The LoHud Yankees Blog

My second Associated Press post of the night. I feel lazy.

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Former World Series MVP Scott Brosius has become the manager of the under-18 national team for the United States.

USA Baseball made the announcement Monday.

Brosius was the MVP when the New York Yankees won the 1998 championship. The All-Star third baseman is going into his fourth year as head coach at Linfield College in Oregon.

The under-18 team will play in a Pan American tournament at Colombia starting in late September.

Former big leaguer Brian McRae will be an assistant coach on the team.

• Newsday and The Post each had stories about Derek Jeter this afternoon.

• Phil Hughes also talked to reporters in Tampa this morning. Here’s the lead quote from The Post: “When you have a bad second half, all I thought about was those bad games because there weren’t very many good ones mixed in there,” Hughes said.

• The AP also had a story this afternoon about the Eric Chavez signing. It was nothing unusual — just a few paragraphs about him agreeing to a minor league deal — but the last paragraph stood out: Chavez has had five operations since September 2007, including three on his shoulder and two on his back. He felt spasms on both sides of his neck last year after a spring training drill in which a minor leaguer collided with his right shoulder. Everyone knows Chavez has been hurt a lot, but I didn’t realize it had been five surgeries in four years. That’s just brutal.

• Robby Hammock signed a minor league deal with the Diamondbacks. You’re forgiven if you’ve forgotten — or never knew — that he played in the Yankees system last year. He hit .180 in 22 games for Scranton.

• Michael Young has officially requested a trade out of Texas. Really nice player, but the Yankees don’t have a spot for him. He’d get less playing time in New York than in Texas.

Associated Press photo

First, a quick announcement that Sam and I are going to have a video chat on Wednesday at 12:15 p.m. We figured that’s a good way to wrap up things in New York before I head to Tampa at the end of the week. Be sure to stop by.

Second, nothing groundbreaking here — believe me, the last thing the Yankees want is a huge story coming out of Tampa on February 7 — but The Associated Press did move a full story about Derek Jeter’s arrival at the Yankees minor league complex this morning. Here it is.

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Derek Jeter is focused on the present and not a down 2010 season.

The Yankees shortstop is trying to bounce back after hitting .270, which is 44 points below his career average.

“I’ve always been pretty good in my career in terms of forgetting about previous seasons, whether it was a good season or a bad season,” Jeter said Monday. “You have to forget about it and move on.”

The 36-year old team captain has been working out onfield for almost a month — his normal offseason routine — at the Yankees’ minor league complex. Although spent three days with hitting coach Kevin Long in January, Jeter’s pre-spring training process basically remains the same.

“The main thing you always want going into a season, you want to make sure that you’re healthy,” Jeter said. “You’ve got to maintain yourself throughout the course of the year, so that’s why you work in the offseason.”

After some negotiations with the Yankees became public and a little snippy, Jeter agreed to a $51 million, three-year contract. While general manager Brian Cashman raised the possibility Jeter could one day be switched to the outfield, Jeter said he can’t predict the future.

“I wish I could,” he said. “I’m not a fortune teller. I don’t have a crystal ball at the house. I have a job to do (this season).”

New York’s biggest concern appears to be its starting rotation following the retirement of Andy Pettitte. The Yankees have two openings behind CC Sabathia, Phil Hughes and A.J. Burnett.

“Other guys are going to have to step up,” Jeter said. “That’s basically how it goes. I wouldn’t use the word worried. It’s going to be different without him.”

“I’m happy that he came to a decision that he’s comfortable with,” Jeter added. “I know how close Andy is to his family. Family is No. 1 for him. He’s definitely a teammate that you look forward to seeing and we’re really going to miss.”

While the Yankees failed in their attempt to sign left-hander Cliff Lee, the Boston Red Sox added left fielder Carl Crawford and first baseman Adrian Gonzalez.

“Last year they had a lot of injuries,” Jeter said. “This year I would assume that everyone over there is excited to get going. It’s our job to try and beat them.”

Notes: Hughes threw 28 pitches during his second bullpen session. The right-hander feels that RHP Ivan Nova could have a breakout season in the rotation. “I think Nova is a real candidate for that,” Hughes said. “He’s got unbelievable stuff.”

For the week leading up to spring training, I thought we’d take a daily look at some of the decisions the Yankees have to make before Opening Day. No sense starting with anything but the most obvious decision of all.

Think back. You might remember hearing something this winter about Cliff Lee going to Philadelphia, Andy Pettitte staying home in Texas and the Yankees sorting through the scraps of the free agent starting pitcher market. It was the biggest Yankees story of the offseason, an on-going saga that won’t be settled until a five-man rotation finally comes together this spring (and one that might not be settled — one way or another — until mid-season). For now the Yankees have three starters in place, and two spots up for grabs.

The possibilities
Assuming no late-minute trades or additions, the Yankees have four prominent candidates for two spots: Ivan Nova, Sergio Mitre, Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon. Both Garcia and  Colon are in camp on minor league deals, while the rookie Nova is actually coming to camp as an incumbent and a favorite. The Yankees could also look deeper in the farm system, giving prospects like David Phelps, Hector Noesi and Adam Warren a chance to impress.

The easy choice
Last season, Nova showed promise in New York and Garcia was reasonably productive in Chicago. Heading into spring training, they seem to be the front-runners for the fourth and fifth spots. Mitre, though, is even further removed from Tommy John surgery and got some spot starts last season. From the outside — my opinion anyway — he seems more likely to end up back in the bullpen, but Joe Girardi seems to like him, and Mitre is probably a legitimate candidate. He could certainly pitch his way into the rotation.

The alternatives
Colon is a complete wild card here. He hasn’t pitched a full big league season since he won the Cy Young back in 2005. He didn’t pitch at all last year, and it’s hard to believe he has much left, but the Yankees were impressed in winter ball, so he’ll get a look. More intriguing options come from the minor league system where the Yankees have considerable pitching depth.

Noesi, Phelps and D.J. Mitchell each finished last season in Triple-A. It’s impossible to count out any of those three. Andrew Brackman also took considerable steps forward in Double-A last year, but it’s Warren who’s name is brought up surprisingly often. A fourth-round pick in 2009, Warren made just 10 Double-A starts last year, but he was impressive, and his name seems to always come up in interviews with Girardi and Brian Cashman. He seems like a long shot, but one that might get a long look.

A separate but related issue
It’s a minor issue — one that will hardly matter by the second week of the season — but the Yankees have a decide how to line up the top of the rotation. CC Sabathia will obviously start on Opening Day, but who gets Game 2? Should the Yankees show A.J. Burnett that they still have confidence in him, or should they acknowledge that Phil Hughes seems to be the more reliable option at this point? Hughes and Burnett will be the Nos. 2 and 3, but who gets which number is a matter of opinion.

Associated Press photos of Nova and Garcia

Most of the Yankees writers are heading down to Tampa either Thursday or Friday, Erik Boland and Brian Costello were at the minor league complex this morning, watching some of the early bullpen and batting practice sessions.

The first player to arrive this morning was Phil Hughes, who has a place in Tampa and threw a bullpen session. Hughes told Boland and Costello that he plans to focus on his changeup, especially early in the season. He said the pitch kind of abandoned him late last year, probably because he didn’t use it enough at the beginning.

The Associated Press reported that this was Hughes’ second bullpen of the offseason, and he threw 28 pitches. That actually seems like a lot for February 7.

Among the other early arrivals was Derek Jeter, who has already worked with Kevin Long this winter.

“I’ve always been pretty good in my career in terms of forgetting about previous seasons, whether it was a good season or a bad season,” Jeter told the AP. “You have to forget about it and move on.”

I had no clue what to expect when a 23-year-old German college student emailed this winter to say he’d like to write guest post on the blog. I’d heard from folks all over the U.S., and from more than one person living in England, all wanting to write about a similar topic of being long-distance fan. I chose Ban, and he came through with one of the best guest posts of the winter.

Four things that stood out to me about Ban’s piece.

“It is weird to have memory of the Logo even before knowing what Baseball is.”
That’s from Ban’s initial email, making his proposal for the Pinch Hitter series. The sentence jumped out at me.

We hear all the time about the Yankees being a global brand, and we all understand that those words mean, but it’s still remarkable to think that the logo could literally transcend the sport. Ban wrote in his post that there are some in Europe who know the interlocking NY and believe it’s simply a fashion label. That’s amazing to me.

Of all the Yankees to be on the cover of USA Today
We all know that 1998 team as one of the greatest ever assembled. Derek Jeter was a 24-year-old kid, but he hit 324/.384/.481 that season. Mariano Rivera pitched a scoreless postseason and saved three games in the World Series. David Wells nearly won the Cy Young, while Jeter, Paul O’Neill and Bernie Williams got MVP votes.

But of all people, it was Chuck Knoblauch who served as the introduction to the Yankees. Just goes to show that all of these guys are representing the team. All of them are having their pictures taken, and any one of them might step into a big moment and make a lasting impression about himself and the franchise.

Speaking of the second baseman
Another reason the Knoblauch connection stands out is that, in his 12-plus years as a fan, Ban has witnessed one of the most interesting positional transitions that I can remember.

Knoblauch gave the Yankees what they needed for a while, but when Alfonso Soriano hit his way to the big leagues, Knoblauch went to left field and Soriano stepped in at second. That should have been the end of the story — young guy takes over for the aging veteran — but Soriano proved so good that he was enough of a trade chip to make a deal for Alex Rodriguez. That’s a huge loss at a position where it’s often hard to find production, but two years later, Robinson Cano emerged and began working his way toward being one of the best hitters in the game. That will teach anyone how quickly things can change in this game.

The roller coaster
Ban wrote that he occasionally sleeps for five hours, watches a baseball game, sleeps for two more hours, then has to wake up again to start his next day. My first thought was that he had just described what it’s like to cover the postseason.

Mostly though, I thought Ban nailed the long-distance baseball fan experience with these words: It’s a roller coaster ride. And I like roller coasters, even if I have to ride them alone.

That’s just a good line.

That’s the Yankees logo, and an AP picture of Cano

There were at least a half dozen guest post suggestions about what it’s like to follow the Yankees from a distance. All of them were terrific suggestions, but I decided to choose only one and went with today’s Pinch Hitter.

Ban Hofmann is a 23-year-old college senior in Germany. He’s studying business, and if nothing else, the Yankees have taught him the power of a brand: He knew the Yankees logo before he knew the game of baseball. For his guest post, Ban wrote about what it was like to discover the Yankees during a family trip to the United States, and what it’s been like to follow the team from a distance for more than a decade.

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A man in pinstripes is holding a wooden stick in his hand. He looks awesome. His name is Chuck Knoblauch? That’s funny…. Knoblauch…. Knoblauch means garlic in German. Aaaaaaand, hey! That logo! You know you have seen that one before!

Who would have thought that this is the way my affection to the New York Yankees would begin?

It was October the 18th on the day after the first game of the 1998 World Series. Chuck Knoblauch was on the front cover of the USA Today. I had just turned 11 years old and was on my first trip to the States – visiting the beautiful state of California with my dad and my sister.

Needless to say, I had no chance understanding anything, but it instantly became obvious that I had to find out more about that Chuck Knoblauch guy. He certainly played a sport called “baseball” for some team that played under this well-known logo.

On that day I would beg my father to let me watch the game in our RV. He agreed, and I was able to do the same for the next games, always sitting alone in front of a very, very small TV trying to identify some kind of system or scheme in the whole slugging, throwing, running and spitting. Oh that spitting! I know I saw some guys spitting brown stuff, weird but whatever… probably licorice.

So I witnessed the World Series for the first time in my life and I was hooked on that sport, on that team and especially on the excitement. It was the start of my steady wish to visit New York City and to witness games in Yankee Stadium. I had to wait 10 more years until I had the chance to visit Old Yankee Stadium before it was deconstructed. My second visit came one year later, this time in NYS for two games against the Sawx for the latter half of the great four-game sweep in ’09.

In the meantime (’98 to ’08) it was kind of hard to get any information about how the Yankees were doing. The only thing I was able to do was check the video text of some German TV stations that displayed scores and tables on two hidden pages. It was tough being a Yankee fan far away from the Bronx, and it probably is partly responsible for my ongoing drive towards this great city.

The internet came and I finally had the chance to let my Yankee-fever take over. Since then I am possessed, getting any kind of Yankees action. I even try to adjust my sleep so I can watch the games. I know it’s hard to go to bed at 8 p.m., sleep five hours, watch the game and get back to sleep for two more hours until I have to get up again, but I know:  It’s totally worth it.

In Germany though, I often get asked why I would do that to myself. I know it’s crazy to some degree, but I see so much beauty in the Game. I love numbers, and I love this sport because anything can happen, even if it’s the bottom of the ninth, two outs and two strikes. The action comes in a very quick peak and decreases in a second. It’s a roller coaster ride. And I like roller coasters, even if I have to ride them alone.

Granted, it would make my life easier if I were able to cut my ties to this great, great team. It’s just not possible. From the day in Santa Barbara, CA until today, it’s the time I’ve invested, the moments I’ve witnessed and probably the money I’ve spent, that have built these strong ties that connect me to the Yankees. I think I speak for a lot of Yankee fans in Europe when I say that it is a love, which is hard to maintain. But with every visit to NYC, I know why I keep up and don’t even think about stopping this insanity which is my life — every year from April to October.

So I will keep on cheering. And I will thank everyone wearing our logo in Germany (most of them not knowing what it stands for), as they have done the groundwork for my affection, because that is what the Yankees are: A global Brand. Whereas many people think it is a fashion label, there are a few of us outsiders – 6,000 or more miles away from Yankee Stadium — cheering as hard for the guys as you do, wishing to be in Yankee Stadium at least 81 times in a year.

Thank God it wasn’t Mr. Trevor Hoffman who was on the front page that day.

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Associated Press photo

I was never a huge fan of one particular NFL team. The football Cardinals left St. Louis when I was 7 years old, and the Rams didn’t come to town until I was 15. I liked the Rams, but it wasn’t the same as cheering for a team you’d followed your entire life. I’ve just never been an especially passionate NFL fan.

So I generally follow the league through my friends, and my friend Jon is an over-the-top Steelers fan. He’s actually in Dallas this weekend, having landed tickets for himself, his wife and his parents. I generally like the Packers — Greg Jennings, of course, is a personal favorite* — but I feel like I owe it to Jon to cheer for the Steelers tonight.

As you might expect, there probably won’t be much blogging this evening. I’ll be a a friend’s house in New Jersey watching the game. I hope you all are able to get with some friends for a rock solid Super Bowl party.

Go Steelers! Go Packers! I really don’t care, I just don’t want this to be a boring game. If you’ve been watching pregame stuff all day, the game itself starts at 6:29 p.m. ET on FOX.

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* Surely I’m not the only person who always thought it was cool when an athlete shared my last name. In the early ’90s, I actively collected Doug Jennings and Keith Jennings cards. Just now, when I looked up Doug Jennings on Baseball Reference, I was stunned to see he was a career .202 hitter. I honestly remember him as a key reserve for those A’s teams.

From Nick Cafardo’s latest Sunday notebook:

The Red Sox are looking into Aceves, who was shut down by the Yankees May 8 after hurting his back. Aceves is 14-1 in his career, including 10-1 in 2009 with the Yankees. He was 3-0 last season until his back injury flared up. He would be an injury rehab project but is working out and could provide protection in the bullpen or as a starter.

Check out the full notebook. Cafardo has an item about Andy Pettitte, mentions A.J. Burnett as one of the players most needing to step up this season and once again connects the Yankees to Kevin Millwood.

As for Aceves, the Yankees non-tendered him this winter after a pair of injuries: A lower-back problem that kept flaring up during the season, and a broken left clavicle suffered this offseason in Mexico.

Brian Cashman said early this offseason that the Yankees would like to bring Aceves back on a minor league deal, but that back problem seems to make it difficult to count on him this season and beyond.

I’ve had the fan experience at Yankee Stadium only once. My friend Ben came to town just after the all-star break last year, so he and I went to one of those Yankees-Rays games in mid-July. Our seats in the right-field corner at the very top of the stadium.

To be honest, my experience was quite the opposite of what Alex described this morning.

My friend lives St. Louis and goes to Busch Stadium pretty often, but he said Yankee Stadium was easier and more fan friendly than he expected. No one gave us free food while we waited in line, but I thought the concession stands were pretty easy to deal with. We moved to the lower level for the ninth inning — trying to get a head start on the crowd — and watched the bottom of the ninth from just behind the lower-level seats along the first-base line. There were quite a few people there, and as long as they weren’t causing problems or getting in anyone’s way, no one seemed to be forcing them to move.

It was one day, and I thought it went really well. But, the whole idea behind the Pinch Hitters series is to bring completely different points to view to the blog. I’m sure some of you have had Alex’s experience. Some of you have had my experience.

Mostly, I’m sure the majority of you are looking forward to getting back to Yankee Stadium as soon as possible. It’s not perfect — ballpark food is always too expensive, the city charges a ton to park, it’s frustrating to see open seats down low — but it’s home.

Our next Pinch Hitter is Alex Bleiweis, a sophomore studying history at the University of Maryland. He co-hosts a sports talk show for the university radio station called Quahog Pizza, which can be heard at 10 p.m. on Tuesdays at wmucsports.com.

Alex says being a Yankees fan runs in the family – his grandfather was born while the old Yankee Stadium was under construction — but experiences away from the Bronx have left him questioning some of the Yankee fan experience.

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I have been a Yankees fan all my life, however, after going away to college during the 2009 championship season and being exposed to other baseball markets, I’ve realized that there’s a lot to complain about as a Yankees fan. Sure, it’s always nice to root for a team that puts a great product on the field, but since the opening of the new Yankee Stadium, it’s become more and more frustrating to root for a team that treats its fans so poorly.

As a student at the University of Maryland, I have been immersed in the surprisingly boisterous fan base of the Washington Nationals. With a state of the art stadium and the prospects of slowly climbing up the ranks of the N.L. East, people in the area are oddly excited about the team’s potential.

Because the games are on TV locally and the stadium is so accessible, I’ve adopted the lowly Nationals as my team away from home. I still pay attention to the Yankee Universe on a daily basis but have found it enjoyable to follow another team and familiarize myself with the likes of Ian Desmond and Roger Bernadina. I’ve also enjoyed going to a stadium where the employees are courteous and accommodating to their guests — the fans. After experiencing life in Nats-Town, I’ve become severely disappointed in the treatment of fans at Yankee Stadium.

There is no doubt that the Yankees and the Nationals are distinctly different teams. One has 27 World Championships and international fame while the other barely manages to make it onto SportsCenter. But they are still two Major League Baseball teams, and the Yankees should definitely take advice from the Nats when it comes to how to treat their fans at games.

Before I go into detail on my experiences in Washington and in the Bronx, I would first like to dispel some of the arguments that my friends have made when I’ve tried to draw the comparison between the two organizations. I always hear people say that the Nationals stink and pampering the few who actually show up on game day is the only way to maintain a fan base and make a profit. Others have said that since nobody shows up to the games, the employees are less strict and don’t really keep control of the fans like they do in New York. Both of these arguments fall short, as explained through these experiences.

• At a SOLD-OUT exhibition game against the Red Sox in Washington, my friend and I were in line to buy a pretzel at a concession stand. Just before we reached the front of the line, the stand sold out. Instead of sending us on a long search for food (which, by the way, is substantially less expensive than it is in New York), we were given a free bag of roasted nuts while we waited for more pretzels to be brought to the stand. We were perfectly content to wait, as we stood in the concourse with a good view of the game and had a bag of free food (every college kid’s dream). I could never imagine that happening in the Bronx, where the ultimate goal is to make money, more so than to make patrons happy.

• A week later when I went to Nationals Park for an opening series game against the Phillies, where 27,000 fans showed up, my friends and I were treated to another pleasant surprise. While walking around the stadium to explore it a little, an usher actively invited my friends and I to sit in the section that he was assigned to, which was two levels closer to the field than the upper-deck seats we had purchased. There was no need to get bodies closer to the field for TV or PR purposes, as some have suggested, because the stadium was already relatively full. It was simply a kind jester on the part of a Nationals employee who had a few empty seats and noticed a handful of eager baseball fans. Not only could I not imagine this event happening in New York, but I have, in fact, experienced the exact opposite treatment, as I’ll explain.

These are just two examples out of many of where the Nationals go out of their way to please their guests and show a great interest in making sure that their experience is as memorable as possible. They go the extra mile even when it’s not necessary. I contrast that with the following experience at Yankee Stadium and it has led me to become almost hesitant to continue going to games in the Bronx.

• At a game this past summer against the Angels, in which the Yankees were destroyed 10-2, my three friends and I felt mistreated by the Yanks. With the team trailing by 8 runs in the later innings of the game, the Stadium had emptied almost completely and only a small fraction of the 47,000-person crowd remained. A majority of these fans were in the upper deck, like I was, which is apparently where the true fans are relegated to sitting in the new ballpark. After watching our favorite team get clobbered for three hours, we decided to head down to the lower level for the ninth inning so that we could bolt to the train station as soon as Frank Sinatra starting blaring through the stadium. For the first time, I was grateful that the Yankees decided to build a stadium with open concourses so that I could catch the game while standing by the exits, but this was not to be. An usher, who was diligently guarding a literally EMPTY section behind home plate, made it her personal business to rid the lower level of the ballpark from the mere peasants. We were not even attempting the blowout ritual of moving up to the better seats when the fake fans left. However, this usher continued to harass us and attempted to move us out of the concourse. She was aggressive and rude, as were the ushers around her who swarmed in to support her cause. We were only standing next to the concession stands, not even in the ticketed section that she was guarding, yet she continued to push us away until Derek Jeter bounced into a game ending double play. This stood in stark contrast to my experience in D.C.

When an usher actively prevented my friends and I from standing behind a completely empty section while the Yankees were down by 8 runs in the 9th inning, I realized that I had been spoiled by the usher who actually invited me to move down to better seats in a crowded April game in Washington. Although I wrote a letter to the Yankees explaining my feeling that fans who are loyal enough to stay till the last out should be treated better, I never got a response.

Would it kill the Yankees to allow fans to move up when a section is completely empty? If they can’t because we haven’t paid for access to the section, could they at least let fans be when they’re standing in the open concourse? I thought the point of that architectural design was to allow this exact sort of access. As an innocent adolescent, I never cared about how the fans were treated at the stadium.

However, now that I’m older and I’m a paying customer, it has become more enjoyable for me to go to a ballgame in Washington than in New York, which is incredibly disappointing. While the Nats will trail the Yankees in wins for many years to come, the Yankees trail the Nationals in giving their fans a great experience. If the Yankees want to truly maintain greatness, they should aspire to be more like my adopted team, and be willing to go out of their way to improve the ballpark experience.

Associated Press photo