Results tagged ‘ Hideki Matsui ’
Anything interesting happening with the Yankees?
Oh, just another day in paradise. When people ask, “What do you do during the offseason?”, my response is almost always that the Yankees don’t have an offseason. Sometimes the winter is more intense than the summer.
The Yankees completed one important piece of business on Monday, signing Andy Pettitte to a one-year, $5.5 million contract with multiple incentive levels. Obviously this is a huge pay cut from the guaranteed $16 million Pettitte made in ’07 and ’08, but this was as high as the Yankees were going to go.
Pettitte knew that it was time to make a decision, and $5.5 million — with the chance to make up to $12 million in incentives — sure beats $0 for sitting at home. With the addition of Pettitte to the 40-man roster, Chase Wright was designated for assignment.
One other tidbit: Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Hideki Matsui are all on track for now.
Now, on to the Joe Torre business, which is sending us all back in our own little time machines. Someone was asking me about my taxes and I actually slipped up and wrote the wrong year … and not even that usual January mistake, I fouled up two years. Seems like this book has us more focused on the ’07 Yankees than the current version.
A-Rod is supposedly laughing off the ‘A-Fraud’ stuff — and look, if you didn’t already know that Alex had some difficulty keeping a low profile, you weren’t paying attention. Some things haven’t changed — by the way, has anyone heard anything about Madonna lately?
Brian Cashman thinks the Yankees might rally around each other as a result of this latest controversy. Hey, you know this team. If it wasn’t this going into the spring, it’d probably be something else.
I want to reserve judgment on this book until I actually hold it in my hands, and based on what I’ve pieced together from excerpts floating around the Internet, that seems like the proper course of action. It seems that there will be a lot more context to base the most salacious parts on when ‘The Yankee Years’ is consumed in its entirety.
How quickly things change
In this morning’s Yankees Mailbag, I answered a question from a reader who astutely noted that Jorge Posada was hurting, and in turn, was hurting the ballclub. My response was that Posada is going to need surgery after the season but, until then, believed he could help the Yankees and would try to play through the pain.
Perhaps no more. Posada is off to have a MRI performed on his ailing right shoulder and this could be the season. Obviously it has not responded to treatment and, really, that’s just a temporary fix anyway. The more Posada threw, the weaker his shoulder was likely to get. It’s a cycle that would only be permanently cured with surgery, so that’s what he’s looking at.
Hideki Matsui is still holding out hope, though the knife, for him as well, seems inevitable. He remains on the DL while Johnny Damon has been activated — just keeping in line with Joe Torre’s old axiom about giving a player one more day after he says he’s ready.
Under the lights in the Bronx
You know, for all this talk about the unbalanced schedule, it sure does feel like a long time since the Yankees and Red Sox met. A lot has happened since April 17. Think they’ll remember how to play a lengthy game?
Here’s the quick hits pre-game that you need to know about … Melky Cabrera is back in the lineup and they hope the day off cleared his head. This 0-for-19 slump might have been wearing on him quite a bit, but you’d never be able to tell by his demeanor. I crossed paths with Melky in the clubhouse and he was upbeat, saying the day off was good for him and Joe Girardi told him it’d just be for one night.
It also seems that Hideki Matsui won’t be able to pick up a bat this weekend, as the Yankees originally thought he would. Surgery still is being viewed as a last resort, but it’s clear that something continues to not be going well in that left knee of his. If Matsui has surgery, he said his ’08 season will be over, so they’ll do everything possible to avoid going under the knife. If that means Matsui has to sit out until after the All-Star Break, so be it.
Fun fact: The last time the Yankees and Red Sox met this late in the season with neither team occupying first place in the AL East was Sept. 15, 1997, when the Orioles paced the division.
Hoping to avert the sweep
Sidney Ponson will be on the mound tonight as the Yankees complete their three-game series with the Texas Rangers, playing on after Hank Steinbrenner publicly called the team out for its lackadaisical offense. We just grabbed Brian Cashman on the field and he wasn’t taken by surprise when Hank unloaded, speaking to the Associated Press:
”He’s right,” Cashman said. “The offense has underperformed and we’ve got to figure it out. The strength of this team, more than anything, is supposed to be the offense. It’s a weakness for us right now and we’ve got to fight our way through it and get guys going in the right direction. It’s simple as that.”
They’ll get their first chance tonight — the Yankees’ 388 runs scored are their fewest since 1992, when they had 374 runs and a 42-42 record after 84 games. In case you’re wondering — and I was — the ’92 Yanks lost that 85th game too, with Scott Sanderson allowing four runs over 7 2/3 innings. They fell to the Mariners, 5-2, when Dave Fleming threw a gem, making one mistake over eight innings — a two-run Danny Tartabull home run.
Imagine if this blog was around then?
Back in 2008, Melky Cabrera isn’t in the lineup, with the Yankees hoping to get his head right after a 0-for-19 drought. It’s looking like Hideki Matsui won’t be back before the All-Star Break; meanwhile, Chris Britton (strained left ribcage) threw a scoreless inning on rehab with the GCL Yankees on Tuesday. Humberto Sanchez (Tommy John surgery rehab) also appeared in the game, throwing a scoreless inning in his third rehab appearance.
Let there be light
This is a gorgeous afternoon in Detroit, and there’s pretty close to a full house on hand here at Comerica Park. Day games seem to be good news for the Yankee bats — the Yankees have three of the American League’s top five hitters in day games, with Hideki Matsui (.429, 12-for-28), Derek Jeter (.405, 15-for-37) and Johnny Damon (.390, 16-for-41).
Interesting town, this Detroit. The Yankees don’t stay downtown, preferring to bus in from about 40 minutes away, but a lot of the writers do. Outside my hotel this morning I watched them setting up for a country music hoe-down. Someone I was talking to was checking into the hotel and was told, “Oh, you must be here for the hoe-down.” Country music isn’t necessarily my cup of tea but I’d check it out if we had the time.
The Hockeytown bar across the street from Comerica Park, to contrast, was blaring loud hip hop into the streets after midnight last night. We could make out lyrics from blocks away. Then we got into the worst smelling taxi cab I’ve ever experienced in my life. Apparently – and this is no joke – the driver was carrying around his dirty laundry in the trunk. If I had to guess, his day job is manure hauling.
With the strange scheduling here — I know this is a day game, but it’ll be night when we’re all wrapped up — it seems I’ll be lucky just to squeeze in a few hands at the poker tables in town. As I’ve been telling everyone, Detroit is kind of like playing a three-game series in Atlantic City. Someday I’ll have to swap travel stories with Chris Britton. He’s probably become quite the familiar face with all his trips between New York and Scranton.
Check these stats of the day — Jeter’s first-inning home run was his first in 128 at-bats, the longest such streak to begin a season in his career … Yankees relievers have not allowed a run in 11 IP over the last three games … Yankees pitchers have allowed one walk in the last two games.
Bryan Hoch
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