Tex is a big giant pussy who is shitting in his pants everytime he gets up. Can he really not hit a curveball?
I agree with Cashman and have been saying it for years..but now it's Girardi too..it started with him giving everybody on the team every third day off at the beginning of the season..or so it seemed..it completely bought into everything wrong about Torre..imagine the Ruths and Gehriga and DiMaggios and Fords and Guidrys being told they couldn't play every day..and most of the players from those days were never in shape to begin with.
Well... George (and his Tampa faction) did more to hamstring this team's long-term development than anyone else... but they're starting to get over that. I don't think the big league club will reap the full benefits for a year or two, but still... it's better than it was. And Hal/Hank (mostly Hank) for wanting re-sign A-Rod after he opted out. I can think of one game this year that was lost due to a tactical error by Girardi. The rest? *shrugs* I'd like to think it's mostly bad luck, but there's also the chance that guys like Mo, Posada, and Jeter are slipping and their performance won't match up to what's expected from their roles this year. Guys like Teixeira, Sabathia, and Burnett, I'm not as worried about. They might be struggling early, but they're too talented not to succeed. Sabathia is not Ed Whitson.
All told, I still think this is (and will be) a very good ballclub. Sabathia, Burnett, and Tex will all be fine. Cano, Swisher, and Matsui should do alright this year. Same for Jeter. Having A-Rod back will help. Losing Posada hurts a lot. Mo? I don't know. He was sick in spring training... typical velocity... typical command. I'm not at a panic point yet, since he's done this before... but he's dropped about 2-3mph all-around, is coming off of shoulder surgery, and is 39 years old. Check this out: His four-seamer usually sits around 93.5... it has for years (including last season). So far this year? 91.5. That's down from spring training. His cutter averaged 93.0 for years, as well. This year? 90.9. So something's different from what he's done in years past, and even from what he was doing in spring training. Is it age? Injury? Dead arm period? Could be anything. But that could hurt a lot, if he's not up to snuff. More than losing Posada hurts. ETA: From Peter Abraham... "UPDATE, 11:07 p.m.: Girardi just said that Mo has been battling 'arm strength' issues. Uh oh."
Francesa will be screaming so loud tomorrow he'll pass gas on the air. And if you listen to Michael Kay, you'll think the Yankees won by six runs tonight.
weird coming off the surgery you would think he wouldnt have been at normal velocity in camp...wht the dropoff now? Too much too fast? If he ends up with arm troubles this year then we're dead. I think we all agree there. But this has been looming for a few years now. One of these years, Mo's gonna be done
I agree with you that eventually talent will "win out" and this team will win a bunch of games. Like I've said though, it's not about beating up up the lower 2/3 of the AL and all the NL teams. It's the playoff caliber teams that they need to be able to beat, and they just can't seem to do that. Mo having arm trouble is terrible news. Again, I agree with you, it's worse than losing Posada. Without Mo, the only guy left with any reliability at all, and it's tenuous, is Coke. I'm still not jumping on the Joba to the pen bandwagon, but what the hell are we going to do without any relievers? See, I still blame Girardi more than I do Cashman. Cashman's job is to provide the team with talent, which he has done. It then falls to the manager for a number of things, including: 1) Overall physical fitness of the team. 2) Handling the pen in-game. 3) Playing the guys who are performing every day. Now is he responsible for Posada? Probably not, I'll put that on age. But Mo? Bruney? Nady? Bruney and Nady have said they felt something before they "got hurt" so there was an issue there already. If Girardi said Mo's been battling arm strength issues, he's known for at least a little time that something is wrong. This is poor management. Do you think he's honestly done a good job of pen management in-game? He pulls guys for no clear reason, but will put Veras in games no matter how many times the fails. He pushes Mo for 4 outs, but pulled Albaladejo with an 0-1 count. Semi-related are his late-game moves like sitting Swisher to put Gardner in as a defensive replacement. Honestly, how often does a defensive replacement come into play compared to a strong bat? Especially when you have a pen that throws a lot of meatballs. Even Gardner can't catch a ball in the 8th row of the bleachers. The one example of Girardi playing the "hot" guy without being forced is Melky. He could probably get credit for Swisher too, but Nady got hurt too quickly to prove that. It took severe injury to get Ransom off third. Posada got, what, two or three days away from the crouch a week (and still got hurt.) Matsui may be hitting well now, but early on, he still DH'd far too often than his dismal performance was warranting. As much as I am a Teixeira fan, he needs some time on the bench to consider how to earn his insane contract. These are things Girardi can do to at least appear like he wants to do his job. Instead, he's a Torre clone, who would rather his players are his buddies than kick them in the ass once in a while. That's why I point a finger at Girardi right now.
Rivera has a .289 BA against him for the year and a .389 for the kast 14 days. His ERA is 2.3+..he isn't looking much like a closer...next we will hear he is going on the DL too..might as well, everybody else is.
Something else about Mo I didn't say earlier (because I forgot) but does anyone recall me saying that something was "off" with Mo this year? Not his velocity, but the "bite" on his cutter. Now I'm just some guy sitting behind a computer all day who played mostly catcher and third base when I was young, so I don't know a lot about pitching, but I do know when a guy I've been watching for years looks "off." Now I don't get major dollars to make that determination, but Girardi and Eiland do. So why exactly was it so hard for them to see? Or were they ignoring it because Mo has been the only guy of any worth in the pen this year? This ship is sinking. Worse yet, we're in another Catch-22 now. If ARod comes back and the team goes on a tear, he'll be absolutely insufferable. If he comes back and the team doesn't turn the corner, we'll be out of the playoff hunt before the All-Star game. This year is just so full of fail.
1. According to Pitch F/X, Mo's cutter is biting just as much as it always has. He just doesn't have the velocity yet. 2. I'm not sure if they were ignoring it. From the NY Times: ?If I try to pinpoint something that is not right, well, the only thing I would say is speed,? said Rivera, who had surgery to remove a calcification from his shoulder last September. ?My velocity is not quite there yet. But I?m feeling good. The longer I go in and pitch, it will get there. I don?t worry about that.? I don't get this. He'll be insufferable? What do you mean?
Maybe it's the loss of the velocity that's making it look more hittable then. Could be. It just appears to me that the cutter doesn't have that same late movement I'm used to seeing. Maybe it's still having the same movement, just earlier, and that's why there is still the same amount of movement. If it's happening over a longer span of time (even the fraction of a second) it's not going to be as effective. As for ARod, that's just what his ego needs, to come back and "save" the Yankees. He loves the spotlight as it is. If he comes back and walks on water, he'll take it as license to do whatever he pleases. (Off the field.) I know you like to attribute some sort of awkwardness to his media personality, but he's not awkward by any means. He plays the media like a fiddle. He knows full well everything he does and says. I used to prescribe to the same school of thought as you until I saw that Vanity Fair spread recently. Alex Rodriguez knows exactly what he's doing at any given moment in time because he's thought about it in advance. I'd put money on it, and I don't gamble.
Haha..the queen is juicing her horses too..I guess nothing is sacred anymore. http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/30640302/
Not that I pretend to know a lot about horse racing, but wouldn't a drug that prevents hemorraging in horses be a good thing, and not really "cheating?" I mean, Alex Rodriguez taking "not Tic-Tacs" or Manny taking fertility drugs for performance enhancement is one thing, but giving a horse a drug that could save its life sounds like a good thing to me. Where the hell is SJ when we need him?
Not sure what the banned substance was, but Lasix is a commonly used to prevent race horses from bleeding during and after a race. Horses pump massive amounts of blood during a race, and some bleed through their nostrils. The whole race-thing isn't really a natural existence for them. They're certainly bred to race, but their bodies need assistance rebuilding between races - so, steroids. Until this year's Kentucky Derby, of course. They'll still use non-steroidals (bute). Race horses need them because of how we've bred them. The rules are probably just different in other countries.
