Wednesday, December 25, 2013

What I Want For Christmas: One More Year!


It is not a coincidence that I am inherently a greedy person when it comes to my Yankees fandom and that translated into my Yankees blog writing, and blog name for that matter. While other teams are talking about "maybe next year" I am always screaming for one more year!

I have already wrote an open letter to both Andy Pettitte and Mariano River asking for one more year, giving them the true World Series send off they deserve, and yada yada yada. This time around I am just going to ask for one more year of you guys, our readers. My last adventure I tried I purchased a domain and hosting for seven years, it was a great deal and I was highly confident. We almost made it a year before I took it down and scrapped the whole idea, and hell I still own the domain. This time around I decided we would go one year at a time with The Greedy Pinstripes as to not force content or put too much pressure on ourselves.

The first year was great for us and the second year has been nothing short of amazing here on the site. We exceeded our goals in views, content, writers, Twitter followers, etc. two fold in all areas. We want to stick to that mantra by saying we won't make any outlandish promises, we just want one more year. The Greedy Pinstripes will be back for the 2014 season if you will have us and beyond. Merry Christmas everyone I hope the day is great and everyone gets what they wanted because I know I did.

Yankees Release 17 More Minor League Players


At first sight I thought this was a recap of the Yankees releasing those 16 minor league players a week or so back but New York has released another 17 minor leaguers just in time for Christmas. No huge names pop out at you but here is the list anyway:

Ryan Baker
Jeff Farnham
Sean Black
Saxon Butler
Shane Brown
Neil Medchill
Tim Flight
Victor Beriguete
Mariel Checo
John Brebbia
Rich Macheri
Charlie Haslup
Hector Crespo
Ty Afenir
Johnny Falla
Aaron Gates
Daniel Aldrich

Baker was the guy who got suspended for 50 games for refusing to take a drug test, just in case the name sounded familiar to some of you out there. I am a bit surprised by the Butler release as he was only drafted in the 2012 draft, talk about a short leash. Crespo is really surprising as he was drafted in 2013 and made it all the way to Scranton this season and now he is a free agent, head scratcher. Afenir was also drafted in this past June's draft but did not turn many heads in his debut season. The rest of the names I have either never heard of or are so far off the radar that they are not huge losses at all. I don't know what is going on in Yankee land down on the farm but someone is definitely cleaning house.

Masahiro Tanaka Will Be Posted, For Real This Time


Praise the lord, praise the baseball Gods, praise whoever we need to praise because Masahiro Tanaka will be posted after all, for real this time. This was announced yesterday so sorry for the delay as I have two young children and we had some sort of holiday going on all day.

I don't think the Yankees or their fans could have asked for  a better Christmas present than this as Tanaka is easily the best starting pitcher available on the market now. Tanaka is coming off of a 24-0 season and a 30 start unbeaten streak that he will be bringing over to the states.

Just as a reminder there will be no posting system going on here. Any team that brings $20 million to the table can negotiate with Tanaka for 30 days. Only the winning team has to pony up the $20 million and if they cannot come to an agreement with Tanaka the $20 million will be returned to the team and Tanaka will be returned to Rakuten. That means it would be next season before we saw Tanaka posted again.

Here is the quote from the Rakuten Golden Eagles team president Yozo Tachibana:

“After evaluating Tanaka’s contributions in the seven years since joining the franchise, owner Hiroshi Mikitani accepted his wish to challenge himself in the Major Leagues and decided to petition for him to be posted” said Tachibana in a statement. “As a team which has valuable players, there’s no change in our view that this is an extremely unfair system.”

Yankees Stadium Legacy: #97 Randy Johnson (Again)


Randy Johnson was 41 years old in 2005 when he showed that he still had plenty left in the tank when he struck out 211 batters in one season. This was the second highest total in the American League that year and the 13th time that Randy had eclipsed the 200 strike out plateau. In 2006 Randy joined some elite company with Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan as the third pitcher to ever have 4,500 strike outs in his career.

Merry Christmas everyone and just remember just 97 more day until Opening Day

Merry Christmas From The Greedy Pinstripes Crew


Merry Christmas to everyone out there from everyone here at The Greedy Pinstripes. It has been a great year and we got everything we wanted for Christmas from you guys and so much more. I hope everyone has a great day spent with family, friends, and what Christmas is really about. Enjoy the day everybody.

The Greedy Pinstripes Elf On A Shelf Is At It Again


Gotta finance Santa Claus somehow...

This Day In New York Yankees History 12/25


On this day in history long,long ago George Steinbrenner had one too many beers with that elf on the shelf, put on the ugliest Christmas sweater he could find, bought a slay, and went around the world spreading Christmas cheer. He was later named Santa Claus for the Yankees haters because they cannot put aside their differences even on Christmas but that's okay, we continue to pray for the Yankees haters. Long story short this morning you can tell your kids that Santa brought them all their presents but we all know that it was George Steinbrenner who started it all.

Merry Christmas all! And if you don't celebrate Christmas then Happy Holidays. And if you don't celebrate anything I hope that you have a great day anyway and enjoy the paid day off for not believing.