Results tagged ‘ Andy Pettitte ’
Pettitte was hurt during playoffs
Yankees manager Joe Girardi shed more light on why Andy Pettitte couldn’t pitch Game 2 of the ALCS today, and why the team instead went to Phil Hughes for Games 2 and 6 against the Rangers. Here’s the transcript:
(Any second thoughts about how he set up Pettitte and Hughes?) Sometimes as a manager you have to do things for certain reasons. As I said before, we lined up our rotation, there were a lot of factors that went into our rotation. Sometimes you’re going to take heat or people are going to question things that you do about it because you’re trying to protect a player or protect a strategy.
Let me take you back. Andy Pettitte pitched Thursday against Minnesota. In the seventh inning, Andy’s back started locking up a little bit. His hamstrings got really tight. He gutted it through the seventh inning for us and got through it. He wanted to go back out for the eighth. I think he had about 88 pitches. And I said, ‘No, you’re not going back out. You’ve done your job.’
He came in on Friday and his back was locked up. Saturday was his bullpen because he basically had to prepare for Game 5. He got about halfway through his bullpen and had to walk off because his leg grabbed at him. A little different spot, his adductor. So we thought it was in our best interests, and I thought talking to the trainers and the doctors, if we could give him a couple of extra days he might be able to get through that series. He didn’t throw a light bullpen until Wednesday because we were fearful.
The last time Andy walked off a bullpen, it became a couple of weeks. If I only had Andy for one game in that playoff, I was willing to take the risk to make sure he was healthy. In talking to doctors, trainers, our staff, Cash, we thought we had to give him those two extra days. Andy had some leg problems down the stretch, he had some back issues. It was unfortunate and he pitched a great game.
Who knows what would have happened if he was able to pitch Game 2? We just felt that after having that issue on Saturday, we’d better give him a couple of extra days.
(If Andy was healthy, would he have pitched Game 2?) We might have lined up our rotation a little different if he was healthy, yes.
(Andrus’ tapper on the first play of Game 3) Yes, I held my breath. He seemed to be OK through that start. He talked about a little back stiffness but nothing like he had in Minnesota or when his leg grabbed. Every time he went after a ball, I was concerned. If you share that knowledge, maybe they bunt more. Maybe they try to do more things. And that was a concern of mine.
(Would Andy have pitched ALCS Game 7?) He was OK. At that point, he felt OK, so if I did have concerns, he was going.
Andy Pettitte in action
Tonight in Altoona, Penn., Andy Pettitte is making what the Yankees believe will be his last stop on the comeback trail, pitching for the Double-A Trenton Thunder. He’s five innings or 80 pitches away from rejoining the Yankees and probably starting against the Orioles on Sunday in Baltimore.
Pettitte throws at 75 percent
Andy Pettitte’s session against live hitters in Tampa didn’t go as the Yankees would have hoped today.
Pettitte scratched with tightness
Andy Pettitte had been scheduled to throw about two innings today to simulated hitters in Tampa, Fla., but he felt some tightness in his left hip flexor and did not pitch. Pettitte told Yankees manager Joe Girardi that he felt it when he got off his couch yesterday. The Yankees dont seem to think this is a serious setback and may try to have Pettitte throw tomorrow.
Albaladejo called up
Jonathan Albaladejo has been called up from Triple-A by the Yankees, replacing Andy Pettitte on the active roster. Albaladejo had an International League-leading 31 saves and an 0.96 ERA at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
Simulating innings as Florida stays soggy
Could Andy Pettitte make it through the whole spring without pitching against another team? It’s starting to look that way, but Joe Girardi promises they’ll find a way to get him into a game with four starts remaining.
Baseball wasn’t meant to happen today, though, as the Yankees got about 80 miles up the interstate before spinning the bus back around toward Tampa – washed out against the Nationals in Viera.
Instead, Pettitte threw a three inning simulated game at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the same way that A.J. Burnett did after last night’s washout. Girardi said that he didn’t consider altering the rotation to have Pettitte go Saturday in one of the Yankees’ split-squad games, believing that Pettitte knows how to handle himself after so many springs.
“If it wasn’t a veteran, you might make him pitch tomorrow,” Girardi said.
Javier Vazquez will start against the Orioles tomorrow in Tampa, with Chad Gaudin going against the Tigers in Lakeland. Alfredo Aceves, Royce Ring and Dave Robertson will pitch against Baltimore, while Grant Duff, Boone Logan, Sergio Mitre, Amaury Sanit and Zack Segovia have all been listed on the travel roster to see Detroit.
Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher are among those heading to Tiger Town on what should be a much nicer day for baseball.
Other notes as we close up shop on what might just be a half-day in Tampa (though I’d bet against it…):
- A-Rod has “a bounce in his step every day,” Girardi said. Rodriguez has been able to limit the amount of hip exercises he does to loosen up compared to last season, and Girardi thinks he looks more like the player who was healthier and more confident in September and October.
- Aceves has been managing some back stiffness well. He’s been skipping fielding practice on some of the days he pitches, instead heading inside to do core work. It’s not considered a serious issue at this point.
- Chan Ho Park should throw batting practice tomorrow. That puts him on the Mariano Rivera (3/16) and Damaso Marte (3/17) schedule for getting into games.
- Girardi’s lineup had Curtis Granderson in left field today, and he might be back there tomorrow with Brett Gardner in center field. Girardi wants to see how Granderson reacts to the balls hit on different angles.
“It makes it real easy when you have players that are willing to do anything you ask,” Girardi said. “That’s a manager’s dream. It just shows you that they check their egos when they come in the clubhouse.”
Jeter back after bout with food poisoning
Derek Jeter returned to camp on Friday, dressing in workout clothes and preparing to hit in the underground batting cages. He said that he had actually been battling a bout with food poisoning, which he guessed might have come from a seafood meal.
Thankfully, Jeter wasn’t in the mood to provide many details, though he said, “I think you can figure it out.” I asked him if he wanted to name the restaurant – you know, as a public service – and he laughed before declining.
Jeter said that he expects to play Saturday against the Tigers in Lakeland.
Meanwhile, the Yankees and Nationals have been washed out in Viera. The bus made it about an hour away from George M. Steinbrenner Field before turning back around. There doesn’t seem to be any chance of playing an intrasquad game here in Tampa, so Joe Girardi is going to need to make alternate plans for Andy Pettitte.
Cashman addresses hot-button issues
I’m playing catch-up on this, but Yankees general manager Brian Cashman spoke on Thursday at the University of New Haven in Connecticut and addressed several hot-button topics that fans have been curious about.
Via the Register Citizen’s Joe Morelli, with a hat tip to the iYankees blog for linking it first:
On not negotiating new contracts with Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera right now, and some more context about Johnny Damon —
“The industry the last two free agent markets seems to be going
downward and the player’s ages are going upward,” Cashman said. “It
makes more sense to be patient. My attitude is if this is the place you
want to be, you will make it happen. Johnny Damon professed his love
for the Yankees, wanted to be here and was given every chance to be
here. He’s not here anymore and I don’t feel that is the Yankees’
fault. They have to reconcile why they are not here, not me.
“If
people want to be here and be a part of something, then find a way to
work it out. Of course we want (Jeter, Rivera and Girardi) back, but we
choose to delay that until the end of the year.”
On the Yankees’ two-year, $14 million offer to Damon –
“I told (Damon and Boras), ‘I don’t know if Hal (Steinbrenner, the
team’s part owner) would approve it, but I’m not going to fight for it
unless we know you will do it,’” Cashman said. “Scott Boras said,
‘Bobby Abreu’s (new) contract is $9 million a year right now on the
table so why would we do that? So I expect to see a Bobby Abreu
contract.’ … I hope he does not sign for something less than our
offer. That means he should have been a Yankee and that’s not our
fault.”
On how the Yankees’ budget looks for 2010 —
“If you ask everyone in the room if they would rather not have Curtis
Granderson because he costs X amount of dollars and Andy Pettitte
because he costs X amount, that gives you more money to sign the left
fielder who is dear to your heart in Johnny Damon,” Cashman said. “If
you ask most people right now, what would you rather have moving
forward, I think they would say they need Andy Pettitte for the
rotation and Curtis Granderson because he’s an all-star center fielder
who hit 30 homers at Comerica Park last year, who steals bases and is
(7) years younger. You can’t have everything.”
Reggie chats with Damon, Pettitte
Received this press release in my inbox today from Sirius XM, where Reggie Jackson hosted a show that ran through last night. Some good stuff in here:
Last night (Nov. 10) on their weekly show, “October Nights,” on SIRIUS XM’s Mad Dog Radio, Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson and co-host Bill Pidto spoke with two members of the 2009 World Champion NY Yankees, free agent outfielder Johnny Damon and free agent pitcher Andy Pettitte.
Highlights from the interviews below:
Host, Reggie Jackson: “You’re a free agent. One of the things people don’t know much about is you’re close to 3000 hits. You’re about three years away…”
Johnny Damon: “Yeah, I believe I’m at 2,425 now so it’s going to have to be three very good years or four pretty decent years so I have to try to keep going strong.”
Jackson: “Are you telling us that you’d like to play another three or four years?”
Damon: “Yeah, absolutely. I feel like with my body type, the fact that I’ve been able to play in at least 140 games over the past 14 seasons, I feel like I can keep it going. I’ll find a way to try to win at all costs. So, that being said, I’m going to take a little break now because the offseason just got here but I’m going to start working out sooner this offseason. It seems like when you start to mature in age a bit your workouts tend to start happening a lot sooner after the season. So I’m going to give myself ’til probably December 1 and then I’m going to get going very hard. And hopefully by then I’ll know what lies in store for me and hopefully it’s back in pinstripes.”
Host, Bill Pidto: “So all things being equal, Johnny, you’d like to come back to the Yanks?”
Damon: “Why not? I mean, we just won a championship. That new stadium is incredible. The Steinbrenners have been the best owners in the game as long as I can remember. They want to win and they proved it last offseason. The Yankees, it’s amazing when you have the pinstripes on and you walk through the clubhouse and you see guys like Reggie Jackson walking around, you see Tino Martinez, you see Yogi Berra. These guys are life-long Yankees and they’ve been accepted into the family because of what they did and how they played the game. And they won in New York City. So, that being said, I’ve loved playing for New York these past four years. You know, if it works out that I do come back then that’d be great and if not, we’ll see where I restart my future at.”
***************
Host, Bill Pidto: “When you look to the financial aspects of your future do you maybe say, ‘You know what? I’ll play for a little bit less if I can stay with the Yanks?’”
Johnny Damon: “Well, we have to go through the system and start negotiating if that’s what it’s going to take. We just need to start talking. We know New York has all the resources in the world but they also know I want to come back. So I’m sure it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’m sure there’s something we can work out. And if it doesn’t work out I’ve enjoyed four years there but I really hope it works out. I’m going to be back up there in a week and just savor the moment again because this was truly a wonderful year.”
***************
Host, Reggie Jackson: “Johnny, if you had a wish list, besides coming back and playing for the Yankees again, do you see anything that you would wish for from [general manager] Brian Cashman and the Steinbrenner family to add to the ballclub?”
Johnny Damon: “Hmm. Well, I always feel like you can’t stay stagnant. I always feel like you have to move forward. You can never have enough pitching. I know there’s guys out there like John Lackey. He’s been a workhorse for years. I don’t have that list in front of me [of] who are free agents but there are quality players out there and the Yankees are always trying to get better. I just hope when they try to get better my name is still involved with it and I’m still wearing pinstripes.”
**************************************
Host, Bill Pidto: “In recent years you’ve thought about retiring, taken a long time to make up your mind. I know it is really early, the season not even over a week, but what are you thinking about for 2010?”
Andy Pettitte: “You know, really I just need to kinda just get down here and get away. If you immediately start thinking about it right now and you start counting the numbers and you’re looking at the calendar you’re saying, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s only 90 days to spring training. Are you kidding me?’ Obviously, you can imagine what’s going through my head right now. I’m down here by myself at my ranch so haven’t even been with my wife really yet as far as to go through things with her and stuff like that. But I’m just going to try to take a little bit of time here and I want to do the right thing. I want to do the right thing for my family more than anything. And I don’t want to continue to play baseball trying to accomplish selfish goals because I’ve never done that before and I feel like that if you try to start doing that you’re not going to be able to be successful as a teammate as you need to be, as far as I feel like the time and the attention that I need to pay to my teammates when you start trying to worry about yourself too much. So there’s a lot of things I need to factor in and think about. I’m not trying to hold anybody up. I don’t want to hold anybody up. People can do what they want to do, you know? But I just want to make the right decisions for my family. I don’t want to leave my kids hanging and regret not seeing my kids do their stuff. They’re not able to be in New York with me no more, you know? I went the last month and a half, two months of the season not seeing my family at all except for the couple of times they flew up during the playoffs.”
Pidto: “You talk about goals. Does the Hall of Fame weigh into it at all? 18 wins now, you’re #1 all time in postseason wins. You’re at 229 wins during the regular season. Do you feel maybe you need to pad those regular season numbers a little bit or is it not something that you think about?”
Pettitte: “That’s the other, and heck, I’m not going to lie to you. Now towards the end of the season and that’s all your friends want to talk to you about and that’s coming up. And to me that’s just like, it’s so off the wall because I’ve never thought about the Hall of Fame. And so it’s not. I don’t want to think about that. If that’s something that happens in my future down the road that would be something I feel like the Lord just absolutely blessed me with and given me the honor to be able to be a part of something like that. Like I said, I want to concentrate on if I come back to just figure out a way that I can continue to hopefully perform at a high level like I feel like I was able to do this year and then, more importantly, to feel like I can contribute to the team and make the guys around me hopefully better and be a positive influence in the clubhouse and hopefully continue to be a positive influence on people.”
“October Nights,” with Reggie Jackson and Bill Pidto, aired Tuesdays (7 – 9 pm ET) through November 10 exclusively on Mad Dog Radio, SIRIUS channel 123 and XM channel 144.
Breaking up the Yankees
One of the realities of that great parade down the Canyon of Heroes was that it was probably going to be the last time these 2009 Yankees were together as a group. That was confirmed yesterday when Hideki Matsui and Johnny Damon, two of the biggest keys to the World Series title, officially filed for free agency.
Jose Molina, Xavier Nady and Eric Hinske also officially filed on Monday, one weekend of celebration after rolling down Broadway on a float.
Brian Cashman said yesterday that he does not expect to lock up any of his seven free agents before they splash onto the open market, which means that none of those five are likely to get a quickie deal, along with Andy Pettitte and Jerry Hairston, Jr.
What I keep telling people who ask is this: If you’d asked me at the All-Star Break who the Yankees would be more likely to keep, Damon or Matsui, I would have said Damon. But then Damon tailed off in the second half and Matsui was a monster, and now I really can’t be so sure.
The fact that the Yankees don’t see Matsui as anything but a DH hurts his chances, because the idea of a revolving-door DH between guys like A-Rod, Jorge Posada, Mark Teixeira and company is appealing and makes sense.
As for Damon, he was a great Yankee, which I wasn’t sure he’d be when he was shaving off his Red Sox scruff. But the moment I truly believed the Yankees were going to win the World Series was his dash in Game 4. People don’t understand how incredibly smart of a play that was.
So Cashman vows he does not do things for sentimental reasons, and I believe him on that topic. Just because a guy was the World Series MVP doesn’t mean you have to bring him back. Heck, the Yankees did it in ’96 with John Wetteland.
As for the other three guys in that group, Molina brings a lot to the clubhouse in terms of relationships and wisdom. If the cost isn’t crazy, a return isn’t out of the question, and if not they can entrust the backup catcher job to Francisco Cervelli – who really did seem ready for it.
Hinske never really got as many at-bats as I thought Joe Girardi would give him down the stretch — it almost seemed at times that they forgot he was on the team — and Nady will be permitted to leave as a free agent, since it’s difficult to
count on a guy who is coming off his second serious surgery.
Should be a good Hot Stove. Who said baseball has an offseason?
Bryan Hoch
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