Yankees Lose.......Again

I didn't get to see much of the game tonight. The 6:40 start time kind of made it tough to watch. I had a shot to watch the beginning but my wife, aka Butterfingers, dropped my son's tadpole habitat on the kitchen floor and as she put it, tadpole fecal matter was everywhere. That shifted bath duties to me while she cleaned up. Then it was kids TV shows, put the kids to bed, make the kids lunch, put one kid back to bed, then put him back to bed a 3rd time, then game. By the time I tuned in it was the 8th inning. I'm glad I didn't see much because I probably would have thrown something thru my TV screen. So this makes 6 losses in a row. Ugh.

Not much is going the Yankees way right now. Not much at all. Nobody is hitting. The pitching is suspect. It's not a good time to be a fan of the Yankees. I'm not worried though. well, I'm a little worried but not much. Every team has these funks. If you remember, the Yankees lost 5 straight back in 2009 and went on to win the World Series. There is a lot of baseball left to play. There's plenty of time for these guys to right the ship.

Congrats to Curtis Granderson on yet another HR. CG is mashing. I'm donating $15 to his charity for each of his HRs. I was expecting him to hit about 24. He's more than halfway there and we're not even 40 games into the season. At this rate I'm going to go broke. Hopefully he keeps it up. He's really the only Yankee hitting right now. It's too bad they can't clone him.

I'm too frustrated to blog anymore tonight. Watching these guys lose night after night adds up and it's taking it's toll on me. I may have to storm into work tomorrow, scream at my boss, and demand I not work. More on that tomorrow.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Jorge Posada Stirs Up Some Yankee Drama

The Yankees lost again tonight. In what's becoming typical Yankee fashion their offense was non-existent. But that's not the story. The big story tonight is what the eff is up with Jorge Posada? If you missed it let me quickly sum it up:

Joe Girardi put Posada in the lineup batting 9th. Posada took himself out of the lineup saying he had to clear his head. Posada's wife posted that Jorge had a bad back. Cashman, during the FOX broadcast said it had nothing to do with injury. And then people had press conferences about it. I watched the post game show. I listened to both Girardi's and Posada's press conferences. I've taken it all in and digested it. Here's my take: Something is rotten in Denmark. Allow me to explain, bullet-point style:Jack Curry opened the postgame show with the story, as told to him by "Yankee officials" that Posada said he was insulted by batting 9th, threw a fit, and took himself out of the lineup. I don't see why the Yankees would make that up and why Curry would report it if he didn't believe it to be true.According to both Girardi and Posada, Jorge didn't mention anything about his back stiffness in their brief meeting. Isn't that something you should tell your employer about if it's a factor in your decision not to play?Why is Laura Posada posting that about his back if it's a non-issue?Girardi said the conversation with Posada was brief and Joe didn't ask any questions. I can't see a situation where an MLB manager, when approached by a player asking for a day off, wouldn't ask why.Posada and Cashman had a conversation after Posada talked to Girardi. I don't see Cashman talking to Jorge for something as simple as requesting not to play.I didn't go back and re-watch Jorge's presser but I think at one point he said he did mention his back to Girardi.I don't know why Cashman would go on-air to talk about this if it was as simple as Jorge asking for a day off.I'm sure I'm missing something but it's late, I'm tired, and the brain is starting not to function. But from what I outlined something doesn't add up and someone, or someones, aren't telling the whole story. Quite frankly, I'm not buying what Jorge is selling. The biggest thing for me is what Jack Curry reported at the beginning of the postgame. I don't see Jack running with that if he didn't think it were true.I've lost a lot of respect for Posada tonight. His actions to me appear to be selfish and I have a problem with that. Nobody is bigger than the team. Look, I get all the hardships Jorge is battling through this year, namely, not catching and sucking at the plate. Bottom line, he's not performing and he's lucky to be in the lineup at all. I can respect needing a mental health day. He's human just like the rest of us and we've all been there. Now granted, we're not all filthy rich and making millions of dollars, but we've been there. But doing what Jorge did, or allegedly did I guess, was just wrong. He talks about feeling disrespected when in fact he's the one disrespecting his teammates and the organization with his actions. The name on the back of the jersey isn't as important as the one on the front. And yes, I know the Yankees don't have names on their jerseys.I did see some people bashing Cashman for going on the FOX broadcast and addressing this. That doesn't surprise me. But I challenge everyone who has access to it to go watch it again and tell me what specifically Cashman said that was bad. Was it for contradicting the bit about Posada being injured because according to Jorge nobody knew about his back. Well, except for his wife. I don't see anything wrong with what Cashman said. I don't think anybody should.Tonight was a lot to take in. Based on what I've seen and heard I'm concluding that Jorge threw a tizzy and refused to play. Regardless of what happened there's one thing I'm 100% certain of and that's that this won't end well for the Yankees. Something wicked this way comes. I'm really interested to see how this plays out. That though, I can't wrap my head around just yet.As I wrote earlier I lost a lot of respect for Posada tonight. I don't care how proud he is, or how messed up his head is. What he (allegedly) did tonight is not becoming of a New York Yankee. The team is currently struggling and this was one of the last things they needed. Like I said, this won't end well.Peace, love and Pinstripes,J-Boogie

My Thoughts On The Last 3 Yankees Games

The Yankees offense is currently terrible.

That's it.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Freddy Garcia Leads Yankees To 3-1 Victory Over Royals

I really like how the title of this blog sounds when I say it out loud. Say it with me: Freddy Garcia leads Yankees to 3-1 victory. Freddy Garcia leads Yankees. Freddy Garcia. How awesome is that? I love it when one of Brian Cashman's "trash heap rejects" does well. I hope the haters recognize that maybe Brian Cashman knows a thing or two. There is never anything wrong with a low-risk high-reward signing. It's especially nice when it turns out to be a low-risk really high-reward signing like both Garcia and Bartolo Colon has been. Point Cashman. Suck it haters.

Garcia pitched pretty well tonight. The wheels started to fall off their in the 7th but thanks to David Robertson the Yankees made it out of the inning with no damage done. Right now my only concern about Garcia is his stamina and ability to pitch deep into games. He's done alright so far but I'm a little weary about him when it gets into the 7th inning and beyond. It's a small concern though. Can't be too concerned by a guy with a 2.61 ERA. Nicely done Freddy.

Big props to the bullpen for pitching extremely well tonight. David Robertson, as mentioned above, came up big in the 7th when he whiffed Escobar and Getz to get out of a bases-loaded jam. Joba pitched a pretty impressive 9 pitch 8th inning. And Mo as usual was Mo. I didn't get to see any of the postgame so I'm not sure why Rafael Soriano didn't pitch in the 8th, especially after an off-day. I could easily find out why by hopping on Twitter but I'm a little lazy right now. Don't judge me.

Before I move on I wanted to talk about Joba for one quick second. I'm coming around to him again. He's pitching very well right now. Tonight's scoreless appearance makes it 6 straight scoreless appearances in a row. And on 9 pitches to boot. Very impressed. I was just looking at his stats and he's sitting on a 0.88 WHIP. That's pretty damn good. To put that into perspective Mariano's WHIP this season is 0.84. Joba's isn't too shabby. Baseball is a weird game. Joba has a 0.88 WHIP and a 3.18 ERA. D-Rob has a WHIP of 1.50 and an ERA of 1.35. Odd, isn't it? Anyway, Joba is pitching well. I'm pleasantly surprised and I'm becoming a fan again.

The offense was again underwhelming tonight. The bats are just not living up to their potential. Thankfully the pitching is exceeding theirs. Derek Jeter had another multi-hit game and is now sitting on a .283 average. It's now the 2nd highest on the team and he only trails Robbie Cano (.289) by 6 percentage points. What a difference a couple of days make, eh? I'm glad to see the Captain swinging the bat well. You knew he had it in him. It was just a matter of would he find it. He has. Welcome back Derek. We missed you. And oh yeah, suck it haters.

I'm not sure how much of the next few games I'll get to see. I have to travel to Kingston, NY for training and I have no idea if the hotel will have YES. You'd think they would but who knows? I also will have to "play the game" and go out to dinners. I don't really want to but it is what it is. I told my boss to just make sure wherever we go that the Yankees game will be on. I doubt that request will be honored, but we'll see. Hopefully things bounce my way and I'll get to see the games. I know for sure I'll miss some of Friday's Red Sox game as I'll be sitting on a train when it starts. If I had much hair left I'd pull it out. It sucks but what can you do? Seriously, what can I do? I need to figure something out.

Hope you all enjoy the next few days if I happen not to be around. And as always...

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Yankees/Rangers Weekend Wrap-Up

Am I the only one out there who is beyond exhausted? It's been a rough few days and the lack of sleep is catching up with me. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep a few times today while driving to work. I'm also pretty sure that I dozed off once or twice on the way home from the office. I spent the last half-hour sleeping in my kid's bed. I was tucking him in and next thing I knew a half-hour passed. I didn't want to go three days without blogging about the Yankees. I've done a good job of keeping up with it this year and I want to keep that going. I feel asleep on my feet right now so this won't be my best blog ever. Consider yourself warned.

• It was nice leaving Texas with a series win especially after dropping 3 of 4 to Detroit. It made the road trip a little nicer.
• How good is it to see Derek Jeter stinging the ball? He's been swinging a much better bat lately. His grounders are becoming line drives and his line drives are becoming home runs, or at least they did yesterday. Derek all of the sudden has the 3rd highest batting average on the team at a respectable .276. A 6-game hitting streak will do that to a guy. DJ had a nice little road trip going 11-28 (.393). He rose his average 34 percentage points in the process. Is the Captain back? Maybe, but I'm not 100% ready to declare his return just yet.
• CC Sabathia impressed me a little bit yesterday. He was by no means sharp as he walked 4 and threw only 58.7% of his pitches for strikes. He struggled out of the gate, settled down, and battled his way to a decent start. It's nice to know he's effective even when he doesn't have his best stuff.
• Curtis Granderson is bleeding me dry. I pledged to donate $15 to his charity for every HR he hits. I was banking on maybe 25 dingers. He's leading the AL with 11 and we're only a month into the season. Smack my head. I'm glad he's doing it though. Kevin Long definitely knocked it out of the park with CG. Wow. He's been on a tear since last last season. I'm not going to be surprised if he belts at least 50 HRs this year. I'd hate to part with that much money but I won't mind because it will probably mean the Yankees are doing very well if I do.
• Despite the 12-run outburst on Sunday I'm still concerned about the offense. Averages for the most part are going in the wrong direction. There currently isn't one .300 hitter in the bunch. That's surprising to me.

Well, I'd like to keep writing but the wife just dropped a bunch of jobs on me. I was hoping to go to bed in about a half-hour but I'm at least an hour away from sleep city. This is going to be a weird week for me. I have to travel for a training class and I'm not sure if I'll get to see much baseball in the latter half of the week. I would much rather chill in my hotel room watching the Yankees each night than having to go to dinner and all that jazz. I think I feel a cold coming on. *cough cough wink wink* I'm interested to see how the next couple of days play out. If I'm not blogging that's why.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Ivan Nova And Curtis Granderson Lead Yankees To 4-1 Win Over Rangers

I'm not sure how this post is going to turn out. I could feel myself dozing off as Mariano Rivera was picking up his 12th save of the season. Shortly after the game ended I did fall asleep for a few minutes. I have that sleepy feeling in my head and I'm getting drowsy. It's been a long week. But, I wanted to blog tonight because if I don't I know I won't tomorrow. So here goes nothing.

Outstanding job by Ivan Nova. The kid was remarkable. He definitely gets my vote for player of the game. It was the longest outing of his short career. He pitched 7.1 innings, allowed only 2 hits, walked one, struck out one, and the one run he gave up was unearned. Job well done kid. This is the 3rd straight outing where Nova has pitched extremely well. In his last 3 starts, the kid has thrown 20 IP, allowed 13 hits, 8 walks, and 4 runs, 3 of which were earned. He's dropped his ERA from 7.63 to 4.08. As the weather has gotten better so has Nova. I was most impressed today by the number of ground ball outs he had. 16 of the 22 outs he got came from the ground ball. He had it working tonight. Great job.

The Yankees offense was again kind of pathetic. There were a few exceptions but for the most part they were underwhelming. The offensive POG was Curtis Granderson. He belted 2 HRs, his 9th and 10th on the season, and knocked in 3 of the 4 Yankee runs. Curtis has been great at the dish this year. Props to Kevin Long for righting that ship. Unfortunately for my wallet he righted it too much. I made a pledge to Granderson's charity. For every HR he hits I donate $15 in his "Scoring For Schools" program. Curtis is on pace for 54 HRs, which would work out to $810. Yowza. I hope he gets that money too. It goes to a great cause and let's face it, how can I not be a fan of Curtis hitting 50+ jacks? Keep it going Curtis.

There's a bunch of negative things I could write about the offense but that could take all night. I'll save that for another day.

I really wish the Yankees would stop bunting. That would be a dream come true. Speaking of dreams I need to turn in. So very tired.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

More Of The Same As Yankees Lose To Tigers

Work totally beat me down today. So much so that I forgot that the Yankees were playing this afternoon. By the time I remembered it was too late. I pulled the game up on the radio and there was one out in the top of the ninth. I was so bummed that I missed it. Wanting to know what I missed I went to the one place where I could easily get that information: Twitter.

I asked my followers to tweet me a summary of the game. Here are some of the replies I got, all in 140 characters or less:

YankeeGirl226: You missed nothing.
Sward92151: it sucked-no hits,bad fielding, chavez broken foot
Yankee Princesa: More of the same, no timely hitting, pitching fell apart late in the game and we lost Chavez in the process.
Maddym21: AJ did well up until the 7th. Offense sucked. Nuñez sucked at SS. That's all.
Dizzydolse: injury to Chavez, errors by Nunez, no offense again and decent but not good enough pitching equals 6-3 loss and Valverde dance
TheRealMBB: Pretty much Nunez's arm killed Burnett's great outing. Five runs on three hits, only two of them earned!
SherriPizza: It sucked.

Thanks guys for summing that up for me. It's appreciated. So basically here's the way it went down. Burnett pitched well. The offense sucked. Eduardo Nunez can't throw the ball. Eric Chavez got hurt.

I looked at the box score as soon as I turned the game on and I immediately could see that 3 of those things happened. Burnett's pitching line was solid. That's encouraging. You shouldn't lose that many games when you allow 3 hits and 1 walk over 7 IPs. I'd almost call him a hard luck loser. But again, I'm encouraged that he pitched well.

I also noticed that only 2 of the 5 runs Burnett gave up were earned. Quick scan of the box score and I see Nunez made 2 errors. That gives him 5 on the season. His fielding percentage this year as a SS is .615. Come again? I didn't even know it was that possible to have a fielding percentage that low. That needs to change real quick.

It appears Eric Chavez is headed to the DL with a fractured bone in his left foot. That sucks. Chavez has been doing it on both sides of the field. He's hitting .303 and has a slick glove to go with it. It looks like Ramiro Pena is coming up to fill in for him. Thankfully it's just to back up A-Rod because the last thing the Yankees need is someone that doesn't hit the ball that well.

This makes 3 straight losses for the Yankees. For the most part that all falls on the shoulders of the offense. In those 3 losses the Yankees scored a total of 5 runs. Houston we have a problem. As a team the Yankees are hitting .251. That ranks 14th out of the 30 MLB teams. They're struggling. That's for sure. They're now off to Texas to play the Rangers. Rangers Ballpark is a hitter-friendly park. It would be nice to see the bats wake up for this series. Here's hoping that they do.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Yankees Offense Absent In 4-0 Loss To Tigers

I had the full intention of watching tonight's Yankees/Tigers game but I opted not to after shortly after I turned it on. I flipped the TV to the game after one of the bedtime shows my kids watched ended just to get a quick update. I saw one pitch. It was the first and only pitch to Magglio Ordonez. He put it in the seats for a 2-run HR. After that I turned the TV off and got my kids ready for bed. When I finished my daddy duties I went back to the game. First pitch I see is an Alex Avila double. Woah. I see 2 pitches and neither yields a good result. Being the superstitious dude that I am I flipped the game off. I wasn't having any of that.

As it turns out staying away from the game did not help the Yankees at all. But it didn't make it worse. The game ended with the Yankees losing 4-0. I followed along a little bit online as I listened to the new Beastie Boys album (it's great - get it). The game was pretty uneventful and I'm glad I didn't watch because it would have been very frustrating. The Yankees offense is quite simply horrible and more often that not it seems that as a team they're struggling at the plate. They managed only 4 hits tonight and struck out 11 times. That's pretty brutal. Nobody is hitting either. Cano, Martin, and Teixeira are the only 3 hitting above .260. Hey Kevin Long!! Get to work my man!!

I'll give it up to Freddy Garcia tonight. Well, sort of. I was surprised when I saw that he was still pitching in the 8th. He didn't start out that great but it looks like he settled in right after I flipped the game off. Coincidence? Maybe. He allowed 8 hits and struck out 2 when I was "watching" and allowed 2 hits and struck out 6 when I wasn't. Hmm. Maybe I was bad mojo. If only yhr Yankees offense could have done something. Props to Freddy for battling.

Day game tomorrow. That sucks. I hate day games. Work always gets in the way of paying attention to it. Hopefully I can figure out a way to give it a listen. Hopefully the Yankees can figure out a way to hit the ball. They're too good not to.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Bartolo Colon Continues To Be Baseball's Best Bargain As Yankees Beat Tigers 5-3

Tonight's game was another one of those games that I didn't get to pay a lot of attention to. First 3 innings or so were spent with the kids. The next 4 innings were spent tinkering with my laptop, which I'm happy to report is functional again. Yay me. I paid a little attention to it in those 4 innings but not as much as I would have liked. I was in front of the TV for the last 2 innings. I'm going to keep this blog really short. In addition to not seeing much of the game I'm beyond exhausted as I was up late last night, as I'm sure a lot of people were, watching history. Not to get political on everyone but last night was awesome. Big win for America. Big win for the world.

I saw very little of Bartolo Colon's outing tonight but was impressed with what little I saw. According to my twitter peeps it was another exceptional start. I was impressed with his pitching line. It's very solid and I love that he didn't walk anyone and struck out 7. I think it's safe to say that as of right now Colon is this year's biggest bargain. What a signing by Brian Cashman! If Colon keeps this up I can see him walking away with Comeback Player of the Year, assuming he's eligible. Not sure if not playing last year affects that at all.

When I hopped onto Twitter in the 7th inning one of the first things I found out about tonight's game was that the Yankees had "left a lot of ducks on the pond." I checked the in-game box score and saw they were 1-11 with RISP. That's not good and it won't usually get the job done. Thankfully Colon pitched as well as he did.

Nice job by Joba and Mo. Mo has been on fire since blowing 2 straight saves. That makes 3 saves in 3 days. Glad to have you back my friend.

I'm not going to see much of the game tomorrow. The missus and I are taking our two boys to see the Imagination Movers in concert. The show should end early enough for me to catch the end of it on the radio. The Yankees are on a nice little roll and it's CC's turn to keep it going tomorrow. Take it to 'em big man.

Peace, love, Pinstripes and God Bless America

J-Boogie

Yankees/Jays Weekend Wrap-Up

Greetings everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend. Mine, as it usually is with 3 kids in tow, was very busy. I realized that 4pm games are a horrible time for me to watch Yankees games. When it's a 1pm start, I can usually fit most of it in as that's when my kids nap. With a 7pm start I might miss the 1st hour as it's the kids' bed time. I can usually though pay half-attention to it as I get them ready. 4pm games are not my friend. The kids usually wake up from their naps around then and I can't justify ignoring them for 2.5+ hours. I sneak in little breaks and make sure to check my phone for updates but it's tough to catch it for a large chunk of time.

I didn't see much of Saturday's game which is why I didn't blog about it yesterday. I figured I'd save it for a "weekend wrap-up" post. I did catch most of the game today. I did though miss the last 2 innings as I made a trek to Best Buy to see if they could help at all with my dying laptop. They couldn't. I am though in process of hopefully fixing it. I had recovery disks and they appear to have solved the problem. So far so good. Unfortunately using recovery disks meant I wiped out the hard drive so everything on it is gone. Right now I'm installing 2 years of windows updates. I've been doing that for 2+ hours and it's on #68 of 94. Wait. why am I blogging about that? I don't write a tech support blog and that's not why you're here. My apologies. Let's talk Yankees, shall we? I am though going to keep it brief as I've got a lot to do still before calling it a day. And we're off:


Very pleased with how the series with the Jays turned out. It was nice to see the Yankees come back to win two straight to take another series. The Jays are a pesky team and always give the Yanks fits. I will never complain when the Yankees take a series.
Great start today by Ivan Nova. i don't know if it was the bad weather but he's been pretty good since the weather has gotten better. The only gripe I had was with the walks. He walked 4 and threw 60% of his pitches for strikes, which in my book is a so-so strike-to-ball ratio. But as long as he can keep the runners on base from scoring, I'm cool with it. The Jays went 0-9 with RISP today. Kudos to Nova for keeping them from scoring. But, that's a dangerous way to live. He needs to reduce the # of baserunners he allows.
It was nice to see the Yankees win Saturday without hitting any HRs.
I hope A.J. Burnett can continue pitching well now that we're out of April. As a Yankee, A.J. has made 16 starts in April and has a 9-1 record to show for it. He's 18-24 after April. I think he's going to continue to pitch well.
Curtis Granderson hit his 8th HR and I now owe him $120. Way to go Curtis.
Robbie Cano bruised his hand and left Sunday's game early. I don't think it's serious. at least I hope it's not.
Rafael Soriano hasn't given up a run in two, count 'em two, straight games. Yay.
After blowing 2 straight saves Mariano Rivers has saved 3 straight and hasn't given up a run. He's the GOAT.
Pretty good series for the bullpen. They've pitched 8.2 scoreless innings since D-Rob's little fielding snafu.
A-Rod has been struggling since missing a few games with his injury. He's 3 for his last 27 which has dropped his average 96 percentage points. Uh oh.
That about sums it up. I'm sure I'm missing something. I'm tired and I'm not 100% focused. The wife has been asking me to help her put some stuff away and I've been ignoring her to do this. Gotta run.
Peace, love and Pinstripes,
J-Boogie