Monday, May 18, 2015

Yankees Off Night Open Thread


The New York Yankees finally have another off day so we will have another off thread here on the blog to talk about anything you want. I apologize for going quiet for so long on the blog today but with Ben Embry making his blogging debut here on The Greedy Pinstripes I wanted to give his post plenty of time to shine and be read. If you haven't checked that post out about where the Yankees undrafted players are now, including Cal Quantrill and Mariano Rivera Jr., then check that out right now below and talk about it here.

The Yankees are back at it tomorrow night in Washington which should be fun because the Yankees pitchers will be taking at bats. The good news for the Yankees is Nathan Eovaldi will be on the mound after spending his entire career before 2015 in the National League East division so it should be not be as much of an adventure for him as it will be for Adam Warren on Wednesday.

Anyway it's an off night so you probably don't want to here from me so enjoy the night and we'll be back at it again tomorrow.

Chase Whitley To Have Tommy John Surgery... Masahiro Tanaka Could Return Soon

As soon as we heard that Chase Whitley had injured his Ulnar Collateral Ligament Yankees fans braced for the words "Tommy John Surgery" to come next. And today it became official.

Whitley will undergo TJS tomorrow, which means his season is over with, and his rehab could last into next season.

Unlike the UCL tear that Masahiro Tanaka suffered last season, Chase's tear is too large for simple rehab.

Speaking of Masahiro...

Shortly before I learned that Chase Whitley would be having Tommy John Surgery, I found out that Masahiro Tanaka got through his latest bullpen session without any problems.

Tanaka threw 29 pitches at Nationals Park during today's off-day, and from what Joe Girardi said it sounds like the next step for Masahiro will be a rehab start as soon as Thursday.

Both Scranton and Trenton will be playing at home on Thursday, which means that if the Thursday rehab start holds true then Tanaka wil likely be pitching for one of them. After that he may rejoin the Yankees or make one more rehab start before returning.
“I think you have to see where he’s at and how many pitches he gets to (in the first start). The one thing you don’t want is to have to be in a situation where he can only give you three or four innings,” said Girardi.

The Offense And Your Mom

Since May 12th the Yankees have gone through a horrible slump , in which they've only won one game out of six. The good news is that the offense has been consistent during that span of games. The bad news is it's been consistently bad, as they've only scored six times. Or, in other words, the Yankees have scored at a rate that's on par with an average night for your mom.


Pitching hasn't been the problem. Mind you, giving up six runs on Thursday and twelve the following day is definitely in the "poor" area, but other than those two games the pitching staff has given up twelve earned runs (the Royals scored two unearned runs yesterday), which shouldn't be a problem for a team that's averaged well over four runs a game. And you have to keep in mind that Esmil Rogers, Justin Wilson, Chasen Shreve, Jose Ramirez, David Carpenter, and Brandon Pinder have gotten a lot more work than they normally would in that six game stretch (none of them pitched in the Yankees lone win during that streak).

But getting back to the problem... scoring. Or that thing your mom's an expert at.


The Yankees have hit an anemic .215/.267/.300 in the past six games. But as bad as that news is, the good news is that it shouldn't continue. During the first 33 games of the season, the team hit .262/.330/.443. For further proof of the past week's offense not being indicative of what we can see for the rest of the season, I would like to point out that the team is walking less, they are striking out more, their power has gone down, and their batting average on balls in play has gone down.

Before May 12th the offense was led by what may be the best one-two hitters in the league... Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner. Well, it has to hurt that those two players have batted .261 and .238, respectively. On that note, Brian McCann has hit a pathetic .217 during that same stretch, making the top of the order almost non-existent at the moment. If it wasn't for Mark Teixeira hitting well above the norm for him, then chances are the Yankees wouldn't be in first place in their division.

You're probably sick of Mr. Optimism here, but I can't help who I am. Nor can I help that the stats back me up.

ICYMI: Will Jorge Posada Please Just Stop?


Alex Rodriguez shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame because of his steroid use and neither should Roger Clemens. Joe Girardi blindsided him when he decided to make him a full-time DH and decided to move him down in the order because of his declining skills both offensively and defensively. Umpires used to fart on him during games while they were calling balls and strikes. The former Yankees catcher had a problem with his manager, especially towards the latter part of his career, and still holds at least some animosity towards him today some four years later. Jorge Posada, could you not? Please just stop.


Posada is doing interview after interview with local and national TV and radio personalities including our very own Michael Kay and Mike Zaun (if you don’t get the reference I can’t help you because you’re not a starting pitchah) and has touched on numerous topics either about his career, excerpts from his book, or both. None of them have been especially positive or made him or his legacy look any better, in fact he has many fans turning on him after the way he has handled this book tour and radio barrage. Posada, please stop.


I haven’t read the book so I am not going to speak on what he said, the truth of it, etc. etc. etc. but I will speak on the fact that he does come across as a little bit of a whiner. He gets dropped in the batting order after becoming a full time DH by the man whose job it is to put out the lineup every day that will help the team win ball games. When this happens he refuses to play the game and threatens to retire before cooler heads prevail but the damage, and the hissy fit, was done. I will also speak on the fact that his timing flat out sucks. The Yankees are retiring his #20 jersey this season and will honor him with a plaque in Monument Park after his somewhat limited involvement in the whole Core Four group. Posada was a part time player in both 1996 and 1998 and really only contributed to the 1999 and 2000 World Series as an everyday player. Now you may be thinking what about 2009 but by that time Jose Molina was starting a couple times a week and even started a few World Series games so that year could go either way and be argued over semantics for the rest of eternity but either way the point is proven.



People say Joe Torre rode the coattails of what Gene Michael and Buck Showalter did but never mention anything about Posada, which is ironic. I’m not trying to take away from anything Posada did in his career he was an awesome talent and one of my favorite players growing up but I am seeing him in a different light these days. If Bernie Williams didn’t write a book and bash the organization then I don’t see why Jorge felt the need to. Again I didn’t read the book so I could be way off base, and the way the media is I probably am, but again I am attacking his timing and his perceived “whiny” character and not the content as I have not read it. Jorge, you’re being out “Yankee Way” ‘d by Alex Rodriguez right now.. Let that sink in for a minute. Could you not?

Most Popular Article of the Week: Dear Chase And Jorge, The Yankees Come First

By: Bryan Van Dusen



First it was Jorge Posada, lashing out against Joe Girardi about his playing time and spot in the lineup. I was going to write about how ridiculous his comments were, and how angry it made me that he actually refused to play because he didn't like the fact he was penciled into the 9-hole in the lineup, but Andrew Mearns at Pinstripe Alley did an excellent job on that already.

And then comes Chase Whitley. While I'd never get upset with a player because he got injured, I will most definitely get mad at them for hiding an injury. Doing so hurt the team two ways...


  1. That injury certainly contributed to him giving up 8 runs over his past 7.1 innings pitched, both of which ended up with losses for the Yankees. We don't know if the player that would have started those games instead would do any better, but I'd bet on a healthy pitcher over somebody with an injury to his throwing elbow.
  2. The Yanks not only have to figure out what to do with his rotation spot (thankfully, that's not difficult), but they could be without Whitley's services for longer than if they were able to address his elbow earlier. It's never a good idea to let an injury linger without treatment. 


Does anybody think about the team first? Athletes always say something like "I'm here to help the team win", but then you hear about a player that refuses to accept that he's no longer the player he used to be, and then we hear about another player that hid an injury from his team so that he could keep pitching. It's selfish, and as a Yankees fan, it ticks me off.

I love that the Yankees don't have player names on their jerseys, as that is the greatest symbol that the team is the most important thing. The Yankees are not about Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Don Mattingly, or Derek Jeter. The Yankees are about them all. The Yankees are about pride and pinstripes. The players, the championships, the stadium, the iconic "NY" logo, THE FANS... that is what the Yankees are about. The Yankees are not about Jorge Posada's ego, and the Yankees are not about Chase Whitley's elbow.

If you're not here for the team... for the fans... then you don't belong here. And if you attack one of us, you attack all of us.

Yankees Off Day Walk Up Music Recommendation


This marks the fourth off day for the New York Yankees and the third time we have brought you the walk up music for specific New York Yankees players on off days. We've covered the first two Yankees batters in the lineup with our first two posts of this series and we will continue that by listening to the music we hear when Alex Rodriguez comes up to the plate.

Alex walks up to two different songs after changing from "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey to "International Love" by Pitbull and Chris Brown.


Weekly Check In: Jacob Lindgren


Happy Monday everyone, I hope everyone had a good weekend. The Yankees are off today so we have plenty of time to check in with the Yankees top bullpen prospect Jacob Lindgren. Lindgren continues to sit in Triple-A with the Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders while the likes of David Carpenter continues to not be trusted and a revolving door of prospects like Jose Ramirez and Bryan Mitchell get called up for fresh arms until Chris Capuano got activated yesterday. While Lindgren continues to impress in the minor leagues the team continues to run Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller out there five days a week begging the question what is the team waiting for and why is Lindgren not in the major leagues yet?

Check out these stats:


YearLevWLERAGGFSVIPHRERHRBBSOBFWHIPH9HR9BB9SO9
2015AAA111.42132219.014730826801.1586.60.03.812.3

This Day In New York Yankees History 5/18:

On this day in 1999 after missing the team's first 36 games Joe Torre returns to the Yankees dugout to manage his first game of the season. Torre missed the first month and a half due to a successful surgery for prostate cancer. The Yankees would lose the game 6-3 against the Boston Red Sox but Torre would receive a two minute standing ovation from the Fenway Park crowd when the scoreboard lights up welcoming him home.