This will hopefully cheer you up
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- March
- 24
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I fully understand that the thought of the Rajah starting on Opening Day is a bit depressing. But consider this: Mariano Rivera may be better than ever.
Rivera has faced 27 batters this spring and retired 24 of them. He has allowed three hits, no walks and struck out eight. He last gave up a hit nine days ago.
It has become almost comical to see him pitch.
Smiling yet? No?
Well, while Brian Bruney was warming up and getting into the game, some clubhouse pranksters covered his entire locker in yellow tape, from top to bottom. They taped a few baseball cards to the front along with one of those black-and-yellow “radiation warning” symbols.
When he came back to the clubhouse, Bruney had to go in the lunch room and get a knife to free his clothes as several amused teammates looked on.
Mike Mussina has his locker in that corner of the clubhouse along with Bruney and Krazy Kyle Farnsworth.
“It may be time to move,” he said. “I’m calling ahead before next season.”
So don’t be too depressed. The Yankees are carrying on.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 7:47 pm by Peter Abraham.
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Chad Jennings
Sam Borden
i’m getting a good feeling about this bullpen. from vizcaino to bruney, farnie and proctor on to rivera with a lefty specialist like myers and maybe even henn as the second lefty.
i’ve never admired an athlete more than rivera. it’s almost embarrassing how i feel about him. and i grew up idolizing the mick!
As efficient as Mo has been, could he be our opening day starter? Maybe go 5 innings?
We’ll be o.k. This team rallied last year without Sheffield, Matsui, and Canoe. The kids will come up and the others will step up.
Bruney’s been impressive.
Yankees fans need to calm down. As a Mets fan, their pitching is a lot bigger problem.
Peter –
Your post did cheer me up.
I thought the radiation warning symbol was for the latest Pavano catastrophe.
Is Bruney even going to make the team out of camp?
This is proof that the Yankees themselves are keeping it light. That’s good. Poor Moose. I agree with Kerouac that the bullpen has indeed looked very good, very deep, very solid this spring. Let’s hope it carries forward, and they’re all good enough so that no one or two of them has to carry too much of the load. If that happens, the season will be good.
It doesn’t really matter if Rivera has been great or has stunk; it’s only spring training, and he’s been money his whole career. His numbers last year are enough to justify faith in him this season.
As for Pavano, it doesn’t really matter if he starts opening day or the fifth game. Each game counts equally. Hopefully he does well; who knows, maybe Minky will catch the last out in his no-hitter.
Don’t worry, be happy. Visualize Mo throwing a changeup at Ortiz and see Papi fall on his butt with a swing and a miss.
- just because the mets pitching is godawful doesn’t mean the yankees rotation isn’t in trouble. is that the same poster who said wagner’s awful outing somehow negated pavano’s putrid spring? come on.
- losing sheffield, matsui and cano in a lineup that’s incredibly stacked with offensive talent is a LIIIITTLE bit different than losing wang and (possibly) pettitte in a rotation whose back end had huge question marks to begin with.
- what does everyone say about hamstring injuries? add at least a week to ten days to the projected return date. remember cano last year?
- it’s not depressing, it’s a fact of life: the yankees rotation, without wang, is CONSIDERABLY weakend. whether you want to admit to that or not, it’s a fact. pettitte’s back remains a question mark, and somebody remind me how mussina’s spring has gone so far. that’s not even mentioning pavano and igawa. thank god this is happening in april and not august. the yankees may well whether this storm, but they’ll need to hit their way through april. period. if the big bats start the year cold, count on a lot of games winding up in the L column. three weeks in april isn’t going to make or break their season, but if wang’s out longer, or pettitte goes down for a period of time, this team is in HUGE trouble. to look at it any other way is to be delusional.
Kasey -
Please take some deep breaths and relax.
First – Wang has a grade-1 hamstring strain. If there’s no further setbacks, he’s back around the third week of April.
Pettitte tweaked his back lifting weights. He’s already throwing, and should throw one spring training start before the start of the season.
Neither guy has arm or shoulder problems.
Both Karstens and Rasner are (in my opinion) capable starters – certainly capable for (say) 3 or 4 starts each in a worst-case scenario.
You also have an embarassment of riches at Scranton (AAA) – Clippard and Ohlendorf are both close, and Hughes isn’t as far away as he looked in a couple of meaningless ST games.
It’s March 24th. The season isn’t over yet – in fact it hasn’t even begun. Please try to just enjoy the journey… please?
- i’m aware of wang’s injury. i’m also aware that hamstring injuries, of any grade, take longer to heal than expected. almost every time.
- i’ll believe pettitte’s stable when he comes through his next start without problem.
- you’re not going to replace wang with karstens or rasner. not for three starts, five starts, ten starts, whatever. not having wang out there puts more pressure on the offense to produce. period.
is the season over? certainly not. but this considerably weakens the team for the first month of games. there is absolutely NO WAY around that.
Man! I have never seen such ‘Whoa is me’ and we havn’t played a game yet. Let’s not forget we’re the Yankees! We don’t get nervous till we’re 3 gms out with 3 games left to play… jeez, just chill!!
Stuff happens. If Wang doesn’t take care of this hammy now, it will throw off his mechanics and the hammy problem will become worse or turn into a shoulder or arm or hip or back problem from compensation. Either that or his ERA will skyrocket because he will lose velocity or be leaving the ball up. This isn’t going to make anyone feel a whole lot better right now, but you can’t look at your watch and bite your nails until he’s back.
Gotta go Zen. It’s not good news, but it is what it is. Think of it as some extra rest for Wang so he will be fresher come October. And if the April record is less than optimal due to rotation injuries, think of it as achievement despite adversity.
Now if the Yankees were to lose two of their top three starters — Pettitte and Wanger — for any length of time, I agree that it’s really really bad. But we’re not there yet. Steady, now. We will adapt and overcome. Visualize 27.
From Rob Neyer Espn Blog
http://insider.espn.go.com/esp.....=Neyer_Rob
Jeff Karstens, who probably gets Wang’s spot if he doesn’t get blasted next time out, has decent credentials, except his projected ERA in the majors this season is 5.58 (courtesy of Baseball Prospectus).
rob neyer grew up in seattle and has admitted in his columns that he hates the yankees. i don’t find that kind of bias very trustworthy in a sports reporter.
For what it’s worth, I think that Karsten’s projected ERA is based on PECOTA, not Neyer’s bias – - if he has any. It’s as objective as the formulas involved allow.
who’s depressed, pete? i can’t wait for the season to start. watching a 162-game season involves more plot turns than the your average murder-mystery. pavano to start the season opener? no big deal. it’s nowhere near as scary as having jaret wright starting game 4 of the ALDS. or randy johnson starting any division series game. this is going to be fun. i hope we average 10 runs per game throughout april. isn’t that what the mets did behind their lousy starters last summer?
PECOTA also projects Wang to have an ERA of 4.31 and a WARP of 4.0.
That WARP would make him the 4th best starter in pinstripes, chasing Mussina (4.8), Pettitte (4.5) and Igawa (4.1). Don’t put too much stock in projections on pitchers — PECOTA, ZIPs, Marcel, or any other.
That said, losing Wang stinks. But, who knows what might happen — Melky stepped up pretty well when Matsui went out last year. Maybe Karstens or Rasner will be this years Melky?
Hey Pete,
About Karstens, what’s the word on his stuff this spring? I have not had a chance to see him pitch (was out of the country), but I hear he picked up a couple miles of hour up on his previously junk fastball and that might be the reason for his pretty good spring.
I would prefer Rasner myself.
I wonder what Wang’s projected PECOTA was for 2005. How can you take stock in projections when the guy only had like five starts last year?
putrid spring for pavano? please kasey, you make me laugh
Thanks, Peter. Great stuff, as always.
Time to lean on the offense and start the season. MLB will not move the season opener back to May 1 to accommodate Wang’s DL stay. PLAY BALL!!!!
The PECOTA projections do take into account minor league career stats, iirc.
Cash – give MO an extension now!!!!!!
Chappy -
I didn’t see Karstens’ most recent start (where he got hit hard). In his other starts, his stuff was a lot better than I remember seeing at the end of last year.
I do remember Joe Torre saying in 2006 that he thought Karstens was kind of gassed when he was called up.
Karstens was using a sinker at 89-92. It looked to have more downward bite than I saw last year.
With young pitchers like Karstens, use PECOTA projections with caution. I expect better results than those projections indicate, simply because his stuff is better.
josh,
by what stretch of the imagination has pavano’s spring been successful? he’s getting hit and scored on every time out, he looks out of shape and lacking in confidence. unless you count yourself among those who share the torre line of thought (”as long as he emerges from each start with all of his limbs intact, he’s a roaring success”), i don’t see how you could classify pavano’s spring as successful. the guy stinks.
if karstens is actually throwing 89-92, he could be decent. he’s got a pretty good breaking ball, but when i watched him pitch in seattle last year, he didn’t look like much.
I gotta tell you, reading the comments on this blog is getting to be stressful with all the lunatics and the negativity. Wang will miss two starts, the world is not ending. I personally think the Yankees are going to have a huge regular season, and get deep into the playoffs. This while effectively in a “rebuilding” mode. I wish the Knicks were able to rebuild and drive for a championship at the same time. Even if the Yankees don’t win it all this year, please take the time to enjoy one of the greatest baseball teams ever assembled. Life’s about enjoying the journey, not the destination. Ok now I feel better.
kasey,
Pavagranate has been mediocre to ‘whew’ at best this spring, but not so terrible that you can’t expect a decent four innings out of him the first couple of starts until Wang gets back, so “stinks” is a little harsh. That said, thank goodness for a deep bullpen, and the Yanks have had a recent bad start in April that they eventually overcame, so I wouldn’t get worked up about this. Taken as a whole, the lineup and bullpen can mask even Pavalive’s deficiencies for the time being…
it doesn’t make sense to put too much into spring numbers. is pavano healthy? how good will he be? if you do pay a lot of attention to spring numbers, then you gotta like rasner as well as karstens. it is good to see the yanks have a set of young arms that might produce one or two good ones as the year unfolds.
i hated to see sheff go– but if one or two decent arms comes outta that– ok. i am still mourning bernie– it’s just not right to see the yank who ranks only after ruth, gehrig, dimaggio and mantle let go this way. what a class guy…
hj
It’s all water under the bridge now, but there were rumors earlier in the winter, that Bonderman could be had – for the right price. It makes me wonder if the Yanks could’ve acquired him by shipping another prospect (Karstens, Rasner, or Clippard) along with Sheff.
I read that the Tigers wouldn’t trade Bonderman in any reasonable package for Sheff.
I can’t understand why anyone would freak out over this. The Yankees will score enough runs to compensate for Wang missing a few starts.
Who said the Yankees have no chemistry?
Kasey,
Don’t be depressed! It’s just a game. It’s not the end of the world. Why people have to take these things that serious? Overall they have nothing to do with our lives! You are being to negative and that’s not a good thing! Just relax!
If last year did not inspire you, watching the kids and newcomers like Johnny Damon and Bobby Abreu scratch and gut out wins, thhen I don’t know why you would bother watching the games.
These guys came together so nicely last year, and I consider the 2006 season a success because a new nucleus is coming together. Cabrera, Cano, Wang. I’m thrilled.
This will be exciting, to see what they have to put together throughout the year to address the inevitable injuries that will come up. I’m super interested to see what Karstens and Rasner can do. Ditto Sanchez, when he’s ready. By the way, does anybody know his latest status after the injury? He was listed as being the most ML-ready of all the pitching prospects they have.
It sounds banal and maybe glib, but remember, it’s about having fun.
“he looks out of shape and lacking in confidence. ”
you are absolutely the only person anywhere who has implied that Pavano is out of shape. every single report has said that Pavano worked his @ss off all winter and game into camp in GREAT shape.
look, we know you don’t like the guy. not many of us do.
but don’t make sh*t up. it undermines your credibility.
“It’s all water under the bridge now, but there were rumors earlier in the winter, that Bonderman could be had ”
if the Tigers wanted to trade Bonderman, why would they have given him a very lucrative extention this very offseason??
i wouldn’t put much stock in internet rumors.
put stock in actions that happened in real life, and the Tigers expressed exactly how they feel about Bonderman with their checkbook.
radiation symbol? i thought that was the bottom of a golf cup…