Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
I don't have much to say about yesterday's 8-4 loss to the Indians. Moose had his first truly bad start of the year, with the Indians six-through-eight hitters doing the bulk of the damage. The offense tried to come back thanks to homers by Alex Rodriguez and Bernie Williams, but Aaron Small and Ron Villone put the game further out of reach and Rodriguez struck out with men on the corners in his next trip to add fuel to a very nasty fire.
The most compelling things about the game for me were Melky Cabrera's first career home run--Melky was batting righty and appeared to get under a pitch up in the zone which just cleared the left field wall around where he made "the catch" (check the highlights, it could be a while before he hits another)--and Matt Smith's appearance in the seventh inning in which lefties Travis Hafner and Ben Broussard both battled him for identical eight-pitch walks (swinging strike, foul strike two, ball one, foul, ball, ball, ball) prompting a two-out mound visit by Ron Guidry, after which Smith got Ronnie Belliard to fly out on two pitches to strand both runners.
In other news, it's almost two weeks old now, but I only recently stumbled across this article by Yahoo!'s Jeff Passan on the Yankees' infamous 1991 number-one draft pick Brien Taylor. While it borders on rubbernecking at times, I found the article compelling and somewhat timely given the recent draft and the influx of homegrown players on the Yankee roster (ten of 25, not counting Crosby and Proctor, who came over from the Dodgers as minor leaguers).
The Yankees will visit two more of their home grown stars this weekend in Washington, but I'll have more on the Nats, Nick and Sori later today. For now, I'll share this on the Nationals' recently fired bullpen coach John Wetteland, courtesy of The Griddle. Apparently the 1996 World Series MVP was having a bit too much fun with his charges out in the pen (who include former Yanks Mike Stanton and, until a recent DL stint, Felix Rodriguez) and former MLB discipline czar and current Nationals manager Frank Robinson didn't appreciate that.
Hopefully that helps the blood pressure and now you can go back to enjoying a diet high in sodium.
"He threw well," Posada said with a grin. "We've been getting hit and not doing anything about it. What Randy did shows there's something there."
Think the position players have been a bit miffed that the pitchers haven't been protecting them so far.
Boras also wrangled a major-league contract for Van Poppel, which meant that the A's had to bring him up to the majors well before he was ready. That was the famous "Four Aces" draft - Todd Van Poppel, Kirk Dressendorfer, Don Peters and Dave Zancanaro - that was supposed to set up the A's pitching for years to come.
The yanks haven't had too much luck with their two first picks. Ron Blomberg was a bust too.
I know, I know...I couldn't help myself.
BTW, this satirical piece almost feels 99% true.
http://www.thebrushback.com/small_full.htm
5, 9 I thought Posada's reaction on Wednesday was completely out of line; there's no way the pitcher was trying to hit him. It was also bad baseball, because it was Posada's tantrum - not the pitch - that drew the umpire's warning. If he doesn't overreact, RJ can throw inside without being ejected.
I knew it was just a matter of time before someone posted something like that. I just hope Rob has a sense of humor about it. It was fun to follow that yesterday, but I don't know if we could stand it for another day.
Right, Rob? Plus it's Friday....if you can't laugh on a Friday then you need help.
I just sent YESnetwork.com an e-mail, congratulating them on the re-design and asking them to bring back to the direct links to the current PB/PBlog. The address is info@yesnetwork.com if anyone else wants to e-mail them.
I imagine the change is to force everyone to go through the front page, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
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