Thanks to the very few of you who showed up to our liveblog on Saturday afternoon, although I guess I can’t complain about attendance too much given that it was the first nice day we’ve had in New York in approximately 800 years.
So my first look at the 2010 Yankees in action was not pretty, although not that I would’ve expected otherwise. Randomly enough I seem to recall the first game of the spring I watched last year was also A.J. Burnett’s first outing, and he was just mowing guys down left and right. This year, not so much. He was throwing gas (seemingly every fastball was at 94), but since he was concentrating on working his changeup into his repertoire he wasn’t fooling too many people, and couldn’t even get through 2 full innings. On the pitching side Amaury Sanit and Boone Logan managed to escape unscathed, although Jonathan Albaledejo continued to do what he does best, which is dump heroic amounts of gasoline on wildfires, getting lit up for 5 runs on 7 hits (6 of which were, a kid you not, in a row) and bringing his spring ERA up to a hilarious 189.00.
I know Girardi wants these guys to get their work in, but it was fairly bizarre that Joe was busy chatting away with Michael Kay and Ken Singleton while Albaledejo was getting throttled every which way and didn’t go to rescue him until things had gotten completely out of hand.
I also got to see Andrew Brackman in action for the first time ever, and while he didn’t pitch particularly effectively (1 IP, 2 ER, 3 H), I remain hopeful that he can be a contributor to the Major League club one day, even if it’s as a reliever.
On the hitting side the bats were pretty quiet. Curtis Granderson and Brett Gardner both worked walks, and I’m not joking when I say those were probably the two most exciting things that happened on offense on Saturday. Francisco Cervelli got nailed in the head and wound up with his second concussion of the offseason, although thankfully his CAT scan was negative.
Also, Jose Molina dropped 20 pounds and actually looked pretty svelte, so good for Molino.
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3 Responses to How do you spell gasoline? A-L-B-A-L-A-D-E-J-O
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TIQ IQ
Safe to chalk Molina up for 20 steals, I'd say.
when Albaledejo first came over and i got a look at him, i thought i saw possibilities – but there is a reason why teams give up on guys like Albaledejo, Brian Bruney and even oliver perez – eventually, you get frustrated with some parts or combination of injuries and inconsistency. i think its pretty safe to say that Albaledejo was going to start the season in triple A anyway, no matter what he did. maybe they left him in just to eat some innings bc no one else was scheduled to throw that day. pretty sure the yanks have some split squad action this week, so that might have limited options.
as for Burnett, i really hope the change-up works out – that could make him deadly.
Did you see what kind of velocity Brackman had? when the yankees drafted him, i heard the dude was almost 7 feet tall, so that got visions of right handed randy johnson dancing in my head… however irrational that might be!
Wish I could have joined the live blog – i was out of town and it was a lovely day in st louis. in person, i found busch stadium to be sort of baltimore – esque
~jamie
Despite the results, I thought Brackman looked alright out there, and I agree, I think everyone hopes he can turn into the Big Unit, but at this point I think we should just be happy if he even makes it to the Show at some point.
As for the liveblog, we would've loved to have had you, but there'll certainly be more to come.