Results tagged ‘ Jorge Posada ’
Yankees tie MLB homers record
With Jorge Posada’s 20th home run of the season in the ninth inning tonight off Toronto’s Jason Frasor, the Yankees now have seven players with 20 or more home runs.
That sets a new franchise record and ties a Major League record also shared by the 1996 Orioles, 2000 Blue Jays and 2005 Rangers (credit: Elias Sports Bureau).
The Yankees with 20 or more: Mark Teixeira-32, Johnny Damon-24, Alex Rodriguez-24, Hideki Matsui-23, Nick Swisher-23 and Robinson Cano-22. The old Yankees franchise record of six players with 20 or more home runs was set in 1961 and tied in 2004.
Posada leaves after being hit with foul tip
Yankees catcher Jorge Posada left Wednesday’s game against the Rangers after reaggravating an injury to his left ring finger after being struck with an eighth-inning foul tip.
The play occurred with reliever Brian Bruney working to Texas cleanup hitter Nelson Cruz, who made contact on a pitch that hit Posada’s glove hand. He had been hit in an Aug. 12 game against the Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium and has been icing the finger since then.
“It’s been beat up before, and it just took another hit today to the same spot,” Posada said. “It was a little bit more painful than I thought it would be.”
Posada walked out past the mound in pain and was inspected by manager Joe Girardi and head trainer Gene Monahan, then left the game shortly after. X-rays were negative and Posada is listed as day-to-day, though he is not expected to catch Thursday.
Alex Rodriguez also fouled a ball off his left foot in the seventh inning and was hobbled momentarily but remained in the game. Girardi eventually lifted Rodriguez because of the lopsided 9-2 score.
Back home after the big trip
10 games in 11 days, to Seattle, Oakland and Boston. If the Yankees knew coming into that excursion that they would be flying home with seven victories in their back pocket – and especially two out of three in the Red Sox series – they would have signed right up for that.
Things are flying high right now for the Yankees, who open a three-game series with the Rangers tonight with Joba Chamberlain on the mound. They’re a Major League-best 27-9 since the All-Star break and own the best record in the Majors, heading into tonight tied with their season high of 32 games over .500.
All of that makes the things you actually can fret about, like the possible rift between A.J. Burnett and Jorge Posada, just background noise for the moment.
Mark Teixeira was on the Late Show with David Letterman last night and took a little batting practice outside the Ed Sullivan Theatre, sending a few bombs flying deep down 53rd Street. Here’s a video.
And now, a few other of the off-day discussion stories floating around out there:
Anthony McCarron has a great look in the New York Daily News at June 24, the night the Yankees saved their season with a pregame meeting at Atlanta’s Turner Field.
Andy Pettitte checks in with Pete Caldera of the Bergen Record, addressing the idea that this could really be the lefty’s final year.
Derek Jeter’s “favorite player right now,” Hideki Matsui, tells Jack Curry of The New York Times that he would love to stay put in Yankees pinstripes.
Posada pays tribute to Munson
Jorge Posada found his own small way to pay tribute to the memory of
Yankees captain Thurman Munson on Thursday, affixing a small No. 15 to
his catcher’s mask during New York’s 13-6 win over the Red Sox.
The gesture came as the Yankees played their first home game
following the 30th anniversary of Munson’s tragic death in an Aug. 2,
1979, plane crash.
“I just wanted to give a little tribute,” Posada said. “Thurman
is special to me. It’s one night; hopefully I don’t get fined for that.
I just wanted to let everyone know I was thinking about it.”
Posada used the same numeric decals that adorn his batting and
catching helmets, with No. 20 displayed on the brim. He placed Munson’s
retired digits on the mask padding near his right cheek, opposite a
Nike swoosh.
He said that he has spoken with many of Munson’s former
teammates — Ron Guidry, Goose Gossage and the late Bobby Murcer among
them — during Yankees Spring Training camps about what kind of man he
was.
“Great teammate,” Posada said. “That’s all they talked about, a great
teammate and a guy that really wanted to be out there every day. Nobody
loved playing the game more than him. It was good to hear those
things.”
Closing up at Steinbrenner Field
Final score, Twins 7, Yankees 3. Some short notes for you:
– Alex Rodriguez isn’t talking like a guy who plans to meet with MLB investigators on Sunday. His name remains on the travel roster for the game against the Reds in Sarasota and he said he plans to be on the 9 a.m. bus. We’ll see. Seems likely that A-Rod could be a last-second scratch from that sheet.
– Don’t fret just yet over Joba Chamberlain’s rough inning here today. He was throwing all four-seam fastballs, and when you fire a 2-0 heater down the pipe to Delmon Young, an RBI double is a predictable result. Joba said he threw two changeups and one slider in the whole frame. For Feb. 28, he did enough. Next up for him: Team Canada on March 5.
– CC Sabathia will throw a simulated game tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. I’ll hang back and give it a look – Joe Girardi said he would as well. The Yankees are trying to limit Sabathia’s innings in the spring whenever possible because, you know, he’s thrown a ton.
– Jorge Posada will throw on Monday, Girardi said, and could resume DHing soon after that. I know the panic button needs to be pushed with every Yankees injury, especially a player as significant as Posada. But Posada himself did not seem too worried at all about this, and he’s never been exactly the world’s best actor in masking his true feelings. Brian Cashman told me that they had to have a 4-on-1 discussion just to talk Posada out of playing today.
– Hideki Matsui is running on dirt and anxiously awaiting Gene Monahan’s signal to turn him loose. Matsui needs to just be able to make the turns on the bases without soreness and could be cleared to DH late next week. Girardi said he had to corral Matsui and get him out of the outfield today. (On an unrelated note, I think I may have cut Matsui off today on Boy Scout Boulevard. Oops.)
Joba says it again: Start me up
In the argument that never dies, Joba Chamberlain once drew his line in the sand down in Tampa, telling the New York Daily News that he wants to start and not be in the bullpen. That pretty much goes along with everything he’s said all along, though he’d agreed to relieve because it was best for the team.
Just by chance (and maybe because I’ve been listening to a little too much sports talk radio lately), I made a similar point in a Yankees Inbox column today, answering a question about why Phil Hughes isn’t being considered for relief work. It’s unorthodox, but I’ll quote myself, I guess:
“Really, [the Yankees are] trying to wean everyone off the idea of Chamberlain
as a reliever as well. That was a move made because New York
desperately needed some bullpen help during the 2007 playoff push.
Chamberlain just happened to be available for a conversion, but
even then, the Yankees said they envisioned Chamberlain as a starter
going forward. It just so happens that we’ve seen more of Chamberlain
as a reliever — and he’s pretty good at it — but it makes sense that
you’d want your best pitchers throwing more innings.”
Other points in that article — the Yankees are in trouble if Jorge Posada can’t catch, the Xavier Nady-Nick Swisher situation, the Yankees’ 2008 Draft and Bernie Williams.
Fire your thoughts back at me if you’d like. MLB.com is allowing us to do fan mail articles more than once a week now – you’ll remember Mailbag used to run on Mondays only – so I’m going to try to get two or three up a week, depending on how busy the Yankees are. Just in the first week of this alone, I have more than 500 e-mails to sort through.
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.
Posada’s dream is to wear Puerto Rico’s uniform
Jorge Posada spoke with the Primera Hora newspaper in Puerto Rico, telling them in Spanish that it is his “dream” and would be an “honor” to wear that uniform for the World Baseball Classic. You can read the complete article in Spanish here.
With translation, here’s what Jorge had to say:
“This will be my last chance to play for Puerto Rico and I’m very clear on that. For that reason, I’ll do anything possible to be 100 percent, because it is a dream of mine to wear that uniform.”
Posada did not play in the 2006 WBC and does not seem to believe that he will be around for the 2012 WBC — his four-year, $52.4 million contract runs through 2011.
He says in the interview that he will do his best to be 100 percent, and estimates that he is at about 75 percent right now. Posada is working out in Tampa, Fla. and says he has had no problems hitting or throwing.
Derek Jeter appears on XM Radio
Received this transcript from our friends at XM Radio, where Derek Jeter appeared Wednesday on the MLB Home Plate channel with hosts Jeff Joyce and Buck Martinez:
On new Yankees CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett:
XM Host Buck Martinez: “What will it be like playing behind these two great pitchers you’ve faced so much?”
Derek Jeter: “It’s going to be fun. I mean, CC [Sabathia], we’ve had plenty of battles with in Cleveland. He pitched against us in the playoffs a couple years ago. He had a tremendous year last year. I think the thing that sticks out with him is he’s always out there. He’s a horse. He throws a lot of innings. [He's a] power pitcher. And with AJ [Burnett], we saw too much of him this year, this past year. It seemed like every time we played Toronto we were facing him and Halladay and they beat us more often than not. So it’ll be fun to finally be behind him, but we added two guys, two power pitchers. Their stuff is as good as any pitcher in baseball.”
On Alex Rodriguez’ choice to play for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic:
XM Host Buck Martinez: “What’s your feeling about Alex Rodriguez playing for the Dominican Republic?”
Derek Jeter: “Well, he has options. I think that’s the biggest thing. Everyone doesn’t have that option. I know it was tough for him the first time around making that decision and I’m sure it was tough this time around, too. I don’t think he’s addressed his reasons for it so we’ll let him do that first but it’s a good spot for him to be in.”
XM Host Jeff Joyce: “Any friendly trash-talking that will go on or already has gone on now that A-Rod’s going to play for the Dominican and not for you like he did in 2006?”
Jeter: “No, I haven’t spoken to him about it yet so we’ll see what happens. Hopefully, we’ll win and we’ll be able to do that.”
On Red Sox second baseman and WBC teammate Dustin Pedroia:
Derek Jeter: “He’s a great player. More importantly, he’s a good person. He was fun to be around [at the All-Star Game]. The thing about Dustin that I like is every game he’s playing all out. I mean, he’s a player that you really enjoy to watch play. I mean, I really don’t enjoy it because we see enough of him but you really appreciate the way he goes about playing the game everyday. He’s a spark plug for the team. He deserved to win the MVP award and he’s going to have a bright future. It might be all downhill for him now. He won a championship his first year, the MVP his second year, but I’m sure he’s going to have a long and successful career.”
On Yankees C Jorge Posada:
XM Host Buck Martinez: “Talk about your pal, Jorge Posada. How is he progressing and what are the prospects for his 100% return to back behind the plate?”
Derek Jeter: “He’s progressing well. He’s down here in Florida. He’s working hard. He’s starting to throw already. He’s really optimistic about being ready to go when spring training starts and the regular season. I know it was a frustrating year for him last year, never really being on the disabled list or being hurt and missing basically the whole second half of the season. I know he’s itching to get back out there and hopefully he won’t have any setbacks.”
Yankees cooling at deadline
– Hopefully no one started stitching Jarrod Washburn’s Yankees jersey together. Brian Cashman said yesterday that everything seems to have cooled in advance of Thursday’s non-waivers trade deadline, and that includes Washburn. The New York Post reports that the Mariners not only want the Yankees to take on all of the $13.6 million remaining on Washburn’s contract, but also to surrender a quality prospect. Richie Sexson may believe Washburn will be a great fit, but not at that price.
– It looks like Jose Molina and Chad Moeller are the catching tandem for the rest of the year, with Jorge Posada out. Cashman isn’t painting a rosy picture about the possibility of upgrading behind the plate. Now we know why Moeller hung around so long as a third catcher. They were lucky to sneak him through waivers one time, and Cashman wasn’t about to take the risk again.
– Phil Hughes and Carl Pavano (yes, that Carl Pavano) are set to pitch in a rehab game tonight for Class-A Charleston, taking on the Asheville Tourists lineup. The game was moved from Florida due to inclement weather. Random aside: the Tourists were the team that Crash Davis finished up his career with in ‘Bull Durham.’
– Xavier Nady changed his number from 29 to 22 and promptly hit his first home run in pinstripes. This would be a good place to write something wise about Kei Igawa’s impact on the uniform. … Mark Melancon and Chase Wright have been promoted to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, reports Mike Ashmore.
As a complete offshoot, I’m pumped about the Sirius-XM merger. I’ve been a Sirius subscriber for years and had to add XM service for its MLB coverage. Having both services on one radio is going to make my driving more enjoyable (and affordable). $12.95 a month for radio is quickly becoming a luxury, but once upon a time people didn’t think cable television would fly either.
Bryan Hoch
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