Everything is right in Yankee land tonight. The Bombers are in first. Mark Teixeira leads baseball in home runs. CC Sabathia is still CC Sabathia. Bartolo Colon and Phil Hughes are coming back soon. Derek Jeter is set to resume pursuing a career milestone in grounding into double plays hits sometime next week. If there is anything bad in Yankee land, anything at all, it would be that there is no game tonight! Enjoy the open thread.
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13 Responses to TYA Open Thread, Thursday June 30, 2011
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Nights w/o games are frustrating and a half.
They are indeed, Matt. And sooo, I am thus left to ponder other important things on this Bomberless evening, such as the following:
Would you happen to know if any of our intrepid Yankee Analysts have scored tickets to DJ’s Rock’n'Rehab-palooza in Trenton this weekend??
There’s sure to be a dearth of objective observers on his performance present, and I’ve come to rely upon the sage and balanced assessments of our crack YA scouts in such instances. Please, say it is so.
If Jeter gets 4 or 5 hits in the first 2 games in Cleveland, would you sit him in game 3 and wait for 3,000 at Yankee stadium? I would. I’d even lift him in the 3rd game if he got to 2,999. I think NY fans deserve to watch this milestone. By the way, I live in Houston so not matter what I have to rely on TV. But I think it should happen at Yankee Stadium.
Phil, I think everyone in the world would agree it would be fitting and a wonderful thing to see him do it in NY. But this isn’t the movie “Mr. 3,000″ and DJ isn’t Bernie Mac. His career doesn’t end with that number, and in fact in the following days and weeks he will be quickly blowing past a host of other highly notable and immortal members of the 3K Club, so this countdown doesn’t end at 3K.
Every hit he gets from now on will be history-making and tallied as a step towards another plateau on the all-time list, and we’re in a pennant race, as always. That means we need every hit he’s got in him. So if it comes down to it, I’ll be quite happy with a heartfelt standing ovation in an oppponent’s ballpark, which are usually quite packed with expatriate Yankee fans anyway. They as much as we are deserving of witnessing that magic moment live. The Splendid Splinter didn’t sit down in the final game of his most special season to preserve an arbitrary stat. Sitting Jeter to arrange a more suitable location would not only justify haters who bemoan the crass commercialization of a genuinely rare and momentous sports event; it would cheat the team, all its fans and especially Jeter himself of at-bats he most definitely needs and we want to see him get.
In any case, I don’t believe for a minute he would go along with such a preposterous suggestion if anyone dared raise it. If it happens on the road, IMHO, it would only raise the stock of the entire sport for all to see his achievement and reputation applauded by opponents, and only elevate his thunderous homecoming when he returned for his next home game. That would be two celebrations for the price of one, and now wouldn’t THAT be something?
Now. can someone at YA please let me know if we’ve got one of our guys in the seats in trenton this weekend to give us the straight dope on DJ’s rehab games?
As far as I know, no one’s going to be there.
Drat! Oh well, thanks for your response, Matt. Guess we’ll have to rely on the lame-stream media types for that.
That could, obviously, change, though.
I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed then. Thanks again!
It is ridiculous that there is talk about Hughes bumping someone from the rotation when he is 0-1 with a 13.94 ERA in 3 starts this year.
2010 is over. It’s 2011.
Sabathia/Burnett/Colon/Garcia/Nova is the way to go.
The Yankees should remove Nova from the rotation only if they acquire a starting pitcher who is better than him. Hughes is not that guy.
He had a great 2010, and the fact that there is a possibility he could continue to repeat that success in the future, I’d say it’s worth giving him another shot. Considering all that’s seemingly out there on the trade block isn’t better than Hughes projects to be, it can’t hurt. And if he fails, there still will be a few weeks left to search for a scrap heap trade.
At True Talent level, Hughes is miles ahead of Nova.
The Yankess absolutely, positively have to start Hughes and determine if he is back to even close to full strength. I doubt they want to go into the post season with Garcia as the #4 starter. Ideally, CC, AJ, Colon, & Hughes would be the best combination at this point. But there is still a half season plus to play and much can (and probably will) happen.
This is the whole Joba discussion all over again. Young impressive power pitcher who mysteriously loses his power when called upon to summon it over a full season. Then, after a serious curtailment in his innings, he summons it once again in briefer tantalizing flashes.
My dad taught me when I was little all major league pitchers were once great starting pitchers, and all relief pitchers are simply the guys who aren’t good enough to be starting pitchers now, for whatever reason.
The book is closed on Joba, he’s a reliever and that’s that. He can’t maintain his velocity over 150-plus innings so he’s now a niche pitcher. Isn’t that the real question the team’s trying to answer in Phil’s case?
I don’t see how a couple of abbreviated minor league starts answers that question concerning Phil. This isn’t about whether his velocity has magically returned to his arm after a couple months of R&R. It’s about discovering if he’s hit his wall as a pitcher and his velocity is destined to fade again over multiple starts. I think that’s a drawn-out experiment that shouldn’t be undertaken with the big club as a lab when we have other pitchers getting the job done.
I think we need to see him start and finish six, seven and eight innings over several turns through the rotation down on the farm. And I think the reason he’s being rushed back to the big club is for a quick snapshot before the deadline that by definition can’t tell us anything meaningful about the problem he was sent down for in the first place
Further, I think bringing him back up to the big club — either as a long reliever OR starter — is a big mistake that could lead in the long term to a protracted Joba Rules-like mess affecting the entire rotation and in the short term a unnecessarily murky needs assessment process come the trade deadline.