Countdown To Pitchers & Catchers

I really hate the fact that when I used google to search for the above picture I simply typed in "Derek Jeter" and was bombarded with pages upon pages of beautiful women that he has put the bone to that I will never get to... namely Jessica Beil. Hey... what are you going to do right? Hit .300 and bring me another ring and Ill forgive you Jete.

Oh yeah, and there are 2 more days until Spring Training begins down at George Steinbrenner field in Tampa FL. Hideki Okajima will NOT be joining us , as he failed his physical. This really opens the door for Mike O'Connor, Cesar Cabral, and Brad Meyers to make the team as the 2nd left handed option out of Joe Girardi's pen to compliment Boone Logan.

Burnett to Pittsburgh

Well it's pretty much official. "Pretty much" since the commissioner's office has to give their stamp of approval to any deal where the teams are exchanging money, not to mention that neither the Pirates nor the Yankees have announced that they've agreed to a deal.

However, Ken Rosenthal has announced that the teams have agreed to a deal, in which Pittsburgh will give the Yankees two low-level minor leaguers, and will be on the hook for $13 million of the $33 million left on Burnett's contract.

Sounds like a great deal to me, as I would have been okay with the Yankees just giving Burnett away. Okay, not really, but you get the point. If the Pirates had only been responsible for $10 million, then that would have freed up enough money for the Yankees to sign Raul Ibanez and Eric Chavez, without having to expand the payroll. This way the team will actually save money even after signing a DH and IF.

EDIT: I read on Twitter, from Joel Sherman, that one of the minor leaguers is Diego Moreno. Nice strikeout rate.

EDIT 2:48pm: Jonathan Mayo is reporting that the 2nd prospect the Yankees will be receiving is Exicardo Cayones, a 21 year-old OFer (mainly LF) that doesn't excite me at all.

Gary Carter Dead at 57

Gary Carter Lost His Battle W/ Brain Cancer Today , He was 57 Yrs Old

Via Lohud

Terribly sad news that Gary Carter has passed away. A great player, and by most accounts a good man and teammate. Here’s the USA Today obituary.By Mike Dodd
USA TODAY
Even as the world watched the Grade 4 brain cancer wither his body, Gary Carter was still, and is always, Kid. It is a testament to Carter’s passion for the game, and for life, that the nickname that at times was applied derisively by crusty veterans ended up on his Hall of Fame plaque.
With his boyish enthusiasm, wide smile and constant hustle, Carter forged a 19-year career that included a memorable five-season stretch with the New York Mets. He died at 57, less than a year after being diagnosed with the disease.
“I am deeply saddened to tell you all that my precious dad went to be with Jesus today at 4:10 p.m.,” Carter’s daughter Kimmy Bloemers wrote on the family website. “This is the most difficult thing I have ever had to write in my entire life but I wanted you all to know.”
“‘The Kid’ was an 11-time All-Star and a durable, consistent slugger for the Montreal Expos and the New York Mets, and he ranks among the most beloved players in the history of both of those franchises,” Commissioner Bud Selg said in a statement. “Like all baseball fans, I will always remember his leadership for the ’86 Mets and his pivotal role in one of the greatest World Series ever played.”
Many stars come to New York and shrink on the big stage. Carter seized the platform from his very first game.
On Opening Day 1985, the newly-acquired catcher hit a walk-off home run in the 10th inning to defeat the St. Louis Cardinals. The Mets won 98 games that season, but finished three games behind the Cards.
The next year, they blew away the division, winning 108 games and taking the NL East by 21½ games, as Carter won his fifth Silver Slugger award and finished third in NL Most Valuable Player voting.
He struggled at the plate in the ’86 postseason, but still contributed several crucial, and historic, hits. His game-winning single in the bottom of the 12th of Game 5 of the NL Championship Series against Houston gave the Mets a 3-2 series lead, setting the stage for the now-legendary 16-inning win in Game 6. He homered twice in Game 4 of the World Series, helping the Mets win and pull even with the Boston Red Sox at two games apiece.And he is the man who started the Mets’ historic rally in Game 6 of the Series. With his team trailing 5-3 with two out and nobody on in the bottom of the 10th, Carter lined a single to center off Calvin Schiraldi. Three batters later, Mookie Wilson hit a ground ball that went through Boston first baseman Bill Buckner’s legs, giving the Mets one of the most improbable victories in World Series history. They won the championship two nights later.
“You just expected that out of him. When he was playing for me, I always knew good things were coming. He was awfully clutch,” says Davey Johnson, the Mets’ manager during Carter’s five-year stint in New York.
“He was just a perfectionist. He wanted to be the best, and he was the best.”
A fan favorite, Carter never shied from the limelight (prompting a less well-known nickname, “Camera”). He was viewed in some quarters of the clubhouse as too friendly with the media, considered self-promotion. His cheerleading demeanor and straight-arrow lifestyle –— he never smoked, rarely drank and was a devoted family man — left him outside many of the cliques in the free-wheeling Mets’ clubhouse.
Bob Klapisch, a columnist for The Record in New Jersey who covered the Mets in the ’80s, wrote that Carter was never part of the team’s inner circle:
“Kid, Nails, Mex, Straw, Doc — it didn’t matter whether they signed autographs or not, because the Mets ruled the world — including the bars and clubs — on the other side of midnight,” Klapisch wrote in a column after Carter was first diagnosed last spring.
“Carter didn’t live that way. Like Mookie Wilson, he was happily married, faithful to his wife, Sandy, didn’t drink, didn’t touch drugs. That made Carter an outcast in the clubhouse. Carter knew he often was mocked by Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry, among others. But The Kid never returned fire, either on or off the record, instead concentrating on playing hard and interacting with the media.”
Jeff Pearlman, author of a 2004 book on the ’86 Mets titled The Bad Guys Won!, wrote in January this year that he felt the need to apologize to Carter for his portrayal of the catcher.
“It was a celebratory look at a team I loved as a boy, and while I praised the uproarious antics of men like Gooden, Strawberry and Dykstra, I juvenilely needled (OK, mocked) Carter. Why, the first sentence of Chapter 6 reads, “Gary Carter is a geek” —- a reference to his Boy Scout ways and Theodore Cleaver goodness.”
Over the years, writers and his former teammates changed their view.“Gary figured it out way before we did how to treat people,” former Mets infielder Wally Backman told Klapisch. “We used to make fun of him, the way he’d sign every damn autograph. We had to hold the bus for him sometimes, because he didn’t know how to say no. He didn’t want to say no. But you know what? He was right. He really loved the game.”
And he proved an invaluable cog for the Mets’ championship club. Ron Darling, the Mets’ No. 2 starter behind Gooden in that era, said Carter was “the missing piece” for the club, an invaluable resource for he and Gooden. Before the days of Moneyball, says Darling, Carter was a walking computer program on the tendencies of opposing hitters.
“Gary had all that in his brain. He had the entire National League,” said Darling at a fund-raising dinner in January. “For a young pitching staff, we never had to go over pages and pages of documents. All we had to do was listen to Gary. It made it pretty easy.”
For all his highlights in Mets pinstripes, Carter’s Hall of Fame plaque features him wearing a Montreal Expos cap. And no one complains.
He played 10-plus seasons with the Expos before being traded to the Mets, and closed his career with them in 1992 (after one-year tours with the Dodgers and Giants). Of his 324 career home runs, 220 came in an Expos uniform.
He was the face of the Canadian franchise for years, making seven of his 11 All-Star appearances with Montreal. In 1981, he led the Expos to the only playoff appearance in franchise history. (They lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS).
After a September call-up in 1974, Carter broke in with the Expos in ’75, playing the majority of his rookie season in right field because the Expos had first-round draft pick Barry Foote behind the plate.
Carter’s arrival was much heralded, and by some accounts, a less-than-flattering origin of his nickname. Pearlman writes that veteran Expos used to goad Foote about the gung-ho rookie, mockingly saying, “Look at the kid’s hustle!”
Veteran New York baseball writer Marty Noble of mlb.com says it’s his understanding the nickname came because Carter never played cards and as such was often unoccupied in the pre-game clubhouse. When the card-playing veterans wanted coffee, they’d say, “Let the kid get it.” After the nickname was established, it became just “Kid.”
Carter took over fulltime behind the plate in 1977 and never moved again (although he played a little first base at the end of his career).
For his career, he is fourth all-time, and first in NL history, in both games caught and putouts as a catcher. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2003, his sixth year on the ballot.
The baseball world was stunned last May when Carter revealed he’d been diagnosed with Grade 4 glioblastoma, a rapidly-growing cancer. Characteristically, he vowed to fight it aggressively, but his family announced in late January that his condition had worsened, as more tumors were found.
Associated Press photos

You have to love and appreciate everything that Mr Carter did for the game of baseball, even if he was a New York Met ;) He played the game the way it was supposed to be played, like a child was playing it. He will surely be missed. Our condolences to his family in this hard time.

Countdown To Pitchers & Catchers

Don't you just love doing these sort of countdowns using old Yankees players wearing single digit numbers? It is a new story, a new hall of famer, a new amazing man every single day. Can Sunday get here soon enough?

Dave Dombrowski on Clubhouse Confidential

Warning: This isn't Yankee related, but I felt the need to write this...

I just watched a re-run of Clubhouse Confidential, where they had Dave Dombrowski (GM of the Tigers) on the phone. In the interview Dombrowski basically said that if it wasn't for Victor Martinez getting hurt, the team never would have looked into Prince Fielder.

So they thought the offense was good enough in 2012 before VMart got hurt (which I agree with), and they clearly had other ideas for the future (free agents, trades, etc.). So why sign Prince? He'll make the offense better than it would have been with Martinez, even though the team thought it was fine as is. That part is not a big deal to me, as there were no other players available that could do what Victor did for the team. But the part that has me baffled is that they obviously thought they were good in the future, and they will get VMart back in 2013, yet they went ahead and spent $191 million over the next 8 years anyway.

So either there is no logic coming out of the Tigers' organization, or there's something else going on that they're not telling us. My guess is that they figured they were covered for 2012 now, and they could make it work in the future. And I'm also guessing that they figure on trading some guys that they were going to count on in the future, as now they're not needed since the offense looks pretty good.

Best Rotation in the AL East?

Leading the charge in 2012

I read an article from Yahoo! Sports stating that, going into the 2012 season, the Tampa Bay Rays have the best rotation in the AL East. At first I wasn't really surprised to see that, but after reading the article and seeing that they only went over the top 3 in the Rays rotation, and then saw the rest of it almost as an afterthought, I decided to see how the Rays rotation stacked up against the Yankees rotation.

I chose Baseball Reference's version of WAR to compare all the pitchers. I'll admit that I don't quite understand how either B-R or Fangraphs do their WAR calculations, but I know they're different. So I took a shot and choose B-R. Hey, I had a 50/50 shot at which is better.

Here is the proposed 2012 rotation for the Rays, with their 2011 bWAR as well as some notes afterwards on whether we can expect an increase or decrease in that stat -

James Shields - 6.1 His career average bWAR in a season is 2.95, and being 30 years old I really don't think he can keep up that career high bWAR from last season. So I expect to see a drop.

Jeremy Hellickson - 4.2 Hellickson had a pretty low strikeout rate of 5.6, and coming into his 3rd season in MLB, I fully expect is bWAR to drop. I really think a bWAR of around 3.0 sounds about right.

David Price - 3.7 David's bWAR in 2010 was a 5.3, and generally a rookie pitcher does very well due to the "surprise factor". I mean, it's hard to prepare for a pitcher you've never seen before. But even though I don't see him being a 5.3 pitcher again, I think getting up to around 4.5 is reasonable.

Jeff Niemann - 1.1 After 3+ seasons in MLB I believe we've seen him strikeout as many as he ever will, even though his strikeout rate has gone up in each of the last three years. Coupling that with the fact he had the same bWAR in 2011, I don't see any change happening here.

Wade Davis - .2 Wade had a bWAR of 1.8 in 2010, and in 2011 his strikeout rate dropped for the 3rd straight season. Although I'm not totally convinced he'll have a higher bWAR in 2012, I'll go ahead and assume he will to be on the safe side.

Let me point out that there's a good chance that Matt Moore could be in the rotation for the majority of the season for the Rays. He did throw 164.1 innings last year (combined majors + minors), so theoretically he could throw around 200. However, I read the chat transcript over at MLBTR where Tim Dierkes implied that Matt wouldn't have a full workload for Tampa Bay. Seeing his innings go up from 123 in 2009 to 144 in 2010, I can see where the Rays may limit him a bit.

So what about the New York Yankees projected rotation in 2012?

CC Sabathia - 6.9 CC has had an average bWAR of 5.4 with the Yankees, and that 6.9 is his career high. So a reduction is to be expected. Although judging by his three-year average I don't see it going down by much.

Hiroki Kuroda - 3.7 Hiro's bWAR in 2010 was 2.5, and coupled with the fact he's moving to a much tougher league/division, I don't think I'm alone in expecting his bWAR to go down a bit in 2012.

Ivan Nova - 3.6 So far in MLB Ivan's strikeout rate has been 5.4, and that bothers me a bit. Not to the point that I'd like to see the Yankees shop him in a trade or something, but I don't see how he continues where he left off from last season.

Michael Pineda - 2.8 Although Robinson Cano's friend is moving to a tougher division, he was still in the American League, his strikeout rate is pretty high, and it's hard not to see a 23 year-old improving.

Phil Hughes/Freddy Garcia - 0.0/3.4 I'm going to go ahead and use their average bWAR as a guess as to what either one will do in 2012, because I see Freddy's going down while Phil's would go up. So a 1.7 sounds about right.

Notice that I'm assuming AJ Burnett is not going to be on the team, and therefore would not affect things. Call it wishful thinking or what-have-you, but I'm leaving AJ out of it.

Above I lined up the pitchers based on their 2011 bWARs, and I'm going to keep it that way in the head-to-head part here. The winner of each battle is in bold.

CC Sabathia vs. James Shields

Hiroki Kuroda vs. James Hellickson

Ivan Nova vs. David Price

Michael Pineda vs. Jeff Niemann

Phil Hughes/Freddy Garcia vs. Wade Davis

The second match-up was no mistake, as I can see both men being equal to one another. So at this point it looks like the New York Yankees have the better rotation going into 2012. However, we have to remember that Matt Moore could be around for 175 or so innings, and if we use him instead of Wade Davis I'd have to give the edge to the Rays pitcher.

So in conclusion, I believe that the Rays and Yankees 2012 projected pitching rotations are even. Perhaps that's not the conclusion Yankee fans were looking for but keep this in mind... the Bombers scored 160 more runs than the Rays last season, and I don't see that changing.

AJ Burnett "Deadline" For Trade Is Saturday

Pittsburgh? Nooooooooooooooooooo!

According to Ken Rosenthal, the Yankees have placed a soft deadline of Saturday to trade AJ Burnett or not. I just hope that this gets done because we all know how much of a head case that AJ Burnett is. I cannot fathom where his head would be at if he had to face trade rumors and not get traded. Not to mention that I want to see Hughes get his last real shot at being a starter in the Yankees organization. We will see what happens between today and Saturday but until then here is Mr. Rosenthal's write up.

The soft deadline for the A.J. Burnett trade discussions is Saturday – the day before the New York Yankees’ pitchers and catchers report to spring training in Tampa.

The Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates continue to discuss a Burnett deal, but as of Wednesday morning the teams remained at an impasse, according to major-league sources.

If a deal is completed, the Yankees plan to move quickly to sign free-agent designated hitter Raul Ibanez and infielder Eric Chavez, sources said. One or both of those signings could occur even if Burnett is not moved.

At this point, the Pirates are perhaps the Yankees’ only realistic trade partner. While the Yankees have discussed Burnett with three other teams, a trade is not likely with any of them.

Talks with the Cleveland Indians about a possible Burnett-for-Travis Hafner exchange “never got serious,” one source said.

The Los Angeles Angels were willing to part with their own left-handed DH, Bobby Abreu, but the Angels are on Burnett’s no-trade list and the pitcher will not approve such a deal, sources said. His family lives in Maryland, and his wife, Karen, does not like to fly.

The identity of the fourth club that checked in on Burnett is not known, but their interest has been lukewarm, sources said.

-Ken Rosenthal

Countdown To Pitchers & Catchers

We are inching closer and closer...

Countdown To Pitchers & Catchers

5 more days until pitchers and catchers report, although Michael Pineda has already showed up among others. Can you tell that I am excited? lol

Getting to know Hiroki Kuroda

Boy, you're ugly when you're pitching.

Do yourself a favor and read this article by Alex Belth over at Bronx Banter. It's a great look into Hiroki Kuroda, and like me it should make you feel a lot better about "Hiro" being a Yankee. Hell, if things go well I could see myself wanting the team to bring him back in 2013.