Nice Homestand

Alexander Goetzfried on Aug 18th 2012

With Tex missing two games in a row with a sore wrist, and CC, ARod, and Andy all still on the DL the Yankees  still managed a good homestand against the Rangers and Red Sox, which will conclude tomorrow night against Boston.

Swisher’s bat really came alive against Boston. Friday night he went 2 for 3 with two home runs one from each side of the plate, the 12th time in his career, he is now one behind Tex on the all time list.  On Saturday he was 3 for 4.  During this homestand Swisher has gone 10 for 24 with four home runs and 11 RBIs.

Derek Jeter had a historic weekend as well tying Graig Nettles at ninth place of all time Yankees. He also became the fourth player in major league history to hit 250 home runs, have 300 stolen bases, and 3000 hits.  Another historic night for a true baseball gentleman!

The Yankees will complete their homestand tomorrow night against the Red Sox.

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October Plans

Alexander Goetzfried on Aug 17th 2012

With pitching struggles continuing and CC back on the DL for a short stint most Yankee fans including myself are chomping at the bit for the return of Andy Pettite.  The Yankees however are being very “cautious” with the return of their aging ace, especially after Pettite had a set back in the recovery of his ankle while doing stair climbs in rehab.

The Yankees are a cautious team when it comes to injuries because from the outset of the season they include October automatically in their baseball plans.  Anymore set backs for Andy would mean the possibility of missing playoff baseball, if the pitcher with the most wins in playoff history can’t throw in October, then Pettite’s return from retirement would be pointless to say the least.

“I know now that if I have another setback, that we’ve got serious problems and my season’s probably over,” Pettitte told the New York Times on Tuesday. “Now we’re probably going to be overcautious and try to figure out what we can do, just to make sure I’m back, and what I need to get ready.”

With Hughes and Nova struggling, getting Pettite and CC back is what the Yankees need in order to be ready for playoff baseball.  Pettite is in week 7 of the 6-8 week projection for his return, however mid September is now looking like a more likely time line for Andy to get back on the mound.

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Yankee Game or Vacation for 4

Alexander Goetzfried on Aug 10th 2012

The new Yankee stadium is an enormous shrine to the dynasty, a technological marvel, and a small culinary mecca in a city already boasting some of the world’s best restaurants.  A hot dog and a beer are no longer affordable, ($9 for a budlight, no thanks) and that is if you are able to resist the influx of real restaurants with cooked-on-site, made-to-order food. Parm serves staples from owners Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi’s Nolita Sandwich Shop.  Lobel’s of New York serves fresh made, hand carved, steak sandwiches, and there’s even a Brother Jimmy’s. The July 2012 GQ went as far as saying that Yankee stadium is the best place to eat right now in the east, and described a Parm sandwich at Yankee stadium as a “picture-perfect summer evening. Under the lights. America.”

Yes America, ball parks, good food, and beer.  A fundamental essence of the American dream, taking your family to a ball game.  But should you have to take out a second mortgage to afford seats out of the bleachers?  Or sacrifice a weeks worth of food shopping budget to afford $20 sandwiches with $10 drinks?  In the quest for more and more everywhere we go, and combining everything we like into one place, have we sold the right to go to a ballgame to the elite?

Yankee tickets are expensive.  The “Legends Suite” tickets start at $1225 and go up to $2500.  Of course with these tickets you can have a bottle of champagne, sushi, an 18 yr scotch, and probably anything else you want from the concierge, and wait team assigned to you.  For the sake of this discussion however, I would like to try and keep the numbers in the realm of possibility for people who are not flying in a helicopter to East Hampton after the game. So there are tickets available to this Tuesday’s game against the Rangers.  To the back right of home plate in section 118 just above field level you can get tickets off of Ticketmaster for $311.90.  Now ticket master does charge a fee, after all they do allow you to print the tickets at home, so for the sake of argument lets call the tickets an even $350.  So if a family of four goes to Tuesday night’s game, tickets in this area will run you about $1400. Of course your kids will want a hand carved steak sandwich, so family dinner at $20 a sandwich and 4 $4 sodas is around another $100, you do have to tip it is a restaurant stand after all.  Now you are obviously going to need to drink four or five of those $9 bud lights in an attempt to cope with all this spending so tack on an extra $50.  So for $1550 you can go to a Yankee game, with your family, and everyone can have a nice meal.

But every ballpark is not built to cater to the mega rich.  There are other options for the same budget.  Just one example is going to Chicago to see the Yankees play the White Sox.  Tickets in the same section in Chicago go for $90 a piece. If all four of you make the trip that’s $360 for the tickets.  This game is Tuesday August 21.  On Expedia if you book right now flights with hotel for four to Chicago will run you $1517 all fees included.  The total is $1877.  I realize that this does not factor in a gourmet meal like you will get at Yankee stadium, but Chicago is no slouch in the world of foodie cities.

One day at Yankee stadium with food, beer, and good seats for a family of four will conservatively speaking run about $1550.  A three day vacation to Chicago with a Yankee game thrown in, same seats, but food not included will cost $1887.  That is an extra $84.25 per person.  We are in a sad place in the history of the greatest baseball franchise, when its more reasonable to fly to another city and stay for three days, than it is to have decent, not even the best, seats to one Yankee game.

 

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Chavez Stepping Up

Alexander Goetzfried on Aug 10th 2012

Eric Chavez has really played well filling the role left void by Alex Rodriguez’s injury.  There was never a doubt as to the veterans ability to play, however he is aging and injury prone and there was a concern whether or not he would be able to last physically.

Before becoming a Yankee Chavez had played only 64 games in three seasons, but prior to that he had won six consecutive gold gloves at third base.  Back, neck and shoulder injuries caused Chavez to undergo five surgeries which had him thinking retirement before realizing the interest the Yankees had in picking him up as a back up.

With the injury to A-Rod, and the Yankees in the midst of a slump, losing eight straight one run games, Chavez helped propel the team to their first one run win since the all star break.  Trailing 3-2 going into the eighth inning Chavez and Teixeira hit back to back solo home runs for the tie, then the go-ahead run.  Chavez’s solo shot was against the Tigers stud set up man Joaquin Benoit. Up until last night Chavez told Newsday he has been “terrible” against Benoit, 3 for 15 with four strikeouts.

That wasn’t the case last night though and its great to see Chavez pulling his weight physically and statistically.

He is batting .289 with a .347 on base percentage and slugging .526 with 12 home runs.

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Injuries Catching Up

Alexander Goetzfried on Aug 8th 2012

The Yankees are now only 4.5 games ahead of the Orioles after dropping 12 of the last 18.  There has been some talk that the injuries are finally slowing the Yankees down, especially with A-Rod being out of the lineup.  A-Rod’s stats are not the only ones that are stagnant right now, and because of the lack of offense this mid-summer slump could be deeper than it appears on the surface.

The Yankee M.O. of staging late game comebacks with ninth inning bats statistically has not changed much. According to the NY Post with A-Rod in the lineup the Yankees averaged 4.81 runs per game, while with him injured they are averaging 4.85.  Pitching is also to blame as this seems like a team problem.  Phil Hughes roller coaster season continues as he is on another low, failing to put batters away, or go deep into games, but CC and Kuroda are pitching well.

Curtis Granderson’s slump is a big part of the overall picture.  Last night a ninth inning rally was abruptly ended and another Yankee loss was confirmed to the Tigers when Granderson popped out making him 2 for 20 with six strikeouts over the last week.

“I am just not putting the ball in play the way I want to”, Granderson told the NY Post. “I am still getting pitches to hit. It doesn’t make a difference if you are hitting first, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth, when you are not hitting you are not hitting.  I am getting balls around the middle of the plate and not being able to do what I want to.”

The sky is not falling yet though.  A 4.5 game lead is still substantial, and with CC and Kuroda starting the next two games things will turn around.  Getting the slumps and losing streaks out of the way in August may just be a prelude to turning it on in October and making a run at another championship.  If the Orioles end up in first place, then we can all start worrying!

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Greatest Ever?

Alexander Goetzfried on Aug 3rd 2012

In this post we are going to take a look at Derek Jeter, to see where he ranks among the greatest Yankees of all time. Jeter is a Yankee lifer, so lets take a look at how he ranks among the best of one of the most esteemed franchises in sports history. There are also a ton of Jeter haters out there, who definitely don’t want to read another article like this. But I think the haters even like him a little bit.

Now I realize that we are talking about a franchise with players in it’s history like Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra, and Joe DiMaggio.  Statistically speaking, Jeter may not even be considered a greater Yankee than Mariano Rivera or Andy Pettite. But to me comparing a short stop to pitchers is apples and oranges. I don’t think that a definitive rank can be made among these baseball legends.  It is difficult to compare people from different eras, especially when thinking about facts like African Americans couldn’t play during Babe Ruth’s time, and the juice scandals of the modern baseball era.  We can however look at some of the categories Jeter has excelled in.

Jeter’s career started off with a bang. In 1996 he was the Yankees opening day short stop, the first rookie to open at short stop since Tom Tresh in 1962.  In his first game he hit his first major league home run.  During Jeter’s rookie season he had a .314 average, 10 home runs, 78 RBIs, and 14 steals according to derekjeter.com.  He was named the AL rookie of the year, and batted .361 in the postseason, an intricate part of leading the Yankees to their first World Series win since 1978.

That World Series ring in his rookie year would set a tone of winning as the Captain has five to date.

Jeter puts up consistent numbers. He has 3,225 hits, and was the fourth youngest member of the 3,000 hit club, a group of only 23 people.  He is a 12 time all star, with five gold gloves but the Captain really shines where it counts, in the post season.

In post season play Jeter holds the MLB records for hits, games played, extra base hits,  and runs scored.(derekjeter.com)

These are just areas where he is statistically superior.  The intangibles are an area that must be considered when discussing Derek Jeter.

According to mlb.com in the Derek Jeter biography section, commissioner Bud Selig wrote Jeter a letter in 2009 which he said “[You are] Major League Baseball’s foremost champion and ambassador. You embody all the best of Major League Baseball. … You have represented the sport magnificently throughout your Hall of Fame career. On and off the field, you are a man of great integrity, and you have my admiration.”

It’s easy to see why people outside of the Yankee’s world hate Derek Jeter.  You have to make up rumors about a guy who consistently wins, stays out of the tabloids (despite being single in New York City), never seems to say the wrong thing or make a mistake in front of the camera, and receives gushing praise from the Commissioner himself. My favorite of the Jeter rumors is the most recent. Hackers got into official Yankee Twitter accounts and tweeted that Jeter would be benched for the rest of the season because he is having a sex change.

I’m sure the Captain can take comfort knowing he is doing something right when the only rumors the haters can make up about him are fake sex change articles.  In the media frenzied world we live in, its not hard to dig up dirt on someone, unless there apparently is no dirt to dig.

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Cashman’s Last Minute Move

Alexander Goetzfried on Aug 1st 2012

In the final minutes of the trade deadline the Yankees made a move for a third baseman as a temporary replacement for the injured Alex Rodriguez.

The Yankees traded Chad Qualls to the Pirates for Casey McGehee, an infielder who can play first or third, both positions the Yankees currently need temporary replacement at, and also a solid right handed bat who can be a DH.

Although this trade wasn’t a huge blockbuster by any means, you have to give Cashman credit for filling a role that needed some help at third, and also getting $250,000 for Qualls who has not done much while in pinstripes.

Cashman new what he was doing as he told the Daily Post “McGehee can obviously be a righthanded bat off the bench, he can play first base, he can play third base, he can DH. So it gives Joe some flexibility as he matches up whether it’s to put a starting lineup together or to matchup later in the game.”

Qualls has not been a huge factor in the pitching lineup this season, and the fact that Joba Chamberlain would be returning to the rotation after his trampoline ankle injury made this deal a no brainer.

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Utility Players Needed

Alexander Goetzfried on Jul 31st 2012

Mark Teixeira is the latest injury to the Yankees who dropped two of three to Boston, and lost the first of three to Baltimore.  With Tex down Eric Chavez moved to first, and Jayson Nix played third.  This is reminiscent of my childhood days watching the Yankees infield in the mid to late 90’s where my favorite utility player of all time would cover any position.  I speak of course of the great Louis Sojo.  I can remember playing wiffle ball at my cousins house, everyone arguing over who would get to play short stop and be Jeter. Whoever was to be picked on that afternoon would end up at second and have to be Louis Sojo.

With the trade deadline taking place as I write this it will be interesting to see if the Yankees have made any big moves for an infield acquisition at third.  Or if they are going to let Chavez and Nix cover for their injured superstar teammates.

Although they are in the midst of a three game losing streak the Yankees are still six and a half ahead of Baltimore, in first place of the AL East.  They have dealt with a lot of big injuries this season, but have not been slowed down much by them.

Tex goes for an MRI on Wednesday, where the severity of his wrist injury will be determined.

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Yankees Have Always Spent Money But Not Like Today

Alexander Goetzfried on Jul 27th 2012

The Yankees are known for their profuse spending habits. In the modern era they buy whatever and whoever they want.  Historically this has also been true but to a much lesser degree, infamously starting with their purchase of Babe Ruth from the Red Sox.  Stadium and players alike lets take a look at what some historical expenditures of the Yankees would cost today.

The historical numbers and figures are courtesy of mlb.com and ballparksofbaseball.com.

In 1913 the New York Yankees signed a 10 year lease to play at the Polo Grounds, the stadium of the New York Giants.  The two teams co-existed for the next seven years.  However in 1920 the Yankees bought Babe Ruth from the Red Sox for $100,000 in what was to become known as the worst trade in baseball history (for the Red Sox), and also sparking arguably the greatest rivalry in sports.  $100,000 in 1920 was an exorbitant amount of money for an athlete, but when you put the numbers into today’s terms, its really not that bad.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator, $100,000 in 1920 is approximately equivalent to $1,147,390 today.  This is still a lot of money, put it pales in comparison to the $275 million the Yankees agreed to pay A-Rod.

After buying Ruth Yankee attendance skyrocketed, and they became the first team to attract over 1 million fans.  In 1921 the Giants asked the Yankees to vacate the Polo Grounds as soon as possible, as they were now outdrawing their landlords.  Yankees co-owners Colonel Jacobs Ruppert and Colonel T.L. Huston bought 10 acres of land in the Bronx from the estate of William Waldorf Astor for $675,000.  According to the CPI inflation calculator the land for Yankees Stadium cost the owners about $8,653,500 in today’s money.  Although this is adjusted for inflation, someone needs to figure out a formula to adjust for the current popularity of pro sports because the numbers still seem ridiculously low!

On May 5, 1922 the construction contract for the new stadium was awarded to New York White’s Construction Company.  In the deal it stated that construction must be completed for $2.5 million, and by opening day April 18, 1923. The job was done in time and for budget.  Yankee Stadium at the time was the “largest and most magnificent stadium in baseball” according to ballparksofbaseball.com.  The construction took 284 days to complete and again according to the CPI inflation calculator the $2.5 million price tag would cost approximately $32,050,000 today.  This adjustment does not appear to be reasonable especially not after you look at the cost of the current Yankee Stadium.

New Yankee Stadium was financed by the organization for $1.6 Billion dollars. Not only that, but New York City also invested $220 million of its own money in infrastructure improvements in the area.  Now New Yankee Stadium is obviously technologically superior to the one built in 1923, but if all things are relative how does it cost $968 million dollars more?  Were our turn of the century ancestors better businessmen, faster builders, and just all around more efficient?  Or is there a factor left out of the CPI inflation calculator? I don’t know but the number discrepancies are pretty astounding.

More recent examples are available and still just as out of whack.  In the 1970’s old Yankee Stadium needed a makeover.  Then New York City Mayor John Lindsay announced that the city would buy Yankee Stadium for $24 million in 1972 and fix it up.  According to the inflation calculator the city got a deal in today’s terms, owning possibly the most valuable piece of baseball history for what would cost in today’s dollars $131,757,703.

That same year Steinbrenner bought the team, and we all know where the spending went from there!

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Injury Bug

Alexander Goetzfried on Jul 25th 2012

The injury bug has bitten the Yankees again putting A-Rod on the disabled list with a non-displaced left hand fracture.  There has been no formal timetable for the superstar third baseman’s return, but similar injuries have taken six to eight weeks to recover from for other players.  The Yankees have had injury issues now with Brett Gardner, Andy Pettite, and CC Sabathia, Sabathia being the only Yankee to return thus far.

Although A-Rod is no longer the MVP he once was he is still considered in the top 50th percentile of third basemen in the league by ESPN’s Buster Olney.  Brian Cashman eluded a few weeks ago to a quiet trade deadline for the Yankees, which has been anything but with the signing of Ichiro Suzuki to replace Gardner, and now it would be smart for the Yankees to shop for a third baseman to fill the void left by Rodriguez.

Putting Eric Chavez on third and shopping for a DH might actually be a more reasonable reaction to the A-Rod injury, especially if he will be back by November. Money however is obviously not an issue for the Yankees so if they do try and bring someone in it will be interesting to see who they go after.  This injury could bring a new opportunity, or an expensive bust, but I will be interested in seeing how Cashman handles this quiet time before the trade deadline.

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