Thunder lose heartbreaker

For various reasons, which you may or may not know, I ended up taking the Amtrak today from New York City to Hartford, with the singular purpose of catching the Trenton Thunder in their series against the New Britain Rock Cats, with dire playoff implications.

For the Thunder to make the playoffs they more or less needed to take three of four from New Britain--but alas, tonight it was not to be.



Jeremy Bleich started for the Thunder. He gave up five hits and walked two before recording an out.





The Thunder's first baserunner. At one point, the Thunder were trying to beat out the Yankees for the-most-likely-to-be-no-hit-tonight bid.

At one point the Thunder were down 7-0, which, given that the Thunder's offense without Montero is the AA equivalent of the San Francisco Giants, is usually an insurmountable thing.

At some point in time, however, the Thunder decided that it'd be fun to mess with everyone and stage a furious comeback. They tied the game with 6 runs in the 7th.





Thunder(ers?) trying to play the hero.


Alas, the comeback could not be completed and in the ninth inning the Rock Cats walked off--a walk, and then a line drive into the corner.




I'm going back tomorrow and may or may not take more pictures. If the Thunder lose another game they will be officially eliminated.

Jeter Would Be First Yankee to 3000 Hits

With Derek Jeter only nine hits away from breaking the Yankees all-time hits record, it struck me the other night that the Yankees have, in their illustrious history, not had a 3000 hit hitter--certainly not one that was a Yankee his entire career.

Yesterday, I was talking to Mike McCann of WFAN, when I brought this up, and we devolved into a long conversation as to why this has happened.

As it turns out, most of the everyday Yankees that we idolize as part of the team's storied history have legitimate reasons as to why they were never able to play long enough to collect 3,000 hits:

• Lou Gehrig got sick with ALS, a disease that now commonly is referred to as Lou Gehrig's Disease.  There is little question that had Gehrig remained healthy he would have broken the record.

• Joe DiMaggio lost seasons due to World War Two, as did many other of the best players of that era.

• Mickey Mantle's career was derailed by injuries and some not-so-good off field habits.

These are only three  examples, but they are among the most high-profile Yankees (you could also consider Babe Ruth and Yogi Berra here) to have ever worn the uniform.  If they never reached 3000 hits, that tells you two things:

1) It tells you just how hard it is to achieve this feat--how long one has to play and how long one has to remain healthy.

2) It tells you just how good Derek Jeter really is.  No, seriously.  He might never win that MVP award (Gehrig never won a World Series without either Ruth or DiMaggio; this is baseball, strange things happen), but Jeter is easily one of the ten best Yankees to have ever put on the uniform.

Late inning Yankee heroics are not your imagination.

Since last night's seven run ninth-inning brings the issue up, check this out:

In innings 7-9 the Yankees are batting .297/.383/.517/.900 as a team. It's more drastic if you look at innings seven and nine individually: in the seventh the Yankees are batting .314/.403/.528/.930 as a team.

That's right, in the seventh inning, the Yankees as a team are batting .314 (guys that bat .314 generally contend for the All Star team) and OPSing .930. To compare, Mark Teixeira is OPSing .920 for the year.

The ninth inning numbers are similar: .311/.399/.528/.927.

The difference here, however, is that while the Yankees always play a seventh inning, they don't always play the ninth (if they're winning and at home). So that makes the seventh inning numbers all that more insane.

The Yankees have scored 271 runs in the 7th-9th innings; they have not scored 250 in either the 1st-3rd or 4th-6th.


We knew the Yankee offense was good...really good...but their numbers in the latter innings are kind of insane.

Maybe this is why the Yankees have 12 walk off wins and g-d-knows-how-many come-from-behind wins. It's the mark of a team that keeps fighting.

Boy, is it fun to watch...

Yankees Sweep Baltimore; Rivera out with Tight Groin (Postgame Notes 2 September 2009)

View my complete recap at The Yankee Universe

• Marc Carig and Pete Abraham are reporting that Mariano Rivera has tightness in his groin and will miss a few days but could be back by the weekend.

• Sabathia struggled early--five hits in two--but picked it up afterwards and held Baltimore to one run.

• The Yankee offense exploded for seven runs in the 9th.

• All Eric Hinske does is come off the bench and hit HRs.
  

Is it too early to start talking about the postseason rotation?

Ask someone what the Yankees' biggest concerns are at the moment, and he or she might be hard pressed to answer. After all, when your team has the best record in the league and a 6.5 game lead in the division race, it's hard to find areas to complain.

Still, there will be those who say that AJ Burnett and Joba Chamberlain are worrisome, and that certain relievers in the bullpen can utterly not be trusted.

So, the questions will inevitably arise, how will the Yankees construct their postseason rotation?

No, the Yankees have not made the postseason yet, but we are fast approaching a point where if the Yankees do not make the playoffs, even as a wild card team, it would be a collapse of historic proportions. Thus, it does not seem a stretch to address this issue.

Right now, the Yankees' rotation comprises of CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett, Andy Pettitte, Joba Chamberlain and Sergio Mitre.

In the postseason, barring injury, you need four starters--so we can drop mighty mighty Mitre off the list for right now.

Thus, the question becomes, how do you organize the remaining four, and here the issue isn't so much the game one starter (Sabathia) or the game four starter (if needed) (Chamberlain). The issue is, as it was in 2007, who starts game two.

For most of this season, AJ Burnett has easily been the Yankees' #2 starter, but of late he has a couple of things working against him: he hasn't won in a month, and he's never pitched in a postseason game.

For me, at least, the second issue is more pressing than the first. Yes, Burnett hasn't won in a month, but he has been unlucky in some of those starts--like the fifteen inning game against Beckett, and the game he pitched in Oakland where he surrendered only three runs but the Yankees couldn't muster anything against Brett Tomko. His ERA for this time is over 6.00, but two absolutley horrid starts--in Chicago and Boston--are perhaps inflating it further. Of course, Burnett had a poor outing last night, so that doesn't do him any favors.

Still, the lack of postseason experience is a concern, especially if it follows Sabathia immediately--Sabathia's postseason number in 2007 and 2008 are not very good (though 2008 may perhaps be attributed to his pitching on three days' rest multiple times that September).

Pettitte as the number two starter would give the Yankees someone with a lot of postseason experience, and, since the All Star break, no pitcher has been better for the Yankees. Well, no starter, anyway (I'm looking at you, Mo Rivera). Last season, Pettitte pitched the second half hurt and put up some not very good numbers, but this season, well, on Monday Pettitte came within 7 outs of a perfect game.

A lot, however, can change between September 2nd and October 1st. In that time, Burnett could put it all together and Pettitte could fall apart, and in that case the decision would become even harder.

Still, if constructing your postseason rotation is your biggest concern, you're probably in a pretty good place.

****

On another note entirely, make sure you check out some great baseball travel posts from WFAN's Mike McCann. He's gone and visited numerous stadia at all levels--worth a gander if you like doing ballpark tours/trips.

Bombs and Bullpen back Burnett (postgame notes 1 September (!!) 2009)

For a full recap, please check out my post on The Yankee Universe any time after midnight.

Notes:

• Handed leads of 3-1 and then 5-3, Burnett could maintain neither, and while he only walked two, he did surrender eleven hits.

• The offense was Bronx Bombing at its best: five home runs, from Robinson Canó (who's hitting somewhere around .480 against Baltimore), Jorge Posada (who hit two, including one after he forgot the count and thought he had struck out!), Nick Swisher (whose home/road splits in the words of Girardi are "mind-boggling"), and Eric Hinske.

• Damaso Marte, David Robertson, Phil Coke and Mariano Rivera combined to hold the Orioles scoreless for 3.2 innings.

• The Orioles have been mathematically eliminated from AL East contention tonight.
  

Scranton Outing a Success

On Sunday, readers of Pete Abraham's LoHud Yankees Blog gathered in Scranton for the second annual LoHud blog outing.

The group was seated in the left field bullpen box--a field-level box, with all-you-can-eat ballpark food (the pasta salad was pretty good, actually...), and an open view to the field--so players could come over and say hi.

Francisco Cervelli came by; Shelley Duncan came by--and signed my program (yes, I'm a fair girl). Duncan would later hit the home run in the first game of a double-header, and a grand slam in the second.

We also received a visit from Champ, Scranton's mascot.

During the second game, a couple friends and I wandered to the other side of the ballpark and did a "Roll Call" for the minor league team. John Rodriguez, Shelley Duncan, Kevin Russo, Cody Ransom and Ramiro Peña all (not always eagerly) responded.

Through a raffle and donations, the LoHud group also managed to rage almost $800 for the Codey Miley Memorial Scholarship Fund. Miley, the son of Scranton manager Dave Miley, was killed in a car accident last summer.

Much thanks must go out to Ron H., who organized the outing for the second year running. It takes a lot of planning to put something that large together, and Ron has done a flawless job now for two years running.