Yankees Update 19/03/09

Injured Vets On The Comeback Are Doing Fine

Jorge Posada was mostly missing from the Yankee lineup last year, and Hideki Matsui was hampered by a knee problem for the better part of 2/3rds of the season. They've both had surgery - as has Mariano Rivera - but so far they're doing well in spring training.

If Posada can healthily catch 120 or so games, then he's certainly going to contribute to the offense. I'm bullish on Posada, in as much as his problem ilast year was his shoulder and not his knees, ankles and hips. His lower body still seems to have juice, an that's important for a catcher.

Mastui is designated to DH duty and is unlikely to take the field this year until the Inter-league games begin, but his bat is going to help greatly. While it is often discussed as if he is now a spare part, his OBP and OPS still projects to be better than Xavier Nady, Johnny Damon, and Nick Swisher. Declarations that Matsui is passed his use-by-date for the Yankees  are just a little premature. If he doesn't have to field, he can surely offer more than enough value over replacement level than the OF who will.

Mo? He's Still Mo from all indications. Mariano Rivera is coming from surgery to remove some calcified tissue in his shoulder. Apparently he played the whole season with the pain last year. Goodness know how good he's going to be this season without the pain. :)

So yeah, I'm bullish on all three.

The Predicted Demise Of Derek Jeter, Shortstop


Derek Jeter is 35. He's at the point where most players who play shortstop  get moved off. Watching him in the USA-Puerto Rico game where he let 2 critical grounders go by sort of made me cringe. He never could get those, but now it's pretty obvious he can't get those.

"Past a diving Jeter!" - *Cringe!*

Still, his projection sits at about an .800 OPS, and that's pretty darn good for a shortstop. He probably will stumble to the end of his contract as a shortstop and with the addition of Sabathia and Burnett, the Yankees are going to have to worry a lot less about balls in play than at any time in the last 6 seasons, so it just might not matter this season. When you do the maths, even in the recent past, his deficiency in Zone Rating has been worth 2 singles up the middle in a fortnight of games.

The future beyond this season is a lot more cloudy. It may come to pass that the Yankees do sign a real shortstop, but at that point they're going to have to figure out where to play Derek Jeter, and live with the fact that new Shortstop is not likely to post an .800 OPS.

Aaron Boone Headed For Heart Surgery

Aaron Boone - that's Aaron Fucking Boone in Boston - is going under the knife to correct an aortic valve.

Boone, 36, has known about his heart condition since the early 1990s, when he played for the University of Southern California. A recent physical and follow-up exam revealed that he needs an operation soon, and Boone will schedule it in the coming days.

“I’ve monitored it all these years,” Boone said in an interview after the news conference. “I knew this day was out there. I just didn’t know it was now.”

For Boone, the news was another unexpected turn in an eventful career. In January 2004, three months after propelling the Yankees to the World Series with a homer in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox, Boone tore a knee ligament playing pickup basketball. He forfeited most of a $5.75 million salary and cleared a path for Alex Rodriguez to join the Yankees.

He's not even in my Top 100 Yankees of all time, I'd imagine. He was only around for 3months, displacing Robin Ventura. Now Robin Ventura, I liked - he just never had a big moment for the Yankees, but he was a 3B who could hit for an .780-.820. OPS, and therefore a better bat than Scott Brosius who had retired at the end of 2001. I know Ventura was struggling at the time but Boone hardly seemed like an improvement at the time. He had about the same ISO as a declining Ventura, but Boone gave up 40 points in OBP for not even a marginally better glove.

But all that is mere detail. His resume has that one blast, and together with Bucky Dent - That's Bucky Fucking Dent in Boston - I'll never forget Aaron Boone. That, and the fact that he got himself foolishly injured in a game of basketball which paved the way for A-Rod to land in the Bronx. My goodness, the Yankees have been  soap opera this decade, and Aaron Boone was more than a bit player in that production.

So, here's wishing the operation is a success and to many happy years for Aaron Boone.

That Brings Us Up To The Weirdness of A-Rod

I really don't know what to make of A-Rod when he goes and gets pieces done on him like this.

The night before his life changes forever, Alex Rodriguez calls from Miami with an urgent request. A-Rod is worried about something he said during our interview last night. I've been hearing mysterious warnings all afternoon: Alex needs to talk. Alex wants to clarify something. Can't say what. Alex will call you from his car.

"Listen," Rodriguez says. "I was thinking about one thing that I spoke about—it's something that's kind of trivial but will give me a hard time for no reason." He pauses. "The song."

Aha. Last night, he let slip his favorite Madonna song. The curious relationship between A-Rod and the pop icon makes for delicious gossip, of course. Is Rodriguez terrified that Madonna will resent the tongue-wagging? Or, better still, has he picked the wrong song as his favorite, and fears that an offended Madge might march her stilettos over his back? No: Rodriguez believes that revealing the song would lead to its being played every time he stepped to the plate during an away game. "The last thing I want to do is go to every stadium and have them play that song," he says. Fine—to be honest, it's not even a great Madonna song (if it had been something juicy like "Justify My Love," forget it).

Looking back, his preoccupation seems surreal. Just the day before, Selena Roberts, a reporter from Sports Illustrated, had confronted Rodriguez at a Miami gym, asking for his reaction to evidence that he'd tested positive for illegal steroids in 2003. And now here he was, sweating a Madonna song. It's like worrying about the in-flight movie as your plane is belly flopping on the Hudson River.

At least he seems to be recovering nicely from surgery.

Bill Clinton Weighs In

And We're Not Talking About His Weight

Former Presidents tend to just shut up and try to fade away like Old Soldiers. In most part, this is a good thing, but sometimes it becomes necessary to speak your mind. And so Former President Bill Clinton has spoken his mind on the execution of the War in Iraq. I think this is the point at which we realise the thing has been going on too long without the resolution that has been promised.

The next day, Mr Clinton weighed in from the Middle East, saying the war as it unfolded was "a big mistake". It was a good thing Saddam Hussein had gone, the former president said, "but I don't agree with what was done". The administration underestimated "how easy it would be to overthrow Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country".

He said President George Bush had made "several errors, including the total dismantlement of the authority structure of Iraq". He added: "We never sent enough troops and didn't have enough troops to control or seal the borders." Across those porous borders, "the terrorists came in. That was the central mistake, and we're still living with that".

As passions have run higher here this week, the venerable traditions that foreign policy arguments "stopped at the water's edge", seems to have been conclusively discarded. The most recent Democratic president was in Dubai, in the heart of the Arab world, when he delivered his verdict on the war that was launched by his successor in the White House.

On Tuesday, US senators voted 79-19 to endorse a Republican amendment demanding a regular accounting for the war from the Bush administration. Not only was it a bilateral statement that things could not go on as they were, it came at the moment Mr Bush was in Asia, thanking Japan, South Korea and Mongolia for their contributions to coalition forces in Iraq.

Ideally, we should get out, but getting out is not going to be easy. The day we decide to leave is the day the insurgents will celebrate saying, "we won". And indeed that may be the case; that we must swallow the bitter pill of defeat in order to get out of this misadventure altogether. However before we come to wiping the Iraq Campaign slate clean we have to look at what possible outcomes we can salvage from Iraq.

In a nutshell the COTW (Coalition Of The Willing) really should go back to an intel-driven war rather than this tank, helicopter gunship and white phosphorous thing they're doing. That stuff is okay for a short war as proven in both gulf-wars, but this thing is getting protracted. The classic way they used to fight wars like this was to send in CIA agents to set up proxies to do the fighting. Haven't they seen 'Spy Games'?

One of the issues seems to be that the current Bush Administration don't like the CIA and are therefore not inclined to follow the advice of those people. Indeed, the model for fighting these wars have been practiced in Afghanistan, and having US troops on the ground has not added much except mobile fire-power. It's costly and thee money is better spent on the CIA nursing the situation along rather than the military rupturing the situation with gunfire at every turn. It draws less attention too.
The least the COTW can do is to manage these things a lot better.

No Rugby World Cup For You!


It must be a day for former leaders to speak up. Former Japanese PM Yoshiro Mori was speaking up on behalf of the globalisation of Rugby, now that Japan was not awarded the Rugby World Cup for 2011. Instead, that honour goes to New Zealand who took it away with a surprise win. Moe accurately, he is whining and griping, but his whine and gripe is not totally without merit. After all. NZ has already hosted a Rugby World Cup. What gives?

The Japanese had stronger words. "Our tender was much better than those of the other two," said Yoshiro Mori, president of the Japanese RFU, and the former prime minister of Japan. "Everybody thought it would be of great value to the game to stage the Rugby World Cup in Asia. We had public support and there is a feeling that the game needs to be globalised.

"It looks as if this was a sympathy vote for New Zealand because they couldn't stage the World Cup in 2003. Maybe it was the old boys network of the IRB at work."

Aah. Mr. Mori, was famous for debating and Rugby from his days at Waseda University. He's also famous for this true anecdote:

Mr. Clinton is coming to Japan for the G8 summit. His underlings brief him on how to greet Mr. Clinton:
"First you say, 'How Are You?' He'll probably say 'fine thank you'. then you say 'Me Too'."
So Bill Clinton arrives. Mr. mori opens his mouth and says: "Who are you?"
Thinking it's a joke, Bill Clinton replies with his riff: "I'm Hilary's Husband."
Mr. Mori says: "Me Too."
Everybody in the room died of embarrassment.
But hey, he's still 'Former Prime Minister of Japan'!

Capital Punishment Is Not A Good Thing
Neither is haggling over sentences of another country. The best that could be said for the on-going Nguyen saga is that the Australian government seems to be doing its best to avert the impending execution of Mr. Nguyen. That is he way the government should be; not exporting people from which it has removed citizenship.
Meanwhile the tone of journalism kind of stinks here

It struck me as we pressed Prime Minister Lee on the issue this morning, how well he defended the indefensible. He spoke not about the fact that this was a first offence. He didn’t focus on Nguyen Tuong Van at all. Instead he spoke of the quantity of heroin at issue — almost 400 grams — and the suffering that could cause. He spoke in soft, measured tones and emphasised the gravity of putting a human being to death.

When pressed on the question of when the execution would take place, he showed sensitivity, suggesting the family needed to know first and so he wasn’t saying any more. And notably, he applauded Prime Minister Howard for resisting 'megaphone diplomacy'; that is trying to embarrass the Singapore government by speaking out on the issue. By the end of his six minutes, Prime Minister Lee had impressed me and I suspect many in the Australian press pack. In fact, tonight it appears what we were watching was a diplomatic stuff-up — big enough to ruffle the typically unruffled John Howard.

The suffering caused by 400grams on heroin are policy things under which laws are writ. Heroin is one of the best anaesthetic tools that have been removed from the hands of doctors because of USA drugs policy. There a re a lot of ins and outs to this issue alone; but in the mean time, the Singaporeans think it is important enough to execute somebody who is carrying this much heroin. No matter which way you slice it, it's their law that you're trying to disrespect.

That said, Mr. Nguyen made this trip to paay off debts. Debts incurred to lawyers who worked on trials defending Mr. Nguyen's brother who trafficked drugs. What kind of hell kind of family is this? Presumably, the third brother will have to mule some heroin to pay off two big legal bills now. Okay, bad joke.

The execution is scheduled for 2. December. I don't agree with capital punishment. That said, I don't think we'll dissuade Singapore from carrying out what its judges have decided, just on the say-so of ethnocentric journalists like this Tim Lester fellow.

Yanks Retain Hideki Matsui

It's a total non-news moment when the Yankees retain a stalwart player with a multi-year contract. Hideki Matsui agreed to stay on for 4 more years with the Yankees.

“I’m most very happy to be able to come back again and wear the pinstripes again and play in that uniform,” Matsui said at a news conference yesterday. “My first desire was to play here.”
Matsui’s agent, Arn Tellem, and Yankees general manager Brian Cashman met the Nov. 15 deadline contained in Matsui’s first contract with the team. That deal stated that if there was no agreement by then, New York would have to place the outfielder on unconditional release waivers, which would have prevented the Yankees from re-signing him until May 15.

“I know Hideki is relieved. This is where he always wanted to be,” Tellem said after reaching the agreement Tuesday night. “His hope is to finish his career as a Yankee and help the Yankees win the World Series.”
Matsui is to earn $13 million in each of the next four seasons and gets a no-trade clause. He was coming off a $21 million, three-year contract in which he earned an additional $1.5 million in performance bonuses.
“This was obviously the No. 1 priority to get him wrapped up,” Yankees manager Joe Torre said. “He’s such an important player.”

The teeth-gnashing you hear from Boston is that the 52million dollar price tag puts Johnny Damon at a higher price for the Bosox who want to retain their Center Fielder. Rumours persist that Scot Boras is trying to get 7 years and 84 million for his client Damon.

And that is all the bullshit that is fit to post.