The LoHud Yankees Blog

These are slow days in MLB land, especially since it seems that everyone I know is either focused on this or this. Worry not – baseball will be front and center soon enough.

A few random nuggets for you this afternoon:

• Johnny Damon’s saga is slowly becoming comical. Word out of Detroit now seems to be that the Tigers are mildly interested, though that’s hardly a guarantee. Most interesting to me is that Scott Boras (as well as most agents) will often refuse to identify specific teams that may or may not be interested in their clients. Suddenly, however, Boras is openly discussing Damon and the Tigers – a move that could be emblematic of the desperate nature of Damon’s situation.

A year ago, Bobby Abreu left the Yankees and – after waiting and waiting and waiting – signed with the Angels for a fraction of his former contract on Feb. 12. What’s that adage about history repeating itself?

• The Yankees made some changes in their minor-league managing ranks. Former Charleston manager Torre Tyson has been promoted to manage the Tampa Yankees and RiverDogs hitting coach Greg Colbrunn will get his first managing job in Charleston. One would assume that Colbrunn won’t often be bringing his World Series ring to work.

• Like baseball cards? I never really got into them much (though I did like the chewing gum), but apparently Upper Deck is being sued by MLB. Money, money, money.

• Great responses to Jeff’s tech post. We’re trying our best to make this site the best both in content and ease-of-use, and we absolutely want all your feedback. Jeff’s e-mail is jmarx@lohud.com and hopefully we’ll have him check in on here with some kind regularity (monthly?) so that he can address any common questions/concerns.

Hey everybody,

I have talked to the guys and they agreed to let me post on here once in a while to talk about the blog and some of its technical aspects. I have been privileged to be a part of this amazing ride known as the Lohud Yankees Blog for the last three years. I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your fierce loyalty to this blog and your team.

I’m looking forward to seeing how it progresses as we move into a new baseball season. The growth and participation of this community has been nothing short of astonishing. So much so that I have spent many nights keeping an eye on an overloaded server, and trying to stop the blog from crashing. After exhausting many options, we have finally found a host that can scale to the meet the needs of our traffic spikes (excuse while I find some wood to knock on). That is a very nice problem to have. There are very few blogs out there that have 300+ comments on posts … let alone over 1000. You guys should be proud of yourselves.

It is definitely not my intention to fix something that is clearly not broken, but there are a couple things coming down the pike of which I wanted to make you guys aware. I figure now is a good time to test things out and I’ll be looking forward to your feedback. After all, it is your blog.

Threaded commenting
This will definitely change the dynamic of the blog, but it’s something that I think you guys will like. We’ll give you the opportunity to reply to each others comments directly, which should lead to some more interesting and targeted discussions. To see an example of this, check out our friends over at River Ave. Blues.

Facebook Connect/Retweet me
You’ll be able to log in with your facebook account and post under your name. This is an interesting technology I have wanted to experiment with for a while. I’m also going to implement a button that makes it easier to retweet posts on your twitter account.

Audio clips now work on smartphones
You can now listen to audio clips that Sam and Chad post on the iPhone and most web-enabled smartphones. If you want to test this out, navigate your phone over to this link for some audio and some pleasant memories. This still won’t work on a lot of old school flip phones. Time for an upgrade!

Tagging
This is something we got away from a while back, but I have been talking to Chad about getting our tagging game back on.

My brief thoughts on the Yankees
Relax, Johnny Damon is not critical to the success the 2010 NY Yankees.

I know a lot of you guys out there are technology people so I would welcome any and all suggestions regarding WordPress or anything else. My email address is jmarx@lohud.com. I expect I’ll get a lot of email after this post and I promise to read each and every one. I will do my best to respond to each one in a timely fashion.

Now, get back to work!

When I read this morning’s guest post, my reaction sequence went something like this:

Jeter the best Yankee ever? No way!

(Pause)

Well, maybe ….

(Pause)

Naaaaaahhhhh.

That said, I think the Brothers Kaftan (no relation to the Brothers Molina) make some interesting points, particularly with regard to the depth of the talent in baseball these days and the off-field challenges that players like Jeter have to face. The truth is, though, that in much the same way it’s difficult (if not impossible) to compare Hall of Famers across different generations, it’s also difficult to figure out which Yankee had it tougher/overcame more/got the most out of their talent as you try to determine who was the best. That’s usually why I don’t bother trying; it’s just a futile pursuit.

Ultimately, I’ll say this: Derek Jeter may not be the “best” Yankee ever but he’s certainly one of the most important, and he’s also provided some incredible highlights over the years. Since we can’t seem to agree on where, exactly, he fits in the Yankee pantheon, I thought it’d be nice if we could also disagree on what his most memorable plays are. Here, in reverse order, are one man’s thoughts on the Captain’s most memorable on-field moments:

3. The Face Plant: I vividly remember walking into the cramped and dingy visitors clubhouse at Shea Stadium the day after this play and seeing Jeter gingerly getting dressed with a face the color of a mailbox. He took seven stitches in his chin and had bruises that A-Rod described as “like he got knocked out by Mike Tyson.”

One of the more telling quotes about Jeter’s play came from teammate Gary Sheffield, who was asked if he thought other players would have put their bodies at risk the way Jeter did. “Guys at the end of the roster, maybe,” Sheffield said. “Guys who are trying to stay on the team.”

How about legends?

“Not many I know,” Sheffield said.

2. Mr. November: Jeter’s reputation as one of the most “clutch” players ever is one of those things that can be almost impossible to live up to all the time. Does Jeter hit well in every postseason series? Certainly not. But he does have a .321 average in the World Series and he has delivered some of the biggest hits in Yankees playoff history.

This one, in particular, sometimes get lost (if that’s possible) in the Tino/Brosius magic, as well as the fact that the Yankees went on to lose the 2001 World Series. If you were to ask Jeter, he’d absolutely say it meant nothing since they didn’t win in the end. But either way, it was one of those moments. And the camera shot of Curt Schilling as Jeter rounds the bases is absolutely priceless.

1. The Flip Play: A few things I like about this play:

• It’s a fielding play, which is rare in baseball’s catalog of “greatest plays ever.”

• It happened on the road, which means that instead of a huge Stadium ovation, it was met by the sounds of a) half the crowd going absolutely silent; and b) the other half saying to each other, “Did that really just happen?”

• It involved so many “ifs.” Think about it: Jeter being in that spot only means something IF Shane Spencer overthrows every cutoff man in the area code and IF Jeremy Giambi isn’t exactly speeding and IF he’s able to make an on-target flip and IF Jorge Posada makes a perfect swipe tag (an often overlooked element of the play) and IF Giambi doesn’t slide (something most of us still can’t believe) and IF plate umpire Kerwin Danley sees the bang-bang play correctly.

In other words, there were at least six contingencies – if not several more – that needed to go a certain way for Jeter’s positioning to be valuable. A guy could go his whole career and never be needed there, but Jeter was there anyway. And on that one day, in that one game, at that one time and for that one moment, it all broke just the way it needed to break.

And Jeter made the most memorable play of his career.

(So far.)

(Obviously that was a joke before about another guest post on instant replay. Here’s the real one …)

Now up in the Pinch Hitters series are brothers Chris and Trevor Kaftan, who wrote about Derek Jeter’s place in Yankees history.

Chris and Trevor are third-generation Yankee fans. Their grandfather immigrated to the Bronx from Ireland in the 1930s and followed DiMaggio on his radio. Their mother grew up idolizing The Mick. Chris and Trevor started blogging in February 2008.

Chris, 31, is the director of curriculum & instruction at a private school in Maryland and frequents games at Camden Yards or Yankee Stadium. His daughter is now the fourth generation Yankee fan in the family. Trevor, 26, is a project consultant for Sears in upstate New York.

———

Derek Jeter is the best Yankee that ever lived.

Yes. Better than Ruth or Gehrig. Better than DiMaggio or Mantle. Not to trivialize their stats or their abilities, despite the records that Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio set, Jeter has had to deal with things that the Babe and the Iron Horse didn’t. Jeter has cemented himself in pinstripe history.

There’s no argument that today’s game is a much more difficult game than the one that Yankee legends played in. It features stronger and faster athletes and power pitchers who can prevent hitters from numbers that we don’t see as often such as .400 averages.

Jeter has had to contend with a 24/7 media, with paparazzi following him and his girlfriends and reporting about his personal life in addition to his play on the field. Yes, DiMaggio and Mantle had to deal with reporters writing about their personal lives but it stopped there. Today’s players have had to deal with the internet and the speed in which it provides information. If DiMaggio went out on the town with Marilyn, the world read about it the next evening in the newspaper. If Jeter goes out with Minka, we hear about it on Twitter or TMZ within seconds.

Jeter has already won more world championships for the Yankees than the Babe, and sits only one World Series win behind Gehrig and two behind Mantle. He will most likely not match DiMaggio’s nine titles.

In 2009, he passed Lou Gehrig as the Yankees hit leader and Mickey Mantle as the leader in at-bats. He also leads in hits for singles, is second in stolen bases, third in games played and fourth in runs scored. Jeter will lead all those categories by the end of his career. By the end of his career, there’s a good chance Jeter will be the third player on the 4,000 hits club, and will have amassed over 300 home runs, 1,500 RBIs, 350 stolen bases, and over 2,000 runs. He has four career Silver Sluggers, four Gold Gloves, two Hank Aaron Awards, a Babe Ruth Award and is a 10-time All Star. He has won a World Series MVP, All-Star Game MVP and the 1996 Rookie of the Year award.

His heart and passion for the game can be found in his spectacular defensive plays and clutch hits. Derek Jeter is the most clutch player ever to put on the pinstripes. There are no specific statistics for clutch situations but his play when the game on the line is incomparable that he has earned the nickname “Captain Clutch.” Jeter also gets credit for one thing that Gehrig, Ruth, DiMaggio or Mantle had to deal with: playing for George Steinbrenner.

There are a couple of arguments against him being the all-time best Yankee. The first might be his lack of AL MVP awards. DiMaggio and Mantle captured three awards each, Gehrig two and Ruth one. While he lacks a regular season MVP award, he has finished in the top three in voting at least three times. Jeter also hasn’t accomplished a big single season record, like Ruth’s 60 home runs, Gehrig’s 2,130 consecutive games or his 184 RBI in one season, or DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak but he has provided something extremely valuable for the Yankees: consistency at the plate and on the field.

Finally, the icing on the cake would be the character of Derek Jeter. Through his actions, words and charity, he has been the role model that every parent wants for their child, even the child of a Red Sox fan. Jeter is humble and constantly lauds the performance of his teammates and always avoids controversy.

Just this year, he was awarded with the Roberto Clemente Award, given out annually to the player that “best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual’s contribution to his team.” Through his Turn 2 Foundation, Jeter has raised over $8 Million to help disadvantaged kids stay off drugs and make good life decisions.

By the end of his illustrious career, Jeter will have been the greatest player to wear the pinstripes.

It seems that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning (at a place called “Gobbler’s Knob,” which has to be some kind of joke) and thus we’re all headed for six more weeks of winter. I don’t know what Phil’s VORG is (Value Above Replacement Groundhog), but considering the rampant frostiness cloaking the Northeast recently, I certainly woudln’t have minded if he’d whiffed today. Alas …

If you’re interested, here’s a nice little piece on Phil – who seems to live a pretty comfortable life, what with this one-day-a-year job – and keep checking the blog all day. We’ll have a guest post on instant replay, some thoughts of mine to get the week started and the official trailer for tonight’s episode of “How I Met Your Mother” guest-starring Nick Swisher!

(Oh, and sources tell me that the Giants are close to signing Byung-Hyun Kim to a minor-league deal — we can have some fun with that, no?)

Word is that the San Francisco Giants have decided to sign Byung-Hyun Kim to a minor-league deal. Kim, who hasn’t played organized baseball in two years, is hoping to make the team’s bullpen out of spring training.

Certainly the Yankees wouldn’t mind.

Can you imagine if they met the Giants in the World Series? Think we’d hear much about this? Or this?

“How I Met Your Mother” is a pretty funny show to begin with (though it’s no “Modern Family”) and tonight’s episode features Nick Swisher as a guest star. Swisher, who plays himself, certainly has plenty of acting assistance available if he needs it; he’s dating Joanna Garcia, who is currently on “Gossip Girl.”

Check out the preview of tonight’s episode below:

A few notes from the final minor league report of the offseason, courtesy of the Yankees:

• Juan Miranda batted .273 (12-for-44) with 10 runs and two doubles in 14 playoff games with the Tigres Del Licey of the Dominican Winter League, ranking second among all DWL postseason hitters in on-base percentage (.411). He finished the regular season batting .409 (18-for-44) with 5 doubles, 2 home runs and 11 RBI in 13 games.

• Ramiro Pena appeared in 11 playoff games with the Tomateros de Culiacan of the Mexican Winter League, batting .400 (12-for-30) with 1HR and 4 RBI. During postseason play, he ranked first in the league in batting average and on-base percentage (.500). He hit .247 (21-for-85) with three doubles and 4 RBI in 26 regular season games with Culiacan.

• Reegie Corona played in 14 postseason games with the Navegantes del Magallanes of the Venezuelan Winter League, batting .291 (16-for-55) with three doubles and 7 RBI. He hit .317 (44-for-139) with 17 doubles, 2HR and 18 RBI in 44 regular season games with the team.

One other thing that jumped off the page is the activity – or lack thereof – of Jesus Montero. It appears that Montero didn’t play in any more games since the last minor-league update, meaning that he only played in nine regular-season games and one playoff game as he recovers from a hand injury that ended his season in Trenton.

As you know, the Yankees brought the World Series trophy to Asia – thanks to Yankees PR for the photo of it alongside the Yomiuri Giants’ 2009 championship hardware – and during a recent media session Brian Cashman said this about the signing of Hideki Matsui back in 2003:

“I’ve had some successful signings in Japan, I’ve had some unsuccessful signings in Japan. Hideki Matsui will be one of the best deals I ever made.”

Cashman added, “We will have future players from Japan on our roster. They will do everything in their power to try to help us win, but I doubt we’ll find another Hideki Matsui.”

Three things about this:

1. Assistant GM Jean Afterman deserves a ton of credit for helping to bring Matsui to the Bronx in the first place. Her experience and knowledge of the international baseball scene was critical in making the deal happen.

2. The Yankees are, obviously, a business and one that has plenty of international interests. It’s good to see them doing what they can to smooth things over with Japanese fans who may be upset that Matsui wasn’t re-signed. “We know the great allegiance to Hideki Matsui – he deserves it. He was a great Yankee,” said team president Randy Levine, who is also on the trip. “Hopefully, people will still root for the New York Yankees.”

3. I tend to agree with Cashman – the deal for Matsui worked out tremendously well for both sides. The interest in Matsui – especially in his first few years – was incredible and the scrutiny from the Japanese media was unparalleled. All the same, Matsui was the essence of class throughout his time with the Yankees. He’s among the most professional people I’ve ever covered.

… the LoHud Yankees blog has learned that we’re finally – finally! – at least in the same month as the day when pitchers and catchers report. So that’s something.

First, let’s wish Chad a lovely (and mandated) week away. A break is good for a beat writer right before spring training since there are few things that are more of a grind. Soon enough, he’ll be seeing pinstripes when he sleeps and watching the grounds crew rake the field at the minor-league complex as he wonders, “Can I get a blog post out of this?”

For now, though, we’ve got a few weeks of idle speculation and discussion still left to pass. I know that I’ve been a bit absent of late (I was off chronicling Rex Ryan and the Jets), but I’ll be here solo all week and then, after Chad returns, we’ll hopefully be back to the double-team approach that fills this blog universe with plenty of Yankee goodness.

A few things that are on my mind as we get this week going:

• At the end of the day, here’s where I come down on the Johnny Damon saga: I was surprised he didn’t end up back with the Yankees but I also don’t think that left field is going to make the difference in whether or not the Yankees repeat as World Series champions. So, sad (that he’s gone) but hardly detrimental (in the big picture).

• Early favorite to win the fifth starter job: Phil Hughes.

• Instant replay in baseball? I’ve written on this before and agree with much of what James wrote this morning. As someone who has extensive experience officiating sports (including baseball), I can say that missing a call is (usually) as much a physical error as a player botching a ground ball. So, the argument goes, if errors are part of the game then errors are part of the game. That said, I find myself turning around a little on the idea as time goes by …

• Lastly, how do these guys not look more jet-lagged????