A.J. throws a good pitch
Posted by: Peter Abraham - Posted in Misc on Aug 11, 2009 
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During HOPE Week, the Yankees were involved with kids from Camp Sundown in upstate New York. Those are the kids with XP, a disease that makes sunlight deadly.
The Yankees held a carnival after a game and Burnett stayed until after 3 a.m. to take part.
For most players, that would have been enough. But Burnett was so impressed with Camp Sundown’s mission that he decided to organize a unique fundraiser.
As you know, the Yankees award a WWE championship belt to the player of the game after every win. The started out using a toy belt before getting a real one sent to them by wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler.
A.J. took the original belt and is having every teammate sign it. It will then be auctioned off with the proceeds going to Camp Sundown. Once I get information on the fundraiser, I’ll post it on the blog.
This is yet another example of how Burnett the person has surprised the Yankees. They knew what kind of pitcher he was but the kind of teammate he turned out to be has been a very pleasant surprise.
Thats great. AJ us truly a remarkable person.
And why spam the board with the “first” bs, how old are you?
AJ has finally found a home. Not Florida or Toronto, he is very comfortable as a Yankee.
HOPE Week continues to be a success! Nice job AJ!
That’s great stuff Pete. AJ really has been a great addition to the team, on and off the field.
This entire team is very likeable. In large part because they are more approachable than recent Yankee teams.
I think more fans have had contact with these guys than the last 6-7 Yankee teams.
Winning is nice but, its also nice to have a team of likeable guys you enjoy following. That’s what this group has become this season.
That’s so sweet of AJ. What a nice, thoughtful gesture.
At the start of the season AJ was the one signing I really didn’t quite like.
My g-d he has changed my mind.
He’s been great for the Yankees–not just as a player, but as a man.
The yankees have made a concerted effort to be more ‘likeable’ and ‘approachable’, from their very generous HOPE week and other community outreach, to the meeting fans in the great hall before games.
Great team. Outside of Cody Ransom there’s not really any players I want to DFA or remove or replace because I like them all.
Darn you, trisha.
I have tears in my eyes.
Great, great stuff from a great, great teammate.
I wish (hope) they do HOPE Week the first week of the season. The team seemed to play inspired baseball during that week. It would be a great way to kick off the season. Well, I could think of a really good way, but I don’t want to jinx the team.
Sabathia, Burnett & Teixiera
Gold, Jerry, gold!
this group has fun on and off the field and because of it seem so much less tense than in the past, great stuff
This is just great. Way to go, AJ. Jason Zillo deserves a promotion for the whole “Hope Week” concept as well.
Jason Zillo also seems to have straightened out ARod. There was a piece a few days ago about ARod’s new attitude and ARod mentioned him as helping out a lot.
Where did they get this guy Zillo? What a miracle worker!
Don’t pass that belt To Mitre!
It’ll lessen the value.
Repost:
Going into yesterday’s game the yankees had a little over a 60% chance of winning the game.
By the time Mitre lest the yankees probability of winning was down to around 40%.
In that period of time the offense had scored 4 runs in 4 innings.
So the offense scored 4 runs in the first 4 innings and the teams probability of winning falls.
You score 4 runs in 4 innings and you should have a probability of winning the game that’s up around 80%. Instead it was 40%.
Mitre’s pitching chopped their probability of winning that game by half.
And the team only had that much of a shot because Mitre got taken out of the game so quickly. That of course left a huge gulf of where to get innings from to clean up the mess of blown leads.
Aceves isn’t really a regular bull pen pitcher anymore.
He’s essentially evolved into Mitre’s caddy.
Mitre gives them no length or quality. Aceves comes in and pitches much, much better but in much lower leverage situations than the one’s mitre has because Mitre’s pitched poorly before Aceves.
It’s true that most teams have bad #5 starters.
But the reason why is that they just can’t come up with a decent guy to slot in.
The yankees have one in Aceves and the should use him because he’d be a significant marginal advantage.
Here’s the thing – if most teams have an awful #5 and your team can come up with a good #5 you’ve just generated an enormous benefit for you club.
The difference between CC and Josh Beckett or Matt Garza is small. Those guys cancel each other out as the respective teams cycle through their rotations.
The difference between Aceves and say Tazawa or Penny – is likely to be very significant. It’s a considerable marginal advantage for the team.
People focus much too much on the bull pen.
Phil Hughes has been one of the yankees 5 best pitchers this year.
The yankees swept 4 games from the Sox. And phil hughes threw 0.2 inning over 4 games. 0.2 innings out of the 42 innings they played against the sox.
Hughes is going to stay in the pen this year. Fine.
But this team would win more games with Aceves in the rotation than they would with Aceves in the pen, especially when Aceves has evolved into Mitre’s mop up man out of necessity.
Say, I just read the article on pitching coach Alan Jaegar. It was over on the yankees.com website.
Jaegar makes a case for long-throwing, as a was to build arm strength and prevent injuries, with distances of up to 350 feet.
SJ, randy, anybody out there – any thoughts? I’ve got zero personal experience in this, but I am curious about the differing philosophies in how to raise young pitchers.
what a guy
Nothing makes me want to root for a player more than knowing he has more than just great talent — but personality and a kind heart to match.
AJ Burnett goes toe-to-toe with Boston’s ace; starts a new tradition of pieing the walk-off heros; and brings everyone together to sign a belt to raise money for a cause most people hadn’t heard of previously.
And to cap it off, he at least had the decency to be honest about his reasons for coming here. He admitted straight away that the money played a large role in signing with the Yankees. And while he clearly doesn’t only go out on the mound to collect a paycheck, his straightforward nature gives us a lot to have faith in in light of recent revelations and press conferences with certain other ballplayers.
I am honored, as always, to be a Yankee fan.
CB,
Agreed. But at this late juncture don’t you think it’s unlikely that they put Aceves in the rotation? I think they’ll keep him in the bullpen and prime him for the postseason bullpen.
If they were going to put him in the rotation, they would’ve done it coming out of the break. He went 65 pitches in minny, he could’ve stretched out over the break and been ready for 80-100 pitches in his first post-ASB start. They should’ve done it. If Wang comes back, you just stick him back in the pen.
If mitre doesn’t work out, they have Gaudin to fall back on.
But agreed, Aceves as a caddy is a total waste of his talents.
cb,
aceves started a game and got a sore shoulder. do you think that the yankees have the time to ‘stretch him out?’
that said, your statistical analysis is unbelievable. do you do this professionally?
I want that belt!!! I hate my lack of money!!!!!
AJ is the man
love to see this type of stuff
I’ll say it again, the “new” Yankees at least have guys you can root for above them just being Yankees. CC, Swish, AJ, Tex are a different breed from Sheff, Randy Johnson, amongst others.
Cashman has made a lot of nice moves this year and I would have to credit Hal with quietly improving the Yankees image across the board.
Wow, CB, sounds like a pretty damn convincing argument to me.
Now, of course, you’ll be ripped to shreds by the usual suspects.
You know on Saturday after the Ortiz presser and we were all pissed I E-mailed a letter to Bob Raissman.
I told him that I agreed with his column about YES and their anticipated coverage of Ortiz and I asked him if he felt it was worthy to explore the other side of the equation in particular the way ESPN had covered the Ortiz P.C. as opposed to their coverage of ARod in Feb.
I also told him about “boli, boli, boli ”
Well today he delivered in a big way.
http://www.nydailynews.com/spo.....ortiz.html
Good for AJ. It is great to see pro athletes being positive role models, while enjoying themselves.
I get a kick out of seeing the guys in the post game interviews w/ the belt draped over them.
I don’t think Aceves is Mitre’s mop-up man per se. Yesterday’s game was winnable going into the 7th so Girardi made the decision to use Ace to give the team a chance. Had it been a blow-out game, I’m sure Gaudin would have been used.
Thanks for the story Pete, this is a great one. This is a fairly easy thing for AJ to do, but it’s going to make a big difference in these kids’ lives. Athletes are in such a good position to help others, I’m always glad to hear about one doing just that.
Mo
Pete has said time and time again anyone who pulls that garbage will be banned. period end of story.
That said this is the best group of guys this team has had in years. Most if not all are likable. There is no Sheff, or Randy on this team.
We scored 4 runs in 4 innings yesterday.
Girardi figured that if ghe kept the game at 5-4, we could win. This offense in this ballpark had 5 innings to score atleast 1 run and didn’t do it. It’s not like Mitre took us out of the game and gave up 8 runs in 2 innings or something. The game was there to be won… for 5 innings and we didn’t capitalize.
He’s not great by any stretch but he isin’t the reason we lost.
Guys: Please don’t respond to the “first” trolls. I’ll take care of it.
AJ is awesome. I keep finding new things to love about him on and off the field.
U the police now?
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no, it’s ‘F the police”. Get it right.
How has MLB responded the Yankees calls to make Hope Week a league wide thing?
It is a shame they didn’t get much national coverage for it. Ask any one of those people that attended and I bet they are still touched with how the Yankees and the players treated them.
Some great news!!
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -New York Yankees pitcher Ian Kennedy has thrown off a mound for the first time since undergoing surgery May 12 to remove an aneurysm from beneath his right biceps.
Kennedy threw 25 pitches during a bullpen session Tuesday. The right-hander says everything was fine and he would work off a mound again Friday.
The 24-year-old Kennedy was pitching for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre when he experienced numbness in his pitching hand. He hopes to pitch in a minor league game before the season ends.
The surgery was performed by Dr. George Todd, who operated on former Yankees pitcher David Cone’s aneurysm in 1996.
http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/s.....rk_Yankees
“Girardi figured that if ghe kept the game at 5-4, we could win.”
Or you could have started Aceves and had him pitch 5 innings. At that point the team would have been up 4-0 or 4-1, most likely. The Jays weren’t close to hitting aceves.
The yankees are up 4-0 or 4-1 after 5 their probability of winning that game would be 80% or higher as they could have used Robertson, Hughes, Bruney and Mo to close out the game.
Aceves pitched nearly as long as the “starter” did last night.
But because Mitre had give up 5 runs in less than 5 innings and blown 2 leads, those innings Aceves pitched weren’t nearly as valuable as those Mitre pitched – especially the innings mitre pitched with a lead or tied.
As always, there were several reasons why the team lost. But by far the biggest was Mitre and it wasn’t even close.
Thanks for the update, Jennifer. Good news, indeed.
Godspeed, IPK.
When did “The King” give them a real belt? I must of missed that. Jerry Lawler is definitely a legend and to have a championship belt from him is pretty cool. Any info on what belt it is Pete? Is it one of his old ones? Is it one WWE is no longer using? Is it a reproduction of a WWE belt?
CB, you’re statistical analysis is interesting but really is depending on nothing more than assumptions. Sure, we can sit here and say “well if Ace was in we would have been up 4-1″ but the fact of the matter is thats not what happened. Even if Ace did start and come out after 5 innings with a 4-1 lead as youre sure he would have, who knows what would have happened in the next 4 innings depending on who came out of the pen. A better question even would be how would the use of those (at least?) 3 pitchers out of the pen effected our chances of winning tonight or tomorrow?
Buster Olney had this little nugget today:
“Talked with some rival talent evaluators Monday who are now convinced the Rays will be taking offers on Upton this winter to take advantage of his value while it’s still relatively high. Upton is incredibly talented and has the talent to be a Gold Glove center fielder, but he has regressed offensively, and the fact that he griped about his place in the lineup when he’s been batting under .250 the whole year doesn’t speak well of his personal accountability.”
He is having an abysmal offensive season, but his D is first-rate. I’d be surprised if they move him or Carl Crawford, but there have been rumblings about both now.
It’s definitely shaping up to be another wild hot stove off-season.
**throwing out a preemptive ‘don’t kill me for mentioning the off-season’.
# Peter Abraham August 11th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Guys: Please don’t respond to the “first” trolls. I’ll take care of it.
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Gotcha, Pete.
Burnett should wait until the end of the season to auction off that belt. If the Yankees with the WS it could be world 7 figures.
Great job AJ!
I have been a YANKEE fan for over 50 years. This team has not won anything yet but I still Love them. The team is coming together and will be conditioned to play in OCT. Last weekend was great.Fear in the faces of the Sox’s players just like the old days when the YANK’s where the Team to beat. We are back.
That link to Chad Gaudin’s girlfriend was very interesting. It’s a site that shows the current or ex girlfriend/wife of sports figures. Derek Jeter was listed at least 7 or 8 times as having dated this or that girl. Not sure how much of that is accurate. I will tell you this – baseball players do not have trouble getting attractive girls to date or marry them. I wonder why that is.