No love for Kate?

Other press conferences of note, Brian Roberts, Troy Glaus and Jose Guillen. Oh wait, only the Yankees are required to give steroid press conferences…

To be fair, Roberts I believe was questioned by reporters and admitted it.  And Ortiz did hold a press conference, though his was more about blaming others than admitting to anything.  But sure, your point holds.

He wasn’t the MVP in the AL (then again, neither was Joe Mauer).

Fortunately one wise MVP voter saw this as well…

Fortunately one wise MVP voter saw this as well…

Nice.

The trajectory of Teix’s first season as a Yankee mirrored Tino’s first season as a Yankee to some degree. They both struggled in April, then found their stride, and then struggled again in the postseason, although Teix had some huge hits that should forever stamp him as being reliable.

Although he didn’t have a great World Series, his two-run instant replay HR with the Yankees trailing 3-0 helped the Yanks to rally and take Game Three.

Wasn’t his top of the 9th 2 out RBI double in game 4 the biggest single Yankees +WPA swing of the World Series?  (+0.34, http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI200911010.shtml)

Wasn’t his top of the 9th 2 out RBI double in game 4 the biggest single Yankees +WPA swing of the World Series?

You really expect me to remember something that happened over a month ago?

.365./.500/.808

Hah!

Wasn’t his top of the 9th 2 out RBI double in game 4 the biggest single Yankees +WPA swing of the World Series?

Damon’s AB was bigger, and then of course he stole a page from the Red Sox playbook and stole two bases… or so I’ve been told…

So now, he can’t be called A-Fraud or A-Freud. Well, he could, but whoever does it is going to sound dumb.

It always sounded dumb, but you knew that.

The trajectory of Teix’s first season as a Yankee mirrored Tino’s first season as a Yankee to some degree.

And let us hope his second season does as well.  1997 was a (by far) career year for Tino, if Teix has a career year in 2010 I feel good about 1) Yankees winning division 2) Teix winning MVP.

Damon’s hit and 2 SB was a total of +.09.  A-Rod’s 2 out hit to drive him in was much much bigger.

ARod hit quite well in the World Series, despite a batting average of only .250, but he got on base a lot via walks and HBP.  His OBA was .423 and slugging was .550 for an OPS of.973.  In 6 games he scored 5 runs (which I believe led the team) and drove in 6 runs, which tied for the team lead with Matsui.

[11]  Fortunately, when comparing to how he did in the previous two series, he was only “okay”, instead of “great”. 

I think it would make so much sense for MLB to do like NHL and NBA do, and have a “playoff MVP” instead of MVP’s of the different series.  They could actually get more awards out of it if they like - CC could have been “player of the ALCS”, Hideki “player of the WS”, while ARod was “MVP of the playoffs”.

I think it would make so much sense for MLB to do like NHL and NBA do, and have a “playoff MVP”...

I think they’ll do this eventually, and call it the Derek Jeter Award.  Statheads can argue about who it really should be named for every year.

“The prospect of losing him for the entire season may have finally caused the clowns who said the Yankees would be better off without him to realize, no, they would be worse.”

Except Peter Abraham.

John Henry is a moron: http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/1551/john-henry-argues-for-change

Holy ish…Tex had three triples?

Actually I think this time John Henry has a point…

over a billion dollars have been paid to seven chronically uncompetitive teams, five of whom have had baseball’s highest operating profits

Then he goes an ruins it by suggesting salary floors.  As if that isn’t a

system… they would never sit still for in any of their industries

“So yeah, the Yankee corner IF was great in 2009.”

Understatement. Where do A-Rod and Tex stack up vs. other teams corners based on BR?

I guess A-Roid is still on the table.

I put Asteroid on vote. It is so much better than A-Roid.

Understatement. Where do A-Rod and Tex stack up vs. other teams corners based on BR?

Well according to Fangraphs, together they produced 78.2 BR.  Pujols alone produced 72.1.  Surprisingly, they still beat out any Pujols + combination the Cards had.  So they were the best.

Morales/Figgins are probably up there. Wright/Delgado, haha just kidding.

[10] I was clearly being sarcastic.  I thought it was obvious when I mentioned the “Red Sox playbook”.

[11] I thought Matsui led the team with 8 RBI in the WS?

The fact that Tex didn’t hit well in the postseason ignores the fact that his stretchy right leg should’ve gotten the MVP in all three postseason series. As long as he was making grabs like he did on throws all over the fucking place, he could hit like the love child of Jose Molina and Freddy Guzman, for all I cared….

He was instrumental during that “Mo as Houdini” 10th inning. My heart is still pounding.

As long as he was making grabs like he did on throws all over the fucking place, he could hit like the love child of Jose Molina and Freddy Guzman, for all I cared….

Will the love child of Cody Ransom and Angel Berroa make you care?

All Henry’s proposal really boils down to is changing revenue sharing from an income tax-based system to a sales tax-based system.  Of course, high-revenue teams can reduce or avoid a sales tax by simply spending less on players.  If enough of them do that, where is the money to be shared with the low-revenue teams going to come from, and who is going to be forking over the minimum percentage of revenues that he wants to guarantee to the players?

Yay Cash!

He confirmed my thought a few moments later when he called Joe Torre’s book “garbage.”

[27] Note the bit about Torre turning down an offer to become the [I]General Manager[/I] (!!) of the Yankees in 1995.  Thank Mo.  Thaaaaaaaank Mo.

There is absolutely no question that A-Rod’s repeated clutch performance in the postseason was the most satisfying thing about the Yankees’ WS run for me. I mean, how much time did I spend sitting around after Yankee postseason failures convincing myself that A-Rod wasn’t some special unclutch monster, that given enough time he would be A-Rod in the postseason, that all this “choking” was just some spectacular fluke?

I recall multiple times trying to convince my father not to pay attention to all the pop psychology spewing forth from ESPN and the rest of the MSM. Every now and then, he’d start a Yankee conversation along the lines of “John, I just don’t know about A-Rod…” and I’d have to rehash all the old arguments about clutch performance and postseason performance and why even these dozen or so games aren’t enough to judge A-Rod.

And how often does one get to see oneself so spectacularly and utterly vindicated? Not that I was alone in this vindication; I’m sure many here experienced the same. Still…

Just thinking back on it gets me excited all over again…

Doh, italics fail.  At least I didn’t mess up the whole comment thread.

By the way, what Henry wants is to reign in the Yankees, force the little guys to spend more, and… have absolutely no impact on his own team.  Win-win!

[17] Well he further ruined it when he started making claims that the Sox weren’t a large-market team.  Though he had some good ideas, I think the point of his rant has to hurt the Yankees, not help baseball.

If enough of them do that, where is the money to be shared with the low-revenue teams going to come from, and who is going to be forking over the minimum percentage of revenues that he wants to guarantee to the players?

Actually that does kinda work, assuming of course that teams can cover all expenses *besides* player-payroll from other revenue.  The theory anyway is that high-revenue teams drive up the price of players (demand outstripping supply), so maybe a smaller revenue team can afford to spend X on players, but to field a competitive team would cost Y.  So the payroll tax would need to generate Z=Y-X dollars for that team.  If they structure it correctly, as big-market teams spend less, salaries are less and Y goes down as Z goes down.  Of course, that’s really hard to do, and obviously makes other assumptions about a team’s revenue/costs.

The second part of your argument is correct though.  If total baseball revenue is R, and you give players .6R for salaries, if big market clubs stop spending you would have to raise the salary floor, possibly above what the small market teams can pay, especially with getting less tax dollars.

John Lynch - no doubt.  Everyone who bought into the “he’s a choker” meme had to admit it was horseshit.  Oh, and we got to watch the Yanks win the WS, which is even better. 

I was also really gratified to see so many closers fail, for two reasons: 1) the role of “closer” is messed up (save stat, don’t even get me started) and I’m happy when it takes a hit; and 2) the legend of Mo grows even greater.  No, that cognitive dissonance does NOT hurt, thank you very much.

[27] In particular I liked this part:

Cashman was, after all, the general manager for all but two of Torre’s Yankee years, and wasn’t once interviewed for the book.

Torre’s book was about Torre lashing out at those he felt wronged them, and he used Verducci so that it was well written.  Being able to string coherent sentences together is not one of his faults (though he has many).

[33] Now I just have an image of Verducci sitting in the corner of a room with a computer as Torre flails around beating heavy bags with poster sized photos of those who wronged him taped to them.

What is the maximum period of time for which a news is allowed to be “breaking”? One hour, two hour tops? ESPN keeps the Allen Iverson return as being “breaking” for like the last few centuries. That is completely outrageous!

/Larry David.

SG, how about comparing Tex with the last 20? years of Giambi, etc?

Sorry, I should have said “Tex vs the last 20? years of Yankee firstbasemen”. I don’t know if Teixeira is as good as he seems, or if my judgement is warped by those baaaddd memories of Giambi…

No love for Kate?

Bride Wars available on HBO and HBO on Demand, check it out! If you don’t have HBO, call your cable company and say your want to order HBO so you can see Bride Wars starring Kate Hudson.

The DVD/Blu-Ray makes a GREAT gift for loved ones for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/BoxingDay.

SG,

A-Rod’s game-tying home run off Fuentes came in the bottom of the 11th of Game 2 of the ALCS, not the 9th. That was one crazy cold but awesome night at the Stadium.

[25] that’s some funny stuff.  I wonder if your love-child would win in a cage match against the love-child of Tony WoeMack and Andy Phillips?

Sorry, I should have said “Tex vs the last 20? years of Yankee firstbasemen”. I don’t know if Teixeira is as good as he seems, or if my judgement is warped by those baaaddd memories of Giambi…

Defensively, or overall?  I can probably do something with it.

A-Rod’s game-tying home run off Fuentes came in the bottom of the 11th of Game 2 of the ALCS, not the 9th.

Oops, yeah.  Not sure why I was thinking the 9th.

No mention of the game-tying HR off Pavano?  That was pretty sweet, and pretty important at the time as well.

we recently tried watching “Bride Wars"The Skeleton Key. hideous flick.

we did enjoy another flick w/Kate H. in it. “The Skeleton Key” - a rather creepy horror movie.