Nice to take 2/3 from Tampa. Losing Pettite is a huge blow, though. Now the gayass Angels are in town for a 2 game set. Game 1: Hughes vs. O'Sullivan Game 2: Vazquez vs. Pineiro -Hughes is 8-2 with a 5.08 ERA in his last 10 starts. -Vazquez is 6-4 with a 2.78 ERA in his last 10. -ARod has 598 career home runs. -AJ Burnett apparently lacerated both of his hands following a tantrum in the clubhouse in the aftermath of his dismal performance vs. Tampa Bay on Saturday.
In the aftermath of his dismal performance? It was right in the middle of his dismal performance that he hurt himself like a retard
Isn't that AJ news, like, four days old? Hughes sucks. Cashman is an idiot for not trading him while he had value.
I have to assume that's sarcasm, but I don't post on the baseball forum enough to know for sure. Hughes has had a few bad outings in a row though, with this one being the worst. In his defense, the strike zone tonight is absolutely fucked. Also, the fact that this nobody O'Sullivan is no hitting them since the first inning isn't helping.
Actually, his last start against Seattle was pretty damn good. The 3-4 before that were iffy, though. His command of both his fastball and curve has been pretty shitty for those starts, too. When he missed, he was missing right over the middle of the plate. The changeup actually looked pretty good tonight, too. Lot of movement, but he wasn't throwing it for strikes. (And he threw a bunch of 'em.) I really don't like the way Posada calls a game. Not trying to blame him for the problems when Hughes was throwing meatballs and missing spots by a foot and a half, but he certainly doesn't help matters back there.
I think that his main problem is his reluctance to throw anything but fastballs and cutters. Because hitters don't respect his change or curve, he gets tatooed when he misses his spots. In Posada's defense, Hughes has no control and this homeplate ump has an absolutely awful strikezone. In other news, Chan Ho Park is awful.
Which is surprising (about the curve, at least). It used to be a real swing and miss pitch. I don't know if it's become less effective, or just more predictable, or what, but a guy with three and a half decent pitches in his arsenal shouldn't have this problem with over-reliance on two pitches. True, and like I said, it's hard to blame him too much in a start like this... I was making more of a general statement; I really don't like how he calls a game.
Didn't know that. Makes no difference. Yeah, but no one had commented on it so I figured I'd throw it out there. Bad game all-around tonight. Bullpen looks bad as usual.
I'm starting to wonder if it would make more sense to bring Mitre back in the pen, and promote Nova to fill in for Pettitte. Nova has been pitching really well and there are whispers he might be ready for the bigs full-time. Besides, he's already been optioned this year, so if they need to send him back down it shouldn't be a problem (I think that's how it works, right?) DFA both Park and Gaudin who are both completely useless. Also, Cappy was talking about Posada so that kind of brings up the subject of catchers. Has anyone been following Montero lately? The guy is absolutely on fire. He's constantly on base and is crushing the ball. Right now, given the mess in the rotation, it would be nice to have Lee, but it's pretty nice to have Montero waiting in the wings too. I'm really starting to hope he can stick behind the plate. He's going to be a special bat when he turns pro.
Options are based on years. Nova can go up and down as many times as the Yanks want as long as there are ten days between callups. I think it's ten days anyway. A player runs out of options after three years, I think.
Okay, so my line of thinking was correct. Then I stand by what I said, bring up Nova for Andy's spot. When Andy returns they can make the determination whether to keep Nova in the rotation to eat some of Hughes' innings, or freely send him back down. Put Mitre in the pen, and dump both Park and Gaudin. BTW: I saw a blurb this morning to expect movement on the Joba front. There's a good chance that he's going to lose his setup role and it will become public knowledge that he's lazy and out of shape. If this is true, I wonder what it means. We already talked about sending him down, but if this goes public, his value plummets. I guess the only thing left would be to "fix" him in AAA. Will it be too little, too late though? (And I still don't buy into the whole "the Yankees ruined him by bouncing him around" thing. This is personality based. You don't slack off because your job has changed, you slack off because you think you've got it easy.)
