Game Thread: Yankees @ Royals 6/9

UPDATE: This game has been rained out. No word on a makeup date as of yet. The Royals will save their farewell tour gift for Jeter and give it to him when the game is made up.

OFFICIAL: August 25th is the makeup date, no time announced yet.

The New York Yankees and the Kansas City Royals will finish up their four game set at Kauffman Stadium tonight before both teams head out for a new series. The Yankees will send Vidal Nuno to the mound to face off with Jason Vargas for the Royals. The game will be played at 8:10 pm ET and can be seen on the YES Network, MLB TV, and can be heard on the radio with WFAN.

Get on Twitter and give us a follow, @GreedyStripes, to chat during the game. Chat, trash the Yankees, whatever you wanna do. Drop us a line in the comments section of the site as well to chat during the game. Get your Yankees tickets while you still can for the Derek Jeter farewell tour as well right here on the blog through Ticket Monster. 

Enjoy the game Yankees family and enjoy the rest of your night.

Yankees Trying To Trade Kelly Johnson?

According to a report in the Dallas Morning Star "officials" around the league say that the New York Yankees have made Kelly Johnson available in trades. The Texas Rangers are said to be interested in Johnson's services possibly after losing their second first basemen this season in Mitch Moreland who went down with an ankle injury. Could the Yankees actually get something in return for Johnson, a player to be named later or cash considerations? Or would they ask for "the moon" for Johnson and play the supply vs. demand game? Hopefully it's the former and not the latter, New York can open up a spot for Triple-A power hitting first basemen Kyle Roller with the trade.

Johnson currently sits at .216/.279/.392 with four home runs and 16 RBI's this season losing his starting third base job to Yangervis Solarte.

BREAKING: Jacoby Ellsbury Scratched W/ Sore Hip

Jacoby Ellsbury out because of a sore hip suffered yesterday stumbling over first base. #yankees
— Brendan Kuty (@BrendanKutyNJ) June 9, 2014

Well isn't this just freaking wonderful with no off day in sight? One of the few Yankees actually producing is nursing a nagging injury, happy happy joy joy. It just keeps on getting better doesn't it?

Preview: New York Yankees vs. Kansas City Royals 6/9

The New York Yankees and the Kansas City Royals will play the finale of their four game set tonight at Kauffman Stadium with the Yankees looking to salvage another game from the worst team in the American League Central division. The Yankees will send Vidal Nuno to the mound to face off with Jason Vargas for the Royals. The game will be played at 8:10 pm ET and can be seen on the YES Network, MLB TV, and can be heard on the radio with John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman on WFAN.

Nuno is coming off a start in which his streak of three straight games working through six innings was snapped against the Oakland Athletics. Nuno only lasted 4.2 innings in Yankee Stadium against the American League West leaders allowing two runs on six hits. Nuno has given up four home runs in his last two starts at Yankee Stadium.

Vargas is coming off a start in which he worked eight innings giving up two runs on nine hits against the St. Louis Cardinals. Vargas got a no decision in the contest in the extra inning loss but improved by only walking two batters in the game. Vargas has only allowed more than two runs in three of his 13 starts this season.

Get your tickets for this game and every New York Yankees game right here on the blog through Ticket Monster. TM gives you free next day shipping with Fed Ex express and does not tack on the fees that other sites do to save you a ton of money. Go Yankees!! 

ONE...EFFING...RUN!

Joe Girardi will be back in 2015.

No, I don't have an inside source, I just know from patterns. This isn't the Dodge City ownership that Yankee fans came to hate anywhere between 1973 and 1990. If the Yankees had hit a putrid 1-for-17 with RISP against the Royals and lost by ONE FREAKIN RUN, the entire Girardi/Cashman regime would be OVUH.

I took a nap yesterday since I had the overnight shift for my internship, so I missed most of the Yankee game. I did catch bases loaded, one out in the 2nd where I and everyone else just knew that they wouldn't score. What else is new? I woke up to my friend Justin's Facebook message; "1-for-17 RISP." I sighed, as I do most times these days and checked the score. I expected 8-1, 11-0, 10-2 Royals. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected 2-1. ONE...FREAKIN...RUN!

So why should Girardi go? It's not like the Yankees have had a few losing seasons in a row; they're only two out of the wild card in mid-June...blame that on an awful AL outside of the Tigers and Oakland, I still don't believe in Toronto, if Buehrle wasn't having the season of his life they'd be down to earth real quick. Girardi would go only because too many pieces around him need to go. Cashman's well overdue for a pink slip--he's signed the big free agents, but not the right ones. The 1980s Yankees were well-known for bringing a ton of big names to the puzzle, but none of those pieces fit together. Tex, Ellsbury, McCann, Ichiro...they just don't seem like a working unit to me. Long story short (too late,) you can't fire the GM and not expect a managerial firing shortly after.

Eventually, the poor hitting will reflect on the coaching. You can't fire Girardi's coaches and not expect a change of the guard shortly after.

One guy I know said Girardi does a great job managing the bullpen. Really? Because I seem to remember over the years Joba being in games he shouldn't be in. You want a more recent example? How 'bout when Girardi totally panicked when D-Rob gave up the lead to the Twins, takes him out, puts MATT DALEY in with bases juiced (a scenario that D-Rob's been in 100 times and gotten out of it) and gives up four more runs. I'd rather be down 3-2 in the 9th than 7-2 with Jeter, Ellsbury and McCann, wouldn't you?

Here's one more basic issue: Girardi doesn't excite me anymore. He replaced Joe "Park Statue" Torre and immediately fired a spark. He argued with umpires, slammed his hat down, kicked dirt, got the fans riled up, got the team riled up. Remember the Giambi called strike-three in 2008 against the Orioles? Why isn't he fired up anymore? Where are the vocal leaders on the team? Not Derek Monotone Jeter.

These days managers aren't at risk of being fired unless there's a few bad years in a row. Unless your former Browns rookie coach Rob Chudzinski.

I'll be writing a lot more now, I miss you guys. I only got 14 views on my last article, and I know that's on me being absent for three months.

And stop booing D-Rob!

Neil Dwyer @neildwyer1993

The Time For Change May Have Finally Arrived

Time and time again Yankees fans, myself included at times, call for a younger player to get more playing time or get brought to the majors. This usually occurs when the team isn't playing well, so the prevailing thought in doing so is "it can't hurt". And here we are saying it again in 2014.

"Yada, yada, yada."

The Yankees are currently 31-31, six games out of first place. Only going that far it would seem the team has a good chance to climb back to the top of the division, what with 100 games remaining. But if you dig a little deeper you'll see that things are more dire.

Take for instance the team's run differential of -31. The Boston Red Sox may be 3 games behind New York, but Boston's run differential of -16 makes me wonder if their records hide the fact that the Red Sox are actually a better team. Furthermore, only two teams in the American League have a worse run differential, and one of those teams... the perennial laughing stock Houston Astros... have actually scored one more run than the "Bombers".

Let's see what else I can find to make me feel worse about the '14 Yanks...

Here we go! How about a team offensive WAR of 4.4, which ranks them 26th in MLB and 2nd worst in the AL. Oh, and remember how I put the word "Bombers" in quotes? That's because the team's Isolated Power is .128, which is good for 25th in baseball. If the Yankees are indeed "Bombers", then they need to fly back to base and reload.

So what can they do to reload?

"I can get you this extra large capacity magazine, which will cut down on the number of times you need to re-"

"Not THAT type of 'reload'!"

First thing's first... when it comes to trades it's always easier said than done. While there may be some fine trade candidates the Yankees would like to acquire, plenty of fans seem to forget that the team has little to nothing to offer in return. We may get a kick out of calling Brian Cashman a "ninja", but ninjas can't use the Jedi mind-trick and tell Miami Marlins General Manager Dan Jennings "you will trade us Giancarlo Stanton for Nik Goody and Jake Cave."

However, while the Yankees' farm system is hardly overrun with top prospects, there have been rumblings of a few of them getting a chance in the big leagues soon.

Brian Cashman had the following to say in an interview yesterday...

"We're just trying to move this thing along. If there are guys struggling in New York, I can't wait."

"As you see us moving the chess pieces around, you can see us struggling with the defensive part with the backup to Teixeira at first base. We've moved Sizemore over there a little bit. Now we're moving Pirela over just to prepare for what ifs."

Cashman may not have mentioned anybody that could be in jeopardy of losing their spots, but those comments seem to point to Kelly Johnson. Johnson has played 181.2 innings at first base, and while he's far from a defensive whiz at the position, Kelly is also batting a measly .216/.279/.392.

Cash may have mentioned Sizemore and Pirela in those quotes, but he's also brought up Rob Refsnyder and Peter O'Brien as players that could be due for a promotion. And if you take that and the first quote above, then you can conclude that Brian Roberts could also be out of a job soon.

Roberts is currently hitting .239/.317/.350, and coupled with his UZR/150 of -18 this season, there is plenty of reason for the Yankees to eat the remainder of Brian's $2 million contract this season and cut him loose.

I will admit that I'm not holding my breathe when it comes to the team making these moves. You don't have to be a an expert on the Yankees to know that the team never gives up, and is more apt to lean on veterans to get the job done rather than prospects. However, this season has been different, and that's thanks to Yangervis Solarte.

Yep, what Solarte has done on the field may mean more than the stats show.

Solarte did not appear on Baseball America's Top 10 list of Yankee prospects, nor did anybody else believe he would be as good as he has been. Personally, I've been waiting for him to fall back to Earth, but in the last couple of weeks he's hit .325/.372/.500, which tells me he may not be going anywhere. And that emergence out of nowhere may be the kick in the pants the team needs to call up players like Sizemore, Pirela, Refsnyder, and/or O'Brien to shake things up.

Not only that, but seeing what those guys can do this season could also save the Yankees from having to spend a lot more money on free agents this offseason. Also, they wouldn't have to deal away good/young players like John Ryan Murphy, Gary Sanchez, Aaron Judge, etc.

So while I'm not going to sit on the edge of my seat waiting to hear that Sizemore and the rest get the call up, while Roberts and Johnson are shown the door, I have reason to think this could be the year the Yankees actually pull the trigger on their youth.

Yesterday's Game was Statistically the Yankees' Least Productive in the Last 40 Years

Yesterday's Yankees game was statistically their least productive in the last 40 years, ESPN.com's Douglas Tucker points out.

In the contest, a frustrating 2-1 loss to the weak Kansas City Royals, the Yanks were just 1-for-17 with runners in scoring position, causing them to leave nine men on base.

Of those 9 runners, 7 were stranded on either second or third, the major effects of the inappropriately named Bombers' .059-hitting performance in the clutch.

Interestingly, according to Tucker, that average is the team's lowest in the last four decades, with a minimum of 15 at-bats.

In other words, if you for some reason thought the Pinstripes played well yesterday you'd be mistaken, as the stats clearly show they didn't. 

The Yankees, 31-31 so far this season, fell behind early in the contest, never being able to come back.

Their one somewhat big hit came with a man on second in the top of the second, when Ichiro Suzuki singled Yangervis Solarte to third.

Unfortunately, as you all know by now, the Yanks didn't score in that frame, as two hitters (First Basemen Kelly Johnson and Shortstop Derek Jeter) struck out and LF Brett Gardner hit into a fielder's choice.

ICYMI: Meet A Prospect Jacob Lindgren

The New York Yankees drafted Mississippi State's relief pitcher Jacob Lindgren with their first pick, 55th overall in the second round, on Thursday in the MLB First Year Players Draft. Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Lindgren as we welcome him to the family, the Yankees family.

Lindgren was a starting pitcher in his Sophomore season at Mississippi State and posted a modest 4-3 record with a 4.18 ERA in 14 starts before converting to the bullpen for his Junior season. Lindgren appeared in 24 games this season and posted a 0.81 ERA with a 16.29 K/9 ratio while allowing just 23 hits, 22 of them singles, and striking out an even 100 batters.

Lindgren struggles with command and has some questionable mechanics on a smaller frame but still strikes out plenty of batters with a hard slider and a 93-94 MPH fastball. Lindgren hides the ball well but struggles with consistency and release points at times making him a project, but a fast mover nonetheless.

The Yankees do not have a shutdown left handed relief pitcher in the system currently unless they plan on using either Manny Banuelos or Jeremy Bleich out of the pen. Lindgren is going to be a site for sore eyes in the Yankees bullpen sooner rather than later.

On the 20-80 scale that scouts use Lindgren has a 60 fastball, 65 slider, 45 command, and compares to BJ Ryan. It would not surprise me one but to see Lindgren up this September with the big league club.

Position: LHP

DOB: 03/12/1993 (Age: 21)

Height/Weight: 5'11", 205 pounds

Bats/Throws: R/L

School: Mississippi State (Junior)

Four More Years: The Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders

The New York Yankees have extended their player development contract with the city of Scranton to keep the Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders in town for at least four more seasons after this one. The maximum amount of years you can sign these contracts for is four years so you can see the Yankees are serious about keeping their Triple-A affiliate close to home. The Yankees Triple-A players have called Scranton home since the 2007 season after spending a long time in Columbus before being 90 minutes away from the Bronx.

After the renovations at PNC Field and such you had to think this is nothing more than a formality but it's still good that it got done anyway.

Quick Hit: 1990 Draft Signing Period Was The Best

The players that the New York Yankees added in the 1990 MLB First Year Players Draft and International signing period probably made that year the best of all time in the Yankees organization. The Yankees drafted a lanky left hander in Andy Pettitte, a second basemen turned catcher in Jorge Posada, a pair of outfielders in Ricky Ledee and Shane Spencer, and signed a starting pitcher out of Panama named Mariano Rivera.

Between these five men you have a total of 19 World Series rings, Posada did not get one in 1996, and 14 alone are between three of the four members of the Core Four. Posada was a five time All Star and five time Silver Slugger Award winner for catcher. Pettitte is the Yankees all time leader in strikeouts with 2,020 and has the 1999 ALCS MVP Award hanging up in his shelf at home. Rivera was a 13 time All Star, All Time leader in saves in Major League history, and five Rolaids Relief Awards hanging in his house.

Trenton Thunder Game Recap 6/8

Six-Run 7th by Altoona Dooms Thunder Sunday

A six-run seventh inning turned a 6-3 lead Trenton Thunder lead into a 9-6 Altoona lead in Altoona's series-clinching win Sunday afternoon.

Before 4,116 fans at ARM & HAMMER Park, the Thunder offense battled back from an early deficit to take a 6-2 lead over Altoona with four runs in the fourth inning and two more in the fifth inning.

However, Altoona's offense put a run on the board in the sixth inning before their 6th-inning explosion. Altoona sent 11 batters to the plate and notched five hits and two walks to take control of the ballgame. Trenton began the inning with Eric Wooten, before summoning Aaron Dott from the bullpen. Dott did not record an out to the three batters he faced before Cesar Cabral was needed to get through the inning.

Starting pitcher Manny Banuelos allowed five baserunners in three innings, and exited the ballgame with the Thunder trailing 2-0. He needed 50 pitches in three innings and saw his ERA climb to 4.32 on the season.

The loss was charged to lefty Wooten who entered for Banuelos and made his third appearance for the Thunder. In his first two appearances, Wooten allowed two earned runs in 13.0 innings but surrendered five runs over 3.1 innings out of the bullpen. His record is now 2-1.

The Thunder enjoy an off-day Monday before getting back to action Tuesday in another three-game series at ARM & HAMMER Park. First pitch of Tuesday's ballgame is 7:05 p.m. with the Trenton Thunder Pre-Game Show beginning at 6:45 p.m. which can be found on 91.3 FM WTSR and www.trentonthunder.com.

Being posted with permission from the Trenton Thunder. The original post can be seen HERE. 

This Day In New York Yankees History 6/9

On this day in 1946 the New York Yankees hit the one million mark in attendance earlier than any other team in major league history. The Yankees would draw over two million fans this season at Yankee Stadium.

On this day in 2005 Alex Rodriguez went 4-4 with two home runs to join the 400 home run club earlier than any other major league player. A Rod was 29 years and 316 days old and passed Ken Griffey Jr. for the honor when he hot a solo home run off the Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Jorge De La Rosa in the eight inning.