The LoHud Yankees Blog

Here are how the minor-league teams will start their seasons:

Scranton: Jason Johnson will face Lehigh Valley tonight.

Trenton: Eric Hacker started Wednesday night in a 5-3 loss against Binghamton. He allowed one run over 5.1 innings

Tampa: Jason Stephens will start at Lakeland tonight

Charleston: Andrew Brackman will start tonight against Rome. This will be Brackman’s debut with the Yankees.

I realize that many of you are reading this from your iPhones and Blackberrys as you line up on the George Washington Bridge to plunge into the icy depths of the Hudson River.

But before you do, the LoHud Yankees Blog Research Staff looked far back in baseball history and discovered that is possible to lose the first two games of the season and then win the World Series. It took several seconds to find a team that had done so, that team being the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies.

In total seriousness, calm down. Listen to your captain.

“It’s two games,” Derek Jeter said after the game. “Just two games.”

YANKEES (0-1)
Jeter SS
Damon LF
Teixeira 1B
Matsui DH
Posada C
Cano 2B
Nady RF
Ransom 3B
Gardner CF

Pitching: RHP Chien-Ming Wang.

ORIOLES (1-0)
Roberts 2B
Jones CF
Markakis RF
Huff 1B
Mora 3B
Scott DH
Pie LF
Zaun C
Izturis SS

Pitching: RHP Koji Uehara.

Chien-Ming Wang (8-2, 4.07 in 2008) vs. the Baltimore hitters.

Koji Uehara (6-5, 3.81 for the Yomiuri Giants in 2008) has never faced any of the New York hitters.

IT’S POSSIBLE: According to extensive research done by LoHud Yankees Blog statisticians, it is possible for a team to recover from an 0-1 start and still make the playoffs.

OLD FRIENDS: According to the Elias Sports Bureau, SS Derek Jeter, C Jorge Posada and RHP Mariano Rivera became the first trio of Yankees to play together in each of 15 straight seasons (1995-2009) with Monday’s season-opening loss at Baltimore.

INTERNATIONAL FLAVA: The 2009 Yankees Opening Day roster featured players hailing from seven different countries (Dominican Republic, Japan, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Taiwan and the United States). Among Major League teams, only Atlanta (eight) has more countries represented on their roster. The Yankees’ total of 12 foreign-born players is tied with the Mets and Red Sox for the second-most in the Majors behind Seattle’s 15.

(The two previous notes were lifted off the Yankees’ notes)

WALKING MAN: Robinson Cano walked twice on Monday. It was only the 13th time in his career he has done that.

Sam Borden wrote a column for SNY.tv on Cano.

IF LOVING YOU IS WANG, I DON’T WANT TO BE RIGHT: CMW is 23-8 after a loss in his career. He is 3-1, 5.13 in eight starts against the Orioles and 2-0, 4.20 in four starts at Camden Yards.

More to come later.

UPDATE, 4:07 p.m.: CC said the mysterious heating pad he uses is to – get this – stay warm on cold days. Shocking.

UPDATE, 5:31 p.m.: Talked to A.J. Burnett, who lives 30 minutes from Camden Yards. He said he expects to be a little anxious before his first start as a Yankee tomorrow. “There will be some butterflies floating around in there,” he said. “There better be.”

CC threw in the bullpen today and worked on his fastball command. Contrary to some speculation, he is not injured. He simply was overthrowing and didn’t have command of his fastball. “I’m going to get it right,” he said. “It was one start.”

UPDATE, 5:40 p.m.: Here is the first part of Joe Girardi’s pre-game. He talks about Uehara, Burnett, CC, Joba and some other stuff.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I was going to upload the A.J. Burnett interview but Nick Swisher was blaring In the Air Tonight in the background.

UPDATE, 7:24 p.m.: We’re underway in Baltimore. It’s 54 degrees and the Wanger is already on the hot seat, having allowed consecutive doubles by Jones, Markakis and Huff. It’s 2-0 O’s. Let the panic begin.

UPDATE, 7:42 p.m.: It’s 2-0 Baltimore in the middle of the second inning. I don’t see any way possible for the Yankees to win this game or any other game this season. 0-162. Unless there’s a forfeit. Than 1-161.

UPDATE, 7:54 p.m.: Teixeira’s career as a Yankee:

F-8
1-3
BB
P6
FC
P-5
P-6

Hey, he did hit one ball out of the infield. It’s not that bad.

UPDATE, 8:12 p.m.: The Yankees have played 12 innings this season and have left at least one runner on base in every one of them.

UPDATE, 8:36 p.m: Wang got crushed. Four doubles, a homer four singles, three walks and it’s 7-1 Baltimore. He was even worse than Sabathia.

Yankee starters have managed to go eight innings without a strikeout. That’s hard to do.

UPDATE, 8:44 p.m.: The combined line of the two starters this season:

8 innings, 17 hits, 13 earned runs, 8 walks, 0 strikeouts. That’s a 14.63 ERA, Yikes.

UPDATE, 8:51 p.m.: You know the bad news. Here is the good news: The last Yankees team to start 0-2 were the 1998 Yankees. They proceeded to win 114 of the remaining 160 games and rolled to the World Series. So maybe this is a good sign.

UPDATE,10:00 p.m.: No quit in these Yankees. Now Teixeira (0 for 9) gets another at-bat to try and keep the game going.

This release from the Athletics:

The Oakland A’s claimed right-handed pitcher Dan Giese off waivers from the New York Yankees and optioned him to Triple-A Sacramento, the club announced today. To clear a spot on the 40-man roster, the A’s designated right-handed pitcher Chris Schroder for assignment.

Giese was 0-1 with two saves and a 6.48 ERA in nine relief appearances with the Yankees this spring and was designated for assignment on Saturday. He went 1-3 with a 3.53 ERA in 20 games, three starts, over two stints with New York last year. The 31-year old right-hander held opponents to a .232 batting average, including .209 against left-handers. Giese spent the balance of the 2008 season at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre where he was 4-2 with a 1.98 ERA in 13 games, 10 starts. He made his Major League debut with San Francisco in 2007 and is 1-5 with a 3.76 ERA in 28 career appearances, three starts.

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Good luck to Dan, he’s a good guy and hopefully he’ll get another shot in the majors.

Time to get all Peter King on you here. I went to the worst Subway ever in Baltimore for lunch. Ever.

Walk in the door and there are 15 people in line. So I wait and when I get up to the counter, I place my order.

“Six-inch turkey on wheat with swiss.”

“No wheat,” the guy tells me.

“OK, how about Italian?”

“OK. No turkey.”

“Ham?”

“No ham.”

“What do you have?”

Turns out they had meatball, chicken breast, tuna salad, salami, American cheese and some sort of weird other cheese. That was it. This was at 12:45 p.m.

So chicken breast on Italian it was. They had Diet Coke at least. Looks like I’ll have to find somewhere else tomorrow.

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Steve Lombardi of Was Watching.com did an interview with me and asked some good questions.

NBC Sports on MSNBC.com had an interview with me as well.

This final bit of shameless self-promotion: I’ll be doing an interview with SNY’s The Wheelhouse this afternoon.

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This from YES:

The YES Network, the most-watched regional sports network in the country for the past six years, and Verizon, the only major provider that delivers all-digital TV service over an advanced all-fiber network straight to customers’ homes, have reached a multiyear video-on-demand agreement.

The agreement will provide Verizon’s FiOS TV digital subscribers throughout New York state and in north and central New Jersey access for the first time to telecasts of New York Yankees games and other YES programming on demand.

The YES on-demand programming will be available beginning Wednesday (April 8). This makes Verizon the first distributor to offer Yankees games on demand.

Everybody who didn’t do anything stupid in their early 20s, please step forward.

Anybody?

Seriously, is there anybody?

You couldn’t buy beer on Sundays around UMass when I was in school, so we used to drive to Vermont to buy it. And being 19, we drank some of the beer on the way back. It was stupid as stupid can be. We were lucky nothing happened.

Joba Chamberlain wasn’t so lucky. He was speeding in Nebraska one night in October and had too much to drink. He got caught, he admitted it and he was placed on probation and lost his license.

A video of his being pulled over made the rounds yesterday because there wasn’t much else going on. Now the usual cast of hang-wringing moralists are at again. Or making a big deal of the fact that he told the state trooper that New Yorkers are rude and Yogi Berra is short.

In other news, water is wet and that big yellow thing in the sky is the sun.

People wonder why newspapers are dying. Probably because they can’t come up with anything better than commenting on a video that was on the internet 24 hours earlier of an event that happened six months ago. How to be topical.

This is not to make light of drunk driving. It’s a serious crime and if Joba does it again, the team should do everything in its power to punish him. But enough already. Stop letting The Smoking Gun drive the news.

Now today Joba will have to say New Yorkers are sweet as can be and he’s really, really sorry he did it. Just like he said in October, November, December, January, February and March.

Makes you long for the days when the big question was whether he should be a reliever.

OK, that’s not true. Anything is better that big bowl of idiocy.

There have been two games played at the new Yankee Stadium, far too few to pass any judgement on the place and what it will be like for fans. The reason they played the two games against the Cubs was to iron out all the details and problems, after all.

My opinion — and this seems to be the general impression — is that it’s a marvelous stadium.

But based on e-mails that have been coming in by the dozens, there are some odd quirks about the Stadium that the team probably needs to address.

Let’s review:

• The net behind home plate: Let’s see, the Yankees own a good chunk of YES. The success of the network accounts for a large percentage of the team’s worth. So how in the world did they build a stadium that ruined an important camera angle? The excuse du jour is that the net was constructed with the safety of the fans in mind. How about cutting down the height of the net and having it stretch over the seats as it did at the old stadium. Would that work?

I have no idea. But it’s embarrassing that a team that owns a television network built a stadium that is not conducive to televising games. Somebody really botched that up. They need to get it fixed.

• The obstructed view seats in the bleachers: It was not the best idea to plunk a sports bar down in the middle of the bleachers and create hundreds of seats that can’t see either right field or left field. The team has tried to remedy that. But the televisions placed there to compensate aren’t angled correctly.

• The huge black curtain on the field level: Behind home plate on the field level is this giant black shower curtain. I noticed it because it’s right near the press gate. It’s like the Wizard of Oz. Apparently it’s supposed to provide a backdrop for infielders to see the ball off the bat. But given how they’ve slavishly catered to the wealthy, you have to wonder whether it’s to keep the great unwashed from peering down at the good seats. Regardless, it looks silly.

• The out-of-town scoreboard: Is it too much to ask that a stadium have one scoreboard dedicated to other games? Just two teams, the score and the inning. Save the little diagrams. Just give us the scores. Having a board rotating four games at a time is not good enough.

• Retired numbers: They’re hidden away in Monument Park, tucked underneath the sports bar. How about you leave them there but also display the numbers somewhere else where people can see them without having to stand in line? There has to be some place in that giant park where this can be done. I can’t think of a single park or arena where the retired numbers aren’t on display for all to see.

The Stadium will change over the days, months and years to come as the Yankees correct what didn’t work in the first place Hopefully they take a very proactive approach to some of these issues.

Mike Ashmore, who has the must-read Thunder Thoughts blog, has full coverage of Trenton’s media day festivities.

Mike has audio and video. If you’re interested in the prospects, it’s well worth your time.

Chien-Ming Wang returns to the mound tonight and an old foe will be pitching for the Orioles.

They’re started dismantling the old Yankee Stadium, stripping out the grass and now they’re taking down the outfield walls. This part of the wall had very little wear and tear as Bobby Abreu rarely touched it.

They also knocked part of a wall on 161st St. That could be where the trucks will roll in once they really get going. It’s going to be weird to be walking into the new place while the old place comes down across the street.

Thanks to WCBS.com for the photo. See more on their site.

(Thanks to Chris for tipping me off about the photos.)