Yankees Update

It's Been A Long Time In Between Spews
I don't easily recall the last time I felt this nauseating, low-hanging grey clouds feeling about the Yankees during the season. Maybe it was in the early months of 2005 and 2007 where they got off to horrendous starts, but by this time of the year you could see they were going to hit and get to the post-season.

What's different about this season is that there's no help coming, and they're as good as they're going to be. As with these things you're either Larfin' or you're Spewin', so it's easy enough to say I'm Spewin'. I most certainly am not McLovin.

Anyway, I do see them possibly playing a bit better but I'm not holding out for the Wild Card spot this year. It's just not promising in the least bit.

The Starting Pitching Still Sucks
The pitching is not there. Ace Chien-Ming Wang is injured. Even if Joba pitches like Roger Clemens at his peak, it still means the other spots are going to Andy Pettitte who has been less than his former self; Mike Mussina who has been living on guile; Darren Rasner who is always around to do league-average (which is valuable, but not exceptional); and Sir Sidney Ponson. That is not going to get it done.

This is after that fact that IPK and Phil Hughes stunk up the joint before jointly landing on the DL. IPK has been told he has to re-earn his call-up. Phil Hughes' injury is a stress-fracture of the rib, so I don't think he's going to be back *at all* this season.
Worse still, the help that can come from the Minors has been getting hurt, and the other alternative is starting to look like trading for CC Sabathia - and to do that they have to trade the farm when the farm product is at a market low.

What does this mean? It means that the great exodus at the end of 2003 that created the current turmoil is still continuing. It's a bit like the sub-prime mortgage crisis going on and on and on. Certainly, until Carl Pavano is off the books, the Yankees are still living in the vortex created by the 'retirement' of Roger Clemens the Defection of Andy Pettitte and the loss of David Wells. The Yankees borrowed from the future to win yesterday, and we're living in that future right now.

The Declining Bats?
Who's been hitting well this year? Turns out Juicin' Giambi is hittting like it's a contract year because it is. Matsui has been as good as projected but now his knee is putting him on the Bench. A-Rod's been good but he's missed time, while Posada has also been short on playing time due to injuries. In both ses, they've hit well. Bobby Abreu has been not too bad either.

Robinson Cano stunk it up on April and May, while Melky Cabrera has stunk it up in May and June. Much of this has been bad luck on balls in play.

The Bench was underwhelming, though we keep seeing glimpses of okay-ness from Wilson Betemit. Morgan Ensberg was a bust, and Alberto Gonzales has been Alberto Gonzales.

Then there's Derek Jeter. He had a weird April without walks, then started to heat up when he was hit in the hand after which he played like crap for a month, then started to hit like himself, but has cooled down again. Amazingly, considering his low walks in April, he's walking about the same as last year.

A quick look at his BABIP shows he's at the lowest point since his slump-ridden 2004 campaign. He's about .51 down on his career average without actually having lost speed. So he too like Melky Cabrera has been unlucky with the hit ball.

His LD% is down which is not a good sign, but also with is a rise in his GB rate.
All this has translated into a pretty lackluster season so far.

I'd imagine he'll post closer to career numbers as his BABIP adjusts back to the norm. Even so, crap numbers are crap numbers. The Yankees certainly wouldn't be in this position if they didn't have Melky, Cano and Jeter hit into such bad luck.

The green line is Jeter, the orange Line is Cano, and the purple line is Cabrera. As you can see, all three of them are getting whacked in the BABIP count this year.

Never A Good Sign

In Ostraya where I live, it's safe to say that even 90% of the sports-nut blokes do not know who A-Rod is. Most of the population have no idea. In fact some wrongfully think they know who it is - they think it's Andy Roddick - who has been mistakenly billed as 'A-Rod' by Channel 7's marketing idiots at the Australian Open.

I'm sure it's not Roddick's fault. I'm sure he cringes every time he hears it in Australia.

So it's a very, very, very bad sign when the real A-Rod turns up in the Sydney Morning Herald as Madonna's new toy boy.

Reports that US baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez and Madonna have become close just as their marriages are disintegrating have both the celebrity gossip industry and the sporting world - each a chatty bunch - buzzing with questions about the two "friends."

A third boldface name was added to the saga when Rodriguez's wife fled from New York to the Paris home of rocker Lenny Kravitz, who denied anything improper had happened with the slugger's wife.

Rodriguez, who plays for the New York Yankees, remained mum. He signed a couple of autographs before his game at Yankee Stadium against Boston, but didn't take questions from a pack of reporters.

The whole story began last week amid tabloid stories that Madonna, who is married to the British filmmaker Guy Ritchie, had consulted a high-profile London divorce attorney. On Tuesday her publicist issued a statement saying Madonna's marriage was not in jeopardy. Then Us Weekly magazine reported that Rodriguez, 32, has been making late-night visits to the New York apartment of Madonna, 49.

Janice Min, editor-in-chief of Us Weekly, said the magazine was "100 per cent" confident in its story, which she said was based on multiple sources.

Min said Us Weekly has been careful not to overstate what's known of the relationship, which the latest issue labels a "hot new friendship."

"The facts are that he comes to her apartment late at night, that they have a friendship, that she had never been photographed at a Yankees game until she was photographed in A-Rod's seats," Min said. "I think from those facts we put forth, a lot of people would infer that something more is going on."

See? It's bad. What kind of hell kind of season are the Yankees having? It's a season where its best hitter turns up in the gossip pages in Sydney.

Unrelated To All Of This...


A complete copy of the film 'Metropolis' by Fritz Lang has been found in Buenos Aires.

BERLIN: The long-lost "director's cut" of a cinematic masterpiece has been found in Argentina.

The discovery of Fritz Lang's Metropolis is being hailed as miraculous by enthusiasts of the Vienna-born director and his 1927 science-fiction epic, renowned for its special effects including the robot woman Maria.

The original 3½-hour film was thought to have been lost when its US distributor, Paramount, cut it by 30 minutes after a poor reception from critics. But the German newspaper Die Zeit has reported that a copy of the original was sent to Argentina in 1928, where it has since gathered dust in the Buenos Aires Film Museum.

The film charts a class struggle in a dystopian futuristic society and was the first to be placed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, which preserves cultural landmarks.

It was not a commercial success and nearly ruined the studio behind it, and Metropolis still ranks as one of the most expensive films made after inflation is taken into account.

The "lost" footage, some of which is badly scratched, includes battle scenes and sections that flesh out a number of subplots and characters.

Paula Felix-Didier, the curator of the museum, viewed the film only after a chance remark from a projectionist, who noted that it was longer than other versions.

A film restorer who has seen the new footage said the film had its rhythm back.

Pretty cool. Look forward to that ending up on DVD. Having said that I'm actually waiting for a DVD release of the Giorgio Moroder version from 1984. Or better still, maybe he can write a few more song s to the fully-restored version. That'd be cool.