There's no better time than tonight.

I'd pinch hit him for Nieves and Dougie Defense.

I think what happened is this: during this bad losing streak, a lot of positive 'secondary' things were happening. Posada and Jeter hitting, young pitching. I mean, I'd rather win! But it meant all we needed was a little spark to ignite the underlying optimism.

As to the bench: I admit I'm getting annoyed about it. Wouldn't you think we could spend a few million bucks and get one good pinch hitting bat? Young BUCs are hard to come by, but someone with weak OBP but surprisingly good slugging, or something like that? Here's hoping Phelps is going to be that guy.

Looks like I picked the right weekend to miss a bunch of ballgames; the only one I got to watch was last night's.

It's still so early that a little surge for the next 10 days or so could make the last 4 weeks a memory...

Abreu and Rodriguez complementing Jeter/Posada is required for a surge to occur. Need 4 guys carrying the offense, not 2.

Giambi also likes Wakefield's knuckleball.

Annoying Yankee radio tidbit- Soozin and Sterling alternated between saying Clippard was herky-jerky and awkward on the mound, and that he had a silky smooth delivery. WHICH IS IT?

And is it just me, or is Soozin getting more and more excitable this year, tripping over her own words, sputtering, etc? I do that sometimes, but I also don't get paid to speak on the radio...

Anything would have been better than Cairo and Nieves - that's what's really sad.

I'd like to see Phelps start at first for a straight week, at least.

Note to Sterling, if the pitcher throws a ball, strike, and ball the count is 2-1 and not 1-2. It messes with me big time when the fourth pitch is a called strike and the batter is still in the box awaiting the next pitch...

is it too much to ask to get the count straight? It's not like we have the count posted on the top-right-hand corners of the car radio!

His delivery is definitely funky. His front foot lands and his arm is trailing far behind, almost as an afterthought. Morgan at least provided one insight and showed how Clippard will vary which way off the mound he falls. Combine that with his long, lean limbs and the good off-speed stuff, and he's obviously hard to read.

That said, his stuff was good. He kept everything low but in the zone. He threw his curve and change for strikes, (sometimes on the first pitch of an AB), and his fastball seemed to have late movement. And he mixed his pitches well such that when he hung a curve to Beltran, Carlos was late on it.

It was a very nice performance to watch.

That being said, I don't want to have to think the Yanks need to win the next two to make it happen, so, for me, today is key.

Let's keep the good Clippard vibes going.

It's hard not to be excited seeing these young guys do well....It may hard for me to look at the standings right now, but honestly the best is yet to come from a good chunk of this roster.

I count 7 pretty talented starters in the organization who can be better than league average at the ML level. If the offense continues to wake up, Vizcaino kicks Joe's dog, and Rivera rediscovers his location, I think the Yanks might have a shot at the WC.

By the time he lands, the pitch is already past home plate.

Then after the Wright HR I did not think he looked rattled. He continued to throw strikes, didn't become scared of the strike zone, and hung in there. I was very excited by the kid.

Finally, what about Jorge's homer last night, it was an absolute missile. Great to see that, and A-Rod had a pretty convincing bomb of his own despite his 1-5 night.

16 And, injuries aside, Rasner and Karstens have had their moments too. So did Igawa.

But the best part? Of the 7 you named, and the 3 I named, 7 are 27 and younger. And there are more on the way in the next couple of years (Sanchez, Joba, Alan Horne, Kennedy, maybe even C. Wright and Ohlendorf). The oldest of those guys is 24 I think (that would be the Princeton-educated Dorf).

That's an awful lot of potentially useful young pitching.

I may be oversimplifying that, but that was the essence.

He falls differently depending on what pitch he throws. Ergo the tip.

Those Jeter facts are unreal. Amazing how he gets more consistent with age. 4,000 hits, here we come...

I'm not saying that Clippard tips his pitches in any meaningful (to a batter) way, I'm just saying that based on the replays it did look like he landed to different sides of the mound depending on which pitch he was throwing.

It didn't work. We had the b-day party at my in-laws house and while killing time before all the guests arrived, I ran across a small stack of baseball cards (mostly from the mid-90's). There was a Mattingly on top of the stack and several other Yankee cards in the small stack. I knew I was in trouble when I came across a Karim Garcia 2nd year card (I'm not making this up).

Later as the party was winding down, I went into my father-in-laws' woodworking shop looking for a something and noticed that he had a small TV sitting on a table over in the corner. I checked my watch and thought that it was probably around the 4th inning by now. I felt like an alcoholic left alone in a liquor store. I couldn't stand it, I had to know. I flipped on the TV and through the static and snow all I could make out was Damon's attempt at the second Wright homer. So much for not letting the Yankees ruin my day. I kept checking in on the game only to see snowy images of Robinson Cano (or should I say Robinson Canoblauch) auditioning for the another remake of the Bad News Bears.

Overall, the day was not that bad, the party was great, the weather was beautiful and my son had a great time. However, my attempt to avoid the Yankees was unsuccessful. I think I have a problem... but at least the first step is admitting it.

Hello, my name is Bama Yankee and I am a Yankeeholic...

My folks were in town for a niece's wedding, so I wasn't able to watch the games. I did go online a couple of times just to check the scores. And I used the game score feature on EI.

I don't think there's a full 12-step program for Yankeeholism. At least, I'm not willing to walk through all of them.

36 (Hi, Bama...) Did you have Angel's Food or Devil's Food cake? Or maybe an ice cream cake? Or a combination? That would be awesome...

All this talk about cake is making me hungry, so I'm heading out for lunch...

I don't know if that's usual for Clippard or something he was doing from adrenaline, etc. If it's new, he should keep it up!

https://bronxbanter.baseballtoaster.com/archives/569389.html

Post #45.

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.

As for headlines, I was disappointed there were no Yankee Clippard references in the major papers:

Daily News: Subway Series is Tyler Made
Post: Yankees Saved by a Ty Game
Times: Pitch by pitch, the Yankees' mood brightens
Star-Ledger: Pitcher foils Mets in debut to salvage finale for Bombers

Pretty lame, guys.

Let's go Yankee Clippard!

I mean, he's had to prove himself at every level, and he's done so with flying colors.

At the time a nice mL comp for Tyler was Mussina (except Tyler stuck out more mL batters while allowing fewer hits). Last night I saw nothing to disabuse me of that comparison.

By the way, Mussina also debuted at age 22.

49 But I blame that on Morgan, too. I have XM radio in my car, so sometimes I get to listen to Miller doing the Giants games. He's superb, very much in the Scully mode - easygoing, relaxed, conversational, but he doesn't miss anything. He adds a lot of detail, he doesn't get histrionic, and - best of all - he's genuinely fluent in English and he's comfortable speaking it.

It's only when he gets near Morgan that he turns into this shrill idiot. That's why I call Morgan an intellectual black hole - he actually sucks intelligence away from people around him.

While were getting on the ESPN blowhards, anyone remember this gem from Sutcliffe?

http://www.foundrymusic.com/opieanthony/displaymedia.cfm/id/11677/

I will always have a special place in my heart for Karl Ravech who does attempt to grill Morgan when Joe says things like, "The only way I judge a pitcher is by wins." Or something loony like that.

I can't remember the specific asinine comment Joe made last night, that caused me to curse Miller for letting him get away with it.

"Could a Red Sox rookie beat TIM HUDSON?!?!"

(in the most fanboy voice imaginable)

Upon hearing this, I became very muscular and green and punched right through my TV.

Moose threw a lot harder when he was young (93-95 IIRC) and Tyler doesn't get it quite up there. But yeah, the deception, the different angles, mixing in the sharp curve and the change, changing speeds effectively - that all screams "Moose" doesn't it? Maybe not 1993-98 Moose, but certainly 2004-07 Moose.

I count 3 strikes right there. Its enough to turn me off.

53 Joe Morgan, intellectual black hole. Sad but true. Great line, JL.

On this exact date last year (5/21/06), the Minnesota Twins were 19-25 and 10.5 games out of first place in what was arguably the toughest division in MLB (Detroit/Chisox/Cleveland).

The Twins ended the 2006 season with a 96-66 record and an AL Central Division crown!

Meanwhile, he did hit 93 on the ESPN gun. And he could still be building arm strength even as he's on pace, in his development, to throw 190 innings.

My point on BA: Even if he doesn't have a #1 ceiling, even if it's only a #2 or #3 - isn't that extremely valuable? With how hard pitching is to project, and how healthy Clippard has already been, why discount him so readily? Because his stuff isn't A+? Weird.

A Yankee organization with a #1 through #3 all pre-arbitration (Hughes, Wang, Clippard) is extremely dangerous, especially with guys like Rasner, Karstens, Wright, and DeSalvo at the backend and with Chmaberlain and Kennedy ariiving as soon as late next year.

Times are looking up, folks. Now if only they'd pull the trigger on the Helton deal. :)

although they had the 2006 Cy Young winner, the batting champ and the MVP ;)

I guess an 8-21 month from the Sox would be too much to expect, but if it happened last year...

I could be mistaken, but I have a hard time believing that a hitter would have enough time to note Clippards landing spot and still make contact. In fact, before the observation registered, the ball would be in Posada's glove. If anything, Clippard's multiple landing points might make things more confusing for the batter.

Let's never forget Boston's innate ability to crash and burn:

http://tinyurl.com/2sj7se

That said, he may be doing something before his release (e.g., front shoulder tilted one way or another) that sets up his landing. It's hard to imagine with how much video is used in the mL's though. Something to worry a bit about, but he wouldn't be the first pitcher to alter his delivery.

BTW: Waswatching has the link to his MySpace page. Damn to be 22 and starting for the NY Yankees. I'd take the looks of Taverez if that was my future.

Yankees:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lNZnczEo9rE

1980s players:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=P9SdRitr5o0&mode=related&search=

It's a guy doing Yankee stances. It's pretty amusing.

Oh to live in your rose colored world.

clippard was first and foremost, i really liked watching him pitch, he looked the 2nd best (behind hughes) of our rookies and the one after hughes i'd be most willing to bet would have a solid ML career (tinstaapp caveat of course) ... fastball was sitting 88-90, which ain't great, but had good late movement and a little sink, command was plus, he was really hitting his spots; he threw a good sharp curve both for strikes and swings and misses and his changeup had people fooled all night

as for his composure and pitchability, i don't think you need to look any farther than the perfect first pitch changeup he threw to jose reyes with the bases loaded last night ... that was a thing of beauty

throw in abreu looking better, jeter and posada being en fuego, the little bounces that seemed to shift in our favor after the damon bloop (big thanks to shawn green), the way the pitching lines up for the red sox series and suddenly i'm thinking like we might have turned a corner

now ... if we can only get ICR back on track, banish Douggie-Outs to somewhere dark and rank (i really don't like feeling schadenfreude for anyone on my team, but i was sure had hopes for that HBP he took on the knee last night) and convince Giambi to STFU, we might get on a nice little roll

I feel like that everytime I see MySpace...

74 Good call on the Cherry Coke...

73 Actually, I think bbfan1 might actually be viewing the world through "blood colored socks"... ;-)

81 True, and thanks.

David Cone once jacked off in the bull pen. These guys aren't exactly paragons of couth.

I really could have lived out the rest of my days without that information and been none the worse for it.

91 I'll check withleather...

For the record, that is two Cokes in on thread for me. (I much prefer Coke to root beer.)

I think its quite healthy for a 22 year old to have amyspace page and be interested in partying and the opposite (or same) sex, but when that 22 year old is a Yankee, its just weird to think about. And web 2.0 has made it that much more common for that to happen

On the other hand, go back and read Ball Four again. It's all in there, and worse - though he does make it all sound so cute and charming.

I don't think we can expect not to know about such things in this era. I think being 22, trumps being a "mystically refined and gentlemanly Yankee."

Personally, and I stress personally, I don't care, if he sleeps with a different girl every night and brags about it on "Isleepwithadifferentgirleverynight.blogspot.com.

As long as he pitches well, I'll be happy.

http://tinyurl.com/g7jcb

http://tinyurl.com/36yxl3

ha ha ha ha haha!!

God, that's just so funny.

Speaking of defective balls, I was trying to explain Gaylord Perry to my wife the other day and couldn't quite figure out why guys just don't do that sort of thing anymore.

Did they begin to crack down in the eighties, or is there some other reason?

Because as I understand it, Perry was the master, but by no means the only spitballer.

Anyone have any insights?

That being said, I find it ludicrous that Morgan's analysis of Clippard's pitching is being dismissed in this site because "he hardly gets anything right". As cool as it is to pick on Morgan, he used to play Major League Baseball, and must have had some baseball IQ to have had the kind of career that the greats in the game would dream of.

He picked up within the first few pitches, as early as in the first inning, how Clippard was finishing his pitches. All the Yankee prospect sites I have visited never picked that up. That was an incredibly astute observation, and Morgan needs to be commended on that analysis, just as he is deservedly hammered when he makes dumb comments.

No, my question's just about spitballers and why they seem to have disappeared. Oh, are you thinking of Kenny Rogers? Is that why you read possible sarcasm?

No, it just seems like spitballing (knuckles, junkballing in general?) used to be more common.

I'm guessing it was probably a result of his showboating afterwards that baseball really started clamping down on cheating of that nature. The most egregious caught-in-the-act that I recall was Joe Niekro flinging an emory board behind his back while the ump was talking with him, in full view of the cameras. That netted him a nice suspension. I do recall there was an incident as recently as a season or two ago involving scuffing and was it a tiny piece of sandpaper superglued to the pitcher's fingernail? At any rate, that's pretty much taken a seat in the back of the bus to another form of cheating.

Any jackass can shoot himself up or whatever it is they do.

Where's the sport in that?

The final few legal spitballers pitched into the '30s; after that their influence probably hung around for a while but I would imagine it's faded as time has gone on, along with the aforementioned clampdown.

The knuckleball used to be a standard part of the repertoire. Most guys don't throw the knuckleball now because no one starts out learning a knuckleball, and it takes time to learn to throw it – and it's difficult. Wakefield didn't learn until he was already in the minors.

Bill James has written (IIRC) that a handful of exclusive knucklers had a stretch of success a few decades ago, and the conventional wisdom developed that either you were a knuckler or you weren't, and it made no sense to overlap.

No, that was in earnest, "defective balls."

Not the pun so much as the original complaint.

It's so bizarre it needs no embellishment.

As to getting old, you and me both.

How could you ever forget about Kenny Rogers, after that great Gambler song parody that I posted a few months back... ;-)
Or could it be that you put him out of your mind after reading that terrible Gambler song parody that I posted a few months back... ;-(

Yeah, the problem as I see it is the general homogenization of the game. It seems like the rise of the power hitter (shortstops batting fourth, weighing in at 220lbs--wtf?) has flattened out the game.

Something has, at any rate. It's as if kids think the only way to be successful is to be a slugger or a power pitcher, so we're losing a lot of the subtler art of the game.

As to taking time to learn the knuckle ball--what the hell else do these people have to do? I mean, they've got all the time they need.

I have to wonder whether it just doesn't seem macho enough or something.

They'd all rather be Nuke LaRouche.

Of course it's ;-) I just never think of Kenny Rogers. Wow, I feel like I've typed those same words before, or at least something to that extent >;)

Two biggies are expansion and smaller ballparks. You have a higher number of crappy pitchers, pitching in parks that favor hitters. On lower mounds than the 60s, too. Expansion has had as much - if not MORE - of an impact on the big-scoring era as steroids.

And IIRC, bats are more conducive to hitting home runs now. They have bigger barrels and smaller handles - in the Days of Yore, the handles were thicker and the barrels smaller. This lets these big dudes really rip it through the strike zone.

There's some other stuff too. On the pitching side, I don't know how much it's really changed, aside from all the crappy pitchers that expansion hath wrought. But most teams aren't going to want to take the time and resources to teach a guy how to pitch a good knuckleball, because there probably isn't a great success rate to date. And that leaves fewer guys who can throw them, and therefore fewer guys who can teach the knuckleball later as coaches.

30, 33, 34 and 48.

Imagine Roger Clemens to Randy Johnson to David Wells to Pedro Martinez, all in their prime. Prolific in their own rights, yes? In which order would you pick them just by looking at them (just like on the playground), then compare that to how you would line them up to pitch the World Series for your team...

All things considered and with the utmost respect, no one ever says Morgan's a bad player, but even casual observers in my presense have been put off by his presentation, which knowledgible or not erodes his credibility. That's his own fault, not the viewers.

I also stand by my comments about his overall commentary. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

My main reason for posting here was to comment on the question as to why there has been less trickery than there was in the past. First, I think we need to separate legal (knuckleball) from the illegal (spitball, pine tar, emery board). As for the illegal, I agree that post-Gaylord Perry I'm sure MLB has cracked down, but I also think the explosion of video coverage of games with multiple camera angles and video research done by teams that is is a lot harder to cheat on a consistent basis (every start). Just look back to the number of stills pulled from the Fox broadcast analyzing Kenny Rogers last fall. I think it has scared enough people "straight". If someone's getting away with it, they have to be really, really good.

As for the legally trickery, I think it's just a basic return-on-investment issue. It is more likely for a team to get bang for the buck looking for the next Clemens/Hughes, a 6'4" 235 lb. strong man who can throw the ball through the wall rather than take a chance developing a Tim Wakefield. Even Wakefield (or any of the great knuckleballers) gets hit around a few times a season when the mojo isn't working.

That being said, I have to think that eventually teams will get so desperate for pitching that teams will try anything. I read the article on Yahoo! about Mike Marshall's controversial techniques that someone posted here a week or so ago, and I have to think that at some point a team is going to take a risk to try and get an edge. I have said for years that if I ever have a son, I'm going to teach him to be a left-handed knuckleballer so I can retire early!

Anyway, thanks for keeping up with my long-winded answer. Thanks again for the great site and I look forward to the beginning of the turn-around of 2007 tonight!

Morgan "notices" a whole lot of things that just aren't so. I won't believe this one until somebody checks it out, somebody reliable, and tells me that Morgan was correct.

At least, this one did.

My first two favorite players were Reggie Jackson and Bucky Dent.

Reggie because he was Reggie--he was the superstar, afterall, and Bucky because he was a shortstop. (I'm not quite old enough to have seen his Homerun, so to me he was a shortstop with a cool name.)

But I also loved Willie because I liked lead-off hitters. I was a lead-off middle infielder with great speed as a kid so I was attracted to those kind of players.

I fell away from baseball for a few years beginning in high school (for a variety of reasons, but generally because I became a guitar-playing, music-loving hippie and lost interest in sports) and I remember my first impression of Derek Jeter was "My God, he's a shortstop?"

To this day, I still think he's too tall to be a shortstop, but I've gotten used to him, you know?

It's amazing watching the old games from the eighties. As my wife says, they look like stick figures compared to the hulks who dominate today.

Something's gotta give, though.

They really ought to think about raising the mound.

"I have said for years that if I ever have a son, I'm going to teach him to be a left-handed knuckleballer so I can retire early!"

Ha ha ha!

Also? Please teach him to bunt.

I don't care if he's 10 years old and hits the ball 500 feet.

Please don't let him not learn to bunt.

I was just out back with my kid, he's 4 1/2. He can really hit, but I'm especially proud of him because one day, of left field, he squared to bunt.

He's so observant of what the players do when we watch the games. It's such a joy to watch him imitate the pros. He's so into learning.

Today he began lecturing me about how to pitch a fastball. Evidently my fingers weren't placed upon the seams properly.

One of his teachers at school used to coach little league, so he gets lots of tips from him.

I can't tell him the first thing about pitching, unfortunately.

And yeah, I used to bunt a lot in little league. I loved it. I loved the art of it and I loved running for my life.

Whenever I'd come up, they'd yell "Watch the bunt!" which was a source of pride to me.

I could also hit pretty well, though, so I kept 'em guessing.

Ah, they'll pass you by, glory days.