Wrapping it up at Legends Field
Posted by: Peter Abraham - Posted in Misc on Mar 20, 2007 
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Yep, those were changeups that Mo Rivera threw to Ryan Howard.
“I’m throwing it more,” he said. “I feel confidence in it.”
Said Johnny Damon: “If he gets that pitch down he’ll be an All-Star until he’s 45.”
Rivera hasn’t said this. But his dominance this spring and the fact he is so seriously working on another pitch seems to be a sign that he trying to prove to the Yankees that they should be extending his contract.
Meanwhile some Japanese TV guy asked Joe Torre if Kei Igawa was “shaky out there.” Must have been Steve Phillips-san.
A shocked Torre said, “Shaky? You call that shaky?” He then heaped praised on Igawa, saying how he kept his fastball down and threw his slider for strikes when he was behind in the count.
Igawa said that working with Ron Guidry helped him keep the ball down. He didn’t seem to have much of an idea that he needed to pitch well. Maybe that’s just as well.
No postgame audio tonight, it was kind of rushed.
Given Mo’s age, and the injury issues from last season, he should prove to the Yankees that he is worth the extension.
In fact, I think it’s likely that that is precisely what Cash wants him to do, and he will be happy to extend him after the season.
“Meanwhile some Japanese TV guy asked Joe Torre if Kei Igawa was “shaky out there.â€? Must have been Steve Phillips-san.”
I try not to bash “analyst” because I understand they have a job to do and its there subjective educated opinions/guesses. Now getting that out of the way Steve Phillips is a complete tool, and I dont know how ESPN employees they guy! Im not the guy that bashes anybody that says something anti-yankee, but dude predicts the Yankee collapse every year!
Peter,
I read in a Taiwanese media something about Mike Myers organised a golf comp and Wang came to ask you for help but you refused.
That would be quite a funny story, can you tell us about it?
Myers himself is leading the comp btw I heard.
Alan
Igawa looked really good tonight he just needs to improve his control and he went in the right direction tonight, let me remind all you haters his ERA is 3.00 this spring.
“He didn’t seem to have much of an idea that he needed to pitch well. Maybe that’s just as well”
maybe b/c that’s b/c he didn’t. he has a 5 year guaranteed contract. if he never throws another strike he gets $20M from the Yankees.
this isn’t the same as someone like Karstens or Villone trying to make the team.
Igawa will be on the team. if he makes a start or 2 in AAA, he’ll still be back soon. guaranteed.
Prove to the Yanks what?
Hes never been seriously injured. Hes always throwing well into October (thankfully) and hes priceless in the clubhouse.
Im almost hoping he saves 4 games in the Series and then goes “Thanks NY but now Im a Free Agent”
And takes bids from 30 teams.
Prove that even at 37 he can still be a dominant closer without any arm issues for the whole season.
It’s a business. The Yankees have every right to expect that.
“Given Mo’s age, and the injury issues from last season, he should prove to the Yankees that he is worth the extension”
good idea. there will hardly be any teams offering bucketloads of money to mariano.
So what? Is your point that Mo isn’t loyal to the Yankees, and as a result, Cash should just abandon his principles and give him a blank check?
Do you really think before you type this stuff?
so rich, you think the free market cares about cashman’s principles? you have heard that baseball players now have this thing called free agency? you see, there is this bidding process that jake mentioned involving 30 teams.
he’ll get signed before he can even think about filing for free agency. i’m not even concerned.
Hey Peter, What Did Posada’s says about Igawa’s outing tonight? Can you post his comments ? Thanks alot.
–If Igawa fails, don’t say prejudice things against Japanese
I remember when Hideki Irabu failed as a Yankee, I used to read and hear Yankees fans everywhere saying all kinds of prejudice things against Japanese people. Things like “we should drop an atomic bomb on Irabu’s big fat belly.�
I hope Igawa does well. But if he fails, don’t say prejudice things. You want to boo him, fine. If you want to say he was waste of money, fine. But don’t say prejudice things against Japanese people. It’s just plain old wrong……….. And for the record, I have no Japanese or Asian blood in my background.
grrrrrrrr (I really like onomatopias, btw)
Here’s where we differ. I think Mo wants to retire as a Yankee. I think Cash will offer him a contract that is commensurate with his ability as well as being in line with the market. If, however, another team wants to offer some ridiculous amount and Mo wants to accept it, then he leaves. It happens.
For example, if a team offered Mo a five year contract, the Yankees would be crazy to match it.
It would seem that Cash holds a similar viewpoint, and I applaud him for that.
The Yankees have done at least as much for Mo as he has done for them.
I’m very confident that he will be re-signed in October, if he remains healthy.
Rich,
As a direct result of the late 90′s dynasty, the Yankees have sold more tickets than anyone ever thought possible, created a cable network that’s the envy of every professional sports team on earth, are in the process of building a stadium with (mostly) their own money, and have seen the value of the franchise skyrocket. There are alot of guys who deserve credit, but none more than Mariano Rivera.
Meanwhile, what have the Yankees done for him that every other team in baseball wouldn’t have been happy to exceed had he gone to free agency?
The only way this strategy pays dividends for Cash is if Mo blows his arm out this year. If he’s healthy, he will dominate, and we won’t be able to lock him up for one or two more years at $10.5 mil per which we probably could have done this past off season.
if cashman let’s his ego (principles) get in the way of resigning mariano, the onomatopias he’ll be hearing from yankee fans will be “bamâ€? ,“whackâ€? ,and ” boom”.
The Taiwanese media wrote what about me?
Mike Myers has a PGA golf pool. I’m not too sure how it works beyond that you pick three players every week and you can’t pick the same guy more than once. Wang and I have discussed his selections once in a while but I never refused to talk to Wang about anything. Quite the opposite, we discuss quite a few things. He’s a very nice guy who is curious about America.
Peter:
Today’s Taiwan’s papers not only about the Golf game, also
about you told Wang that you want to see his next start in the spring which in minors camp, but you have to travel with the team on that day, then he told you to go see other’s game not to go watching his game, is that true???
Grace: Can you tell me who is writing this and in what paper? Why do they care about my conversations with Wang?
Peter:
I think Grace means this article
http://udn.com/NEWS/SPORTS/SPOS1/3769785.shtml
It’s by a reporter from the United Daily News by the last name Liao.
They quoted you as saying “When Wang came to talk to me, he asked me, ‘Can you pick for me?’ I didn’t help him, however, because it’s his pool. I also wanted to see what his luck is like.”
I haven’t been able to find the second article that Grace mentioned.
I think in general the Taiwanese media and people are just curious about the way Wang interacts with Americans. I believe that we all want to see that Wang is melding into America successfully.
(This is my first time leaving a comment on your blog. I’ve been keeping up with it since last August. Great read!)
Peter:
I did reply you via e-mail, but I forget to mention one thing is that Taiwanese reporters will be exaggerated a bit in their story,some might put their opinion in the news along with the facts. So for readers is difficult to distinguish which part is truely happened….
An exagerating reporter?
What a foof!
Taiwnaese reporters are the polar opposite of what you would call a reliable source. They are the biggest trash. They had a report about Rivera saying Wang doesn’t have a right to dictate how much salary he wants. I think they just made that up out of nowhere. Most Taiwanese reporters bs and have no professionalism. Shame.
If, as Eric states, Taiwanese reporters are unreliable, then maybe Anthony McCarron at the Daily News is Taiwanese. In this morning’s paper, McC evaluated Iggy’s most recent performance this way: “Igawa, whose lack of control has irked Yankee brass, was brilliant, allowing no runs and two hits in five strong innings and prompting praise from Joe Torre.”
Brilliant? Um, no. Much improved and encouraging, yes.
don’t want to beat a dead horse but just one quick thing about the mo extension issue. don’t read too much into everything that went on with that, i think it all just got misconstrued because of the Bernie situation, so Mo got a little paranoid and the fans got a little upset with Cash. But i don’t think it’s a bad thing, we should appreciate that Cashman is at least being consistent. He’s been trying to profess that the Yankees only worry about this season and will worry about the following season after 2007, so if he were to just put everything else on hold to work on Mo’s contract, after saying all those things about worrying about 2008 after this season, he would be a liar or whatever you want to call it and people would rip on him just the same.
eitherway, it’s really nothing to worry about. I don’t think it has ANYTHING to do with Mo needing to prove himself OR Cashman having an “ego” or messed up principles; just guys running a business fairly and consistently, as much as we’d all love to see our more beloved players get pampered. Mo getting his extension will be one of the first things the Yankees do when the World Series is over.
Try not to read anything into Spring Training
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/6570558
Good article.
IF Abrehu has trouble in the field because of his injury maybe melky should start the season in RF and Bobby as DH.
The extension would have gotten done if Mo hadn’t gone public. Cashman cannot operate under that pressure. It wouls set a horrible precendent.
Marc: If Abreu DH’s, Giambi plays first. One of the two platooners is out (Mink/Phillips/Phelps) or they have to carry 11 pitchers.
so cashman’s idea of financial shrewdness is having arod, mariano, posada, and torre all be free agents at the same time when the free agent market is at it’s highest level ever.
gee , that should work out well.
rh,
The Yankees signed Rivera as an undrafted free agent. They stuck with him after he had major arm surgery. They developed him. They came up with the idea to convert him into a reliever. They surrounded him with enough talent to win four rings. They made him a multi-millionaire.
He owes them at least as much as they owe him, if not more.
[...] Mariano Rivera is gaining a lot of confidence with his new found changeup. (Lohud) [...]
“He owes them at least as much as they owe him, if not more.”
so why do i get the feeling that you don’t think marvin miller should be in the hall of fame?
Because you like non sequiturs
wasn’t sequiturs a utilityman with seattle? i think the yankees tries to get him once.
“so cashman’s idea of financial shrewdness is having arod, mariano, posada, and torre all be free agents at the same time when the free agent market is at it’s highest level ever.”
one of these things is not like the other. who cares if torre is a free agent? where is he going to go? and who cares if he does?
also, the a-rod situation is completely out of his control. there isn’t much he can do about it.
finally, not every player with an expiring contract actually becomes a free agent. the yankees have 2 weeks after the world series to sign Mo and Po. let’s not “blame” cashman for something that hasn’t happened yet.
Moose never became a free agent this year. Matsui never became a free agent last offseason.
so let’s not accuse Cashman of “letting” something happen that may or may not actually happen.
“one of these things is not like the other. who cares if torre is a free agent? where is he going to go? and who cares if he does?”
nice show of respect for torre. nice to know where you are coming from.
got any more gems like that?
“nice show of respect for torre. nice to know where you are coming from.
got any more gems like that?”
didn’t realize i had to kiss torre’s ring on a blog. is he reading this?
give me a break.
including torre in a list of “potential free agents” was ridiculous. a complete non-sequitor intended to stack the deck in favor of his argument.
“nice show of respect for torre. nice to know where you are coming from.
got any more gems like that?”
He obviously wasn’t showing a lack of respect for Torre, he’s saying that a manager is different than a player who becomes a FA. There obviously aren’t 30 teams going after him. If Torre becomes a FA, its quite obvious he’s going to look to NY first to pay him, if he wants to stay. It’s like comparing apples and oranges.
As for Posada and Mo, and even Arod. Like hmmm posted above, the yankees have two weeks to sign a guy, why do people not understand that. They did it with moose, they did it with Matusi, and you know a guy like Mariano and even Posada, who want to remain yankees, are going to hear what Cashman has to say first. And if they play well, there is no doubt in my mind that Cash will show them the money.
“didn’t realize i had to kiss torre’s ring on a blog. is he reading this?”
no,i don’t think you’d say that to torre’s face. it’s easy from a distance though. the irony is that torre and cashman have a good relationship. cashman seems to show him more respect than you do.
the thing that all these things(arod,rivera,posada,and torre) have in common is that they are going to take an immense amount of time to resolve. the two week window won’t be enough time. it’s poor time management on cashman’s part to think he can do all these things at once. more than likely rivera and posada will go to free agency if it goes that far. cashman will then have to overpay to sign them. he’ll have to overpay arod to extend him.
if overpaying is something you like, you’re right. cashman has it all under control.
Randy unless you have connections to Cashman’s office you really can’t call it poor management. Because you have no idea what he has planned or how he plans to handle it. Maybe during the season he lays down some ground work with the agent on a new deal. The only person who knows is cashman and the agent.
Your a fan and you care about the players so you have a right to worry if they come back, but Cashman has shown that he is always in control of what goes on, and when a situation regards three key starting players, well you know Cashman isn’t sitting around with no plan. I’m sure he has everthing mapped out accordingly
“Cashman has shown that he is always in control of what goes on”
he wasn’t in control when mariano took him to task for not taking care of mariano’s contract. at no time did mussina or matsui reprimand cashman the winter before their contract was up. this is a new market that pro- management types have a hard time grasping. if cashman’s plan is to go into next fall with so much up in the air, it’s a bad plan because catching, third base, and closing are in short demand. all these agents will have cashman over a barrel. he needs to get a few of these contracts off the table so he can do a good job on the ones that are left. he should sign rivera and posada now and get the home team discount and the early bird special. arod has to wait because of the nature of the opt out clause. as far as torre goes, did anyone happen to notice grady little’s
extension by the dodgers? so much for torre having no value.
“no,i don’t think you’d say that to torre’s face. it’s easy from a distance though. ”
what an awesomely relevant point. how’s this, i’ll say what i just said to torre’s face, if all you guys say what you say about a-rod to his face?
deal?
“i’ll say what i just said to torre’s face, if all you guys say what you say about a-rod to his face?
i like arod . i think you’re having trouble with those non sequiturs again.
How’d that 2 week window work out when Pettitte bailed after the ’03 season, thereby unleashing the Brown/Vazquez era?
Mo’s a loyal guy who clearly enjoys playing here and wants to stay, but I think he knows now that the Yanks have played him for a sucker and he’s determined not to let it happen again.
After he has another big year this year, I expect him to tell Cash to not even bother calling until the window is up and he’s gathered all his offers. I’m sure he’ll let us match the highest one, but it’ll be a sight more than we could have locked him up for this past off season.
Rich,
What exactly did the Yankees do to “develop” Mo? Based on all the other great arms we’ve “developed” over the past 20 years, I’m thinking Mo became the pitcher he is in spite of the meathead pitching instructors in our system and not because of them.
“How’d that 2 week window work out when Pettitte bailed after the ‘03 season, thereby unleashing the Brown/Vazquez era?”
Cash had some issues with Pettite’s elbow at the time and was eventually proven correct as Pettite’s first season with the Astro’s was spent on the DL with an elbow injury. So it wasn’t the 2 week window – it was Pettite’s fragile elbow that gave Cash pause.
I also doubt that 2 week window will expire regarding Mo. He’ll negotiate with Cash in good faith as he has in all his past contracts and in probably the same way both Moose and Matsui did. Cash was involved in all of Mo’s contracts and having accumulated over $80 mil over his career, he’s got nothing to gripe about.
please explain how Mo has been “played for a sucker”.
i would be willing to bet that Mo has earned more $$ per inning than any other pitcher in the history of baseball.
“How’d that 2 week window work out when Pettitte bailed after the ‘03 season, thereby unleashing the Brown/Vazquez era? ”
not so good in the short term, but we did pick Phil Hughes with Houston’s first round draft pick.
hey cool, hmmm. when rivera goes to the red sox we’ll get their first round pick to use five years later. that’s reassuring.
Sunny615,
Cash didn’t choose not to sign Pettitte because of elbow concerns. He lowballed him at first, thinking he’d never leave, and then tried to beat Houston’s offer at the last minute and Andy said “Screw You.”
Also, he injured his elbow swinging a bat, which probably wouldn’t have happened here. Even if it had, Houston more than got their money’s worth in the last two years of the deal, and if we had had him against the Angels in ’05 and Detroit in ’06, instead of Johnson, we might have two more rings now.
hmmm,
The fact that Mo’s idiot of an agent has represented the greatest closer in the history of the sport and has never taken him to free agency, where multiple big market teams could bid on his servies and establish his true market value, is an absolute joke, and borders on malpractice.
The Mets are paying that bit-spittin’ hillbilly Wagner the same $10.5 that the Yanks are paying Mo. You don’t think they would have gladly upped the ante to get the best? How much do you think the Sawx would have offered him if he was a free agent this year?
Saying that Mo’s been fairly compensated because he’s earned more than any reliever is like saying if Babe Ruth were reincarnated in his prime, a fair salary would be whatever JD Drew is getting plus $1.
“The fact that Mo’s idiot of an agent has represented the greatest closer in the history of the sport and has never taken him to free agency, where multiple big market teams could bid on his servies and establish his true market value, is an absolute joke, and borders on malpractice.”
so if Mo tells his agent that he wants to stay with the Yankees b/c he is happy and his agent works out an extremely lucrative deal with the Yankees, that’s malpractice?
remember, by getting extended a full year before you hit free agency, the club assumes the injury risk for that season. in exchange, there is usually a slight discount given to the team.
Mo has gotten his extentions early, and still was the highest paid reliever in baseball at the time of the deal. what else do you want?
randyhater:
I’m pretty certain that Cash’s primary concern was Pettite’s elbow when he was thinking about resigning him. As for the lowball, I think Cash was giving him what he thought was fair for a pitcher who was about to have a major arm problem. The thing is – if he did give Pettitte a big contract and he was out for a year (or two) then Cash is percieved as getting bad goods (see Pavano, Carla). And Pettite’s injury was caused when batting, but stemmed from weak ligaments from pitching so the batting just aggravated a pre-existing condition. So damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.
Would I have liked to have kept Pettite – hell yes, any Yankee fan would have I would like to think. But “Cold Cash” made his decision based on all the info the doctor’s gave him. In retrospect, I’d have taken that risk but Cash fixed it as best he could by getting him back.
hmmm,
I never said he had to leave NY. He could have done like Bernie did in ’98: gone to free agency, established his market price, and then come back to the Yanks even if it meant giving them a hometown discount.
By not doing so he left millions and millions of dollars, and probably a couple more guaranteed years, on the table, all because he thought the Yankees would treat him differently than other players when the time came, when in fact now that they’ve got the leverage, they’re trying to play his loyalty against him same as they tried with Pettitte.
Let’s hope it works better this time.
Sunny,
At the end Cash offered more money than Houston and Pettitte left because he was pissed off. It was not Cash’s choice. Even worse, he then took on Brown’s insane contract and bad back and we wll know how that worked out.
randyhater:
He left because he got to go home. As a commuter, let me tell you – I’d take a decent pay cut to be able to cut my commute from an hour/hour and a half to 10 minutes and see my family more often. Cash didn’t make a strong case because of his elbow issues, and Houston jumped on Andy and pushed his family time and he decided (his kids were very young at that time) he could spend more time at home. I honestly understand that desire. He didn’t leave because he was pissed, he left because he got to spend time at home. Who wouldn’t?
He came back also because Cash learned to make Pettite feel important here – something he didn’t do last time because he was very concerned about the elbow, and now that Cash knows how that recovered, he’s completely open. Remember, Pettite gave Houston a chance to match the Yankees offer with a $2 mil hometown discount (Yankees $16 mil vs the $14 for Houston) and they said no thanks. So Houston in general did the same thing the Yanks did 3 years ago. He didn’t leave because he was angry, he left because he felt needed elsewhere (Houston’s full court press 3 years ago, and the Yankees this past winter).
ALSO:
Here’s something cool: the SI.com 2007 MLB Scouting Report. It ranks how all the teams will finish this year. Guess where the Yankees are? I’ll give you a hint… it’s less than 2:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.c...../previews/
“remember, by getting extended a full year before you hit free agency, the club assumes the injury risk for that season. in exchange, there is usually a slight discount given to the team.”
so why not extend rivera right now ahead of time like before? why play games? what’s different now? it hasn’t been talked about. but i think rivera wants the contract as much for controlling how he goes out of the game as he wants it for the money. it would not be surprising to see rivera walk way from the last year of a three year contract if he was physically unable to play up to his standards much like keith foulke did with cleveland . i think the thing rivera does not want is to be put in a situation like with bernie where there was no contract to protect him.
i think that after watching cashman play hardball with bernie that rivera wants to negotiate from a point of strength while he has the most leverage. i think he wants a contract that will let him decide when he’s done and not have someone like cashman deciding it for him. after watching cashman’s treatment of bernie, i don’t think any yankee veteran trusts cashman the way they did before. his new philosophy of younger and cheaper does not win him any points with veterans. if posada and rivera go to free agency,cashman will not get a discount. he will be paying top dollar for a lot of years on each contract. he will overpay. no one wants to go out the way bernie did. posada and rivera will make sure, now or next fall , that it doesn’t happen to them.
“so why not extend rivera right now ahead of time like before? why play games? what’s different now? ”
i would be in favor in that. i never said i don’t want him extended now.
but the simple answer is that he is older now.
“after watching cashman’s treatment of bernie, i don’t think any yankee veteran trusts cashman the way they did before.”
i don’t disagree. but Mo is confusing his situation and Bernie’s. they are not at all related b/c Mo is still a good player and Bernie is not.
“By not doing so he left millions and millions of dollars, and probably a couple more guaranteed years, on the table,”
maybe. but my only point is that Mo ALSO got something from taking the slightly discounted extention 1 season before free agency: he got injury insurance.
before the 2004 season, he signed a deal that paid him $10.5M in 2005, 2006, and 2007.
if he doesn’t sign the deal and blows his arm out in 2004, he loses $31.5M. that is worth A LOT.
both parties benefitted greatly from his last contract.
maybe he gets more if he waits, maybe he gets hurt. who knows? it’s easy to say in retrospect that he wouldn’t have gotten hurt. but it wasn’t known at the time, and calling his last contract anything but extremely fair is revisionist history.
also, he signed that deal 2 full years before Billy Wagner. it’s apples and oranges.