Silent bats

It was not the best time I have ever had at the ball park, however it was better than a day at work.

~~ Rangers 2, Yankees 0 ~~

The day started with Kasey and me fighting over tickets. Both of us wanted D-Rob, she won. At Yankees Stadium it was sunscreen day so we got free packets of sunscreen and a skin check from a dermatologist. All the doctor who checked me said was I had pretty legs. Than after that I didn’t put on the sunscreen and ended up with a sunburn. In my defense, we weren’t sitting in the sun, but there must have been enough of a reflection off the concrete and I got burned.

The Replacement Yankees were playing, besides Phil Hughes pitching, Robbie playing third, Gardner and Ichiro in the outfield, I can’t tell you who was playing.

We saw a stellar pitching performance. Phil only gave up 4 hits and 2 runs. Actually we saw two stellar pitching performances, the better one by Derek Holland. What we didn’t see was any defensive output by the Yankees. It was like they had forgotten how to swing a bat. In fact the Yankees didn’t even drive up his pitch count, which is one of their strengths, drive up pitch counts, get into the bullpen, Holland threw 92 pitches. It was a shut-out, not a no-hitter but just as bad.

~~ Questo è tutto, dice la principessa ~~ 😛

Game 78
Yankees 42-36 (0.538)

King Felix versus David Phelps

A discussion on the last game in Seattle, King Felix and his court, turkey legs, bases loaded jams and strike-outs.

~~ Yankees 2, Mariners 1 ~~

About the turkey legs, first I have to tell you about the court. There is a section in the ball park where all the King Felix fans sit and they have these yellow squares of paper with “K” on them. Whenever Felix pitches a chef comes out to that section with a turkey leg and people take bites out of it. Yes I’m serious.

First inning with the bases loaded, Ichiro strikes out and makes the 3rd out.

My notes: Gardner on fire, 7 game hitting streak, always a threat to run, he steals second.
Hafner walks.
Wells walks. Bases loaded ~ two outs, Ichiro up. King Felix struggling with his control. Felix strikes out Ichiro. Yankees leave bases loaded.

David Phelps picks off Bay at first.

Jayson Nix on first (5 game hitting streak), Nix steals second (Shoppach is worse than Stewart? Who would have thunk it?)
Stewart with a bunt base hit, Jayson Nix on third.
Gardner with a single to center field, Nix scores.
Robinson Cano GIDP.

Sorry I got distracted, it is now 1-1 and the top of the third. Teixeira is up. Now he’s out.

David Phelps has walked three batters so far. That’s a batter per inning.
Double play ends the inning.

NYY 1, SEA 1

4th Inning:
1-2-3 inning for Hernandez and David Phelps

5th Inning
Gardner with a double (8th hit in this series, 8-15), left on base.

Bottom of the 5th:
Broken bat ~ Nix to Teixeira, 1 out
Hard hit to Cano, 2 outs
Strike out. David’s fourth of the game.

Sixth inning:
Vernon Wells reaches on a throwing error by shortstop Brendan Ryan. And he is left there.

Bottom of the sixth:
Boone Logan warming in the pen, Phelps at 93 pitches, Strike-out, 1 out
Lines out to Ichiro, 2 outs
Strike-out. 3 outs. Six strike outs for David Phelps.

Seventh inning:
Felix with 7 strikeouts.

Side-note: O’s 10, TB 7

Boone Logan in for David Phelps
Ichiro drops it, in foul territory. (Love you, Raul ♡ , now be a good boy and swing and miss)
Shoppach grounds into a 5-3 out at first.
Yowzer, 2 strike-outs for Logan.

Charlie Furbush in for Felix Hernandez
Eighth inning:
Cano hit by pitch. Advances to second on a wild pitch.
3rd strikeout for Mark Teixeira. Good job swinging at a ball Mark. 😦
Hafner pops out in foul territory.
Wells in now, come on baby! Just put it in play no out, just put it in play no out, just put it in play no out, just put it in play no out, just put it in play no out, just put it in play no out, just put it in play outs.

David Robertson in for Logan
Ken (or AL) jinxed them. Lead-off double for Mariners.
Sacrifice bunt. Runner on 3rd. 1 out
Strike-out Jason Bay. Hat trick for Bay? Huh? 2 outs.
Swing and a miss, freakin’ LOVE D-Rob. David “H” Robertson. The H is for Houdini or Heart-attack, whichever you prefer.

Ninth inning:
Yoervis Medina in for Seattle.
Ichiro walks. And he takes great care with his bat.
Nix sacrifice bunt, Ichiro to second.
Chris Stewart with a big 2-out hit, throw is not in time, Ichiro scores, Stewart fist pumps when he gets to second. Yankees in the lead.
Oliver Perez in for Seattle, Gardner up at bat. He has had a great afternoon, 3 for 4. Hit a home run Gardy! I guess I have to settle for a base hit. Runners on the corners, Robbie is up. Home run Robbie! And he walks. Mark is up now. Strikes out, golden sombrero for Tex. 3 outs.

Bottom of the ninth:
Mariano Rivera in for the Yankees
Lead off walk
Double play (Mark is soooo good, can you say ‘Gold Glove’?
Walk to Raul (Mo has seen his late game power)
Base hit. Who do these Mariners think they are? Getting hits against Mo.
Pop-out to left field. Yankees win 2-1.

Since the game was tied until the ninth inning, neither starting pitcher gets the win.
Pitching Decisions
Winning Pitcher
David Robertson

Losing Pitcher
Yoervis Medina

Save
Mariano Rivera – 23 SV

~~ Questo è tutto, dice la principessa ~~ 😛

Game 63
Yankees 37-26 (0.587)

Still don’t know why they call him Pronk

C.C. was back on the mound today, gave up two runs in the first inning and immediately everyone lost their minds! Except for me I was doing laundry.

~~ Yankees 4, D-backs 3 ~~

After seeing Sarah off on the train, I planned to come home and do laundry, then watch the game in the evening. Instead I took a nap, I felt really good after, but I still had laundry to do. I come home to the Diamondbacks with a lead. Then in the seventh inning the lead started to unravel, with the bases loaded, their pitcher, Wade Miley, walked Jayson Nix which brought in Ben Francisco. It was either his pitch count or the fact that he walked Nix on 5 pitches that prompted the manager to replace him. The next pitcher had to face Brett Gardner, who brought in the next two runners tying the game at 3.

Then in the bottom of the eighth inning Travis Hafner pitch hit for Francisco and he slammed it over the fence. This prompted the D-Backs announcer to say they got ‘pronked’, and I still don’t know what that means or why he’s called that.

That’s all except for, Kevin Youkilis got hit by pitch, go figure.

~~ Questo è tutto, dice la principessa ~~ 😛

Game 13
Yankees 8-5 (0.615)

No sweep for the Red Sox

The old guys come through. A couple of home runs by guys who you don’t expect to hit home runs.

~~ Yankees 4, Red Sox 2 ~~

Andy Pettitte came through for us holding the Red Sox to one run. His numbers for this game were: 8IP, 8H, 1ER, 1BB, 3SO. He got 3 double plays, 9 ground-outs and 6 fly-outs. He threw 94 pitches, 64 of them were strikes. Mariano came in and got his first save of 2013. He walked one, got one out, then a double, then a ground out with the Sox scoring, then a strike and out and a victory. So we lost the series but didn’t get swept.

Andy Pettitte pitching like a BOSS y’all.

— ♦B Foxx ❤⚾❤ (@UES_Bella) April 5, 2013

Brett Gardner and Frankie Cervelli got home runs. Cervelli also tagged Victorino out at home when he tried to run home on a passed ball. oh wait, it was ruled a wild pitch. Cervelli went back to get it kind of looked to third, but seemed to get distracted then saw Victorino running in. Everyone seemed to playing better today, it seems the team is getting used to each other and getting into the rhythm of playing. This is why I wasn’t really worried. However tomorrow is a day game, in Detroit. Who made up this schedule?

Game 3
Yankees 1-2

~~ Questo è tutto, dice la principessa ~~ 😛

The next opening day

The season opener was in Tampa on Good Friday, April 6. The home opener was the next Friday, April 13 against the Angels, NY Yankees 5, Angels 0. As I have mentioned, to anyone that will listen, I was not at the game and I desperately wanted to go, I wanted to go so bad that up to the last possible minute I kept checking StubHub™ hoping a ticket would magically appear for under $100. Every time I looked up tickets, I noticed that tickets for Sunday, which was also Jackie Robinson Day were really cheap, probably because the game was at 8:00pm on Sunday. I bought two tickets, it was cheaper to get two then one, go figure. Jackie Robinson Day was going to be my opening day.

Now I had two tickets and had to think of who did I want to go with me? I put a post on this blog, I casually mentioned it on Twitter, then I saw a tweep that I’ve met a few time, that has a few times tweeted me to “Come on Down to _____ for some drinks”, so I just asked her want to go to the game Sunday? I have an extra ticket. She was thrilled, it was her birthday weekend and she loves the Yankees. In particular Phil Hughes, she wore his shirt, she squealed when his picture came up on the Jumb-o-tron.

It was also calendar night so we got this nice calendar. It has coupons from subway and the Yankees in it are: April: Derek Jeter; May: Mariano Rivera (taken the day he got his 602nd save); June: Alex Rodriguez (he looks like he just hit a home run, he’s got that happy look on his face and relaxed); July: CC Sabathia; August: Robinson Cano; September: Mark Teixeira (I probably should tear September off and send it to Kasey); October: Nick Swisher (not Mr. October but hey, my sweet Nicky! Who two years in a row hit a walk off home run on my birthday. The next year and this year, no home game on my birthday, so no walk-off); November: Curtis Granderson; December: Russell Martin (without his face mask. Very important); January: Ivan Nova; February: David Robertson (who so coolly in this game got the last out with the bases loaded {thank you Rafe you bum}); March: Brett Gardner.

~~ Yankees 11, Angels 5 ~~

Everyone was wearing 42 today, before the game when C and I were eating pizza and drinking beer at the pizza place around the corner from the stadium, I wondered why they were showing an old Yankee game, I mean #42 was pitching, but the uniforms were the wrong color …… Then during the game she showed me a tweet, “I just turned on the Yankee game and couldn’t figure out why Mariano was pitching in the 5th inning.” So I wasn’t the only one confused.

The #42 that was pitching was Ivan Nova, despite having a cold he maintained his winning streak. 6 IP, 4 ER, 8 Ks and his ERA is now down to 4.15 (He ended spring training with an ERA over 8. I guess he needs the adrenalin of regular season). Derek Jeter and Raul Ibanez hit home runs. Then in the 7th inning Rafael comes in, gets two out and then walks two, the bases are loaded, I was screaming at him “You are not David Robertson! You cannot load the bases! If you lose this game for Ivan Nova I will kick your ass!” Since Joe didn’t want to see me get in trouble he called in D-Rob. When Boone came in for the 9th inning C pouted, she wanted to see Mo, but since it wasn’t a save situation no Mo, Boone pitched a scoreless 9th. Good game.

~~ Questo è tutto, dice la principessa ~~ 😛

Bits and pieces, awards and football

Report: Yu Darvish bid tops Dice-K I’m not quite sure how this works, like a lot of things in the business end of baseball, as I understand it, this pitcher, Yu Darvish wants to come to play in the MLB. So the MLB teams that want him have to bid for him. Then his team (the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters) decides if they’ll accept the bid, then the team who made the bid gets to ‘talk’ to the player, to see if they can reach a deal. I don’t know if then the team has to pay MORE money to the player. I can’t find that out. However, the bidding has closed and the highest bid is a lot of money.

Greatness in Baseball Yearly Awards (GIBBYs) were announced on Friday night as the final word on Major League Baseball’s awards season. The Yankees had three: Derek Jeter for Performance of the Year, David Robertson for Setup Man and Robinson Cano for Wow Factor. Jose Valverde of the Tigers won Closer of the Year, which I was going to cry about, but it’s just for the year, and his numbers were better then Mo’s this year. However, Mo is still the greatest of all time. Speaking of Mo ….

Rivera recovering well after surgery on throat He had polyps removed from his vocal cords. We haven’t heard the results of the testing on the polyps, but this is one area where bad news usually travels faster then good news. Pretty sure he’ll be fine.

Yankees take two players in Rule 5 Draft Left-handed reliever Cesar Cabral, so if I understand this right, he was with the Red Sox, then the Royals picked him in the draft, then the Yankees paid the Royals for him (sounds a little bit like a slave auction, hmmm). So was he a Royals, or a Red Sox? The other player is a right-handed pitcher Brad Meyers, who was a starter with the Nationals.

The Yankees are keeping Hector Noesi as a starter and released Greg Golson. Good-bye Greg, I’ll never forget that throw you made from right field, it was a beauty.

Freddy Garcia will be a Yankee next year, they offered him a one year deal and he accepted. He likes playing in Pinstripes.

All eligible Yankees tendered contracts Joba, Phil, David, Brett, Boone (Boom-Boom-Boone) and Russell (HI! Russell) are all coming back next year. Russell even tweeted it. If it wasn’t so late I would find it and post a link.

Cano and Swisher are coming back, of course Cano is a no-doubter (as is Swisher in my mind). There is talk that the Yankees might use Swisher for trade, but I doubt it. If you trade Swisher, who’s going to play right field? Not only that but he can relieve Mark at first and he is good for 30 home runs a year and contributes to the clubhouse moral. Not only that, he loves New York and would cry if he had to leave.

The biggest news of all (pun intended) is that CC is coming back. So we will have our Ace, our Big Stoppa, our Great Devourer of Innings. He also let the fans know, he posted a video saying he wanted to let the fans know himself, he is coming back to New York.

However, the Yankees are not the only ones busy acquiring things during the off-season, I got these two beautiful pins.

On the subject of football, I’m not really a football fan, but I’ve been trying to keep myself occupied instead of just moping about waiting for baseball to start again. I have been a Bills fan since I lived in Buffalo, it wasn’t that hard to abandon the Bucs when I left Florida, and I still am. However, I decided I can root for two teams. I picked the Ravens for 3 reason. One is they beat the Steelers (TWICE!) and I hate the Steelers. Two is their uniforms are purple (pretty!). Third is the quarterback is a real cutie (his wife is pregnant with their first baby, how presh is that!). So I bought some cute purple stuff, a t-shirt, some fuzzy socks and a dog tag (it has an engraveable back, I don’t know what I would put there but if I ever do, ….. So I am hoping they make it to the superbowl. If not them, maybe the Giants, I can root for the Giants, they are almost a New York team.

2011 GIBBYs Greatness in Baseball Yearly Awards

The categories are listed below. Of course I voted for the Yankee players, maybe I’m prejudiced, but if I didn’t believe the players were the best, ….

Anyway if you click on this link, you can vote for the players you think are great!
Player
Starting Pitcher
Rookie
Closer
Setup Man
Defensive Player
Breakout Player
Comeback Player
Wow Factor
Manager
Executive
Postseason MVP

Notes from the baseball world (and some thoughts from me)

After two days, Ramos rescued in Venezuela

Starting with some good news.

Papelbon agrees to four-year deal with Phillies

And this means I don’t have to stop hating Papelbon

Yankees continue to rake in postseason awards

Outfielder Curtis Granderson named the AL’s Outstanding Player in the 2011 Players Choice Awards, as selected by Major League players.

Gardner was given a nod with his second consecutive Fielding Bible Award, indicative of the best fielder at a position in 2011, as announced in “The Bill James Handbook”.

Granderson was tabbed as the Bombers’ Player of the Year, closer Mariano Rivera took honors as the team’s Pitcher of the Year and right-hander Ivan Nova’s rookie campaign earned respect as the Yankees’ Breakout Player of the Year.

Granderson and second baseman Robinson Cano selected for AL Silver Slugger Awards at their respective positions, as announced by Louisville Slugger. (Curtis’ first and Robbie’s third)

Grandy, Cano among All-Stars headed to Taiwan

Another double-header because of the stupid freaking rain!

~~ Yankees 6, Red Sox 2 ~~

The pitchers for the first game of this double-header are Wakefield for the Red Sox and A.J. Burnett for NYY. Someone shoot me now.

Gardner and Jeter bunted, both came around to score. Then in the third inning Jorge hits a two run home run, 4-0 Yankees. And the Rays are leading in their game. Since this won’t be posted until after the game and no one is here to read it, “Please don’t melt down, implode, fall apart, or anything else. OK AJ? Please hold it together for your devoted fan (I might be the only one left).”

Oh Captain! My captain. And no, I don’t think he did touch home plate. Until he reached back and tagged AFTER he was called safe. I almost feel sorry for Tim Wakefield, almost.

Hate Ellsbury, all three hits have come off Ellsbury. If it wasn’t for him AJ would have a no-hitter. I will hate him more if he’s gets MVP instead of a Yankee.

And with that hit Derek is now hitting 300 and the Yankees lead 6-2.

Guess Big Sloppy was tired of walking. AJ doesn’t usually melt down this late in the game does he? OH NICE PLAY! Good fielding by Laird and AJ, 3-6-1 double-play.

AJ pitched into the 8th, D-Rob came in to pitch to Ellsbury, who hit two home runs off AJ, and struck him out. Then D-Rob pitched a scoreless ninth saving Mo and Soriano for tonight’s game if needed.

~~ Questo è tutto, dice la principessa ~~ Sunday September 25, 2011 😛

Rain, Rain, GO AWAY!

~~ Yankees 5, Orioles 3 ~~

There was a four hour rain delay, can you believe it? All the Yankee fans (ok, me and one other, maybe two) are blaming Buck. When you think about it, if the Orioles had agreed to the double-header on that Friday, Yankees would still have a day to play a make-up game and wouldn’t have had to play yesterday. It is what is, can’t change it now. So the delay was longer then the game. I went to bed, couldn’t take it anymore.

Phil Hughes gave up 2 runs in six innings. Not great, not terrible and Logan gave up the other run. The rest of the bull pen kept the Orioles to three runs and Mo picked up save number 39.

Posada, Cervelli and Gardner each hit home runs. That Cervelli is proving all the haters wrong! What a little firebrand.

The rain helped and hindered both teams. In the end, Yankees win.

~~ Questo è tutto, dice la principessa ~~ Tuesday, September 6, 2011 😛