The LoHud Yankees Blog

The Yankees will play the dreaded Red Sox in Fort Myers tonight at 7:05 p.m.

NESN has the game and there will be a simulcast on MLB Network. The game is also on WRKO in Boston, 680 on the AM dial.

To whatever degree I can, I’ll update the blog. But with a night game, I have newspapers deadlines to meet and it gets a little tricky.

Chien-Ming Wang will face Tim Wakefield.

UPDATE, 2:22 p.m.: MLB contacted me. The game will be blacked out in the New York area. YES has the ability to request that and they did. I’m going to contact YES to ask them why they did this.

Brett Gardner changed his approach at the plate last season and it continues to pay off this spring.

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A reader from Japan sent a link to this story about a rescued statue and a long-standing baseball curse.

Seems like Bernie Williams got into a beef in Puerto Rico.

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I have a Twitter account that I opened a few months back. I’ve been trying to determine how it could help the blog. Now that I have an iPhone, I can blog on the go. So I don’t see how Twitter updates would change much.

But a reader, Steven, suggested I use a free service called Twitter Feed. Via my RSS feed, I can broadcast the URLs of a new blog update using Twitter.

So if you’re all about Twitter, start following PeteAbe and you’ll get blog updates that way if you want.

If anybody else has any good ideas, please feel free to clue me in. They didn’t have the fancy interweb when I was in journalism school and I’m sort of stumbling around in the dark on this stuff. But we’re getting there.

Are you watching the WBC? I’ve only seen bits and pieces on television.

I think a worldwide tournament is a good way to promote the game and it’s needed. But there is not a good time for such a tournament, that’s the problem. So you have games like yesterday, when Davey Johnson used eight pitchers against Venezuela because the game didn’t really count.

How are we supposed to take that seriously?

Here’s an answer: Seed the 16 teams like an NCAA tournament regional. Play best-of-three in the first round and the single-game elimination after that until the final, which would be best-of-three. Every game matters, people follow the bracket, you have a compelling tournament.

Potential seeding for this year:

1. Japan
2. Dominican
3. USA
4. Cuba
5. Venezuela
6. Puerto Rico
7. Korea
8. Mexico
9. Canada
10. Australia
11. Netherlands
12. Italy
13. Panama
14. Taiwan
15. China
16. South Africa

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Thanks to Nick, who suggested I go to Barbers Inc. on North Dale Mabry to get a haircut. Great place. Barbers Inc. is a cool place. There are skateboard decks on the walls, good music on the speakers and a tattoo shop in the back. So I owe you one, Nick

When a player has 0-3 years of service time, there is no bargaining for a contract. You are guaranteed only the minimum — which is $400,000 this year.

The Yankees, like most teams, have a salary scale for 0-3 players based on service time rather than performance. In most cases, the players just accept the offer and sign. In some cases, a player will refuse and the team renews his deal at a figure they set. That’s what happened with Joba Chamberlain last season.

The 0-3 players have two salaries in their contracts, one if they’re in the majors and another if they are in the minors. Minor-league salaries can be as low as $32,600 or significantly higher depending on how much major-league experience the player has.

Here is what the Yankees did for their 0-3 players:

Cody Ransom $455,100
Joba Chamberlain: $433,000
Jose Veras: $432,975
Edwar Ramirez: $422,450
Dan Giese $422,250
Brett Gardner $414,000
Ian Kennedy: $408,925
Phil Hughes: $407,650
David Robertson: $406,825
Alfredo Aceves: $406,750
Jonathan Albaladejo: $403,075
Phil Coke: $403,300
Francisco Cervelli: $400,700
Wilkin De La Rosa: $400,000
Anthony Claggett: $400,000
Michael Dunn: $400,000
Christian Garcia: $400,000
Eric Hacker: $400,000
Steven Jackson: $400,000

You can watch a replay of today’s live chat on the Mogulus Channel.

It’s streaming there or is available on demand. Just click the “on demand” button. Thanks to everybody who participated in the live video chat.

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I mentioned this on the blog. If you are interested in attending a Triple-A Scranton game with some fellow readers, check out this post for details and how to sign up.

We had a great time last season.

As in 30 minutes. If you’re at work, go on anyway. The market is over 7,000 again, so your boss is out having a huge lunch to celebrate.

Go to our our Mogulus Channel to participate and have your Yankees questions ready.

Thanks.

CC Sabathia has fit in well with the Yankees. Meanwhile, he had to shake off a rough day against the Tigers.

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· The Yankees are off today, one of their two days off this spring. They’re shutting down the operation. That means no side sessions, no open batting cages, etc. Joe Girardi said he thinks his coaches could use the day off, too.

· Meanwhile, I think the clock is ticking in terms of a new infielder being added to the roster. If the season started tomorrow, Cody Ransom and Angel Berroa would be on the roster. Yikes.

The Yankees have trade chips. Juan Miranda could platoon at first base for somebody. Kei Igawa can pitch in the NL West. They have a surplus of fringy pitchers. Somewhere out there is a player who can be had on the relative cheap who is better than Angel Berroa, if not Ransom.

· The “Joba to the pen” crew is at it again. Here is all I ask of them: Prove to me that 200 innings is less than 70 and we can talk. I want my best pitchers trying to get 600 outs, not 210. It is not really complicated. You know who would make a good pinch hitter? Albert Pujols, he’s a really good hitter. But you want him up four times, not once.

Mariano Rivera is certainly one of the best pitchers on the team. He’s also a one-pitch pitcher who can get six outs tops before he tires. He was a starter once and had 5.94 ERA. Joba is better than that.

· The tabloid editor who wrote the web headline “Sabathia already has fat in fire” should be ashamed of himself. It was Sabathia’s second start of spring training, try and understand the sport a little bit. Just a little. It’s no wonder newspapers are dying and people equate the media with used-car salesmen. Headlines like that are embarrassing.

· To the (literally) dozens of people who have e-mailed: I have no idea when single-game seats go on sale. I have to assume it’ll be before April 16. I tried asking twice to no avail. When I find out, I will let you know.

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Go to our our Mogulus Channel at noon today for our latest Live Video Chat.

Bored at lunch time? Be here tomorrow for another Spring Training live chat. I’ll be here for a while answering your questions.

Go to our our Mogulus Channel to submit your questions via our moderator, Susie the Sports Editor. It’ll be fun, promise.

It’s easy to look at a box from today’s game and say, “Wow, Nick Swisher is hitting .111. He sucks.”

However … the games against Team USA and Team Canada do not count in the spring stats for reasons I am not clear on. The Excitable Boy was 1 for 3 in those two games with two walks and two RBI.

Beyond that, most teams invite every pitcher over high A ball with a pulse to spring training. In a WBC year, you get even more scrubs mixed in. So somebody could be hitting .400 against pitchers who would need a ticket to get into a big-league park. Somebody else could be hitting .111 against six aces.

Joe Girardi said it well yesterday: you can’t look at the numbers in spring training, you have to look at the work. If a good player is swinging the bat well, it doesn’t really matter whether the ball falls in. History tells you it will.

The same is true of a pitcher. CC Sabathia doesn’t have control of his cutter yet. That’s a pitch he often uses with two strikes. For him, that pitch usually comes when he has two or three starts left in the spring. So he throws a four-seam fastball for a strike and — ka-boom — Gary Sheffield drills one. Sheff doesn’t get that pitch on April 27.

“I’ve been doing this a while, I know what will happen,” CC said. “You go through these things in spring training.”

Had you been on Field 2 at 9:40 a.m today, you would have seen Mariano Rivera barely able to throw strikes. John Rodriguez was laughing as he danced out of the way.

But Mo has another bullpen session on Saturday, then a game on Monday and then more games after that. Come April 6 in Baltimore, he’ll be ready.

So don’t look at the numbers and miniscule sample sizes. Read the comments, watch the swings and scan the boxes to see who was pitching.

There’s a reason spring training is so long. If they ran the players out there for real games after two weeks, it would be pretty ugly.

A few things here at the end of the day …

Brian Cashman spoke to Alex Rodriguez on Tuesday night while Joe Girardi received a voice mail from the third baseman. A-Rod remains in Colorado rehabbing after his hip surgery. The Yankees are not getting daily updates on his rehab at this point as he is in the beginning stages of it.

Edwar Ramirez, who threw BP today, is scheduled to pitch on Saturday.

Nick Swisher was 0 for 3 today. But at least he had a sense of humor about it. “Give me some of those burritos,” he said to the clubhouse attendant. “I need to feed that village of people I left on base.”

Mark Melancon threw another scoreless inning. Here is what he has done in 5 games this spring:

5 innings, 3 hits, 1 run, 0 earned runs, 2 walks, 4 strikeouts.

Every indication is that Jose Veras, Phil Coke, Edwar Ramirez and Dave Robertson are the main candidates for three spots in the bullpen. But Melancon is positioning himself to be the first reliever called up when the need arises.

Thanks to everybody for reading during the game. Don’t forget, we’ll have a live video chat at noon tomorrow. Hope to see you then.