(Via Heyman, SI and RAB)

Hey, it gives us an excuse to go look at the fancy splits feature on Fangraphs!

Did you know that last year he hit .299 on grounders…and only .212 on fly balls?

Seriously, check it out!

(And yes, Thames joins Nick Johnson and Javier Vazquez as returning Yankees.)

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I was going to attempt this post in the vein of Jay-Z’s “99 problems and a bitch ain’t one”, but the thing is, the Yankees don’t actually have 99 problems.

Well, I’m sure they do, but I got stuck after 34–and that was with the majority of them being completely nonsensical.

So where does a manager who brought the Yankees a 100+-win season and their 27th World title in his second year with the team–and third, overall–rank in terms of issues the Yankees may deign to consider as the dawn of the 2010 season approaches?

Pretty far down. I can think of a lot others–both serious and not-so-serious–(these are only in the order they occur to me)

Oh. And for the record, since this seems to sail over some people’s head: If the following is all that plagues your franchise, you are in remarkably good shape.

For instance,

1) Nick Johnson, who history tells us will probably get hurt at some point, is supposed to be the fulltime DH.

What happens when Johnson goes down? Right now your fillers are Randy Winn and Jamie Hoffman; otherwise you’re talking Posada DHing and Cervelli catching, and if Cervelli goes down, you’re rushing Jesus Montero. Johnny Damon would be the perfect fit here, of course, but it looks like both sides blew that one.

2) Jeter’s 36, Mo’s 40, A-Rod’s 35, Posada’s…you know what? I’d rather not know.

For a team that prides itself on getting younger, many of the most important players–Jeter, Mo, A-Rod, Posada, Pettitte–are all on the wrong side of 35.

I’d hate to be considered agist, but the older you are after your mid-20s, the easier it is to wear-and-tear and get hurt, and the Yankees, as 2008 showed us, can ill-afford a slate of injuries. To keep them healthy, Girardi needs to rest them, but when he does rest them, he gets hammered Jim Caldwell-style for sitting his starters…

3) Our best prospect is a 20 year old kid who’s never played above AA.

Yeah, sure, trades are fun, but we’ve more or less gutted the upper levels of our farm system. Sure, Kelvin DeLeon and Slade Heathcott and Manny Banuelos may turn out to be studs, but they are a long, long way off.

2009 worked as well as it did because we had guys like Cervelli and Peña who, though not All-Stars, could still come up and do their fill, what was needed of them, and not be completely overmatched. It meant that hurt guys, like Posada and A-Rod, could take their time coming back, instead of risking re-aggravating their injury.

4) In the time it takes Joba to set between pitches, I managed to finish, print, revise, print, publish and ship my novel.

Speaking of which, there’s the whole Joba-vs-Phil debate, and then someone is bound to bring up the 8th inning thing again, and meanwhile you want to tear your hair out because you remember that good pitchers aren’t built in a day–even though the rest of the media seems to have forgotten this.

5) That (rhymes with duck)-ing moat.

And Kate Smith. And Cotton Eye’d Joe. And YMCA. And fans doing the wave. And everything that says “let’s be cheesy” instead of just letting fans enjoy the game that’s played on the field, like the main attraction it’s supposed to be.

6) The fact that if Granderson and Winn hit back to back, there exists a potential “Grandy and Randy go back-to-back, ain’t that dandy?” from Sterling.

‘Nuff said.

Yeah, there are a lot more problems, I’m sure, but the point is, all things considered, Joe Girardi isn’t really a worry.

Yes, if the Yankees miss the playoffs it will be 2-of-3 years that they missed, but let us not forget that in 2008 the team lost many of its best players due to injury for extended time and still managed to win 89 games–which would have made the playoffs in at least two other divisions.

Then, last year, Girardi and his team won over 100 games, far and away the best team in the league, and virtually steamrolled through the postseason.

Honestly, there are other New York coaches–Tortorella, Coughlin, whatever dude manages the Mets–that should find their seats a whole lot hotter…

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I miss baseball.

Now that it’s almost back, now that we’re finally in the same month as Spring Training, now that PECOTA has been released and torn to shreds, I miss it more than ever.

I won’t lie–it’s hard to let go of 2009.

It’s hard to let go of that season where nearly everything broke *just* right, where the Yankees were that team, the one you decided you’d take as your own, because it was clear they were by and far the best team, and where you spent a chill November evening get drunk on Brooklyn Lager and free champagne at a bar on the Upper West Side.

A new season means that, according to the standings, at least, 2009 doesn’t matter one bit.

No matter how much you follow the team in the offseason, no matter how familiar you are with how Curtis Granderson hits during night games on turf against lefties or how Nick Johnson’s OBP improves if he hits in spot Y of the lineup instead of spot X, you still, ultimately, know almost nothing.

No matter how familiar you are with statistics–how you bypass OBP and OPS and go straight for WAR–the fact is that there is no statistic that will tell you which player’s going to get hurt (though they’re trying) or which rookie will be utterly unable to deal with the transition from a 10,000 seat AAA park to a 50,000 seat stadium, or which player is going to get in some sort of other trouble that prohibits him from doing what the team had planned for him to do.

The stats can tell you what should happen, of course–but, with the possible exception of Nate Silver, they usually don’t tell you what will.

Yet even so, even knowing that with the aging shortstop, third baseman, catcher and a couple pitchers PECOTA’s 93-win prediction may not be all that far off–I still miss baseball.

I miss listening to “amp-up” music on the way to the subway, wearing my Yankee t-shirt and hi-fiving grown men with whom I have utterly nothing in common–except that we’re Yankee fans.

I miss coming out of the subway and crossing the street, feeling the rays of the sun on my back and moping about how I forgot sunblock, while I wait for my friend/brother/co-conspirator to come and meet me.

I miss trying to scan a crumpled-up paper ticket to get through the turnstile, and then walking all the way to the sushi stand in the food court, even though my seats are all the way in right field.

I miss trying to rush back, climbing G-d-only-knows how many flights of stairs to get to my Terrace or Grandstand level seats for which I’ve overpaid, just so I can finish my food before the National Anthem.

I miss the clapping till the first strike, and the Roll Call, and watching as Gardner flexes and Swisher salutes.

I miss the way the Stadium explodes when A-Rod connects, or when Jeter makes that jump throw, or when Canó manages to do anything with a runner on base.

I miss the way that you really don’t know what the score at the end of the game is going to be–and don’t tell me you do, because in 2009 I saw Chien Ming Wang outpitch Roy Halladay and am now a firm believer in anything being possible.

I miss the roar–in this case, the cliché is true–when “Enter Sandman” starts to blare, and the way we hang on Mariano’s every pitch as though life itself depends on it. Sometimes it does–and then we get to savor the sweet-smelling pie afterwards. I miss that, too.

I miss going to Ollie’s for dinner afterwards, watching game highlights on my phone and just trying to soak in everything I can about that day.

No matter how hard it may be to let go of 2009, I do it because that summer is over. It’s about time for a new one to begin.

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Here’s a preview of Swisher’s guest spot tonight on How I Met Your Mother on CBS.

Only in New York, of course!

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Via Joel Sherman on Twitter, the Yankees have reached a one year deal with Randy Winn.

Sherman states that the Yankees saw Winn as a better overall fit than Reed Johnson–although a Gardner/Winn platoon doesn’t have quite the same oomph as one might have hoped for.

At any rate, as they say, que será, será

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Over at River Ave Blues, our friends have come up with a series outlining the Yankees’ 10 best pitching performances and hits of the 2009 regular season.

Since I lack a single original bone in body body, I thought I’d come up with a similar list–except, of course, for the postseason, and one that combines hits, pitches and all-out instincts.  See if you agree or disagree–comments are always welcome!

10: Jeterian:  In the grand scheme of things, Derek Jeter’s ALDS game one game-tying home run may go unnoticed.  In a game the Yankees ended up winning by a comfortable margin, Jeter’s hit came relatively early, thus it perhaps lacks the drama of some of the later moments.

Still, until that hit, the Yankees were trailing the Twins, and the feeling of “oh no, not again…” was rampant–after all, these were Yankees that still hadn’t won a playoff series since 2004.

9: Pettitte Pizazz With his team down 3-0 in game three of a deadlocked World Series, the Yankees were in serious danger of going down in the World Series two games to one while on the road.  The Yankees, however, got help from an unlikely source–Pettitte himself, who blooped a single off of Cole Hamels that scored the game tying run.  The Yankees never looked back, taking a lead in the game (and in the series) that they would not relinquish.

8: Fundamentals 2, Angels 0 It’s one thing to win on a walk-off, another to win because of the other team’s miscues, and still yet another to do both of these in an ALCS game.  Helped by an unseasonably cold and wet night, Jerry Hairston Jr. helped the Yankees do just that–scoring after the Angels’ second baseman botched what could have been a double play ball–and the Yankees took a commanding two games-to-none series lead.

7: Halloween Hijinks Pettitte’s game-tying hit in Game Three of the World Series would have gone for naught had it not been for what happened almost immediately beforehand.  Alex Rodriguez (who else?) hit a long fly ball that looked, on first glance, as though it bounced off of the top of the wall in right field for a long double.  His teammates, however, saw differently:  the ball actually hit a camera that was hanging over the fence, and would have likely gone into the stand otherwise.  After a brief protest, the umpires conferred, watched the first-ever World Series replay, and issued their ruling:  two-run home run.

6: David Robertson, Miracle Worker Although A-Rod’s game-tying home run in Game 2 of the ALDS (see below) may have been the biggest moment at the New Yankee Stadium at that point, the home run did, alas, only tie the game.  Thus, as the Yankees proceeded to extra innings and Girardi burned reliever after reliever, he was eventually left to call upon David Robertson to come in and do the impossible:  get out of a two men on, no one out situation without giving up a run.

Robertson did not help his own cause at first–allowing a base hit–but the ball was hit so hard that Minnesota could not score, and instead was left with the bases loaded (and still no one out).  Let the miracle begin:  a line-out to Teixeira, a ground ball hit hard enough for Teixeira to make the out at home, and a lazy fly ball to center field.  The Yankees won the game in the bottom of the same inning.

5:  CC, completely in control Heading into the postseason, one of the biggest question marks the Yankees had was the ability of Sabathia to pitch on rest as short as three days–he had done so in Milwaukee, but done so so often in September that there was nothing in the tank in October.

Yankee fans, however, needn’t have worried.  Sabathia excelled on short rest–and perhaps not more so than in game four of the ALCS, which the Yankees would win 10-1.  Sabathia allowed just five hits over eight innings, and the not-so-hidden benefit of his dominant performance was that the Yankees were able to employ a ready and rested bullpen in the wake of a poor performance from AJ Burnett in Game Five.

4:  Matsui go Boom–The only thought going into Game Six of the World Series for Yankee fans (and one presumes the Yankees) was simple:  don’t go to Game Seven.  No one, it seems, heeded that call more than designated hitter Hideki Matsui, who got to work quickly, with a two run home run, two run single and two run double.  The six RBI night was enough to crown Matsui World Series MVP in a series with no clear-cut winner–and as far away as crowded bars in Manhattan, you could hear the chants of MVP! MVP! reverberating just as Matsui’s double (and RBI 5 and 6) landed, missing being a second home run by only a little.  Godzilla, indeed.

3:  Johnny Damon takes the 2-1 special: Keith Olbermann called this the smartest play in World Series history, and while you may debate this, the fact is that this play illustrates why sabermetrics, though important, cannot be the be all and end all–that an acute awareness for one’s surroundings can be as, if not more, important.

In the ninth inning of a tie game on the road, with two out and Phil Coke (!) warming in the bullpen, Johnny Damon worked a miracle at-bat against Brad Lidge, finally singling after what seemed to be an eternity.  Then, with Teixeira at bat, the Phillies over-shifted–something of perhaps little consequence in a regular season game, but made all the difference in this situation.  After stealing second base, Damon noticed that no one was covering third base–so he took it.  The decision, which had to be made in hundredths of a second, meant that if successful, Damon could score as easily on a passed ball or wild pitch as on a base hit.

2:  AJ and an Empire State of Mind AJ’s postseason can be explained very simply:  when he pitched at home he was great; when he pitched on the road he was awful.  Fortunately for the Yankees, his most important pitching performance came at home–Game Two of the World Series.  After having being beat soundly by Cliff Lee in Game One of the Series (which many Yankee fans will tell you did not feel like Game One of the World Series), the Yankees were at risk of going down two games to none, and then having to go to Philadelphia to try to salvage the series.

Philadelphia’s surprising Game Two starter–Pedro Martinez–pitched better than most expected, but it was Burnett who had the endurance to outlast him.  Burnett went seven innings, allowing just one run on four hits–and impressively (for Burnett) walked just two.  In a game that the Yankees won by a low score of 3-1, Burnett’s performance was nothing short of exactly what the Yankees needed.

1:  It’s an A-bomb, from A-Rod You might disagree about where this home run is placed, but after having seen it in person, I admit I am biased.

It’s not just that A-Rod’s home run was a bottom of the ninth, game-tying blast, or that it happened in the postseason, or that it happened after the Yankees’ vaunted set-up and closer duo of Phil Hughes and Mariano Rivera faltered, just a bit but enough to give Minnesota a 3-1 lead, or that A-Rod had long been the scapegoat for Yankee postseason woes, or that the entire 2009 season seemed to be about A-Rod’s redemption after admitting he used steroids, or that the way the season started and ended for him–first and last pitch home runs was an incredible story, if not a bizarre coincidence–

–It was the fact that A-Rod’s home run was an aggregate of all of those, coming in a game that itself was incredibly close and well-played.

It’s not often that you can say one hit changes everything–but this time, you can.

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Around this time last year, amidst the dark and cold of winter, I came to a conclusion:  the reason I love baseball so much more than any other sport is because it is predicated on one concept:  hope.

Football, basketball and hockey, all of these sports are set against an actual clock, so you are never just playing the other team, you are playing the clock as well.  In American football, especially, if the winning team maintains posession of the ball with less than a minute left, they don’t even pretend to play the final minute.

Maybe there’s something symbolic about the fact that one plays football in the fall and winter while baseball is played primarily in the spring and summer.

We are not all optimists.  In fact, I may even wager that most of us are not.

We see doom and gloom, the Hobbesian view that life is nasty, brutish and short.  We see Darfur, Afghanistan and Haiti.  We see man’s cruelty to man and we tell people that no matter how bad things get, they could always get worse.

Baseball says otherwise.

It dares us to challenge the way we think; dares us to stop saying no and to start saying “yes, yes it is possible”.  Baseball dares us to hope; it dares us to believe.  It might be the bottom of the ninth inning, our team might be down by five runs against their best closer, but until that other team gets that final out, well, you just never know.

Baseball on its own, of course, cannot change the realities of the world around us.  It’s just a game, right?

Yet the mindset that one develops, the idea that it’s okay to hope, that maybe, just maybe…that changes everything.

Hope changes everything, from something as unimportant as what we see on a baseball field, to something as important as the way that so many with little or no connection to half of an island in the Caribbean have banded together to help, in whatever way, shape or form possible.

Hope reaches into our most primal emotions, makes us imagine, makes us dream.  Hope is contagious–it starts with one and then spreads to another, the same as any virulent plague but instead of spreading bad it spreads good, the belief not just that things can end well, but that they will.  Reality keeps us grounded, but hope makes us human.

This is the enduring power of baseball, as it channels this, and lands a sucker punch in Hobbes’ survivalist gut.

Life can be beautiful, baseball tells us.  All you have to do is hope.

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(with thanks to Jonathan Mayo)

There’s a proud man.

He was once (and presumably still is) a millionaire.

He had a fantastic job, one which many young children dream that they might one day be able to do.

Alas, this November he lost his job.  He wasn’t fired, he didn’t do anything wrong, but his skills were not what his company needed at the moment, and, well, with the economy the way it is, his salary was a little too extravagant for what his performance warranted.

His company decided that they would prefer younger, fresher talent–talent that was not too far removed from training, and thus cheaply obtainable.  In an economy such as this, any dollar saved was supremely beneficial.

As autumn turned to winter, he looked everywhere in his industry, with all the competitors of his former company, his career counsellor advised him that there was no reason for him to ever consent to a salary or employment contract inferior to his previous one.  His career counsellor had long given the same advice to others in the same industry, but niether seemed to grasp the difficulties and the climate of the current economy.

And so, as our hero continued to look, the opportunties disappeared:  in LA, in St. Louis, in Atlanta, in New York and in others, the position was filled by others with either better skills or less pride, and sometimes both.

Soon the new year came around, and not so long after that the proud man found himself only a few weeks before the High Season still seeking employment.

Could he, one must think, return to his previous employer?  Though they have filled the void, they have not done so to the degree that their shareholders had come to expect.

The company, however, is not in the same state that it was when our hero was first employed by them–they can no longer pay him the salary he so desires; out of choice or necessity is known only to those executives, so we must only speculate.

One thing, however, remains clear:  the witching hour grows nigh and our hero is still without a job.

What’s the moral of the story?

Swallow your pride, Damon.  I am about to lose all the credit in the world of Yankee blogging for saying this, but swallow your pride and come back to the Yanks.  Not for your defence, but because Nick Johnson being Nick Johnson is probably going to get hurt at some point and we will need a decent DH and besides do we really want Brett Gardner playing left field every day of the season when a better option is available?

I realize it’s a lot to ask, but you’ve got at least one good year with the bat left; NYS is perfect for your swing and don’t tell me you’re mulling retirement, either….

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Ah, Fordham University.

If I could do a good Michael Kay impression, now is when I would do so.

However, since I can’t (not even a little), I’ll just leave you with this instead:

Yankees World Championship Trophy Pays Visit To Fordham University Rose Hill Campus This Sat., Jan., 23

***27th World Series Hardware treks up the Deegan to be displayed at Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame ceremonies, and during Rams vs. Temple Men’s Basketball Game***

New York, January 21, 2010 — The New York Yankees 2009 World Championship Trophy will depart from Yankee Stadium, travel north on the Major Deegan Expressway, across Fordham Road, and arrive at another venerable Bronx institution – Fordham University –  this Saturday, January 23, from 11:30 am to 4:00 pm for a special visit to the Rose Hill Campus.

Fordham will play host to the World Series hardware – the Bronx Bombers 27th championship trophy – will be on display during Fordham Athletics’ Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in the McGinley Center , and later at the Rams vs. Temple men’s basketball game at the Rose Hill Gymnasium. The public is welcomed (tickets for the Hall of Fame brunch are priced at $50 adults/$25 students and children, while game tickets are priced at $10 for adults and $5 for children).

An astounding number of Fordham connections helped the visit the visit to materialize. Recent Fordham/WFUV alum Ryan Ruocco (’08) tipped off executive athletic director Frank McLaughlin (‘69) with the brainchild. The idea was hatched because Michael Kay (’82), YES Network’s Yankees play by play voice and 1050 ESPN Radio host is Master of Ceremonies for the Hall of Fame proceedings. Ruocco works with Kay at both YES and ESPN. McLaughlin went into action, contacting a pair of Fordham grads now with the Yankees, Assistant Director of Corporate/Community Relations Rocky Halsey (’98) and Director of Stadium Tours Tony Morante (’79), who will escort the trophy to his alma mater.

Men’s swimming record holder Akira Kosugi (CBA ‘96), football Patriot League champions   and 2004 graduates Kirwin Watson (FCRH), wide receiver Javarus Dudley (CBA) and quarterback Kevin Eakin (FCRH), Ioana Dragan (CBA ‘02, Women’s Tennis), and Sophie Namy (FCRH ‘00 Rowing) – champions all – will be inducted into the hallowed Fordham halls, where they join the likes of Frankie Frisch, Vince Lombardi, Wellington Mara and Vin Scully in the Fordham pantheon, with the Yankees championship trophy present and accounted for.

Now, as a Syracuse graduate, I have to say that most of the time I am completley unaware that Fordham even has a basketball team, but my favorite memory from my time at Fordham?

Walking the long way from FMH to McGinley, past the baseball fields in the fall and spring, listening to the ping of baseballs off of the aluminum bats…

…(Yes, I’m overly sentimental, so what?)

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From Shotgun Spartling, in his own words:

“Today, I had a simultaneous posting of two long, time-consuming articles that I slaved over for a while on my site, The Blue Workhorse, and a LA-based site out of USC that I write for, and I’d really like some love to help promote them.

The first is about the transformation and evolution of sports media coverage from Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle to the groundbreaking 1970 book “Ball Four” all the way to Tony Romo and Tiger Woods today.

Link here

For the article, I was able to interview former MLB pitcher (most notably with the Yankees) and “Ball Four” author Jim Bouton, and after asking about the media, I asked him some general baseball questions from how he threw his knuckleball to who was the toughest hitter he ever faced, so I wrote up a post in Q&A format

Link here”

Both are worth a read, so have fun.  I’ll be here when you get back.

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