What To Do? What To Do?

With the recent injury to Yankees captain Derek Jeter comes a lot of speculation about who to put at SS as his replacement. People are throwing around the notion of moving A-Rod back to SS. Personally, I wouldn't be a fan of that unless Jeter will be on the shelf for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, the other options aren't very appealing. So what to do?

According to Pete Abraham's blog, it looks like Yankees farm hand Alberto Gonzalez is on his way to New York. I think this is the smartest move as a short term fix. The Yankees won't gain much from him offensively but his defense is probably a little better that DJs when you consider his range is likely better. His offense can't be much worse than that of Wilson Betemit, who in my opinion won't be around much longer. His defense is questionable and offensively he's been a nightmare, unless you prefer a guy that will hit around .200 with more strikeouts that balls in play. sure he'll run into an HR every now and then but he's more of a liability. Short term they should go with Alberto.

In the event Jeter is out for an extended period of time, I think Girardi and crew need to explore other possibilities, one of which is moving Alex back to where he started. He might be a little rusty at first but a player with Alex's athletic ability wouldn't take long to readjust. I'd worry more about how he'd do moving back to the hot corner. When Alex was asked about his thoughts, he was quoted as saying:

"I haven’t thought about it. But whatever Joe wants I will do. I haven’t taken a groundball over there in five years, not even playing around. It would definitely be a challenge. But if Joe thought that were the best combination, I will let it fly.”

It's been 5 years since Alex has taken grounders at short. There would definitely be a period of adjustment but it's probably best to move Alex's bat and glove to short and move a guy to 3rd than it is to leave Alex at 3rd and put a weak bat at short. The Yankees have a natural 3B in the bench in Morgan Ensberg. If given the option of playing Betemit at short or Ensberg at third, what would you do? I'd go with Ensberg every time. Can you tell I'm not a big Betemit fan? I prefer him to Scott Proctor but he's really a waste on this ball club.

Hopefully, this discussion is all for nothing and our captain returns to the lineup for this weekend's Boston series. It doesn't bode well for the Yankees offense to have 2 of our best hitters (DJ and Jorge) on the shelf, especially when you consider how poorly the offense is performing. Jeter is a gamer and he won't sit any longer than he has to. That's one of the reasons why we love him so much. I just hope that the injuries to Jorge and Derek aren't anything serious and their time missed is minimal. Keep your fingers crossed.

J-Boogie