Morning Bits: Sabathia, Stewart, 1912 Uniforms, Cano, Girardi
Nice start from C.C. last night. Hopefully this gets the team going in the right direction. Game time same time as last night. Here are the links….
– C.C. Sabathia performs like an ace last night when the Yankees needed him to reports Tim Smith of The Daily News.
– The bottom of the order came through last night against the Twins reports Marc Craig of The Star Ledger.
– Dan Martin of The New York Post writes that backup catcher Stewart came up big last night.
– Take a look at these uniforms from 1912 that the Yankees will be wearing Friday against the Red Sox as they celebrate 100 years at Fenway.
– Cano’s recent skid minor in Girardi’s eyes reports Joey Nowak of mlb.com.
– Stewart has more rbi’s than A-Rod and Cano reports Matt Ehalt of Espn New York.
Posted on April 18, 2012, in Notes & Links and tagged Alex Rodriguez, C.C. Sabathia, Joe Girardi, New York Yankees, Robinson Cano. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
Brian D.
fishjam25
jimmytoucan
Matthew B
Delia E.
Dan H.
Matthew S.
Michael P.
Mike D.
I’m not as worried as most are about the pitching this year. I’m more worried about the bats.
Martin .160
A-Rod .227
Granderson .227
Cano .239
Tex .250
Swisher .250
Matt I’ve been screaming that since January. Our pitching last year was fine, despite all the hysteria about it. The bats are the issue. I do understand how important pitching is, I swear I do. I just think its the latest craze for every media member to scream that pitching is everything the last 5 years and its just not true. Runs win games, and when pitchers have more room to work with they are more relaxed and don’t suffer the mental exhaustion of feeling like every run they give up is the end of the world. The Rangers don’t need all star pitching, because they blast opponents.
I know I keep emphasizing this but I still don’t think most people understand the impact of the PED era being over for the most part. We all know that 2007 was probably the last year of the PED era as it was. Just take a look at the batting averages and home run totals since then. The notion that you can “always go out and get a bat” was indeed true for about 15 years but thats over with now. Pitching became more valued during the PED era because you needed true aces to contend with all the juiced up hitters and of course teams started drafting pitchers by the bushelful and focusing on developing them.
How’d the Phillies dream staff work out? When they only had Hamels they won the World Series. When they added Lee to Hamels they made the World Series and lost it. Then they added Oswalt and Hallday and them made the NLCS and lost, and then lost the NLDS. Why? Because they didn’t hit!!!
In the postseason esepcially, you have to keep moving the train to score and you can’t live on the long ball.
That has been apparent with the Yankees the last two postseasons. Everyone loves to point how many runs the Yankees scored last year but fail to point out that they were only 5th in batting average. These kinds of lineups are feast or famine lineups.
Martin is never going to hit, and Swisher and Tex will always be hold your breath when they are up kind of guys. I know Cano will hit and I think Granderson and Arod will come around but our lineup is not as long as Detroit’s or Texas’s and we’re also going to be very prone to a bad run if we have injuries because the lineup is shorter.
We needed one more bat below Arod and we had it and traded it away.
I just hope we stay healthy and can get some of these guys going conisistently, I don’t care if its Swish or Tex but we need one of them to get hot this season.
Matt and Michael, you need a well rounded team to win, and pitching the the most important part of the game. If your aces don’t perform your team will not win anything. Take the top 4 teams right now which is a small sample. Texas has Andrus .270, Cruz .230, Torrealba .238 and Napoli who was up for the MVP at .207. Dodgers have Gordon .205, Ellis .237, Loney .194, Uribe .235. Detriot has Boesch .267, Cabrera .250, Inge .167, Raburn .086, Kelly .200. St Louis has Holliday .200, Greene .200 and Descalso.212 by yesterday Box Scores. The playoffs are random so many short series in all sports, the best team doesn’t always win, Giants and St. Louis. HRs are hit by players like Freese and Renteria, pretty random. The Yanks need one big hit last year to advance an they didn’t get it. The only problem I see with the Yanks hitting is their lefty hitters must hit better agains’t RHP. I still think that Pineda will be the pitcher that helps the Yanks the most the second half if he gets back to form. Texas wins with no ace and a balanced attack. They look to me like the best team right now, but it’s a long season, and it gets real hot in Texas. Hamilton and Cruz will get injured at some point like they usually do.
Doug,
But thats my point about Texas. You just pointed out the cold guys so far but they’re still 9-2 because the lineup is so long that at any given time they have 4 guys hitting even if its 4 different guys from week to week.
Andrus will be his typical 285, you know Napoli will hit and Cruz is a no brainer.
Texas is the perfect team, they were constructed the right way and have been maintained the right way. Pitching? Does anyone really think Nolan Ryan doesn’t understand pitching? WHat Ryan “gets” is that you’re better off with 5 number 3 starters then you are tying up zillions on one or two aces. Thats why he let Wilson walk.
Their trades have been fabulous and they understand the value of OBP/AVG guys.
Sorry, but I don’t believe the playoffs are random. Thats a big crutch Yankee fans and lately Phillies fans have been using.
There was no change in the playoff format from 1995-2011 and it seemed to work fine when we won titles and noone said it was random. In 2009 we clearly had the best team in MLB and we won.
The big money teams have the advantage of DEPTH in the regular season so they win more games. In the postseason depth isn’t an advantage because your backups don’t play a very big role or any role at all. Texas sure didn’t have a problem hitting Detroit or getting “big hits” did they? There was nothing random about it, Texas simply had a team that kept the train moving and could score runs without having to launch the longball, we didn’t.
We’ve lost the last two years because we constructed a station to station team that relied on the longball. The 2009 team had a sick OBP/AVG as did the dynasty teams.
When I look at a team like Texas I see a well rounded team who doesn’t need their pitchers to throw shutouts or one run games. I see a team with a power/speed/avg/obp blend that tortures pitchers and creams lefties. Lester threw 80 pitches last night and came away with 6 outs.
Texas keeps pitchers working from the stretch constantly.
Michael, first of all the Rangers play in the only division with only 4 teams, that means they have a 25% chance of winning their division, more than teams in all the other divisions, with the unbalanced schedule this is a big advantage. The Astros will be playing in their division next year which makes the west the weakest division in baseball. By your comments you are telling me that the Gaints and the Cards were the best teams in baseball the last 2 years, when by record the Yanks and Phils had the best records therefore the best teams over 162 games. This is a fact. The Yanks won in the 90′s because they had Clemens, Cone, Pettite, Wells, and El Duke, one Hall of Famer, and 2 borderline Hall of Famers. I believe the Yanks won their series with Texas last year, and the Sox relief doesn’t look too good right now. Let’s let the season play out a bit before we start crowning a team that has never won a world series, and blew one last year.
Since 1995 only 11 of the 34 teams with the best records played in the world series. I would call that random. Now we have a one game playoff with the wild card teams, which makes it even more random. I think in 2009 the Yanks had a team batting average of .283 the Angels hit .285 as a team. Last year we hit .263 while Texas hit .283. The Yanks, Sox, and Texas hit about the same again’st leftys .282-.281. The glaring differenc was again’st RHPers, Texas 283, Sox .280, and they Yanks .255. I see Girardi sitting some hitters again’st RHPinng if they are not producing. Swisher and Tex need to hit better again’st RHPs. The shift is a problem for Tex, which has caused a problem for the Yanks.