Enjoy the day!

Would love to hear more.

Ledger_Yankees Melky Cabrera not on the trip, but Hinske and his nifty new back tat are coming to town. #live about 1 minute ago

It’s not a tat, it’s a $5000 shirt:

http://blogs.ajc.com/jeff-schu.....to-braves/

Yes, I did.

Today is just local.

But I gotta get going.

If you ever want to hear more about some my adventures or misadventures let me know.

I have one major issue with Nardi as the roving pitching coordinator and that’s that I have yet to find any track record of success for him as a pitching instructor at any level.

I don’t have a record of his minor league stops, but at the major league level he was a failure replacing Billy Connors for the Yankees, was dropped by the Mariners and also the Chicago White Sox.

I would be thrilled if the Yankees could find an established guy to replace Contreras in this role…

My top choice would have been for the Yankees to throw an obnoxious amount of money at Dave Duncan (and I still think that they should go this route the minute Tony LaRussa leaves the Cards) but I knew that was probably not going to happen. More realistically I had thought that Joe Kerrigan, when he was let go as Yankee bullpen coach, would have been a great candidate.

Other guys I would consider:

Leo Mazzone
Mark Wiley
Don Cooper

Guys with an established track record of success who may be at a point in their careers where they don’t want to deal with the grind of traveling with a team.

Imagine setting Leo Mazzone up at the Tampa complex and being able to send the top pitchers in the organization to work with him on a 1-on-1 basis. And what’s more, Mazzone goes with a great philosophy about pitchers needing more work, not less work.

___

While i agree that melky and a-jax would be great to still have, Swish is no bum out there and defensively gardner isnt bad either.

I dont think it is worth any panic or lost sleep.

You gotta eat some egg rolls and I’ve gotta go hiking.

http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/nardi-contreras/

Torre Puts His Trust in Tampa. No, Really, He Does.
By TYLER KEPNER

In past years, Joe Torre might have gotten a suggestion on pitching coming from Tampa, Fla., and ignored it. Billy Connors, a confidant of George Steinbrenner’s and a nemesis of the former pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, was the organization’s pitching guru.

With Steinbrenner’s influence fading, Connors is taking less of a public role. Nardi Contreras, also a former major league pitching coach, is in charge of the development of the Yankees’ minor league pitchers. And it is Contreras who established the ground rules for how Torre will use Joba Chamberlain.

Chamberlain – who is being trailed by the brilliant Sports Illustrated writer, Gary Smith, this weekend – retired the side on 10 pitches last night. But because Contreras determined that Chamberlain must get one day off for every inning he pitches, Torre cannot use him tonight. And he’s fine with that.

“I have a great deal of respect for Nardi,” Torre said. “He’s got absolutely no axe to grind other than what’s best for the pitchers. This is what he came up with, and I trust the man. I’m not saying it won’t change, but somebody else would have to tell me. I don’t know as much as he does about the physical aspect of pitching.”

He (in my opinion wrongly) predicts that the Yankees will look back on the decisions to trade for Granderson and let Damon go with regret.

I get that Damon was a very good player (offensively) for the Yankees, but articles like that just prove to me what a short memory columnists (and fans) in this town have. It wasn’t too long ago that everyone in this town was killing the Yankees for having a glorified DH in CF/LF in Damon. That all the years were taking their toll on his body and so on and so forth.

Again, the Yankees did exactly the right thing here. Given the option of dropping a player a year too early or hanging onto him a year too long I’ll take the too early option every time – and I think that Curtis is going to be the best all around CF the Yankees have had in a very very long time.