The Girl Who Loved Andy Pettitte

The Yankees have faced two not very good Rangers pitchers in a row and have scraped out a total of 2 runs in infuriating fashion. It’s not often that you get to face a pitcher who is worse when he’s not pitching at Arlington but the Yankees apparently got confused and thought they were in 2002 last night when Kevin Millwood was on the mound.

So yeah, the offense needs some work because there is a lot wrong with it at the moment. Hideki Matsui is out for god knows how long, Robinson Cano is getting better but still isn’t showing much power, something is seriously wrong with Derek Jeter who is posting career lows across the board, Melky Cabrera has fallen off a steep cliff into sucksville and Brett Gardner is not the answer.

I don’t care that he is a “clubhouse cancer” because baseball is a sport of individuals, I don’t care about any controversy he may create, I don’t care that he is a total jerk to everyone. What I know about Barry Bonds is that last year he had an OBP of .480, a Slugging Percentage of .565 and an OPS+ of 172. Even if he regresses hard and ONLY has an OBP of .400 that is still astoundingly useful.

Shawn Chacon attempts to kill Ed Wade, which as far as most people (including me) are concerned makes him a True American Hero and is immediately cut. Manny Ramirez shoves the Boston travel secretary to the ground because he tells him he might not be able to get him 16 tickets for a game and he isn’t disciplined at all as far as anyone can tell. I don’t expect Manny to get cut from the Red Sox, but surely you’d think there would be some sort of repercussion made public. Of course now that everyone is whining, maybe he’ll get fined a puny amount.

Ramirez had requested 16 tickets from Jack McCormick for Saturday’s game against the Astros, the report said.

After McCormick said that might not be possible, Ramirez replied by yelling, “Just do your job,” according to Monday’s report.

Ramirez and McCormick later discussed the incident in a private meeting, during which the left fielder made amends.

“That’s over,” Ramirez said Sunday, according to the report. “We’re fine now.”

Boston manager Terry Francona said the team had resolved the matter and was “satisfied with how we handled this.”

“Sometimes things happen,” Francona said, according to The Journal. “And when they do, we choose to handle them internally.”

Said McCormick: “It was an unfortunate misunderstanding and it’s over with as far as I’m concerned.”

See, it’s ok! He apologized!

I really, really really hate the Angels. They play the Yankees every years on Old Timer’s Day, which is my favorite event at Yankee Stadium, and every year the Yankees lose. In 1998, the Yankees had a losing record to only one team, the Angels.

So, don’t get down on me because I am excited that the Angels lost a no-hitter on two errors and a sacrifice fly. It’s true–it just happened.

Excepting things like World Series wins and Yankees pitchers throwing perfect games nothing will ever top this for me.

Nice game for Andy, tonight, though it would have been better without the two homeruns. Neither of them were off bad pitches this time, and honestly David Wright has been absolutely smashing lefties this year so I was worried about it all game. He probably could have gone for 7 innings (he had only thrown 88 pitches and the bottomish of the order was up), but I think the team wanted to be careful since he was sat for more than an hour when you account for both the rain delay and the top of the 6th inning.

Since MLB.com still hasn’t gotten with the picture and doesn’t let you embed videos, click here for the play of the game.

Andy’s been on a roll, but he has also been facing offensively inferior teams. He’ll be starting in this upcoming Red Sox series so hopefully this run of good games after that awful, awful Kansas City outing (I was traumatized) is about his ability and not the other teams. I certainly hope it is!

The only things I am willing to discuss about this game right now are:

Man wearing a Kaz Matsui jersey–why would anyone spend money on this? If you spent money on it, why wear it out of the house ever?

David Wright’s incredibly horrible shoes:

LaTroy Hawkins needs to be DFAd and Russ Ohlendorf needs an extended–if not permanent–trip to Scranton.

A few days ago ESPN’s Daily Poll was “Who is your favorite Jason Giambi”. I forgot about it briefly until I stumbled on the screenshot I took of it. I just want to record this for history:

Also, I voted for Team USA Giambi because he’s so hilariously skinny. Clean cut Giambi on the other hand, is frightening.

Ugh, it’s official:

I know they’re hoping to capture some of the “hot streak” Ponson had in a bottle and there is no Roger Clemens to sign this year but I feel this is going to be an absolute disaster. Is there any way to heal Chien-Ming Wang faster because I miss him so much already.

Other pitching matchups in the series:

Friday (Game 1) - Dan Giese vs Mike Pelfrey
Saturday - Andy Pettitte vs Johan Santana
Sunday - Oliver Perez vs Darrel Rasner

Going through some really old comics of mine, I found this ad from about 1997:

Not sure what a shortstop has to do with runners never reaching second but hey, it’s cute.

I went to the first game of my Staten Island Yankees ticket plan today, and was very excited to see Pat Venditte pitching. I even used my camera to grab some videos:

End of his warmups, you can see him switch arms here:

First batter, throwing lefty:

Second batter, throwing righty:

Third batter: throwing lefty again:

I know Damon Oppenheimer has said that Venditte is a right handed prospect so I am going to ride this awesome train until he has to focus more. I really enjoyed seeing how different his delivery using the right and left arms are.

Two series, two sweeps in a row. This is a good thing, because other than the Oswalt/Wang matchup things were pretty lopsided in the Yankees favor. If they can’t sweep the Padres this year, well I just don’t want to think about it.

Tonight the Reds series starts and pitching for Cincinnati is Edison Volquez who has been very good so far this year. I don’t really believe the Yankees will put much up against him but we’ll see. It would be great to get a 10 game winning streak going like the one they put together last year.

Another question mark game for me in this series is Sunday, which is a Pettitte/Johnny Cueto matchup. Cueto has the potential to be a very excellent pitcher and started off well but then started walking too many people and he uses too many pitches so he doesn’t last as long in games as you’d like. If the Yankees are patient they can probably smack him around.

Getting either pitcher out quick would be wonderful, though, as the Reds don’t have a good bullpen. However their lineup has a lot of power in it so if Mussina/Giese/Pettitte slip up it could cost the Yankees dearly.

…

Jason Giambi’s mustache is the source of his power, but everyone already knew that.

Curt Schilling is done throwing baseballs for the season and maybe forever. Too bad this gives him more time to talk.

Tino Martinez and Davey Johnson will be managing the Futures Game during All Star Weekend, both keeping up a New York theme and exciting me because I do love the Tino.