I saw somebody mention that Wang could, in theory, win 20 games. They could bring him into a tie game on his throw day for an inning or two (highly unlikely) and give him a shot (I guess it would partially depend on tonight's decision). I would be cool if the Yanks had the ONLY 20 game winner in baseball this season, but I would rather not risk it. Interesting scenario though. And Go!
I didn't think we'd see this lineup tonight but I'm psyched. This is a must watch now just to see this lineup for the first time. I was working out today and day dreaming about this very lineup, though I had Cano 8th and Posada 9th. Either way works for me. It amazes me to think about the possible batting champion batting 9th.
5 If the Yanks don't do that with Wang, and the Twins don't end up pitching Santana one final time in the regular season, this will be the first time EVER that there are no 20-game winners in the majors. Strike-shortened seasons excluded, of course.
That allow might be reason to not see it happen.
Wow, Jay's going to the game tonight and he still had time for an almost 3-hour chat on Prospectus. Nice life! Hope you and he enjoy the game, Alex.
While Sheff is not yet Sheff, Giambi is hurting and ARod is having an off year, on paper, this must be the most dangerous (non all-star game) lineup in history. Even the Ruth-Gehrig lineups, or the Bog Red Machine, did not have this 1-9 combination of power, speed and OBP.
Can some post a lineup from ANY TEAM IN HISTORY, that is better then this one?
This is the lineup possibility I was so excited about when the talk of Shef going to first started. I don't know what the hell will happen tonight because I had no clue until Sterling told us 4 thousand times that no one can predict baseball, but if people are in good shape you certainly can say what the probability favors and this line up is awesome and may become famous with tonight a famous origin date for this lineup of the mightiest Yankee hitters ever. Look at the damn thing, it's truly impossible to pitch around anyone.
wow, this lineup just kills. There is no relief EVER! Even the slumping Damon is always a threat. I mean, that has to be mentally tough to pitch against these guys.
48 I think what happened needed to happen. It sure gave me a different outlook. You're right about taking it for granted because when everyone was hurt I forgot what is was like to have this lineup.
50 True, Seamus. And no matter how smart a guy is, if he's handed crap he can't turn it into a souffle. Still, if Leo could get a good year out of Jaret Wright. . .
64 His age and frequent physical problems always present risks. I love Moose, but I've also started to understand why he can't get 20 wins besides his luck.
66 the accidental reverse jinx! btw, this figures. With Giambi sitting I benched him for my fantasy league championship game (didn't think he'd play enough!).
64 Simple. He's been steadily sucky for the better part of the second half of the season.
At least RJ is capable (once in a great while) of six or even seven innings of no-hit goodness, even if he then proceeds to fall off a cliff once he loses his stuff. Moose's lows have not been as catastrophic as RJ's, but he's been dreary and mediocre...now, even when Moose pitches out of jams, it feels like it's just delaying the inevitable big inning.
Man, I am so pumped that Giambi is hitting. I truly believe he is one of two most valuable hitters in the Yankees lineup (Jeter being the other right now). The way he works pitchers and can hit with power is huge.
Good Lord, man - I get home late from work and the boys are spankin' the Birdies...I think the Birdies are starting to see those cartoon birdies circling aroung their heads 'cause they're getting dizzy watching our team circle the bases so much! YEESH!
Yankees crushing, Toronto beating Detroit, and Boston losing. What a night.
I so want Boston to finish in 3rd. I can taste it now. I predicted it to a Sawx fan I know at the beginning of the season, and even when the Sawx were going good I never backed down from it. This would be sweet.
Man, what a collapse. If Houston wins and St L loses that'll be 8 games lost in the standings by the Cards in as many played.
Couldn't happen to a more overrated manager Mr. LaRussa. (Still pissed at him for playing Womack at dp depth with Papi up in game 1 of the 2004 series. 10 feet back and Papi hits into a dp easy, the Cards probably win game 1. Instead Papi nearly kills Womack and the rest is history.)
Anything can happen late in the season Dept:
1st place St. Louis, (was) a .550 team, has now lost 7 in a row. Houston, at 6 games under .500, has now won 7 in a row... and the NL is a race for the first time this year.
89 The best part about the Sox losing is Beckett getting rocked at Fenway and giving up 2 more homers. The local media has been desperately trying to pump up his recent improvement as a sign of better things to come (young pitcher with tons of potential, bla bla bla)...and making a BIG deal about the significant drop in homers given up.
Then he reverts to throwing batting practice tonight. Too good.
112 Melky played CF Monday. I knew then that Matsui was coming back to LF. Until then, Joe had never used Melky in CF, even when we could have really used him there.
I'm really torn between who I like to see in the NL wildcard... I really like both the Dodgers and the Phillies.... I don't dislike the Padres either.... can one of them take the Cardinal's spot instead? they suck bad right now.
Man, this is really fun. I mean, it doesn't have the kind of ecstasy of whupping the Red Sox when it really counts. But it's just, I dunno, enjoyable to watch Cano bang the living crop out of the ball in a meaningless game against a lousy pitcher on a mediocre team.
You are right, I thought that last year when it appeared he had more pop in his bat than early this year....but he is turning on the power and is just killing it...
This guy is unreal and every Yankee fan should be happy the D-Backs did not ask for him the Randy Johnson deal
147 He really is. He's going to be incredible next year.
I can't decide which is better: Bombers flexing their HR biceps tonight, or Beckett being murdered in the cathedral.
Okay, Beckett's better.
158,160Dammit, that's what I get for going out of town for a couple of days. I go and make a dumb comment like that and then someone retaliates with an extra long link that makes the page all fooey.
Just kidding, neilymon. But tinyurl is your friend.
A year ago today, we were also playing the Orioles. It was a slugfest, that we ended up on the wrong end of. Moose got pulled in the 2nd inning, and Leiter came in. It ended up 17-9 Orioles.
179 Toaster will hide the posts up to the 200th once we reach 200+something. You can hide them yourself, of course, but it's nice when the Bad Line is hidden when you refresh.
187 Ugh, I remember that game. The Yankees had a great comeback to get Mussina off the hook, then the bullpen came in and blew up the game. The worst part of it was the O's announcers interviewing the governor of Maryland during one of the O's big innings.
I don't think it's the browser, it's your video display settings. If you have a large screen and small text, the long lines aren't long enough to stretch the screen for you. People with smaller screens and/or larger text will have a problem.
179
At around every 50, the previous 50 are automatically not displayed so long lines
don't show. Except it takes it a bit more than
fifty. I think 7 is the magic number.
I just saw a piece at BP comparing the starting pitching of playoff teams. It's subscriber content, so I only got the tease first paragraph, which included this whopper:
"The best way to answer the question would be to run PECOTAs for all the pitchers involved, which would help us to separate skill from luck--Chien-Ming Wang has a better ERA and a better VORP on the season than Jake Peavy, but only those folks immediately east of the Hudson River would rather have Wang start a playoff game."
Now, I know what this guy is getting at -- Wang doesn't strike anyone out and he gives up hits, therefore he must be lucky that more balls don't get through etc. But at some pt you have to face reality, you don't get well under a 4 era in the AL and esp the AL East for a whole season by luck. The fact that most of the balls hit off him are not only gb's but softly hit ones has got to friggin count for something.
At some pt you've got to put down the stat book and actually watch the dude pitch, and then listen to to what hitters have to say about trying to hit him.
This type of nonsense gives statheads a bad name.
Peavy, for chrissakes his era is well over 4 in the extremely light hitting NL west.
195 I'm on a laptop, I tried Decrease Text in Firefox, but the window is still messed up. But at least all this discussion will hasten the end of the problem.
205 God, that is moronic, you're right.
Look in the Baseball Musings archives for David Pinto's interesting entry on how Wang defies the standard analysis. It's pretty cool. (And Pinto restores the good name of baseball geeks.)
Pedro looks all set for October with his 84mph fastball....he got shelled today vs. a Braves team that packed it in a long time ago....2.2 IP 8 runs....
205 Wang created the worms burner...and I think he got 3 or 4 SO in his recent starts in comparison to earlier this season when he often ended up with zero or one SO in a game.
221 I think Sheff did ok today. With his power back, it makes up for what he lacks in D. Giambi should stay as a DH. The defense skills of Phillips, Cairo (he's in, no matter what), and Wilson cannot compensate for their lack of power.
228 That's the thing. Even with Wanger pitching, Sheff or Giambi add so much over Wilson or Phillips at the plate, that the defensive drop-off is swamped.
Not watching the game, just noticed over Gameday that ARod left the game after getting hit by a pitch. Is Torre just resting him in a blowout, or did the pitch nick him a bit?
218 The Wang vs Peavy comparison, in the particulars of this year, is a poor one. Wang is pitching very well and Peavy has crapped the bed sometimes, even in that pitcher's haven he calls his home ballpark.
That said, in general a pitcher who strikes out a lot of hitters and walks few hitters is preferrable to a pitcher who rarely strikes anyone out.
Not having read David Pinto's analysis, I'd have to agree that Wang is very much an outlier in this regard.
FYI - WARP1: Wang 7.1, Peavy 5.9
VORP: Wang 55.4 (leads team), Peavy 36.9 (3rd on team)
SNLVAR: Wang 5.5 (leads team), Peavy 5.7 (2nd on team)
Silver's work has been a little shoddy lately - first that 'secret sauce' article where he takes Liriano's numbers out for the Twins, but doesn't take out Erickson, Chacon, Small, etc's numbers for the Yanks, now this. He really should have looked the stats up before he typed that.
233 I just thought if Wilson could handle things as the backstop (emergency only in the PS, of course) then he would be a better choice than Phillips since we could leave Fasano off the PS roster and possibly carry an extra pitcher.
I just saw a commercial for Honesty. This goes with the one for Love from the last time I watched Yanks-O's games on Comcast. Is there some kind of a problem in the Baltimore area with abstract concepts?
And the commercial didn't even incorporate the Billy Joel song. For shame.
Thanks, Shaun, nice.
David's angle was that Wang's percentage of base hits that are singles is so high you think you must have pushed the wrong buttons on your calculator. Nobody is anywhere near him.
246 You mean the dude with the 5.20 ERA since the All-Star break?
For all of Farnsworth's farts, I'd rather have his young arm over the next two seasons (and this one) than Gordon's old arm. Good luck with that, Philly!
249 Interesting. It makes sense. If you're going to give up a hit, a single is better than any of the other possibilities.
As long as Wang can keep reliably inducing ground balls - one of the reasons I'm sure his number of singles allowed is so high - I think he'll continue to have success, strikeout rate be damned.
Actually stat geeks have acknowledged guys like Wang-it's the guys who look for the easy explanation (or in this case, have an axe to grind) that think K/9 is the end of the conversation.
Even Bill James mentioned extreme ground ball pitchers back before he turned into a crank.
Comparing a guy pitching in the AL East to a guy pitching in the NL west and in Dodger Stadium requires a lot of adjustments, and using PECOTA shows a complete lack of research (as in PECOTA is a joke.)
No, wrong, sorry: Tigers closed to 6-4.
KC still has their starter on the mound; the Twinks have a decent chance if they get to the Royal pen for an inning.
254 I'm not sure I agree with you on PECOTA, but actually Silver stated at the start of the article that he wasn't using PECOTA to figure it out. Instead, he used something he called QuikERA:
"QuikERA (QERA), which estimates what a pitcher's ERA should be based solely on his strikeout rate, walk rate, and GB/FB ratio. These three components--K rate, BB rate, GB/FB--stabilize very quickly, and they have the strongest predictive relationship with a pitcher's ERA going forward. What's more, they are not very dependent on park effects, allowing us to make reasonable comparisons of pitchers across different teams."
I'm not sure I agree that GB/FB rate isn't very dependent on park effects. PETCO, for example, tends to depress home runs, which suggests it also tends to depress fly balls.
Even if you accept everything Silver writes as true, given Peavy's struggles this year and the shoulder issue that's bothered him off and on, I still would rather have Wang starting a playoff game for me. It was a poor comparison on his part (though, to his credit, he did mention that Wang's VORP is better than Peavy's).
Not trying to get ahead of myself, but I think we are good regardless of how unreliable Beam is. This is the 19th win for Wang. That is one amazing record, as he's the first Asian pitcher to do it in MLB. The Yankees wouldn't be here without him so he will be starting Game 1 in PS. And he's only 26.
It's more than wonderful that Wang and Cano came along.
251 et al. Regarding Wilson--it's hard to evaluate his performance with the Yankees, because he was never really platooned properly. He has historically hit LHP very well; he's also streaky and Ks a lot. That was his rap in Pit, and that's pretty much what we have seen (when we saw him, before he got buried on the bench).
Now, as for the post season roster? Well, IF Shef is really back AND if Bernie is used properly (ha-ha), there really is not much need for a RH platoon hitter. On the other hand, carrying a back-up C is pretty silly, even though it is conventional wisdom. Check the Yankees post season stats--how many ABs do the back-up Cs actually get? Torre will never PH for Posada. Sure, he could get injured, but what are the odds? And rosters can be updated after each series anyway. And, Fasano is piss worthless as a starter, so if Posada gets hurt, the team is likely screwed anyway.
So, IF Torre had the balls to use Wilson as an emergency C, he could carry him (and he can play corner OF as well) instead of Fasano. But if Torre is set on carrying Fasano, then there is not much need for Wilson on the roster.
Likewise, there is little reason to carry Andy unless Torre actually plans on using him as the back-up 2B/3B as well. But he won't--he'll bring Cairo (I never wish injury on anone, but I was hoping Cairo would not be back this year).
269 Perhaps the signings of Womack and Pavano weren't so bad after all. Without those 2, the Yanks might have never given Wang and Cano their respective shots. Steven Goldman might have to stop referring to the 2004-05 offseason as the worst in team history.
Minnesota just lost and Detroit is losing 7-4 int he 9th. We could lead Detroit by effectively 2 games if they lose. With only 4 games left we're getting awfully close to clinching homefield!
281 Tigers lost. Blue Jays in second place again (same # of losses as Sox but 1 less win).
Its a shame the Yanks play the Jays to end the year. I'd love to see the Jays end the season in 2nd place, but I'd rather the Yanks get HFA. Maybe the Sox will go on a long losing streak?
By the way, Anibel Sanchez won again tonight and Hanley Ramirez hit two HRs. Just seemed appropriate to point out on the night that Beckett got shelled again.
294 you would miss all of the yankees games? We keep planning on getting a package deal but we were broke this year. I couldn't possibly make enough games to make season tickets worthwhile, but a 12 pack or something sure. I love PNC park (obviously I live in the 'burgh).
298 it is certainly affordable by season ticket packages i believe. Something about fielding bad teams year after year that brings the fans out in... small clustered groups.
So the Phillies win in the end, and the Astros do too. What a night.
On a sad note, the AP recap of the game said Tony Pena's dad died, and he found out about it before the start of the game. My condolences to Pena and his family.
J/K.
Johnny Damon CF
Derek Jeter SS
Bobby Abreu RF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Jason Giambi DH
Gary Sheffield 1B
Hideki Matsui LF
Jorge Posada C
Robinson Cano 2B
Chien-Ming Wang RHP
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B09270SEA1997.htm
Wang
Mussina
Johnson
NINTH
Wow.
That allow might be reason to not see it happen.
Wow, Jay's going to the game tonight and he still had time for an almost 3-hour chat on Prospectus. Nice life! Hope you and he enjoy the game, Alex.
Can some post a lineup from ANY TEAM IN HISTORY, that is better then this one?
Yanks to put Wang on mound for playoffs Game 1
With that, it feels wrong to laugh at Jorge's 3 run dinger. What an utterly sick lineup.
I like lineup.
It make me feel good.
Some adversity really made me learn to appreciate the Yankees more and not to take them for granted.
Minn up 1-0.
I believe we have HFA on the WC, regardless og their record.
The question comes down to "who on the Yankees starting pitching staffs pitch better than the off-Wang"?
How many starts has he had since coming off the DL?
Melky is replacing Damon in CF next inning.
At least RJ is capable (once in a great while) of six or even seven innings of no-hit goodness, even if he then proceeds to fall off a cliff once he loses his stuff. Moose's lows have not been as catastrophic as RJ's, but he's been dreary and mediocre...now, even when Moose pitches out of jams, it feels like it's just delaying the inevitable big inning.
Melky, I am sorry that you have to start make nice with the bench now.
Has anyone thought which veterans Torre will have be the pitching coach and manager for the final game of the season?
Um, yea, Sheff's back.
I so want Boston to finish in 3rd. I can taste it now. I predicted it to a Sawx fan I know at the beginning of the season, and even when the Sawx were going good I never backed down from it. This would be sweet.
89 I hope the Sawx finish 3rd. Too bad there aren't enough games left so they could finish last.
Man, what a collapse. If Houston wins and St L loses that'll be 8 games lost in the standings by the Cards in as many played.
Couldn't happen to a more overrated manager Mr. LaRussa. (Still pissed at him for playing Womack at dp depth with Papi up in game 1 of the 2004 series. 10 feet back and Papi hits into a dp easy, the Cards probably win game 1. Instead Papi nearly kills Womack and the rest is history.)
Toronto over Detroit 4-0 in the 5th.
Minn and KC tied at 1 each in the 4th.
A good day all around.
Ichiro, RF
Jeter, SS
Ortiz, 1B
A-Rod, 3B
Guerrero, LF
I. Rodriguez, C
Wells, CF
Loretta, 2B
Rogers, P
1st place St. Louis, (was) a .550 team, has now lost 7 in a row. Houston, at 6 games under .500, has now won 7 in a row... and the NL is a race for the first time this year.
Then he reverts to throwing batting practice tonight. Too good.
Abreu > Ichiro
Posada > Rodriguez
95 This house is also rooting for the Astros. bf is a Cards-hater. Great game today.
Yep, it's better
I like Rocco Baldelli tonight, good man.
TJ and Myers (law associates).
They gave up the farm for this cocky, hotshot shithead....
I love that the Marlins trifecta of Burnett, Beckett and our boy Pavano are all rubbish in the AL East
Phew, am I glad the Yanks got those two runs back.
Gawd dam, upperdeck
You are right, I thought that last year when it appeared he had more pop in his bat than early this year....but he is turning on the power and is just killing it...
This guy is unreal and every Yankee fan should be happy the D-Backs did not ask for him the Randy Johnson deal
Umm... when was the last time Mariano Rivera pitched in the seventh inning of a regular season game? 1996?
Try September 25, 2006.
http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/wrap.jsp?ymd=20060925&content_id=1682209&vkey=wrapup2005&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
Heh. Our guy's better.
I can't decide which is better: Bombers flexing their HR biceps tonight, or Beckett being murdered in the cathedral.
Okay, Beckett's better.
Just kidding, neilymon. But tinyurl is your friend.
What browser are you using?
I'm using Mozilla.
Everyone was very nice about it.
I mean, considering.
On Mac OSX.4.
Tonight's better. :)
At around every 50, the previous 50 are automatically not displayed so long lines
don't show. Except it takes it a bit more than
fifty. I think 7 is the magic number.
I have Firefox 1.5.0.7 for Mac. And no problem at all.
Mean while, there seems to be some kind of baseball game going on.
(haven't gotten a good skin for Firefox yet.)
Yeah Jeter. Yeah rbi for Bernie.
9 starting players
Melky and Bernie as OFs
Sal Fasano as Jorges caddy
Andy Phillips as INF sub
who is the final player on the roster ? Cairo ?
So who comes in for 8th and 9th. Beam and Dotel?
"The best way to answer the question would be to run PECOTAs for all the pitchers involved, which would help us to separate skill from luck--Chien-Ming Wang has a better ERA and a better VORP on the season than Jake Peavy, but only those folks immediately east of the Hudson River would rather have Wang start a playoff game."
Now, I know what this guy is getting at -- Wang doesn't strike anyone out and he gives up hits, therefore he must be lucky that more balls don't get through etc. But at some pt you have to face reality, you don't get well under a 4 era in the AL and esp the AL East for a whole season by luck. The fact that most of the balls hit off him are not only gb's but softly hit ones has got to friggin count for something.
At some pt you've got to put down the stat book and actually watch the dude pitch, and then listen to to what hitters have to say about trying to hit him.
This type of nonsense gives statheads a bad name.
Peavy, for chrissakes his era is well over 4 in the extremely light hitting NL west.
Except I'm using a laptop. Still, it has a very high resolution.
that is what I thought too....so it comes down to Phillips vs. Wilson really
Good job everyone.
Ice cream for everyone. Mr. Torre's buying.
I don't get Andy Phillips on the postseason roster, though.
Look in the Baseball Musings archives for David Pinto's interesting entry on how Wang defies the standard analysis. It's pretty cool. (And Pinto restores the good name of baseball geeks.)
Can we loan Phil Hughes to the White Sox for a game this weekend to shut this sob down for at least one game?
the only number that matters is 27
Speaking of which, that had better be Giambi's last plate appearance.
I have wondered myself why Wilson has not gotten behind the plate since the day we got him at least once or twice
That said, in general a pitcher who strikes out a lot of hitters and walks few hitters is preferrable to a pitcher who rarely strikes anyone out.
Not having read David Pinto's analysis, I'd have to agree that Wang is very much an outlier in this regard.
FYI - WARP1: Wang 7.1, Peavy 5.9
VORP: Wang 55.4 (leads team), Peavy 36.9 (3rd on team)
SNLVAR: Wang 5.5 (leads team), Peavy 5.7 (2nd on team)
Silver's work has been a little shoddy lately - first that 'secret sauce' article where he takes Liriano's numbers out for the Twins, but doesn't take out Erickson, Chacon, Small, etc's numbers for the Yanks, now this. He really should have looked the stats up before he typed that.
BTW, I have no idea who I'd want at first for Wang.
BTW II, ESPN's Hometown heroes will be on after the Phils - Nats game. Phils need 2 outs bottom of ninth, bases loaded.
And the commercial didn't even incorporate the Billy Joel song. For shame.
Now let's see what Villone can do . . .
PS - Odds on Bruney and/or Proctor pitching tonight?
By the way, Ligers and Twinks each down 6-3 batting in the bottom of the eighth. Nice of them, it makes it easier to remember.
David's angle was that Wang's percentage of base hits that are singles is so high you think you must have pushed the wrong buttons on your calculator. Nobody is anywhere near him.
For all of Farnsworth's farts, I'd rather have his young arm over the next two seasons (and this one) than Gordon's old arm. Good luck with that, Philly!
As long as Wang can keep reliably inducing ground balls - one of the reasons I'm sure his number of singles allowed is so high - I think he'll continue to have success, strikeout rate be damned.
Even Bill James mentioned extreme ground ball pitchers back before he turned into a crank.
Comparing a guy pitching in the AL East to a guy pitching in the NL west and in Dodger Stadium requires a lot of adjustments, and using PECOTA shows a complete lack of research (as in PECOTA is a joke.)
Man, is Villone really on the PS roster? I trust Veras, Rasner, and Karstens than him at this point.
Phils still in extra innings.
Astros still in extra innings.
Pads-Cards tied in 8th, with Pads threatening and Looper pitching. (Mets fans everywhere, BTW, must be howling with laughter.)
Dodgers take the lead in Colorado in the 6th.
This is still an interesting last week for baseball.
I think Villone is almost as guaranteed a spot on the postseason roster as Cairo. Joe trusts him now.
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B10040SLN2005.htm
KC still has their starter on the mound; the Twinks have a decent chance if they get to the Royal pen for an inning.
254 I'm not sure I agree with you on PECOTA, but actually Silver stated at the start of the article that he wasn't using PECOTA to figure it out. Instead, he used something he called QuikERA:
"QuikERA (QERA), which estimates what a pitcher's ERA should be based solely on his strikeout rate, walk rate, and GB/FB ratio. These three components--K rate, BB rate, GB/FB--stabilize very quickly, and they have the strongest predictive relationship with a pitcher's ERA going forward. What's more, they are not very dependent on park effects, allowing us to make reasonable comparisons of pitchers across different teams."
I'm not sure I agree that GB/FB rate isn't very dependent on park effects. PETCO, for example, tends to depress home runs, which suggests it also tends to depress fly balls.
Even if you accept everything Silver writes as true, given Peavy's struggles this year and the shoulder issue that's bothered him off and on, I still would rather have Wang starting a playoff game for me. It was a poor comparison on his part (though, to his credit, he did mention that Wang's VORP is better than Peavy's).
It's more than wonderful that Wang and Cano came along.
This really is a pretty exciting night. In the National League, anyway.
Now, as for the post season roster? Well, IF Shef is really back AND if Bernie is used properly (ha-ha), there really is not much need for a RH platoon hitter. On the other hand, carrying a back-up C is pretty silly, even though it is conventional wisdom. Check the Yankees post season stats--how many ABs do the back-up Cs actually get? Torre will never PH for Posada. Sure, he could get injured, but what are the odds? And rosters can be updated after each series anyway. And, Fasano is piss worthless as a starter, so if Posada gets hurt, the team is likely screwed anyway.
So, IF Torre had the balls to use Wilson as an emergency C, he could carry him (and he can play corner OF as well) instead of Fasano. But if Torre is set on carrying Fasano, then there is not much need for Wilson on the roster.
Likewise, there is little reason to carry Andy unless Torre actually plans on using him as the back-up 2B/3B as well. But he won't--he'll bring Cairo (I never wish injury on anone, but I was hoping Cairo would not be back this year).
I've mentioned I love Cano, right?
275 Who is Nick Green?
Who's the guy playing 1B for KC named Phillips? Andy didn't get traded and he certainly doesn't have a beard!
(Please tell me its NOT Jason Phillips.)
Mark Redmond strikes out, Twinks lose.
113 career at-bats.
Holy Smokes. Pugols just hit a 3-run dinger.
the Nats, Phillies is a real nail biter...
Its a shame the Yanks play the Jays to end the year. I'd love to see the Jays end the season in 2nd place, but I'd rather the Yanks get HFA. Maybe the Sox will go on a long losing streak?
Otherwise I agree - no need to pitch to him.
The pressure is on Houston now to keep pace.
PNC Park is so empty. If I lived in Pittsburgh, I would get season tickets. That place is a jewel.
295 Oops, my bad. Still, loading the bases even with 2 outs is generally not a good idea.
Too much, I'm hanging it up.
Torre says: Mo gets one more inning before post-season, likely Saturday.
Genius!
On a sad note, the AP recap of the game said Tony Pena's dad died, and he found out about it before the start of the game. My condolences to Pena and his family.
When asked if this was his deepest lineup ever, Torre, who has won four titles with the Yankees, said it was.
"It's pretty darn good right now," Torre said. "We have a guy named Bernie Williams sitting on the bench."
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