The LoHud Yankees Blog

Big plans for today. I’m headed up to my old stomping grounds in Connecticut to see No. 2 UConn play Providence, a team they never seem to beat. It’ll be fun to sit in the stands for a change.

As for the Yankees, one would expect a quiet weekend. Not even book publicists can compete with the Super Bowl. So here are some free-agent leftovers to chew on. It’s shocking the talent still out there considering that February is just about here.

1B: Adam Dunn
2B: Orlando Hudson
SS: Orlando Cabrera
3B: Ty Wigginton
LF: Manny Ramirez
CF: Ken Griffey Jr.
RF: Bobby Abreu
C: Pudge Rodriguez
DH: Frank Thomas

SP: Ben Sheets
SP: Oliver Perez
SP: Tom Glavine
SP: Randy Wolf
SP: Braden Looper
RP: Juan Cruz
RP: Eric Gagne

Also: Andruw Jones, Joe Crede, Jim Edmonds, Cliff Floyd, Garret Anderson, Nomar Garciaparra, Rich Aurilia, Pedro Martinez, Tom Gordon, Eddie Guardado.

It’ll be interesting to see how many of these notable players settle for whatever they can get. Or would some be wiser to wait and hope that jobs open up in spring training? Let’s say Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner aren’t impressive in spring training. Might the Yankees go get Jim Edmonds?

My faith in Brian Bruney and belief in Mark Melancon is such that I think Juan Cruz isn’t needed. But wouldn’t signing Wigginton, Aurilia or Garciaparra for the bench make some sense? At this point, another million isn’t going to matter.

January is traditionally a slow month for baseball news. So for the second year in a row, we will showcase other blogs with a series of pinch hitters.

Next up is Dan from Statistically Speaking.

Dan is a freshman business major at Cornell. He started blogging a few months ago and say his favorite player is Phil Hughes. Why? “Because he’s the man,” Dan said.

Here’s his post:

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Brian Cashman is an idiot. There, now that I got that out of the way, let’s see if we can figure out what it means to take an honest look at evaluating a general manager. This means trades, free agent signings, drafts, and roster management. I’m not going to go trade by trade, and signing by signing telling you what Cashman did well or what he could have done differently. I’m not even going to say if I think he’s done a good job as GM of the Yankees. Why does my opinion matter more than anyone else’s? What I’m going to do is outline how such a debate should take place.

For the sake of space I’m going to focus on trades specifically, mostly because people love debating them. First and foremost, the most important part of evaluating any trade is to do the evaluation using only information available at the time. For a trade that just happened, such as the Swisher deal, this isn’t a problem. But if we’re looking back in time at, say, the Weaver-for Lilly-deal, then this becomes incredibly important. At the time, this was hailed as a steal for New York. Since the deal, however, various fans and members of the media have bashed the deal as another one of Cashman’s blunders. To paraphrase from U.S.S. Mariner, if the Yankees traded Jeter tomorrow for a can of Sprite, and next week Jeter tore his hamstring while the can of Sprite turned out to be delicious, that wouldn’t make that trade any better. No GM has a crystal ball (besides Theo Epstein, according to Red Sox fans), and it’s simply unfair to evaluate a decision based on information that was unknown at the time it was made.

Consciously or not, every fan has this equation in his or her head when declaring a “winner” for a trade:

(Value of assets acquired) – (Value of assets lost)

If you get a positive number, then you obviously made a good trade. What exactly goes into “value,” though? There are the obvious things like hitting, defense, and pitching, and then there are other considerations like contracts, service time, and team needs. These secondary factors make it possible for both teams to come out ahead. This has nothing to do with whether or not you subscribe to sabermetric principles, by the way. You can use numbers or not, it makes no difference to me, as long as every aspect of a trade is considered with the information known at the time.

So what if Nick Swisher hit .219 last season? Tell me about his contract, his service time, who else we got and who else we gave up. Using the outline above, I think the Yankees made a good deal. I know that if he’s out of baseball in three years, my opinion won’t change.

I hope this will help encourage everyone here participate in a more intelligent, well-reasoned debate.

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Thanks, Dan. Intelligent, well-reasoned debate? Are you tying to kill my traffic? Just kidding.

Coming tomorrow: Jim from the Giambi Mustache Squad.

According to the info button on my cable, Larry King’s guest on CNN tonight is “Author Joe Torre.”

Author? The late, great John Updike was an author. Torre is a guy who told a few stories to somebody else and cashed a check.

At any rate, I’ll be watching Friday Night Lights. I’m much more concerned with Coach Taylor and the Panthers than seeing Larry King yuck it up with Torre.

UPDATE, 11:14 p.m.: The Associated Press reported on the interview and there doesn’t seem to have been much of substance. There certainly wasn’t an apology.

“I was just letting people know what goes into the decision-making, and I think I did that without violating any confidences,” Torre said after he talked to King.

UPDATE, 11:31 p.m.: Sports Illustrated.com released an interview with Tom Verducci tonight. Alex Belth conducted the Q&A and does a good job.

Kudos to Doubleday, which handled the publicity masterfully. The mainstream media and even bloggers have been puppets all week. There’s been a ruckus based on a few passages in a 477-page book.

I still don’t think Torre should have betrayed confidences. But this will be a 24-hour story in spring training. The veteran players will say they either didn’t read the book or that they don’t care and that will be that.

If you’re looking for this, Derek Jeter took it home.

A-Rod got the “You’re a huge fraud and we all hate you” sign that Joe Torre hung over his locker.

Speaking of Torre, he’ll be on Larry King Live tonight, assuming Larry King is still alive.

There will be no arbitration cases as Brian Bruney agreed to a one-year contract.

UPDATE, 3:39 p.m.: Troy Renck of the Denver Post says Bruney will get $1.25 million. That makes sense given that he asked for $1.55 million and the Yankees offered $1.1 million.

Fear not, greedy Yankee fans, the Yankees can sign all the Type A free agents if they want.

A story on MLB.com today said the Yankees had reached the quota on Type A free agents.

This led to — seriously — a dozen e-mails from fans who want Juan Cruz, Adam Dunn and/or Manny Ramirez.

Turns out the story is wrong. Brian Cashman said the Yankees could sign up to eight if they want. “I’m not sure of the exact number, but it’s one we won’t worry about either way,” he said.

I’m not clear on the exact reasons. But the large pool of FAs led to an adjustment in the quota. I also think it has something to do with how many ranked FAs they had.

Panic over. Think big thoughts.

And, no, Cash wouldn’t way whether than plan to sign anybody else.

There has been some chatter lately that the Yankees will try and insert a confidentially and/or a non-disparagement clauses in future contracts for players and managers. This, of course, is a knee-jerk reaction to the Joe Torre book.

One problem: They can’t. The collective bargaining agreement doesn’t allow it, as least as far as players are concerned. Attorneys for the MLBPA have already said they would fight it.

I’m not sure the Yankees need legalities on their side. Given that Torre went from icon to pariah in a span of a week, that should sufficiently discourage those who would betray confidences. Sam Borden and I were talking yesterday and I think there’s a real chance Torre will get heckled when he does his book tour in NYC next week.

Torre will be on Larry King tonight. It’ll be interesting to see if he apologizes. But at this point, even that won’t help him.

January is traditionally a slow month for baseball news. So for the second year in a row, we will showcase other blogs with a series of pinch hitters.

Next up is Joe from The Fowl Balls.

A blogger since 2007, Joe tries to provide (in his words), “biting humor, in-depth analysis, and questionable morality to the masses.” Plus Joe once interviewed me, which was nice of him.

Here’s his post:

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We as Yankee fans have a propensity to be a little … let’s call it optimistic, at times. After all, we are the same fan base that was shouting from the rooftops that Melky Cabrera would develop into a .300 hitter at this time last year. With the franchise having spent an exorbitant amount of money this offseason, this is not a team devoid of holes. Alas, we as fans are resigned to talking about the impending “bounce-back seasons” that we are so entitled to. Names like Matsui, Cano and Posada come to mind. However, there is at least one instance that the thought of a “bounce back” actually has some validity. That would be in the curious case of Nick Swisher.

Coming off the worst statistical year of his career, Swisher ended 2008 on the bench for the Chicago White Sox. The so-called “free spirit” (is my use of quotations obnoxious yet?) was seemingly grounded from the outset by Ozzie Guillen, and Swisher’s game suffered. Forced to bat leadoff and play center field, two positions that he is uncomfortable to say the least, Swish grinded (ground??) through an atrocious year finishing with a line as ugly as Otis Nixon – .219/.332/.410. As ugly as the numbers were, though, there was much more than meets the eye concerning Swisher’s nightmarish 2008.

One thing that haunted Swisher throughout last season was bad luck. That’s right, bad luck. For all of the stupid, quirky things that baseball players do to avoid such streaks, Swisher must have walked under a ladder every day. Maybe he wasn’t hitting the ball as well? According to his line drive rate, nothing was wrong with Swisher’s game. He actually posted a higher rate of line drives, .204, than he had ever before in his career. The anomaly of Swisher’s 2008 lies in his BABIP – Batting Average on Balls Put in Play. His BABIP sat at .251, an alarmingly low percentage, considering how many balls he was hitting hard. Of all the players on the Yankees gearing up for that big rebound, Swisher has the best case.

The CHONE projections for 2009 have looked into their crystal ball and predicted a line of .247/.360/.454 for Swish. Numbers like that in the lower half of the Yankees order could make Swisher the linchpin to a dominant season offensively. What the Yankees have gained in Swisher is a patient, switch hitting, corner outfielder with proven 30 home run power. With expectations that are already higher than Joe Pepitone’s pompadour, he could serve as a saving grace in the event of a Posada/Matsui/Cano letdown.

So in short, we at The Fowl Balls are fans of Swisher, Personally, I love it every time the Yankees acquire the “wild man” with long hair and Sonny Crockett stubble and force him to dress like he works at Wachovia branch. Plus, Swisher replaces Jason Giambi as the “Yankee most likely to have a sex tape with Paris Hilton.”

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A little humor mixed with some CHONE. I love my readers. Coming tomorrow: Dan from Statistically Speaking.

The pinch hitter series is going to continue through Feb. 5 instead of finishing up tomorrow. So many bloggers responded that I wanted to give everybody a shot.

Bruce Springsteen aficionados know that the man doesn’t do many press conferences. The last one was in 1987. So check out what he had to say today at the Super Bowl.

The mighty E Street Band joined him on stage. Nils, Stevie, Max and Clarence answered some questions along with Bruce.

It’ll be a little weird seeing Bruce limited to a 12 minutes. My guess at the setlist:

Working On A Dream
The Rising
Glory Days
Born To Run (I had Thunder Road earlier in a moment of idiocy)

I still can’t believe the Yankees didn’t get Bruce to do the national anthem at the Stadium last season. He is a Yankees fan, after all. Maybe this year.

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There’s a great story on Bruce on the New York Times’ site by Jon Pareles. It’s about them rehearsing for Sunday and the new record.

There’s been a lot of talk about clubhouse chemistry in the wake of Joe Torre setting fire to the George Washington Bridge.

So now seems like a good time to bring up the recent actions of one Carsten Charles Sabathia.

Joba Chamberlain was quick to tell me the other day how much he has enjoyed getting to know CC over the last few weeks. The two had dinner in Manhattan the day before CC’s press conference and have kept in touch since.

Now comes word that Sabathia flew to Florida this week to take part in the golf tournament Derek Jeter hosts to raise money for the Turn 2 Foundation. You’ve also heard of Sabathia’s striking up a friendship with Johnny Damon and his plans to move to New Jersey full time with his family.

Back in the dark days of November and December, all we heard was how Sabathia didn’t want to play for the Yankees and would shun New York. Instead he is embracing the idea and working hard to ingratiate himself with his new teammates.

If Sabathia goes 13-12, none of this much matters. But after reading about how the Yankees treated A-Rod like Fredo, it’s worth noting that Sabathia appears to be fitting in just fine.