We Blog Baseball!

By Sean Connolly

As a Ranger, Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez torched the Yankees, now he has become one. With the news that Jorge Posada will undergo season-ending shoulder surgery, the Yankees didn’t hesitate to make one of the biggest trades of the season and landing Rodriguez.

In the deal the Yankees gave away the the uncontrollable talent of Kyle Farnsworth who drives fans and coaches of the Yankees awol whenever he pitches. The loss of Farnsworth means that the Yankees bullpen, which has been surprisingly good this season, will have a bit of a hole. But, that hole pales in comparison to the hole that Posada has left this season.

Posada who we won’t see until next season was having his worst year yet behind the plate and at the plate where he struggled to throw out runners and failed to drive in runners. He tried to overcome the injury by playing DH and first but season ending surgery was imminent. The Yankees’ Brian Cashman and company quickly made a deal that may solve the Yankees biggest problem. Pudge is hitting .295 and has 5 home runs to go with the gun he sports behind the plate. Posada couldn’t throw out runners if they walked to second base this season and Pudge is sure to slow down runners on the base pads. Pudge has a career average of .302 and has always shown a great deal of power for a catcher. He is an all-around athlete doing it with the bat, glove, and actually has some speed for a catcher. He has earned 13 Gold Glove awards and was named AL MVP in 1999.

The Yankees so far have made all the right moves in the past two weeks filling in the holes in their team. They acquired a powerful bat in Richie Sexson, added the versatile Xavier Nady, and now add one of the greatest catchers of all time in Ivan Rodriguez. With rumors that the first place Rays may make a deal for Jason Bay, the Yankees have already kept pace by landing Rodriguez’s bat. Overall, an intelligent couple of weeks for the Yankees, something we haven’t seen for a while.

By Sean Connolly

So we’ve hit the mid-season point and a lot has changed since the beginning, but the question is will this be how it ends. Both Chicago teams, Cubs and White Sox, stand alone in first place in their respective divisions. The Mets’ season has started just as disastrous as it ended last year and the Yankees, well they’re just hanging around waiting for a trade like always. But the big surprise of this season has to be the Twins and the Rays.

Big Surprises

For a team to lose the best pitcher in baseball and get nothing good in return to be 1.5 games back in their division is astounding. The Twins have played it very quietly this season and have made themselves into contenders in the American League. Their ten game win streak came to a close this past Saturday but they easily bounced back with a win over the Milwaukee Brewers. They have a solid, young team with one of the best closers in the game in Joe Nathan. Don’t be surprised if you see this Twin team in the running for the A.L. Wild Card or even the Central Division.

The biggest surprise of the season has the be the Tampa Bay Rays though. They have shocked the American League, putting up a 49-32 record at the mid-way point and have established themselves as a legitimate threat in one of the toughest divisions in baseball, the American League East. Throughout this season people have been calling it a fluke and that it’s just luck, but with half the season gone they are atop the A.L. East and have the players to catapult them into the franchise’s first post-season. They are also beginning to bring in bigger crowds and have been rumored to possibly bring in one of the game’s biggest stars in Ken Griffey. If the Rays can complete a trade for Griffey this team will have to be considered one of the best teams in baseball.

The Second City in First

Is this their year? The Chicago Cubs have finally fielded a team that may be able to get past the curse. But that’s what they think every year. This year is different though. The Cubs have one of baseball’s most potent all-around threat in Alfonso Soriano, and are led by a fiery coach who simply knows how to win in Lou Pinella. The Cubs have the best baseball team with a record of 49-33 and are playoff bound and possibly World Series bound. As for the other side of town, the White Sox have surprised some critics and stand atop a very difficult A.L. Central with a record of 46-35. Ozzie Guillen and his team have played great baseball in a division that was etched in stone by many writers that the Detroit Tigers would win. The White Sox have a powerful team that can score at any moment, and are possibly one trade away from having a team capable of making a significant impact down the stretch.

800 miles east of Chicago sits millions of disappointed New Yorkers. The Mets are crumbling again behind poor management, poor upper management, and poor play on the field. They’ve lost their manager in Willie Randolph in an absolute fiasco that ate up thousands of headlines, and the players such as Jose Reyes, and David Wright, have yet to prove they are as good as their paycheck. Speaking of overpaid, in the Bronx the Yankees are having yet again another unpredictable, chaotic season. New skipper, Joe Girardi hasn’t shown New York much with a 44-38 record sitting 5.5 games back of the Tampa Bay Rays. Injuries of Chien-Ming Wang, Jorge Posada, and M.V.P Alex Rodriguez have hampered the Bombers’ season and have yet to prove that they the best in the bigs as they should be. A trade is looming in New York that could make or break these Yanks but with the tumultuous season they’ve had so far, Bomber fans should consider themselves lucky to only be 5.5 games out.

So with that said I’ll give you the second half predictions with who I think will end up in the playoffs come the end of the regular season.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

EAST- Boston Red Sox

CENTRAL- Detroit Tigers

WEST- Anaheim Angels

WILD CARD- Tampa Bay Rays

NATIONAL LEAGUE

EAST- Philadelphia Phillies

CENTRAL- Chicago Cubs

WEST- Los Angeles Dodgers

WILD CARD- St. Louis Cardinals

It’s begun. Baseball’s greatest rivalry. First came the buried jersey. One construction worker/fan’s attempt to reverse the Babe’s curse by burying a David Ortiz jersey beneath the new Yankee Stadium.

The excavated David Ortiz jersey

Then came the ballgames.


And if you watched the series between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park this past weekend, you’d have a heck of a time remembering it’s only April.


As far as the fans and the media were concerned, it could have been late September with the pennant at stack. Things are so hyped between the two teams that FOX broadcast the game on Saturday and ESPN took Sunday.


And because the Sox took two out of three, the media in New York has already raised the volume, worrying about the Yankee’s young star Phil Hughes, and criticizing Joe Girardi’s managing.
When it comes to the Yanks and Sox, it’s amazing how quickly things can turn.


After Friday night’s masterful showing by Yankee ace Chien-Ming Wang, Red Sox fans were worried. They were freaked out by David “Big Papi” Ortiz suddenly inability to hit the ball; they were worried that wunkerkind Clay Bucholz might have lost something one year after his magical no-hitter.

Chien-Ming Wang - Photo: Barry Chiu/Boston Globe

One night later – after rain – and Jonathan Papelbon’s blazing fastball and sinking split – it was New York’s turn to despair. It didn’t take long for New York to pile on Joe Girardi for his decision to let Mike Mussina pitch to Manny Ramirez. Manny – a one-man Yankee wrecking machine – did what he loves to do, he smacked the ball.

Manny running to first - Photo: Matthew Lee/Boston Globe

This is the way NY Newsday described it:

Up one run in the sixth inning, with Red Sox on second and third base and two outs, what would compel Girardi to go after Manny Ramirez? Before anyone could even voice such a thought, the decision backfired, with Ramirez’s two-run double on Mike Mussina’s first pitch putting the Red Sox ahead.

It’s important to put Girardi’s decision in context. If Mussina had walked Manny, he would have had to face Kevin Youklis. We’re not talking Julio Lugo here, we talking Kevin Youklis. And as great as Manny does against the Yanks, Mussina does well against him: even though he previously hit a solo home run earlier, Manny was 25-for-97, batting .258 lifetime vs Mussina. But this time, Manny got ahold of a fastball that made its way back over the plate and sent it to right centerfield. Ellsbury and Pedroia scored and a Yankee lead of 2-1 was transformed to a 3-2 deficit.

Girardi was direct: “You have to live by your decisions. There’s a lot of decisions that you’re going to make during the course of the year. Hopefully, 95 percent of them work out. But that’s not the case during this game.”

And Mussina took the blame: “Whatever the strategy was, I didn’t make a good pitch. Manny’s too good a player to make mistakes like that. He was up there ready to go, and he hit it.”

Newsweek blogger Ken Davidoff wasn’t so understanding:

That’s exactly why you take the bat out of Manny’s hands and take your chances having to be precise with Youkilis.
That’s why Girardi’s first high-profile tactical decision since he took over the Yankees manager’s office - with the understanding that he would exhibit more in-game savvy than Joe Torre - made surprisingly little sense.

Sunday night brought more pain to the Bronx Bombers. Already a bit shaky with Jorge Posada absence behind the plate, backup catcher Jose Molina’s hamstring injury revealed how easily things fall apart. The Sox, on the other hand, have managed to beautifully overcome World Series’ MVP Mike Lowell’s injury by shifting Youklis from first to third and bringing Sean Casey in to first.
Manny continued to be Manny on Sunday night, going 2-for-3 with a walk, one RBI and two runs scored.


So Round One goes to the Red Sox. But Red Soxers still have reason to worry – Big Papi’s silent bat and Matsuzaka’s propensity to walk batters.

A frustrated David Ortiz - Photo: Barry Chiu/Boston Globe

Round Two resumes at Yankee Stadium.


And just a reminder. Save some energy for the season to come. It’s still April.