF: Miguel Ozuna (MIA)


The official teams will be announced on Tuesday, July 5th at 7:00 pm ET on MLB Network. You can only assume that they will also announce the nominees for the final All-Star Game spot via a fan vote. Leave your gripes, omissions and snubs in the comments section. Thank you.

Game Preview: New York Yankees @ San Diego Padres 7/2


Why can’t the MLB schedulers get this thing right? Why can’t they meet in the middle, especially on Saturday’s, and play the West Coast games at 1:05 pm locally or even 4:05 pm locally? Who wants to spend their Saturday nights staying up until 1:00 am ET or even 2:00 am ET watching the Yankees? Now in my younger days, before I had kids that woke up at 6:00 am no matter what, that wasn’t a big issue but now it is. Maybe I’ll bring this up next time Commissioner Rob Manfred is in town and wants to take me to lunch. I digress though as we have a game to preview between the New York Yankees and the San Diego Padres. In the middle game of this three-game weekend set the Yankees will send Ivan Nova to the mound to face off with the Padres starter Drew Pomeranz.

Nova struggled for much of the month of June but it's July now and it's also Interleague play, something Nova has dominated during his career. In 15 games, 14 of them starts, Nova has posted a 2.88 ERA against the National League and that includes one dominant start against the Padres back in 2013. 


Pomeranz's name has already been thrown around a few living rooms this season but for two totally different reasons. One circle is discussing whether Pomeranz will be an All-Star representative this season after a strong first half while the other is discussing who the Padres will trade him to.


The game will be played at 10:10 pm ET inside Petco Park and can be seen on the YES Network and MLB TV. It just won’t be seen by me, not in its entirety anyway. I’ll do the best I can to follow along and entertain you on Twitter but I make no promises. Hopefully the Yankees can make that same statement as they pull out a win against a team they are supposed to beat up on. Go Yankees!

The History Of The Yankees Captains

There have been 14 players named the team captain in the Highlanders/Yankees history. Some Yankees/Highlanders players are listed as captains but the first to be officially recognized as the Yankees captain was Hal Chase in 1910. Three of the first four Yankees "captains" were not officially recognized as Yankees captains but I have included them as well with the 11 official captains in our history.

Let's take a look at the complete list now.

(P) Clark Griffith 
Spent 1891-1914 as a Yankees player
Spent 1903-1905 as a Yankees captain



(SS) Kid Elberfeld 
Spent 1898-1914 as a Yankees player
Spent 1906-1909 as a Yankees captain




(1B) Hal Chase #1
Spent 1905-1919 as a Yankees player
Spent 1910-1912 as a Yankees captain



(1B) Frank Chance 
Spent 1898-1914 as a Yankees player
Spent 1913 as a Yankees captain



(SS) Roger Peckinpaugh #2 
Spent 1910-1927 as a Yankees player
Spent 1914-1921 as a Yankees captain




(OF) Babe Ruth #3
Spent 1914-1935 as a Yankees player
Spent 1922 as a Yankees captain





(SS) Everett Scott #4
Spent 1914-1926 as a Yankees player
Spent 1922-1925 as a Yankees captain





(1B) Lou Gehrig #5
Spent 1923-1939 as a Yankees player
Spent 1935-1939 as a Yankees captain



(C) Thurman Munson #6
Spent 1969-1979 as a Yankees player
Spent 1976-1979 as a Yankees captain





(3B) Graig Nettles #7
Spent 1967-1988 as a Yankees player
Spent 1982-1984 as a Yankees captain





(2B) Willie Randolph #8
Spent 1975-1992 as a Yankees player
Spent 1986-1988 as a Yankees co-captain


(P) Ron Guidry #9
Spent 1975-1988 as a Yankees player
Spent 1986-1988 as a Yankees co-captain





(1B) Don Mattingly #10
Spent 1982-1995 as a Yankees player
Spent 1991-1995 as a Yankees captain





(SS) Derek Jeter #11
Spent 1995-2014 as a Yankees player
Spent 2003- 2014 as a Yankees captain

Four Yankees captains have been elected into the Hall of Fame, and obviously it will be five when Derek Jeter is eligible, including Clark Griffith, Frank Chance, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig. It is really amazing to think that players like Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto, or Catfsh Hunter to name a few have never been named a Yankees captain. It is also interesting to point out that Babe Ruth has only been a captain for a single season in 1922. George Steinbrenner kind of watered down the whole prestige behind being the Yankees captain, in my opinion, when he handed the honor out six times in his tenure as Yankees owner but Derek Jeter did his best to make the best of the situation and bring the prestige back to the most honored spot in all of baseball, the captain of the New York Yankees.

Weekly Prospects Check In: Chad Green


With the sudden emergence of Chad Green as a starting pitcher down in Scranton with the RailRiders and the recent struggles of Ivan Nova in the rotation in the Bronx you have to wonder how long the hypothetical leash is for Nova at this point. Green has already used his minor league option for the 2016 and on the same night that Nova was allowing opposite field home runs to start games against the Texas Rangers Green was shutting down Triple-A hitting with six scoreless innings.

Nova may be better suited in the bullpen and the Yankees may need to finally face that fact. I know he’s a free agent to be and you want to build Nova’s trade value or potential to offer a qualifying offer but it just isn’t going to happen. Nova was inconsistent before the Tommy John surgery and he’s been inconsistent since. He is what he is and so is Chad Green. Give him a chance to flourish and work it all out because at least he, unlike Nova, has a future with the club.

Find out how he does tomorrow when he makes his second start of the season for the Yankees.

Year Age Lg W L ERA G GS GF IP H R ER HR BB SO ERA+ FIP WHIP H9 HR9 BB9 SO9
2016 25 AAA 6 6 1.54 14 14 0 81.2 61 19 14 2 19 82 0.980 6.7 0.2 2.1 9.0
2016 25 AL 0 1 7.20 2 1 1 5.0 8 6 4 2 1 6 64 6.56 1.800 14.4 3.6 1.8 10.8

International Free Agent Signing Period Begins Today


Every season the new international signing period for international free agents begins on July 2nd so today marks the beginning of the new period. The Yankees went crazy a couple signing periods ago spending roughly $30 million with just $2 million or so allocated to their budget forcing the team to face penalties for this signing period. For this signing period, and FYI this is the final signing period the Yankees will be under a signing and spending restriction, the Yankees cannot sign an international free agent for more than $300K which severely limits the team’s ability to go out and sign the top talent on the market, which I guess was the point when it was written into the collective bargaining agreement.



The Yankees have made some notable international free agent signings for cheap in the past but there probably won’t be much to get excited about for a couple of years on the IFA market unfortunately. There have been plenty of Cuban defecting and Cuban born players that do not count against the cap due to their age and service time so the Yankees could always go that route as well but it’s hard to bank on that either given the team’s preference to stay away from Cuban players for whatever reason.

This Day in New York Yankees History 7/2: Clemens Wins 350


On this day in 2007 Roger Clemens became the eight pitcher in Major League history to win 350 games with his eight inning and two hit victory over the Minnesota Twins. Joe Torre was Clemens manager on that day and was also the catcher for Warren Spahn's 350th game making him a participant in the only two times since 1928 that a pitcher reached the historic plateau.


Also on this day in 1995 the New York Yankees celebrated what would have been Babe Ruth's 100th birthday. Mickey Mantle, a frail image of his former self, bids the fans a farewell in a recorded message on the Yankee Stadium Jumbotron. Mantle would die 22 days later after a losing battle with liver cancer but not before telling the fans that "I feel like Phil Rizzuto in Babe Ruth's uniform."


Also on this day in 1978 Louisiana Lightning Ron Guidry beat the Detroit Tigers to improve his record to 13-0. This would be the best start in the Yankees franchise history for a season.


Finally on this day in 1941 Joe DiMaggio passed Wee Willie Keeler's 1897 major league record for consecutive hit games with his 45th straight game. DiMaggio hit a three run home run off the Red Sox Dick Newsome in front of 52,832 fans.