Boof vs. Wang.  Sounds like cast for a bad porno.

Hey, this thing is working at last. Woo-hoo!

Wang looks terrible, incidentally. Everything is up.

Wang not looking Won(K)gish-let’s hope Boof is Boofish

Yeah, this is going to be ugly.

Incidentally, that ad with Brian Schneider was funny the first time. It’s rapidly entering the Giuseppe Franco zone, however.

“Won(K)gish”

WTF?

Wang needs to stiffen up.

Wang’s arm slot is messed up right now.

Ugly is losing 2-1 in a well played game.  Beautiful is winning 13-9 in an error filled game.

Um, guys?  I’m not generally the most positive person around these parts, but they’ve only played ONE INNING.

Ugly is also losing 9-1 tonight, which is what’s they seem to be aiming for.

Good one (8)

Just missed.  This DH thing agrees with Matsui.

Response to DaPuj from the previous thread - one way to see if there is some subset of players who have stepped up their performance is to look at NL batters and compare how each did to how well he was expected to do.  If you see a single peak at say, 1.1, then you know that everybody is doing better, esp. if the distribution is as wide as it usually is - then you’ll want to look into whether baseballs in the NL are different than in the AL this year, or the umpire pool is split, or whatever.  If you see two peaks, then maybe there are some good young hitters unexpectedly making a difference - one would look for factors associating players in one peak or the other to understand what’s going on.  One would of course look at the performance unscaled by the expectation first, but I assume that’s been done.

Mike Lamb. Still in the league. Good for him.

I could’ve sworn the Yankees had Lamb for a while. Who was it they had, an ex-Texas 3B? This was after Boone’s knee thing but before they traded for A-Rod.

Is today the deadline for <strike>Nathan</strike> Jason Lane?

What did they do?

Ah. Yankees did get him. Then traded him post Alex. Makes sense.

Wang has nothing.

I could’ve sworn the Yankees had Lamb for a while. Who was it they had, an ex-Texas 3B? This was after Boone’s knee thing but before they traded for A-Rod.

It was Lamb.  They signed him after Aaron’s White Man Can’t Jump moment.  After they got ARod, they let him go.

You know, since coming out like gangbusters, CMW hasn’t been that great, has he.

You thinking of Todd Zeile?

Wang in his last four stars: 0-2, 5.14 ERA (not including tonight). Not TOO terrible, but not good by any means.

5.14 ERA is pretty terrible.

what happened to Wang being ridiculously good? It seems so long ago.

or 5 starts ago.

Singleton told a Lamb anecdote last night wherein he walked in with a Texas Ranger’s bag and Robby Thompson thought he was Arod’s gofer and said Arod’s locker is over there.

24- I guess that’s true. I’m probably just happy to see anything sub-8 (looking at you, Phil and Ian).

Ian is sub-8. Not by much, though (7.??)

Bosner came in with an ERA over 6, incidentally.

Also, Melky has a .596 OPS in May (not including the latest K).

Mike Lamb’s Yankee tenure lasted from Feb 5, 2004 to March 26, 2004.  The Yanks traded Jose Garcia for him and got Juan DeLeon.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/l/lambmi01.shtml

Do you think the guys monitoring the traffic at B-R are baffled by the sudden spike in traffic they’re seeing for Mike Lamb’s page?

Think how many rings we would have if we kept Lamb.

Arod can redeem himself here for not being Mike Lamb

Think how many rings we would have if we kept Lamb.

Would they have kept Soriano at second?  What would have happened to Cano?

I guess Robby would’ve been traded or moved to…third?

OK he can stay

Take that that Mike Lamb!

Do you think the guys monitoring the traffic at B-R are baffled by the sudden spike in traffic they’re seeing for Mike Lamb’s page?

He doesn’t show up on the list of recently popular pages.

Mike Lamb would’ve homered instead of singled there.

Maybe we can google bomb Mike Lamb on B-R

He doesn’t show up on the list of recently popular pages.

Paxton Crawford?

Wasn’t Crawford fingered in the Mitchell Report?

Walking Casilla twice = very bad.

Aw, fuck.

The hell?

They need to do something with Wang, he’s been up, up, up lately.

Blargh.

No location, velocity, or secondary pitches. Best of luck with that.

Time to score some more runs. They’ll need it.

Damn. Nice play.

Major League is on.  Sweeeeeet!

Fuck. That’s two nice plays this inning.

(A) That looked foul to me
(B) Wang has nothing at all

Seriously?!?

He walked him again.

Jesus…come on, Wang.

WTF? Wang is terrified of…Alexi Casilla?!

Mauer has gotten really unlucky today.

I think Major League is going to be a lot more entertaining then this game.

Hey, a scoreless inning!

Major League is always entertaining.

I think Major League is going to be a lot more entertaining then this game.

There’s playoff hockey on NBC. I love playoff hockey.

Boo, a scoreless inning!

Two scoreless innings in a row. Alert the press!

Isn’t it time to beat this Boof dude about the face and neck?  C’mon bats…

What kind of name is Boof again?

A stupid one.

By the way, fear: per Pete A.

UPDATE, 8:44 p.m.: It appears Jeff Karstens is headed to the majors. He was lifted after four innings in his start for Scranton tonight (4 6 2 2 2 2).

long reliever? I hope so because I don’t really ant to see him start.

Yeah, I think Joe G. said they wanted a long man for Tuesday.  I don’t want to see Karstens start or relieve.

well yeah, but relieving is a lot better than starting.

Who knows, maybe Karstens will pitch well.  He’s done OK in the past.  I know what his limitations are, but you never can tell—see Hughes and Kennedy.

Prowess!!!

fgas-

The difference is that Hughes and Kennedy still have a chance to improve (and likely will), whereas Karstens just plain sucks.

One thing I will say for Molina, when he gets one he gets one.

Sterling and Waldman talking about how great Molina is with men on. 

RISP:  239/287/316
Men on:  243/289/327

Career:  240/275/342

So he’s actually a little worse that his putrid overall numbers with men on or ISP.

I understand that S&W will never talk about OPS+.  But what does it say that they can’t even get the numbers they DO use right?

ym, my point is that in limited duty anything can happen.  Like he might well be better than what we’ve seen from K/H so far.  I get that he doesn’t have their ceilings.

True dat.

That was a rhetorical question, right?

Christ, I hope Wang doesn’t have to face Dangerous Alexi Casilla again.

Manny just hit #500. Good for him.

Edwar coming in.  Work that magic, skinny man.

Wang’s struggles:  Blip on the radar, or inevitable cratering?  Discuss.

Grr.

Hey RB—I don’t want you to take this as a slam, but are you really psyched?  I was psyched for Thome, but I really don’t like Manny.  I mean I’m not devastated, except that it helps the Sox.  On the other hand I DO like Ortiz, despite everything.  What makes you like Manny?

I’ll say blip on the radar.

Oh dear.

Whoops! Gameday flub—said Mauer had driven in runs.

Hey RB—I don’t want you to take this as a slam, but are you really psyched?

Psyched? Nope. But then, I wasn’t really psyched for anyone’s 500th but A-Rod lately.

I like Manny because I think—a bit like A-Rod—he takes rap from the media for not being what they expect of him. He’s hardly a perfect guy from a baseball standpoint, but I think he’s more of a space cadet than malicious.

Also, I think a lot of people criminally underrate him. He’s one of the greatest right-handed hitters of all-time, and people still promote this stupid “hitting savant” stuff. No one is as good as Manny without putting in hours and hours of work.

That would “crap” from the media. I mean, I don’t know, maybe he takes rap too.

RB—okay, fair enough.

I’m glad Manny got his homers… He’s a hell of a hitter.  One of the best ever.

I’d be happier if ARod got one here though.

I would be happy if Manny played a couple years for the Yankees. Perhaps he could DH next year, with Matsui learning to play first.

Manny has club options for 09 and 10 at 20M per.  That looks like a fair price for a hitter of his caliber.  Although who knows, they tried to waive him.

Wouldn’t it have been funny if the Sox sent him to the minors after he passed waivers?

Manny playing for the Yankees would be a goddamn phenomenon. Imagine the guys from the Heights with the enormous Dominican flags.

Breslow doesn’t seem awful, but has pretty much been unwanted by a lot of teams.  The Yankees with no lefties in the pen, didn’t pick him off waivers, and the Twins did.

So why?

Nuts.

I would be happy if Manny played a couple years for the Yankees. Perhaps he could DH next year, with Matsui learning to play first.

Just looking up some quick numbers, Manny lost about 100 pts in OPS last year and is continuing the same trend this year.  He’s really more of a .300/.400/.500 hitter than a .300/.400/.600 at this point in his career.  The Sox have an option on him for $18MM, given that Abreu is being $16MM for .300/.360/.475 production, they may just pick it up.

But even if they let him go, I could see the Mets doing something like offering him 3 years/50MM.  Not to mention his best buddy Pedro whispering sweet nothings into his ear. 

Actually, isn’t Pedro a free agent next year too?

Fucking weak, man.

Manny and the Yankees made so much sense in terms of how popular he would be, it would be crazy.

Send the kid back to the minors.  He sucks.

It was a good pitch. sorry Edwar. He nailed it.