New York, New York

The Yankees have a few problems but one glaring one could be solved by the incompetence of the Mets.

As hard as it is to face, Derek Jeter has become a real liability. Bad enough where it needs to be addressed. The problem with The Captain isn't his lack of mobility in the field, it's on offense. He can't drive the ball anymore and his on base percentage is terrible. He can't be slotted in anywhere in the top 6 of the lineup and is probably best suited for the 9 hole in front of Gardner.

This is a real blow because if he can't hit, he can't be moved to the outfield or DH.

Luckily, the Mets have continued to suck and need to unload Jose Reyes. The Yankees need to make a serious play for him.

The only problem is whether or not the Mets would try and hijack the Yanks because of the cross town rivalry. In a reasonable world, a package of Nunez and prospect Jesus Montero should get the job done.

Many Yankee fans might see it as too high a cost considering the hype around Montero. The only problem is that Montero doesn't have a position. He can't catch and the Yankees also have Auatin Romine and Gary Sanchez in the catching pipeline. He could play 1B but only if you unload Texiera. He could also DH but the team needs that spot for its aging sluggers who can't play the field. It's only a matter of time before A-Rod becomes the full time DH anyway.

One thing the Yankees should not do is trade the young pitchers Banuelos or Betances. Maybe not even Noesi or Brackman. It's been so long since the Yankees had any respectable young pitching (Phil Hughes and Joba don't count) that they can't panic and dump them into a deal for a position player.

The bottom line is that the Yankees can't win consistently with Jeter playing everyday, hitting leadoff or second. The Mets are incompetent and desperate and if the Yankees can grab Reyes, they absolutely should. Jeter is going to have to face his Posada-esque revelation sooner or later. Might as well be sooner.

Number Two Is Right

On the eve of Opening Day, a great day where hundreds of people gather to watch a summer game in the snow, I have some concerns about my beloved Yankees.

The first regards The Captain, Derek Jeter. All I've been hearing all training camp is about how he has removed the slide step from his hitting style in an attempt to play catch up to the fastball. What I haven't been hearing is how he has been tearing the cover off the ball this spring. All that can mean is that last year wasn't a fluke. When a 36 year old decides to start tinkering with his mechanics to hit the most common pitch in the game, it just screams "I'm washed up!" Changing positions isn't going to help either if he can't hit anymore.

Speaking of bad mechanics and being washed up, A.J. Burnett has now gone 34 consecutive years of life looking for a way to get a consistent delivery and release point. I guess he has adjusted his leg kick in an effort to keep his pitches from randomly turning into BP balls in the middle of games. Shouldn't a pitcher who has made it to the bigs ironed out the delivery for about a decade now? How many examples do we have of a pitcher changing his windup, then skyrocketing off to success? All the talk about the rotation has been about the 4 & 5 spots but we all do realize what it means to have AJ as the two right? He needs to win at least 16 games and have a sub 4 ERA for the Yanks to be competitive for the playoffs. I'm not sure you can count on 18 from Hughes again and the Nova/Garcia/Colon/Milwood pupu platter probably has the over/under set at about 25 wins and I'm not sure I would go with the over on that one.

I realize that being overly nervous is a Yankee tradition but how good should anyone feel when two key cogs to the machine have decided to redo the mechanics of the job? I would also point out that any bullpen that has both Joba and Pedro Feliciano in it is ripe for destruction.

Having said all that, I do think the Yanks take the wildcard. The Red Sox are not going to be near as good as people think they will be. A lot of what Crawford is good at is negated by the goofy dimensions of that ballpark and Dice-K, Beckett and Lackey are just about done. The real reason the Yanks should still be in the playoffs is that the Rays are significantly worse. No Soriano and the everyday lineup features Johnny Damon and ManRam. Plus, they think Kyle Farnsworth can close. I guess every team in the league has to make that mistake once.

200 Million Dollar Question

It's hard to believe but spring training is nearly done and Opening Day is exactly one week away.

This revelation sent me into a predictable, early panic. Did i have enough bacon, ground beef and sharp cheddar? Should I go with brauts instead? Ribs? Is it really ethical for me to drink tall boys and barbecue all day when technically it's my "work from home day"? Heady questions indeed. For the record, I think I might go with burgers and ribs and just skip the potato salad all together.

A bigger panic though came shortly thereafter when I realized I had no idea who was gonna be pitching for the Yanks. People have been writing for weeks about the battle for the number 4 & 5 slots in the rotation. That assumes of course that AJ Burnett can hold on to the number 2 spot. I personally think AJ is a couple of bad outings from hanging out with Kaz Igawa and Fat Toad Hideki Irabu.

Ignoring that disturbing fact though still leaves the bottom of the rotation. By all accounts Ivan Nova has been awesome in the spring and has locked up the number 4 spot. I must say it's nice to finally have a pitcher under 30 to develop that isn't Phil Hughes. I think I can rest easy there.

What'll keep me up at nights, metaphorically anyway, is that the number 5 spot has seen the legendary Sergio Mitre and Freddy Garcia beaten out by . . . . Bartolo Colon. You might remember him from his Cy Young season of 1984. He's been throwing great, there's no doubt about it but good lord look at him. It looks like all the fat C.C. Sabathia lost hooked up with Rich "El Guapo" Garces and their unholy progeny turned into this iteration of Bartolo.

I realize that you don't have to be the picture of health. The Babe plowed through hookers and booze at a Lawrence Taylor-esque rate and that was just in between innings. But there's fat and then there's unhealthily fat. David Wells was a big fat jackass but he never looked like he was going to die in the middle of a pitch. Hell, El Guapo looked damn near childlike on the mound. Every time I see Colon throw a pitch I'm convinced he's just keep on going through his follow through right into the grave. And this at the end of spring training! He's supposedly in game shape.

I hope I'm wrong but I can't see him lasting all year taking the bump regularly. They should just have him and Garcia split every fifth game. One week Bartolo gets 5 innings and Garcia 4, then switch the next time through. That's gotta be better than trying to get 200 relief innings out of Joba and Pedro Feliciano every time Bartolo throws 115 pitches through 4 1/3 and has to be yanked.

The Drought Is Over

The New York Yankees moved on to the World Series by beating the Los Angeles Angeles of Anaheim, San Jose, Silver Lake, Diamond Bar and El Cajon 5-2 Sunday night.

More impressively, they also beat their own manager, Joe Girardi who seemed to be actively working against them.

Girardi himself seemed surprised by the teams success. "Whew! I assumed I'd somehow manage to F@#! up this one too, that's why I decided to hold a fully rested Sabathia over to game 7. Figured it was inevitable." Girardi remarked.

When asked about a couple of tense moments during the game, Girardi recalled when "Andy threw a 0-2 ball to Figgens in the 1st. I thought maybe he didn't have his A game. Lucky thing Gaudin wasn't warm or I would've pulled his ass." In regards to how far he could stretch Rivera, Girardi said he had no problems stretching him out a bit. "My only question was if I could get six outs with Mo or 15."

When asked to comment, Riviera told MLB's Harold Reynolds. "I tried to hit him (Girardi) with a champagne cork during the celebration. I think I may have knocked Minka Kelly into the old stadium."

While Girardi's bizarre substitutional antics were seen as ALCS whimsy, don't expect the team to tolerate it during the World Series. "This is the big show" Captain Jeter said "if he tries to pinch run Guzman for A-Rod in the sixth, I'm paying a drifter to kill him."

Game 1 is Wednesday night in the stadium.

At Least Soccer Has A Time Limit

Major League Baseball is riding fast on a freight train straight to hell and Joe Torre is riding shotgun.

I used to think all those 5 hour Yankees - Red Sox marathons were the result of intense rivalry and the superhuman competitiveness of Jeter, Man Ram, Papi, etc. Now I know that's B.S.

MLB baseball games are excruciating long because of one thing: over managing. Not hitters adjusting their nuts, spitting, retightening their gloves or, in Papi's case, just taking a break to get a little fatter. Nope, the only culprit is mangers and Joe Torre is their Duce.

Game 1 of the NLCS just ended with the Phillies winning 8-6 over the Dodgers. They managed to squeeze this one in in just over four hours, a brisk pace considering that Torre and his despot protege Charlie Manuel used no less than 6,325 pitchers. I myself got the call to warm up in the sixth but I was already icing down my shoulder in anticipation of getting the call somewhere around hour six of tomorrows ALCS opener.

Tonight's disgusting display was all the more sickening in that it was the National League. Quadruple A, the Junior College of baseball. This is supposed to be the pure league, pitchers hit, second basemen suck and Bob Costas can wax on and on about the beautiful game until the end of time. That kind of boring crap is fine if you can wrap it up in two hours but once you get past that it just becomes the Carnival of the Damned.

How exactly are these control freak managers over managing games? Let's see. The Dodgers and Phillies used a combined 13 pitchers to get 54 outs. 30 of those were gotten by the two starters so the other 24 outs were claimed by eleven different pitchers. They didn't even average a full inning! For the Phillies, Chan Ho Park and J.A. Happ, both starters moved to the bullpen, threw a combined 26 pitches to get 4 outs. Durbin and Bastardo both threw four pitches to get an out apiece. For the Dodgers, Belisario and Troncoso managed to throw just 11 pitches to get four outs.

In an odd occurrence, the two relievers who actually put in some work were the ones that sucked the most. Ryan Madson (former starter) managed to last for 31 whole pitches, allowing four hits and two runs while George Sherrill managed to firebomb the Dodgers chances by allowing 3 runs in just 21 pitches. Impressive efficiency.

And this idiotic phenomenon applies to the American League as well. Year long starter Joba Chamberlain of the Yankees managed to enter a game against the Twins long enough to walk one batter, then make way for Joe Girardi's next overly aggressive move.

The only plausible excuse for this ridiculous coddling of major league pitchers is if you're trotting out a Jesse Orosco type who literally can only throw 5 pitches a day. Outside of that, let the players play! They're big boys, they can take the work. Goose Gossage threw more innings in one year than Phil Coke will throw in his entire career. Compounding this problem is the idiocy of the four out save. Everybody knows that when you bring in a Rivera, Lidge, Paplebon, Nathan, etc. in the eighth to get out of a jam and then expect to throw him in the ninth, bad things happen. Yet all these psycho managers do it constantly, results be damned. Why don't you guys use one of those other multi-millionaire pitchers to get one more out and push it to the ninth before you bring in the Hammer of God?

Sadly, this is all a result of manager cowardice. They are scared to death of the heavy criticism of leaving a guy in too long so they go nuts the other way, generating pitch limits, Joba rules, one hitter specialists and all the other crap that makes baseball god awful to watch. Today's kids have all the attention span of squirrel on meth and you expect them to develop any love for the game when it takes four hours plus? Jon Gruden doesn't even sleep for the average length of a baseball game!

Last thing I'm gonna say; you remember hockey, right MLB? Do you remember when their game got so long and boring because of the neutral zone trap that casual fans started watching lacrosse? It was a lost decade for the NHL in terms of fan growth. Learn the lesson. That's all I'm asking.

Finally A Reason to Relive the Past

As a Yankees fan it's been difficult to stomach the resurgence of the Red Sox over the past decade.

Especially since they exercised their demons at the expense of the Yankess, humiliating them after being down 0-3 in the ALCS on the road to the first World Series since the Babe picked up his first working girl.

Since then we've had to deal with never ending stories about the goofballs, cowboying up, Schillings ketchup soaked sock, what a leader Varitek is, which he better be since he no longer excels at "playing baseball".

From the depressing Generals to my beloved Yankess Globtrotters to Americas fun loving favorite bandwagon to jump on. Every casual jackass sporting a new Manny or Ortiz jersey, everybody talking about Noh-mah (for awhile anyway), every pink ladies jersey or or toddler romper made the Sox incredibly insufferable to deal with. They had to publish an Idiot's Guide to Bill Buckner & The Curse, just to catch all these late arrivers up. They were as pleasant as a Boston winter. Or Spring, or fall or summer. Or really anytime in that State except for the few good weeks when the leaves turn.

Now it's my turn to have some fun, so let's have it.

CHEATERS! JUICERS!!!! FRAUDS FRAUDS FRAUDS!!!

Whew! That was all right. Time to fire up a menthol and just soak in the experience. Lest anyone not know, ESPN reported today that both Manny & Ortiz were on the same list of positive tests for PED's in 2003 that A-Rod was on.

What? You don't think it's suspicious that a double stroking fat body in Minnesota could turn into a homer machine just by playing at Fenway or that a moody, dim bulb outfielder who tanks games when depressed suddenly turned into the greatest right handed hitter ever? No, not suspicious at all!

Wanna know who isn't on that list? Jeter*. Rivera*. Posada*. Bernie Williams.*
Suck on that Nation.


*list subject to change pending further reveals by the New York Times.

Yankees Lead By Example in D.C.

The New York Yankees lost a game, and a series, Thursday night in D.C. but came out the winners.
"These kids are heroes, it was nice to see them celebrate after the game." captain Derek Jeter said in the post game news conference.
During interleague play this season, the Yankees sacrificed three valuable off-days to have a friendly exhibition with the Washington Nationals, a local D.C. high school team.
The Yankees took game one on Tuesday as expected but dropped the next two to the ecstatic Nationals.
The Yankees claim to not have tanked on purpose but when Nick Swisher gave Melky Cabrera a hot foot in the outfield in the pivotal fifth inning, the result was never in doubt.
"Aw, who gives a shit!" proclaimed Swisher "The kids feel great, we did our civic duty. It was a great break from the grind of a big league season."
Nationals pitcher Craig Stammen, Thursdays winner and unknown prospect, sees lasting impact from tonight's game. "Now I can get a date to the prom! This unbelievable!" the elated Stammen screamed as he ran off the field after getting hit with the ceremonial shaving cream pie "wait til the boys at the dock hear about this one!"
The Yankees resume big league action Friday in Florida against the Marlins.