Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
The Yankees took two of three from the O's at the Stadium last week. Over the weekend, the Yanks swept the Mariners, while the O's were swept by the Rays. As a result, the formerly struggling Yankees slipped past the formerly hot Orioles at the bottom of the AL East standings. Expect those trends to continue.
The Orioles roster is unchanged from Thursday, but the Yankees have activated Wilson Betemit, optioning Alberto Gonzalez down to Scranton to make room for him. Garrett Olson, whom the Yankees chased in the third inning last Wednesday, starts this Memorial Day afternoon contest against Darrell Rasner, who pitched seven scoreless frames in that game and has been the Yankees' best pitcher the last few times through the rotation.
Despite his ugly performance yesterday, Shelley Duncan gets another start at first base against the lefty Olson while Jason Giambi takes his turn on the bench. I'm convinced that Jason Lane's May 31 out in his contract is motivating the extended look Duncan is getting despite his poor play, meaning that it's Duncan, who is essentially the exact same player as Lane only two years younger and without the ability to play center field in a pinch, who is in danger of losing his roster spot to the former Astros right fielder.
It's worth noting that the Yankees only outscored the Orioles by one run in last week's series. A more convincing series win in Baltimore would help the Bombers maintain the momentum they've built since Alex Rodriguez returned to the lineup.
hope it is as nice where you are as it is here. 79 and light puffy clouds. i'll be taking the back country roads to cooperstown in an hour, listening to the game.
until then, lets go yanks.
Derek, the complete opposite, nice AB.
I'm digging Rasner. Nothing spectacular but he gets the outs.
The team really needs a long man, which I assume they will have once Joba moves into the starting rotation. Probably Rasner unless he keeps pitching shutouts...
Hopefully Rasner gets a little more efficient this game and can go 6.
It feels like the offense is making Olson look a lot better than he is.
Meanwhile Rasner really settled down and is back on pace for 7 innings...
But Duncan has been slumping all season. He has 1 homer and 6 RBI's in 53 at bats (2 k's already today against a lefty, which is the reason he's in the lineup). Someone called him "Forrest McSlump" the other day, and it was a pretty accurate description. All the other slumpers have had a few games where they hit at least.
What's interesting to me is this though: Pretty much everyone agreed that it was time for Josh Phelps to leave last year and that he never really worked out after 80 at-bats. But compare Phelps's 2007 numbers to Duncan's this season:
Phelps 2007: .263/.330/.363/.693 (NY only)
Lefty Splits: .314/.392/.500/.892
Duncan 2008: .176/.259/.275/.534 (total)
Lefty Splits: .235/.308/.382/.690
Phelps was shipped out last year when he was doing MUCH BETTER than Duncan is doing this year. I guess we could get Duncan another 30 at bats to see if he can do better (and maybe you just leave him in the lineup to give him the consistent swings), but he'd have to do a lot better than he's done to stick.
I understand that he's a likeable guy and that he caught some lightening in a bottle last year. I hope I'm dead wrong and he goes on to hit 20 homers this year, but I really don't think that's going to happen.
- Former Major League pitcher Geremi Gonzalez, who won 11 games for the Chicago Cubs in 1997, was killed by a lightning strike in his native Venezuela on Sunday. He was 33.
well...that double didn't help, but I still like it, lets see what he does here.
Millar will be Raz' last batter, right?
Too bad six innings, one run isn't going to get Darrell the W. But maybe it's enough to get one for the Yanks.
83 104.
Better hit their bullpen.
93 My bad on that one. Don't know what happened, didn't see the first pitch.
Wow, if this were Yankee Stadium I'd say Kate Smith had a bit of a sore throat...
Also, Girardi's stubborness with Duncan has really been costly so far. Duncan has had men on base in two ABs and done very little with each opportunity. With as hot as Giambi has been, you just wonder if one of those situations would have produced another outcome? Heck, even if you insist on Duncan, he could have played RF with Damon moving to CF and Melky getting a rest.
Hopefully, the Yankees have really emerged from their slumber and will have more late inning magic. I'd hate to think this has just been Seattle-induced optimism.
Sad but true.
Meanwhile, Hawkins doing what he does best, giving up hits.
I feel like Hawkins is this close to being a really good pitcher.
Hm, I guess there's probably a lot of okay bullpen guys you could say that about, though.
This is a very discouraging game...the kind that Yankees teams of the past have won before they even took the field.
That one hurt.
Remember, we're going 13-6 since the 5/21/08 win over Baltimore. Including today, we're now 5-1 in that run and only have to go 8-5 to get to 33-31. At that point, we're going to roll through Kansas City, have a tough series with Oakland, and then smash Houston, Cincy, San Diego and Pittsburgh.
Really the only bright spot was Rasner. Everything else was bad. Hm, not Matsui, he's still good.
And if Duncan doesn't lose his job soon, this team isn't serious about winning this year.
When I wrote, "He looks pretty good to me," he'd given up a single and K-ed two. And his stuff did look good.
Obviously, walking two was not good at all. The last hit I thought came off a pretty good pitch: high and tight and fast.
A-Rod is hitting before Matsui, who is plainly the best hitter on the team right now (and even more obviously today). The one player it's a mistake to walk has to be the guy hitting in front of Matsui.
You think it's smart to walk a guy so you can face the best hitter on the team with a man on base?
Okay. I don't really have any answer to that.
When a team has just two batters hitting well, you obviously shouldn't walk one of them to face the second. That's obviously a terrible strategy. (And their equally good against lefties this year.)
And Jeter, yeah.
I guess Seattle IS that bad.
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