Does it surprise anyone that the forecast tonight calls for rain in Philadelphia?

Here’s the thing, though:  a rainout–not a rain delay, but a proper rainout, would actually help the Yankees.  It would help the Yankees more if was a Game Four rainout instead of Game Three, but here’s how it helps:

A rainout means an extra day of rest for the pitchers.  Let’s say the Yankees are using a three-man rotation.  If it’s today’s game that gets rained out, then CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett get an extra day off so they can pitch on four days’ rest instead of three.  Alas, Andy Pettitte would still have to make a second start on short rest (assuming the series gets to a game six), but if tomorrow’s game got rained out (and it won’t, the forecast is for sun), then all three pitchers could make their second starts on normal rest.

Currently, the situation looks like Chad Gaudin will be getting the Game Four start, which doesn’t thrill many, but Charlie Manuel has perhaps helped make the decision easier by stating that he will start Joe Blanton–who does not have good career numbers against the Yankees–in Game Four.

*****

As you may have noticed, the blog’s undergone a layout revision.  Or two.

Please check out the “From Blogger to WordPress” link above for details and acknowledgements, and bear with me as I continue to sort out the details.

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I’ll admit it. I’ve been an awful blogger the past couple of weeks. I’ll spare you the excuses.

Anyway, now that Spring Training is a few weeks old, I’ve had a couple of thoughts that keep repeating:

• I wish the Yankees would do something about the fact that Derek Jeter is not going to be able to play shortstop for a whole heck of a lot longer. They’ve got a couple prospects at the lower levels, I think, but I would love to see if perhaps they considered trading some of their surplus pitching talent for a closer-to-ready SS…unless the kids the Yankees have in their system really are supposed to be that good…but, given that you never hear them mentioned in the nearly the same breath as Jackson, Montero, Romine, et al, that doesn’t bode very well.

• Posada’s been swinging the bat well. I wonder how many people remember that in last spring training, in the first game against USF, Posada hit a triple?

• I wouldn’t worry too much about the pitching right now–and here I’m talking about the starting. All you need to worry about is whether or not they stay healthy. Don’t go too much on Spring Training performances–remember how good Canó was in March and how bad he was in April?

• As the economy continues to collapse and enters downright scary-as-hell territory, I have to think that it might soon become very possible to see ticket prices, at least from fan-to-fan selling, come down a tad. Granted, no, you still won’t be able to afford tickets for Opening Day, but the prices for the Cubs exhibition games, at least the ones I’ve seen, aren’t too bad (until you consider that face value is 1923 prices, but we’ll ignore that). I’m still hoping to magically land a ticket (or two) for Friday night, but I have to go to a conference all day on Saturday, which is a shame since I’d much prefer the day game.

• If you haven’t seen it, PBP was mentioned on the New York Magazine website here the other day, under the appropriate named linked ‘fanatic-blogs’. My inappropriate sense of self-importance grows ever larger.

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[it's 11.27 PM, so as long as I get this done in the next half hour I won't have broken my New Year's resolution!]

You know you’ve been baseball blogging too much when…

10) You hear “spreadsheet” and think baseball reference

09) Your best friend apologizes for only reading once a month…even though she doesn’t watch baseball and hates the Yankees.

08) You hear that George Mitchell has been named US Mideast envoy and begin to think that ‘Roid Rage would go a long way to explaining the endemic violence.

07) You look forward to the end of the second week of February not for Valentine’s Day but for Spring Training…

06) You feel out of the loop because your phone won’t let you mobile update.

05) You have, at any point in time, uttered the sentence “it’s on my blog.”

04) You have, at any point in time, ever live-blogged and had people follow the post through some or the entirety of the event.

03) You feel slightly bad for the fact that you will be unable to live-blog the Super Bowl because you’ll actually be at a Super Bowl Party (what is this life and how do you have one?).

02) You’ve ever looked at your Technorati ranking.

01) You’re so determined to make your New Year’s blogging resolution stand that you come up with something like this.

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I’ve done some editing to the blogroll on the sidebar.

If you have a Yankees-related blog you would like me to link to or if your blog has changed addresses and the correct one is not currently not on the sidebar, please email me at rebecca@puristbleedspinstripes.com and I will be glad to edit accordingly.

Please, however, don’t ask me to link to your blog if you haven’t updated since, say, 2007…

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The Yankees will go for the you-know-what of the Chicago White Sox tonight, but to do it, Phil Hughes will have to pitch much better than his stat line–though that would be very welcome, not just for the Yankees, but for the sake of my fantasy team as well.

Jorge Posada is out of the lineup for a day off, with Jose Molina getting the nod. Johnny Damon will DH so Hideki Matsui can play in left, while Morgan Ensberg will still play at third. Alex Rodriguez is back with the team, but not playing tonight.

The Yankees offense has had a decent showing the past three games, though the bullpen has left a lot to be desired. Given that Hughes likely won’t go more than six full innings (maybe into the seventh), one has to hope that the bullpen can do what is asked of it today.

On a more personal welcome-to-my-life note, My law professor today made a remark about the Yankees getting off to a bad start.

He is clearly not a very big baseball fan, or, at least, greatly unfamiliar with the way the team started last year and is structured this year.

On a blog note note, I do feel I should make a brief mention of upcoming days when I will be unable to update this, so you will likely either get a guest post from Brent Nycz or someone else I annoy enough to do it, or no update at all. They are:

This Friday, I’ll be at the Rochester Red Wings/Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs game in Rochester.

This Saturday, I’ll be watching the Scranton Yankees up here in Syracuse; I should get back early enough to do some sort of post, but then again, last time I got lost and ended up where you don’t want to be after dark.

May 9th and 10th is Graduation Weekend, so, for obvious reasons, I will not be around, and then, 21-29 May I will be “across the pond”, doing it Italian style.

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1) What’s wrong with this statement: The Yankees and the Rays, dueling in a scoreless game in the eighth inning, Rasner having started for the pinstripes…

[EDIT: So it's not scoreless any more, but it was when I started this post!]

2) So I get not calling Davidson and Western Kentucky getting lucky, but how the heck does my brother bet San Diego on a coin flip and I…don’t? St. Joe’s and Vanderbilt are killing me as well. As my brother said, “Madness? THIS IS MARCH!” (don’t worry, he hasn’t kicked me into a bottomless well…)

Also, when they do those studies about how March Madness costs millions in productivity, they need to study how many hours of productivity college students lose…

3) I know my posts have been sporadic of late; this week has been fairly tough academically wise and it’ll get worse over the next few weeks before it gets better. Until it clears up, I do apologize.

4) Tampa’s offering two tickets to opening day for $20. I am very, very tempted. However, on that note, I will find out around dinnertime tomorrow whether or not I have tickets to Yankees-Sox on my birthday next month. If I do go, I’ll make specially sure to take some great photos.

5) Brian Bruney still can’t locate.

6) Some of you have asked about “The Season”. I am still working on it, and apologize for the lack of updates. There’s a reason for it, but I don’t want to get into it right now. Let’s just call it a secret.

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So, I did not catch today’s game and thus the notes are second-hand information.

1) Apparently Moose struggled a bit in his second inning today. It’s certainly much too early to draw any conclusions (see Ford, Whitey: Spring Training for details), but he is so far the only starter to have given up more than a hit in two innings of work. I am not worried at this point, because, well, it’d be un-optimistic.

2) According to the box score that was on my cell phone, Morgan Ensberg had a couple hits and a couple RBI. As did Shelley. It would be kind of funny if our 1B combined in the season for A-Rod-ish numbers.

3) Karstens pitched WELL. Don’t count this kid out, he might be the ‘sleeper’ on the team, the guy that ends up being much more important than we realize.

***

On another note entirely: I have been hotly debating this for some time, and I still have mixed feelings about it, but I will likely start running ads. Well, an ad.

See, I do love not having ads, but there are a few reasons to run at least one. I don’t want to get too detailed into it, but I’m hoping you guys will forgive me this little bit.

Anyway, the writing’s not going to change. Not a bit. You’d probably have to shoot me first.*

*Except that the writing might change in that the more I do this, the better the quality.

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Well, I mean, it’s actually seven weeks until March 21st, so technically, yes, there are six more weeks of winter, but I mean, really, like the groundhog’s ever right about these things…

Anyway, the Blog Plan for Spring Training is as follows–and I’ll do my best to actually, y’know, stick to it:

Most of this month won’t be too totally different than the previous ones. I’ll try to do the once-a-day update thing, unless something totally news/blogworthy occurs, and of course, a celebratory on the fourteenth and updates on The Season every Sunday, for the few of you that read it. Oh, and I’ll liveblog the Super Bowl, because, well, I can.

March, however, is gonna be all sorts of fun.

I’m going to do a team-preview-a-day, starting March 1st, in alphabetical order (so I can save the best for last and yet have a convincing argument that it’s not favoritism, even if it blatantly is). Some of these previews will be fairly in-depth, some won’t be quite so much, and the reasoning behind this is that a) Yankee fans are probably more concerned about AL teams than NL teams, especially AL East teams, and b) depending on the day and how much or little of coursework I’ve gotten done, I might not have time to fully research. I will, of course, do the best I can.

I probably won’t blog every spring training game, but I’ll do what I can, and, who knows, maybe attempt a live blog on a Saturday or Sunday for the heck of it.

So that is the grand plan, regardless of what any little furball groundhog has to say about it…

(I mean, does no one even ask Scooter what he thinks?!)

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Wow.

You know, yesterday I thought there were about five or six more days of January to get through, especially given how cold it got last night, but I woke up today and I turned the calendar page…and right now, I’m about to do it again.

This time I’ll go from 31 January to 1 February.

Sure, there’s a lot of winter left up in Syracuse, but, as I’d tell myself as a kid, by the time we get out of this month, people will be pitching and swinging again.

I have to say, it’s a slightly odd feeling, for a few reasons.

The first is that, even if the last month was kind of slow (until Tuesday), it was one heck of an offseason from a Yankees perspective: new manager, new coaching staff, A-Rod hoopla, getting Mo, Po and Andy to come back, the report-that-must-not-be-named, Santanamania…

Hard to believe it’s only been three months. Hard to believe it’s been as long as three months. I go back and forth.

It’s an odd feeling because October 2007 seems like it was such a long time ago, feels so far removed from now, but it’s really not.

On a more personal level, it’s an odd feeling because it means the blog’s closing in on a five month anniversary and (coincidentally?) 25.000 views. I can’t describe the feeling, knowing that something I started more or less on a whim has grown into something that was good enough to survive the off-season.

What’s more, I can’t describe the feeling this past week has given me–and the irony of it all is that I’m a journalism school reject. That’s life though, isn’t it?

So now there are just fourteen days to go, and indeed, there are a lot of people already down in Florida or Arizona, and the potential of Spring is soon to be at its most vibrant.

Whoever said February was a boring month is probably just a college football fan.

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So if you’re reading this, there’s a chance you may have just hopped over from Pete Abraham’s site, so if you’re new I’d like to say ‘welcome’ and ‘Let’s Go Yankees!’

Feel free to click around; there hasn’t been a ton of Yankee stuff of late, so if you’re looking for Yankees-specific entries, use the sidebar to navigate.

If you’ve got your own blog and want a link, or if you just want to say hello, feel free to drop me a line at rebecca@puristbleedspinstripes.com

Only seventeen days, not counting the 28th (today) to go ’till Spring Training.

A bonus nugget for the regular readers: In March, I’m going to attempt a preview-a-day season preview, starting on 1 March with the Angels, and going in alphabetical order, so that the last one, on 30 March, the day before the season starts is the New York Yankees.

I promise, I’ll try not to let school get in the way too much…

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