Apropos To The A-Rod Opt Out

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There's a lot of interesting discussion on the internet about the A-Rod opt-out and who is is negotiating badly.

Theory 1: The Yankees Front Office has fucked it up by issuing ultimatums and trying to bully A-Rod into signing an extension. Thus A-Rod opted out to test hi real market value, righteously.

Theory 2: A-Rod couldn't wait to get out of New York. Thus, there is no further discussion between Boras/A-Rod and the Yankee Front Office.

Theory 3: It's all a big negotiation ploy from both sides. The Yankees press an ultimatum; Boras counters by having A-Rod opt out; the Yankees feign fury/jilted-lover-speak; Boras collects the bids; Boras goes back to the Yankees and the Yankees trumps it all...

Personally, I'm with Theory 2. I think the Yankees are rebuilding and the presence of A-Rod while good for the next few years is bound to become an albatross by the end of his career. The Yankees will miss A-Rod's bat, but they've won without the best player being on their side. As an organization, you have to take that risk.

While the offense is going to be 5 wins short without A-Rod, the new rotation with Hughes, Chamberlain, and Kennedy is possibly going to pick up 2-3 of those wins on the pitching side. So really, the new 3B platoon needs to be 30runs above replacement instead of 60. If they can find the right bat to platoon with Betemit, this is not unachievable.

Names being bandied about as targets are:
Morgan Ensberg (32) - He might be non-tendered by the Padres because they have Kevin Khouzmanof
Joe Crede (30) - He seems to be on the trading block after a bad back ruined his season.
Mike Lowell (33) - if Boston don't retain him.
Mark Teahen (26) - because the Royals already have Alex Gordon.
Miguel Tejada (32) - just because the Orioles really don't have a need for him, as they waved him about as trade bait for a few off-seasons running. 'What do the Orioles need him for?'
Miguel Cabrera 24 - They'd have to give up Hughes to get this guy. So they probably won't.
Hank Blalock (27) - It's possible that the Rangers might trade him for some pitching.
Garrett Atkins (28) - Unlikely as it seems, the Rockies may trade him to make room for prospect Ian Stewart.

Somewhere in that pile is the answer. Go Ca$hmoney!

Oh Crap

Part 1: A-Rod Opts Out

Well, now we know. No matter which way you slice it, A-Rod was always going to be about the money. Can't blame him really.
So good luck to you A-Rod, and all the best. The Yankees will still be the Yankees without you; and thanks for all the memories, good and bad.

Part 2: Red Sox Win World Series *Ugh*
Look, I don't have it in me to say anything nice, so I'll just shut up.

Part 3: Here Comes the Rebuild I have to admit, I'm a little irked that A-Rod is gone. I don't know how you replace that much value. I think the 2008 Yanks are going to be a 85-88win team without him. The Bosox are going to be a 90-95 win team for sure, so it's going to be a tough off-season.

Here's the head-count:
Who's on First?: Still Giambi and caddy (mink again?)
Who's on Second? Robbie Cano
Who's on Short? St. Derek
Who's on Third? Wilson Betemit, but who will hit from the other side as he's pretty vulnerable to Lefties.
Who's in Left? Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui
Who's in Center?: Melky Cabrera
Who's in Right?: It's looking like Bobby Abreu is coming back for one last time around as the Yankees will exercise his option.
Who's Catching?: Hopefully Jorge Posada; plus caddy.
Who's DH?: Matsui, Damon and Shelley Duncan.

Yeah... Suddenly A-Rod is looking like a huge hole. The best thing to come out of this is that the Yankees would get a pretty spectacular draft compensation for A-Rod opting out. I think we pin our hopes on that guy to come in and be the next superstar. :)

My New Friend

Meet 'Mardi deBirdy'

Yeah, his name is Mardi deBirdy in honor of Rob Reiner's character Marty deBerghi in 'This Is Spinal Tap'.

Looming Disaster

Sometimes The Assumptions Are Wrong

Just a quick note...
The IPCC has been using a forecasting model pertaining to polar ice sheets for a while and this has sort of informed where we might be in say 2040 when they think the ice sheets will disappear. More recent data suggests otherwise. The line is painted towards more of a 2011-2012 sort of date.
When the icecap is gone, it will unleash some seriously volatile weather.

From what I've been told, it may mean the gulf stream stops altogether, in which case there might even be a cold snap so hard it's an ice age in the Northern Hemisphere. While I wouldn't want to peddle panic, it is clear that what we've been doing to curb the trend in the last decade is nowhere near enough. That responsibility rests squarely with the governments of the past decade.
Yes, even you, John Howard.

End Of An Era

Last Year's Axe Falls This Year

It seemed like it was definite last year that they were going to sack Joe Torre, and they didn't. This year, George said he would sack Joe, but instead they offered him a 23% pay cut, which he promptly rejected.

"We respect Joe Torre," Yankees president Randy Levine said. "He is entitled to his own decision and we respect that.

"It's now time for the New York Yankees to move forward. We will be doing that very, very quickly."

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and other team officials met for two days and decided they wanted to keep Torre, whose contract expired at the end of the season.

But the Yankees wanted to spend based upon results. Their performance-based offer was a one-year proposal for a five million-dollar base salary with one million-dollar bonuses for each playoff round won by the Yankees next year.

That made the deal potentially worth eight million dollars, but would give Torre a pay cut unless the Yankees won the World Series.

The offer also included an option for a second year at eight million dollars for Torre if the Yankees reached next year's World Series.

After the Thursday morning offer, Torre turned down the Yankees rather than take a deal that would be a pay cut from a three-year deal worth 20 million dollars that brought him 7.5 million dollars this year.

It's what happens when things get complicated, protracted, and generally filled with difficulty.
There's a lot of web-electrons being marshaled to express the outrage of this outcome, but in some ways it is the most rational outcome. Maybe it was a year too early, or a year too late, but the Yankees couldn't go with Joe Torre forever. The Yankees simply had to change directions at some point. Perhaps this is the year they have to start searching for something new.

On Joe's side of the ledger are all the things that make fans groan in their seats at every pitching change, but the reality is that he had a good run of success and nobody can take that away from him. At 67, there are worse ways to be than Joe Torre, even if he is unemployed.

My Song Of The Week

Silly Love Songs

I know it's perverse for a mighty cynic like me to do a version of this song except for the fact that I was a big fan of Paul McCartney's bass playing on this song.
So fast forward many years and here I am doing a version.

'Touch' On YouTube

Yet Another Short Film

I was so over doing short films, but one day Kendal rang me up to say she had an idea for a film about this weird woman she met. And so we started nutting out the script and the film you see above is what we came up with. It's not too shabby in hindsight.

'Rakuda 1.2' On YouTube

This is the film I was shooting in September 2001. On the third day of the shoot, '9/11' happened. Needless to say it took a lot of mirth out of trying to shoot a comedy.

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Part 5:

ALDS Game 4

Numb

The final out registered as Jorge Posada swung over a pitch that maybe he wouldn't offer at in the regular season, and that was that. Yankees were bundled out 6-4.

For 12 seasons, there was sunshine on his shoulders. But now there is darkness, and the condemned old ballpark is shuttered again for the winter. The Yankees are a first-round playoff casualty for the third October in a row, and Torre will almost certainly lose his job as manager.

The Cleveland Indians eliminated the Yankees, 6-4, in Game 4 of their American League division series, advancing to the championship series against the Boston Red Sox. George Steinbrenner, the Yankees' principal owner, who had tied Torre's future to the outcome of this series, was said to be fuming in his office and left without taking questions, ushered away by his daughter.

In his postgame news conference, Torre choked up when talking about how badly his players wanted to win. He does not have a contract for next season, and he spoke with a sense of finality.

"This ball club, they have a great future," Torre said, adding later: "This has been a great 12 years. Whatever the hell happens from here on out, I'll look back on these 12 years with great, great pleasure."

Torre became an icon — and a very wealthy man — while guiding Steinbrenner's players to four World Series titles. But the last was seven years ago, a drought too long for a famously impatient owner.

Four of the unfulfilled seasons have been with the game's best player, Alex Rodriguez, anchoring the lineup. Rodriguez was 2 for 12 in the series until adding a single and a homer after the Yankees had fallen far behind. He can now opt out of his $25.2-million-a-year contract and is expected to seek untold riches in a new contract.

Two mainstays from the championship years, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada, can also become free agents. Keeping both, and Rodriguez, will be expensive but affordable for the Yankees, whose business model thrives despite repeated playoff failures.

"Joe Torre is the best manager in baseball," Posada said. "It's not his fault. He used the same lineup from April till now, the same guys. He doesn't throw or hit or do anything on the field. He does everything possible to keep us positive and get us to win."

Rivera said he did not know why Steinbrenner would even think of firing Torre, and he said he would have to think about whether he would want to play for another manager.

Of his contract status, Rivera said: "They had an opportunity and they did nothing with me, so we'll see what happens. This is a business, and I'm going to treat it like a business."

I've not figured out this team for 3 years, maybe 4. Each year has brought a weird kind of drama in the regular season that essentially saps the will of the Yankees as they arrive in October. It's been more perplexing and distressing than the Bronx Zoo Yankees of my childhood. There hasn't been that mongrel thing - more like a flash of panic running through a heerd of thoroughbreds. And I'm not comfortable with that when it comes to the Yankees.

In 2005 and 2007 it was bad starts. In 2006 it was the possibility Torre might get fired. 2004 was just incomprehensible how they folded to the Red Sox. The Sox fans keep telling me it was choking, but it was worse than that - it looked like they just closed up shop and quit.

So this year's end is not all that surprising, if at all. This club just wasn't a World Series winning club. More like the AL All-Stars circa 2001. They scored a lot of runs, and that's always something but if there's one lesson that's been hammered home to me, it really is a lot more about having that killer Ace do his thing on the mound.

There was a time the Yankees could boast 4 guys like that in their rotation and thy went to Game 7 against Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling (when he was excellent). They just haven't had that in the last 4 years. But you know, things are looking good over the horizon. Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain showed enough to get excited about the future of Yankee pitching. but that's about the extent of the silver-lining to this black cloud that's been hanging since 2004.

Joe Torre is most probably not coming back. It's the end of an era. There will be a major re-construction of the roster, there will be new players to get excited about, hope springs eternal.

ALDS Game 3

Screw You Roger Clemens (...and The 22Million You Got For The Horse You Rode In On)...?

The Yankees hung one on the Indians today with a 8-4 win. Roger Clemens started it off, pulled a hamstring, gave up a 3-0 lead and came out of the game. His career is looking done. It was one of those moments where your heart sinks and you go "again...?"
Not so much because Roger Clemens is melting down, but because the Yankees sent out a 40-something vet to the mound, only to fall behind quickly, then let the series slide away.

With the careers of the aged on the line, the next generation of Yankees took over in an 8-4 victory against the Cleveland Indians. In the third inning Roger Clemens shuffled off the mound, perhaps for the final time, but Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain got the game to Mariano Rivera in the ninth.

Robinson Canó had two hits, Cabrera had one, and both were on base for Johnny Damon’s go-ahead, three-run homer in the fifth inning. The Yankees won for the first time this series, avoiding elimination and saving Manager Joe Torre’s job, at least for a day, after the principal owner George Steinbrenner’s public threat to fire him with one more loss.

“We’re playing for our manager that we love,” Damon said. “We’re playing for our fans that we love. So we’d like to prolong the season as long as we can.”

The future of Clemens is also in doubt, after he lasted only two and a third innings and gave up three runs, four hits and two walks. Clemens, who has a frayed elbow ligament and recurring hamstring problems, may have finally reached the end of a remarkable career.

“I don’t want to say it’s heartbreaking,” Torre said, “because he wouldn’t want me to say that.”

In Hughes, though, the Yankees have a 21-year-old pitcher who has drawn comparisons to a young Clemens. Who better to follow Clemens and earn the victory with three and two-thirds scoreless innings?

Although after Clemens left, the next bit was quite different. Phil Hughes came in, pitched like the phenom we all heard about for 3.2 innings, then Joba came in and it was Mo time to secure the 1 win. That was the difference. in 2004, it was Esteban Loaiza coming in to surrender more home runs to Johnny Damon (who is incidentally hitting very well). In 2005 and 2006, it was Randy Johnson giving it away, only to be replaced by nonentities I don't want to recall.
This time though, it was the farm products who you could say are the Yankees of the next dynasty.
Phil Hughes' victory turns out to be the youngest Yankee victory in history, even beating out the legendary Whitey Ford. That's something to savor.

The Yankees may lose tomorrow and go play bitter golf again for the rest of October, but one thing is for sure: for one game, we got a glimpse of the next wave in the Yankee Post Season Legends. And for that I am grateful - much more so than for the lone win Shawn Chacon pitched in 2005.

Wang pitches tomorrow on 3 days rest, which is going to be interesting. Indians' skipper Eric Wedge is not going to panic and pitch Sabathia on 3 days' rest. So if the Yankees could only jump all over Paul Byrd and snag a victory, they'll be heading back to the Jake for a showdown. But I get ahead of myself. Just win, baby.

Wallabies Bundled Out Of World Cup

My Teams Keep Losing

I watched the Quarter Finals with dismay. The English did it again. They actually won yet another game against the Wallabies while scoring fewer tries.

In Marseille, Jonny Wilkinson and defending champions England again proved Australia's nemesis in a tense 12-10 win at the Stade Velodrome.
England, who downed the Wallabies in the 2003 final in extra-time and the 1995 quarter-final both with drop goals, handled the high stakes better and came home from 10-6 down at halftime.

England, with Wilkinson setting a new World Cup points-scoring career record of 234, had the Australians under relentless pressure with their forwards preventing the Wallabies from gaining any momentum.

Wilkinson again kicked England to victory as he did in Sydney four years ago with his extra-time drop goal, this time landing four penalties from seven attempts with the Wallabies coming up with the only try through winger Lote Tuqiri.

"I thought we were the better side, but it wasn't reflected on the scoreboard and it became a bit of a nail-biter in the last 10 minutes. I'm just so pleased for this group of players," England coach Brian Ashton said.

Yeah. He's not wrong there. It's totally against the grain of Rugby in Australia but England have made a way of winning without scoring tries completely viable. The 10-12 scoreline actually hides how dominant the England Forwards were through out the game. Australia rarely got to get any continuity they needed happening, and that was because the English forward pack would repeatedly contest for the ball at the breakdown successfully. Their defense would hold out against just enough line breaks, and really, the scrums contested by the English were scary events.

And at the end, there it was again, that feeling akin to sinking, the big L Losing feeling. How can a side that actually scored the one try go down to a side that never got near enough to the try line? "FaarrrrKKK!!" What the f*ck was that game? 10-12? I went to bed feeling ill. At least our guys lost fair and square, unlike the other real World Cup where the ref can steal it away from you in the last 30seconds.

I know I sound like I'm grousing or whining when I say this but England have re-established the old way to win: Powerful, skilled forwards contesting for possession, drawing penalties and slotting goals. It's really unlike what Rugby should look like in our cultural heritage/obsession of running the ball, but this isn't the first time they've done this to the Wallabies. In some ways it felt like a replay of the 2003 World Cup Final, sans Steven Larkham to push it into extra time.

It's no consolation that the All Blacks go edged by the French either. What a bummer for the Southern Hemisphere. I never thought I'd say that.

ALDS Game 2

Not Jinxed, Hexed

There's a spell in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons appropriately called 'Creeping Doom'. A Druid can cast this spell where a swarm of insects appear and inflict some ungodly amount of hit points damage to the foe.

While not quite delivering 1000 hit points, but somebody cast 'Creeping Doom' against the Yanks' relief corps.

CLEVELAND, Oct. 5 — It is natural to be drawn to Joba Chamberlain, to the irresistible story of the rookie fireballer from Nebraska who saved the Yankees’ season. But nobody expected the bugs from Lake Erie to care.

Yet they were attracted to Chamberlain as much as the most rabid Yankees fan, and a sudden swarm in the eighth inning helped derail the Yankees in Game 2 of their American League division series against the Indians. Swatting at the air with his glove, wiping his face with his sleeves and covered in bug spray, Chamberlain came unglued and the Yankees now stand at the brink of elimination.

Chamberlain lost Andy Pettitte’s lead in the eighth, Luis Vizcaíno lost the game on Travis Hafner’s bases-loaded single in the 11th and Cleveland stole away with a 2-1 victory at Jacobs Field. The Yankees trail in the series, two games to none, and face elimination in Game 3 Sunday at Yankee Stadium, where presumably the bugs will stay away.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Pettitte said. “It’s crazy. It’s a shame that had to happen in such a pressure-packed situation like that. Their guy had to deal with it, and he was still lights-out in the ninth inning. But that’s a shame.”

Alex Rodriguez went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts and has only four hits in his last 50 postseason at-bats, but he is not alone in offensive misery. The Yankees have scored one run — a Melky Cabrera homer — on four hits in their last 15 innings, and they were stifled for nine innings by Fausto Carmona on Friday.

Chamberlain came in with two on and one out in the seventh and bailed out Pettitte, who worked six and a third steely innings, escaping trouble all night. But the top of the eighth ended ominously, with the Yankees’ Doug Mientkiewicz repeatedly stepping out of the box and slashing the air with his hands before grounding out.

It was 81 degrees and humid at game time, and when a breeze died down in the eighth inning, Mientkiewicz said, the bugs came out in force.

“During my at-bat, I had them in my nose,” he said. “I chased a foul ball after that and I ate about four of them on my way down. It was very strange. Joba had them all over his back and all over his neck and all over everywhere.”

Chamberlain was immediately distracted during warm-ups, twitching and shaking his head, trying in vain to scare off the pests. He walked two, threw two wild pitches and hit a batter in the fateful eighth, yet he tried not to make an excuse.

“They were in front of my face, but I wasn’t the only one that had to deal with it,” he said. “Everybody had to deal with the same thing. They were bad, but they just didn’t show up for me. You can look at it a million ways, but when it comes down to it, we were in the loss column because I didn’t do my job.”

Chamberlain walked the leadoff batter, Grady Sizemore, for his first four-pitch walk since his major league debut Aug. 7. He could not find a rhythm, stepping off the rubber, flailing with his glove and looking to the dugout for help.

The trainer, Gene Monahan, all but bathed Chamberlain and others in bug spray, but it was no use. As Rodriguez and Derek Jeter waved their hats above their heads and flinched in the field, Chamberlain’s first pitch to Asdrúbal Cabrera was a wild slider, moving Sizemore into scoring position. A bunt moved Sizemore to third.

In the end the Yanks lost 2-1 in th 11th.
I don't know what to make of this. They've now lost a match where Wang got smacked around, and now they lost an 11 inning game where they only scored 1 run. They're playing like shit.

ALDS Game 1

So What?

Happens every year it seems that the Yankees have a pitching meltdown in the post-season. It really sucked when it was Javier Vazquez and Esteban Loaiza in 2004. Randy Johnson was pretty craptacular in both 2005 and 2006. People may recall my headline: Screw You Randy Johnson ...and the Horse You Came Riding In On after his dismal showing in last year's ALDS.

While I am not a forgiving guy, I can live with it if Chien-Ming Wang has one bad outing fo several reasons. He's been good this year; good enough to deliver the Yankees to the ALCS. He's also one of the homegrown guys. When they fail, you live with it. It's the mercenaries who took lots of money that you hate to see pitching a clanger.
Anyway, here's today's clanger:

It is only one game, of course, but what a game it was for the Cleveland Indians. They used four home runs to crush the Yankees, 12-3, in Game 1 of their American League division series on Thursday. The Indians battered Chien-Ming Wang, got four runs batted in from Kenny Lofton and four nearly perfect innings from their bullpen.

“With what we had to deal with pretty much all year, especially since we dug a hole for ourselves, we understand that we can’t feel sorry for ourselves,” Manager Joe Torre said. “If somebody beats us up, you tip your hat to them and come back the next day.”

The Yankees recovered from a 21-29 start to reach the playoffs for the 13th season in a row. To escape the first round for the first time since 2004, they will need to take better advantage of their scoring chances.

They made C. C. Sabathia throw 114 pitches in five innings, yet scored only three runs. Sabathia tied a career high by walking six batters, yet none came in to score.

“We were doing a good job — sort of — on the offensive side,” said Johnny Damon, who hit a leadoff home run just inside the right-field foul pole. “We got his pitch count up, but he knows how to pitch out of tough situations.”

Wang is the Yankees’ ace, but he tied a career high in runs allowed. He gave up eight in four and two-thirds innings, walking four and hitting a batter. He said his sinker was up, which forced him to throw more sliders and changeups.

“Today, I feel no good,” Wang said. “Lots of hits, lots of runs.”

Wang gave up his first run when Ryan Garko punched a two-out slider to center for a single in the first. He gave up a leadoff home run to Asdrubal Cabrera on a changeup in the third.

The pitching coach, Ron Guidry, said the Indians resisted Wang’s sinkers, knowing that they end up too low to be called strikes. That forces Wang to throw the pitch higher in the zone, where it can be hit. When he tried to freelance with his off-speed pitches, he paid for it.
“If you have to go away from what always works best, it’s almost like a learning experience,” Guidry said. “The only problem is, in a postseason game, you don’t want to try to learn something new.”

Ugh. What can you do? The Indians were up to Wang's Worm-Killin' Ways. They clobbered him for 8 runs in 4.2 innings. It was so depressing watching the game unfold on the Yahoo game-thingy, I didn't bother calling my folks. Maybe they'll do better tomorrow.

Smilodon Biomechanics

Sabre-Tooth Bite Was Weak

This is the article here.

The sabre-toothed cat Smilodon, one of the fiercest predators to roam the Ice Age, had a fairly wimpy bite, Australian researchers said on Monday, but this powerful killing-machine was no pussycat.

Researchers at the University of NSW and the University of Newcastle compared Smilodon's bite strength to another fearsome feline, the modern lion, using a computer model.

"Bite strength has long been a contentious issue in Smilodon," said Stephen Wroe of the University of NSW in Sydney, whose study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Smilodon was one of the most powerfully built feline predators to ever prowl the Earth.

Wroe said early investigators had concluded Smilodon's bite was weak, but later investigators believed it was strong. Wroe and colleagues sought to put the matter to the test.

They used data from CAT scan X-rays of lion and Smilodon skulls to build sophisticated programs that could compare the mechanics of each cat's bite.

What they hoped to gain was a better understanding of how Smilodon killed its prey.

Wroe said lion skulls are built to withstand great forces as they bite animals that "are trying very hard to escape".

When the researchers subjected the digital Smilodon skull to these same forces, it showed much higher stress.

"If Smilodon bit into prey that was struggling wildly - as can a lion - it would have risked serious injury and perhaps even breakage of its own skull and teeth," he said.

So now we know. If a Smilodon attacked us, it would shove us to the ground first, then plunge its long teeth into our soft tissue eliciting massive blood flows.