NFL-who? NHL-what? NBA-why? It's December 2nd, and all anybody is talking about is who will land Johan Santana and where Miguel Cabrera will end up.

As for the good guys (aka the Yankees), they brought Jorge back into the fold, and are about to officially do the same with Mo and A-Rod (please see my post from October 11th to wonder at my awesome powers of prognostication). They also have some of the most exciting young arms in all of baseball ready to step into the rotation. That is, unless they do something boneheaded like trade Phil Hughes for Johan Santana.

That's right. Boneheaded.

I'll do a more in depth analysis tomorrow, but the short version is, even if Santana is as great in the AL East as the AL Central, and even if PHil Hughes is only 75% of what scouts think he can be, the Yankees end up giving away additional, MLB ready talent plus $150 million for what? An extra 3-5 wins a year from a pitcher who will certainly hit his decline phase in the later years of the contract. If they keep Hughes, and he turns out to be a number 4 pitcher instead of an Ace, then he gives you 12-15 wins a year with the offense the Yankees will be trotting out, and only costs a couple of hundred grand a year for the next three years.

Go get Johan next off-season when he's a free agent. Or, worst case, silently chuckle as the Red Sox add another $20+ million player just as they're ready to clear Manny off the books.

More tomorrow.

Sorry it's been quiet around here for a while. Here's why:

I'll get back to baseball soon. For now, I'm enjoying the time I have with my wife and our daughter.

The ARod Watch™ has begun in earnest.

yawn

I'm not paying attention. He's sticking with the Yankees. All speculation to the contrary is just media-manufactured hoopla. Rodriguez is going to Chicago; he's going to Boston; he's going to the other Chicago; he's going to Anaheim; he's not going to Anaheim...

And on.

Listen. He's going to be a Yankee for a very long time. Why? Because the businessmen who run Yankees Global Enterprises know there's a little truth to Scott Boras' bullshit. Specifically: Alex Rodriguez is a unique draw not just in sports, but in entertainment. Boras is selling Rodriguez as the Michael Jordan of this millennium.

Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan.

6 time champion Michael Jordan.

Yeah. There's the rub for Rodriguez. MJ was MJ because of his dominating, devastating post season performances. Rodriguez doesn't have that. Not yet. New York is the only place that will guarantee using the most resources for building an entire team, not just paying his check. He left Texas cause the losing sucked and Showalter smothered him, he cannot possibly want to risk a return to that.

In an excellent article by the NY Time Murray Chase from 2004, Rodriguez's Texas days are remembered:

Maybe 2003 would be the turnaround season for the Rangers, the year when Manager Buck Showalter would help transform a losing environment that had enveloped the team ever since Rodriguez signed a $252 million contract. Rodriguez sounded hopeful that Showalter, a smart, controlling disciplinarian, was the perfect man to guide him and rescue the last-place Rangers.

''If Buck comes in with hard rules, I welcome it,'' Rodriguez said then.

On the same day, Showalter compared Rodriguez to Don Mattingly, as high a compliment as Showalter will ever offer, and said Rodriguez ''is a better person than he is a player.''

As Rodriguez returned here with the Yankees to oppose Showalter and Texas on Friday night, their 15-month-old comments seemed hollow. The two men did not come within 150 feet of each other until Rodriguez strolled to the plate amid a blast of boos in the first inning. He promptly lined a two-run homer.

[...snip...]

''We had some differences,'' Rodriguez said. ''We really did. We had our differences early in the year and then we settled them by the end. It just takes time to get to know each other. His philosophies were a little different from my philosophies.''

[...snip...]

'I think Joe has a different philosophy,'' Rodriguez said. ''He lets the veteran players do their thing and kind of be creative. To me, it just works more.'

Read the whole thing, it's a great look at what went on in making Rodriguez a Yankee.

So after all that, and a post season berth every year since he's been in NY, and a horde of stud arms coming in from the minors, and a multi-billion dollar for-profit corporation running the whole thing, you think he's going anywhere else? Why would he want to jump from the most recognized brand in the world to the Chicago White Sox? Do you think they've even heard of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in Europe?

C'mon.

As for those arms. We know about Hughes and Chamberlain, Kennedy and Ohlendorf. We know about Wang (assuming he works out his mechanics over the winter and refines his change-up and slider - think maybe Edwar and Joba can help him there?). But don't forget about the unknowns: Humberto Sanchez, and Alan Horne, Kevin Whelan, and Steven Jackson. That's quite a crop even with half of them not panning out. It's a good thing considering the flaw in the Yankees post-season marches of the last four years has been spotty starting pitching and thin middle relief.

Looks like that's about to change for the better.

It takes time for young pitchers to make the adjustment to Major League pitching (although some seem to slip right in like Joba and Hughes, but they are the rare exceptions), but even if it's 2009 before these guys are lifting heavy loads, Rodriguez will only be 34 at that point, and can realistically enjoy five or six years of peak production while these guys enter their primes. And the Yankees will sign and keep these guys, not many other teams can guarantee that.

So long story short? Alex is staying in NY. And I'm boycotting the media until he signs on the dotted line, 'cause I just can't stand all of their crap.

Peter Abraham from the excellent LoHud Yankees Blog reports from Yankee Stadium:

Meanwhile the Yankees are banning reporters from the Stadium today whose newspapers insist on having reporters at Joe Torre’s house in Westchester.

Call me crazy, but I think Torre is back next year. Why else would the Yankees be so adamant about leaving the guy alone? If he's out, or if they even THINK he's out, why protect him?

As much as this series loss hurt, Torre didn't hit into all those double plays, Jeter did. Torre didn't turn from an Ace to a zero, Wang did. Hell, when Torre brought in Kyle, Kyle pitched a strong inning. SO how exactly did Torre lose this series? He didn't. The players did.

I don't think the Yankees are so dumb as to forget where this team was in May, and where they finished. And to all the knuckle-heads who say "Isn't it the manager's job to motivate the team to play from day 1?" my response is: did you WATCH those first two months? Chase Wright, Tyler Clipard, Matt DeSalvo, Abreu hurt, Damon hurt, Wang hurt, Pettitte hurt, Miguel Cairo playing first base for two weeks - WHAT WAS TORRE SUPPOSED TO DO?

Torre stays, inherits a rotation of Chamberlain, Kennedy, Hughes, Wang, Pettitte, and storms through the AL east next year. They'll never say it publicly, but this was a rebuilding year for the team, and Torre STILL got them into the playoffs. They're not firing a guy who does that.

Or, I'm wrong and they're morons.

I'll post a more thorough evaluation tomorrow, but my initial assessment of this series is: shit happens. Wang blows TWO games with horrendous starts? Tell me who among you saw that happening? If Wang was Wang and Joba didn't get attacked by biblical swarms of parasites, we would have wrapped this thing up already. Didn't happen.

Firing Joe Torre, exiling AROD, trading Wang, wedgie-ing Jeter resolves none of that. Shit just happens. So it goes.

Take it to the bank.

6:43 pm Right off the bat, Johnny Damon starts some controversy, and puts the Yankees on the board with a leadoff homer. My first impression was "how is that ball (expletive deleted) foul?!?!?!?" You'd think TBS would have more than one camera angle to show on a ball like that.

6:55 pm Ideally you'd like to turn two consecutive walks into more than that, but I'm happy with a 33 pitch first inning for Sabathia.

7:09 pm At least Wang is missing down. Except to Johnny Peralta. Oy. His pitch count is up,his control is off, and you know what? I've seen Wang enough this year to have confidence that an early inning hiccup doesn't prevent later dominance. Let's hope he gets out of this inning with only the 1 run. Ok, that was the suckiest first inning this side of a Mets game. The Yankees need to come right back and make a statement about this game.

8:18 pm Wang seems to be settling in, and Sabathia is up around 90 pitches already, so you'd think the boys are primed to roar back into this thing. They've been shut down since the first, though (except for Robbie's laser-like home run in the fourth).

8:26 pm Sabathia's season high is 119 pitches back on July 29. he threw 115 on September 14. He's at 94 right now with one ball no strikes to Jeter. This guy ain't getting past the 5th. The Yankees are very much still in this.

8:34 pm Walking A-Rod to get to Posada? Well, it sets up the double play, but Jorge has a career 1.214 OPS against Sabathia in 13 at bats. Rock meet hard place.

8:39 pm Ok, so the A-Rod thing worked out. Why is Matsui in this game again? You have Betemit to sub in for Mientkeiwicz, so why not go with Duncan right from the get-go? If the Yankees lose this game, Torre's going to have to answer that question a lot.

What more can I say? This game sucked. Tomorrow they hopefully come out and take back the momentum of this series. Andy Pettitte is definitely the guy you want out there to do that.

The Mets finally got what they wanted: back page domination. But they sure as hell didn't want to get it this way. For NY's second team, the downfall was in the details. No bullpen. Mediocre starting pitching. Streaky offense. In some ways, it is more amazing that this team was in first place so long, than that they blew a 7 game lead so spectacularly with only 17 games to play.

Beginning with the first game against the Phillies on September 12, the Mets dropped four games by one run. Stat-heads will tell you one-run losses are primarily a feature of luck, and if they're right, then this is one damn unlucky team. But I think the stat-heads are too blase about one-run loses. Why? Because I actually watch the freaking games, instead of just pouring over box scores. Call me a radical. I think one run losses are bullpens falling apart and offenses pressing. In those four one-run loses, the Mets bullpen line was: 14IP, 20H, 10R, 9ER, 2BB, 8K. Not post-season worthy, really (although the majority of that disastrous lien came in one game). The strange thing is, Tom Glavine started 3 of those 4 close loss games, and he was pretty mediocre, bordering on downright bad. He did go 7.2 inning in the first of those close ones, getting no run support in a game the Mets lost 3-2. His other two starts he didn't see the 6th inning, giving up 6 and 4 runs, respectively.

The Yankees have gone in the opposite direction from the Mets. They finally figured out how to get the rest of their bullpen to Mariano Rivera with the additions of Joba Chamberlain, the resurgence of Luis Vizcaino, and possibly (keep your fingers crossed and don't bet the farm on him) the wacky new wind-up of Kyle Farnsworth. Ramirez, Veras, Ohlendorf, add unproven but plus arms to the mix.

And the Yankees' hitting? Except for those rare days when everyone seems flat (usually following a travel day from half-way across the country; a non-issue in the post-season), this team can rake. Hell, the "B" team put up 11 runs on Saturday. The playoffs are notorious for emasculating strong offenses, but with the Bombers less dependent on the long ball than in recent years, they are more equipped to handle a 3-2 type of game.

Now we wait. Mets fans for 6 months, Yankees fans for three days. I'm glad I'm a Yankee fan.

Last night was one of those weird games where you out hit the other team 12 to 5, and lose 7 to 6. Go figure. Actually, don't figure, here's the answer 11 walks.

In the scheme of things, losing last night may actually be a good thing for the Yankees. It puts the division beyond reach, but leaves their post-season ticket only one win away. The Yankees will win one game. You could start me every one of the next five games and the Yankees would win one game. So now there is no back-of-the-mind pressure to chase Boston, and Torre can just set up his rotation, pen and rest his lineup for the playoffs.

I'm sure we'll see the "A-team" tonight (Joba, Viz, Mo) coming out of the pen, and last nights debacle opened the door for guys like Veras and Ohlendorff to make the post-season roster. Mssrs. Bruney and Ramirez? Not so much. Edwar supposedly had some mechanical flaw where his front shoulder was flying open. The team said they fixed it. A 0.1ip, 1h, 3r, 2bb, 0k line puts the lie to that statement. And Bruney was even worse if that is possible. Guess Arizona and Anaheim knew what they were doing after-all? Oh well, the Yankees have a ton of arms to plug in, so finding out his week that those two guys cannot cut it is a hell of a lot better than finding out next week. Plan on seeing a lot more of Ohlendorf, Britton and Veras over the next five days.

Tonight the champaign corks fly. Ace-Ming Wang toes the rubber, and if the Yankees offense doesn't strand 9 runners on base, Joe Torre will be going to the post-season for the twelth straight year. It's good to be a Yankees fan. How are those Mets doing right now?

Brian Costello over at the New York Post has this to say about the Yankees' third sacker:

Signs of Fall are everywhere. The temperature has dipped, leaves are beginning to change colors and Alex Rodriguez looks tighter than Britney Spears' pants.

The Yankee third baseman went 0-for-4 last night, making him 3-for-29 in his last eight games. No one can knock the MVP-caliber season Rodriguez is having, but as he's learned in his first three years in The Bronx, his season ultimately will be measured by what he does during the Yankees' pennant chase and playoff run.

[snip]

The Yankee Stadium crowd still has not turned on A-Rod, but you get the feeling that if he looks this bad in the playoffs the "MVP" chants will transform back into the boos he heard last season.

The next month may be the most important month in Rodriguez's career. His stay in pinstripes has been shadowed by what he's done in October. This year there is the added factor of him possibly opting out of his contract and leaving New York. (emphasis added)

Holy freaking flying possums. Did you go to journalism school to write garbage like that? Or does it just come from working for a scumbag like Rupert Murdoch?

"The Yankee Stadium crowd still has not turned on A-Rod?!?!?!?!" The dude has had a bad week. ONE FREAKING WEEK YOU PIE FACED BABOON! Please don't confuse your (or your editor's) juvenile need to create a false controversy with Yankees fans disloyalty. We fans are not stupid. We fans know that but for Alex Rodriguez, this team is sitting 10 games back in the wild card, and Boston runs away with the AL East title for the first time since strike-shortened 1995. We fans know that baseball is a game of failure, and failure can bunch up, and that the best single season batting average still had Hugh Duffy failing 56% of the time.

The fans "still" haven't turned on A-Rod? Turn in your press pass you sniveling excuse for a New Yorker. We are witnessing perhaps the greatest comeback in 30 years (Last years Twins don't count - don't ask me why, they just don't), the greatest performance by a right-handed batter ever, and Brian Patsy Costello is writing dream fantasies about a A-Rod failing and the fans turning. What a joke.

Of course, a lot of this is my fault, as I swore off the NY Post months ago for similar A-Rod trashing. I should have stuck to my word and left those raggedy hacks alone. My mistake.

Little piss-ants like Mr. Costello will never accomplish anything one-tenth as impressive as the season Alex has put together, so they snipe at the man for doing what, exactly? Falling victim to the structure of the game? Baseball is about FAILING. Jeter said Sunday night in Boston after his monster home-run off of 38bitches.com "I've been in that situation many times before, and sometimes I've succeeded and often I've failed. This time it happened that I succeeded." A-rod's had a rough week. Baseball is all about rough weeks. This moron of a reporter obviously doesn't know much about baseball.

It's time the Bronx Bombers showed the little orange birds who's boss. The good guys have lost 8 of 12 against the pitiful Orioles, and that trend has to be reversed tonight. The O's are playing like a team whose season is over (it is), and the Yankees need to keep the pedal to the metal so the paper-Tigers are left looking at the playoffs from the outside. It was a great series in Boston (I was out all day Saturday, so it was a GREAT series in Boston, ok?), but the boys have a nasty habit of falling flat after these big wins. No time for that right now.

Phil Hughes is on the mound tonight, looking to build on a solid start in Toronto. He showed more velocity last time out, now he just needs to fine tune his control a bit, and the Yankees' rotation will look all the more fearsome.

Okajima and Papelbon might as well have been 8 year olds throwing muffins.

You have to love seeing the fight the Yankees put up tonight. They played ugly, sloppy baseball for 7 innings, with Jason Giambi leading the pack of the awful. Yet it was Giambi who got the 8th inning started with a home run to right field.

The division is still an improbable goal, but if the Yankees meet the Sox in the Leage Championship Series, the Bombers have to like their chances given the track record: 5 straight wins, 8 of the last 10.

I'll have a more detailed analysis in the morning. For now, enjoy this awesome win!

*Cough cough cough*

Man, it's dusty in here. After thinking I was ready to get back to talking Yankees, I realized that after the bar exam, I didn't want to talk about ANYTHING. So goes my month long hiatus. It didn't help that the Yankees played some very mediocre baseball for about ten days there either. Hey, if you get paid to write about the team, then you have to suck it up and write about the team. I don't get paid, so when the team goes flat, I go hiking.

But as the cobwebs have cleared from my bleary head, the team seems to be making a September push for the playoffs. And that just shows what a 162 game schedule does: separate the wheat from the chaff. A miserable April, and a not much better May had many (including a couple of blowhards with a decades long radio show) calling for trading A-Rod, firing Cashman, firing Torre, firing the Pope. Hmmm. Guess those folks are eating a bit of crow now, huh? The Yankees may not make the playoffs, but having a 3 game Wild Card lead on September 6 is pretty remarkable considering the team was 21-29 on May 29th, and 37-40 on June 30th. They've gone 40-22 since then. Not too bad.

And as magnificent as A-Rod has been this year, a clear MVP, it's the kids who should get a lot of credit for getting the Yankees where they are. I know that's not entirely fair to A-Rod, because without him the Yankees aren't even dreaming Wild Card, but it can be argued that A-Rod should be putting up numbers like these. Ok, not quite like these, but pretty close.

However, guys like Cabrera, Wang, Cano, Hughes, Chamberlain, and Duncan have all reshaped this team. Cano and Wang are a bit more established, so calling them kids may not be entirely accurate, but the basic point is that there were no Raul Mondesi's or Jeff Weaver's brought in to up the Yankees average age and lower their flexibility. This team is athletic, talented, and for the first time in a long time, hungry.

IF I were an AL playoff contender, I'd be fearing this New York team more than any other. Their record is not a reflection of their talent, and they are still making the playoffs if the season ended today. I'd rather have them play their best baseball in September/October than in April/May.

One final note on the passing of the great Phil Rizzuto. Like many of you, I grew up with the Scooter as the voice of Yankees' baseball, and he made it the games fun and easy to listen to. He was a tremendous player, an even greater person, and will be sorely missed. AS George Steinbrenner said: "Heaven must have needed a shortstop."

Alex sure took care of that quickly. One pitch, one swing, one more member of the 500 home run club. Congratulations Alex, not only on becoming the youngest player ever to hit 500 home runs, but on also being, perhaps, the most scrutinized player to do it, too. I mean, wow, how many arm-chair hitting coaches were over analyzing his every swing since the last bomb he hit in KC? But I have to say, I think we've witnessed a turning point in the relationship between Alex and the fans. As he himself admitted to in his post game press conference, the fans seemed to want it more than him. and not in a "oh let's get this crap over with already way," but in a genuine outpouring of support for a player who has given this Yankees team a stellar performance all season long. And who, with each passing day, makes it ever more obvious that his absence next year would be a disastrous blow to the Yankee offense and infield.

As for the rest of the team, they seem to be ok, too. They've scored 122 runs in their last 13 home games for an average of 9.4 runs per home game. Nine point four. That's silly. It won't, it can't, last forever, but the pitching has been better than average over this stretch, too; and on the days the pitchers have stumbled, or Kyle Farnsworth has played, the offense is picking up the slack more often than not. That's winning baseball.

Joba Chamberlain should be up by Monday (see this report by Peter Abraham for more on that - short version: 12 batters faced, 10 strikeouts as a reliever at AAA) and Giambi is on his way back. Joba will push Farnsworthless even further down on the depth chart (hopefully, mercifully, if Mr. Torre has even a modicum of baseball brains left!), nd Giambi will make an anemic April bench an even bigger August juggernaught along with Shelly Duncan, Johnny Damon, Wilson Betemit and Jose Molina. Those are some serious weapons to bring in late in a game, and perhaps Torre's best bench ever, if not since the mid 90's.

So here we sit on August 5th with the Yankees 1.5 game sout of the wild card, and 7 behind Boston. The schedule gets a lot rougher for the remainder of August however, with trips to Toronto, Cleveland, a home stand against Baltimore and Detroit, then a swing to the Southern California Anaheim Los Angeles greater San Diego San Andreas Fault line Angels, then to Detroit and finally Boston rolls into the Bronx from August 28 through the 30th. Those are some tough teams, with some much better pitching than the Yankees have seen over the last month. This is the real test stretch. If the Yankees can go 18-6 over these next 24 games then they are in great shape. Anything less than that (say 15-9), and the AL East is beyond reach, but the wild card still in play.NY needs to be within 4 games of Boston when the Red Sox roll into town at the end of the month for the East to still be in reach. Somehow, I have a feeling they can pull it off.

I never, ever, EVER, want to do that again.

Let's get back to the good things in life, like the Yankees' level of play, for instance.

When I went silent last week, I said I wanted to come back with the team having reeled off 7 in a row. Except for a three game hiccup at the end of the KC/Baltimore trip, the Yankees offense is just churning through the American League. They are now just 2.5 back of Detroit for the Wildcard, and 7 behind Boston in the East. BOth are very catchable.

Phil Franchise toes the rubber for the Bronx bombers today, and I am not alone in being very excited to see this young man get back to pitching in the majors. He's going to be a huge boost down the stretch, and his arm is going to be relatively fresh because of the long layoff.

It also sounds like Giambi is rehabbing well. He's going to cause a glut on the bench, but his lefty power combined with Duncan's righty pop gives Torre bench power that he hasn't had since the Chili Davis / Tim Raines / Darrel Strawberry days. Miguel Cairo is the likely odd man out, and really, that's for the best. I love Miggy's hustle, and he sure provided a two week boost when he took over first base, but Betemit is just a better player, and Giambi brings more to the plate (pun intended).

It's going to be a fun two months!