• Percentage results have been added, both actual and public only
• Total number of votes cast by each voter has been added
• I tried to make it look a little less ugly, but didn’t really succeed.

The actual results and public ballot results were pretty close in most cases, which is nice. There were some exceptions, of course.

• Lots of people who don’t make their ballots public love Don Mattingly. He got 17.8% of the total vote but just under 10% from the public ballots.
• Jack Morris was on 58.7% of public ballots, and 66.7% total ballots.
• Tim Raines was the opposite of Morris. He was on 57.14% of public ballots and 48.7% total ballots.

Tim Raines received 37.5% of the total vote last year, so I was really happy to see him gain 10%. It means he will probably hang on through the crazy ballot time coming up and has a real chance to get voted in by the writers at some point.

You can check out the final version of everything here. If work stops kicking my ass I’ll see if I can figure out anything fun to do with it in the next few days.

A bunch of pigeons were hanging around in Center Field for the first couple of innings.

The Mariners vs CC Sabathia: Nope

Bye-bye tarp

Fries left behind in the rain. Soggy but perhaps still edible?

I’ve seen Betances a few times now, and this was the worst I’ve seen him. His secondary stuff, particularly his curveball, looked great and he got a ton of swing and misses on everything but he had a lot of problems locating his pitches. Because of his stuff, he wasn’t all that hittable but a lot of the time he was so far off the plate that nobody was going to swing. On a positive note, what I liked other than the whiffs was that he was able to come back out after a rough inning in the fourth (a HBP, a walk and a few singles) and rebound to have a mostly uneventful fifth, striking out two.

If you haven’t seen him before, here is some video of Betances’ pitching motions from warming up before the start of an inning:

Austine Romine got knocked around in a collision at homeplate a few days ago and nobody is quite sure what is going on with him, so he was not in the lineup. That leaves Trenton kinda boring from a prospecting point of view outside of Corban Joseph. I am admittedly a fan of Joseph, and in the time I’ve seen him he’s improved his defense at second and he holds his own at the plate. He’s not an outstanding prospect but he has the chance to be a solid player, I think. Especially if he can stick at second base. Here’s a picture of him at the plate for your enjoyment.

While watching minor league shortstops is a barf party most of the time every now and then someone like Adeiny Hechavarria comes along and gives you something pleasant to watch. When I saw Hechavarria last year, he was impressive but sometimes went for splashy plays and made a few mistakes. Last night he showed great range on both popups and groundballs, and was completely on in the field. His bat looked as bad as it did the last time I saw him, but I do think that he’ll get every shot to start in the majors with the hope that his bat is below average and not outright horrible.

As fun as it was to listen to impatient people whine about Betances the real highlight of the game was Sal “Looks like a guy who knows a guy” Fasano. He was working as the 3B coach on top of his managerial duties for New Hampshire and even put on a catcher’s mask and warmed up a pitcher between innings.

While coming out to give the umpire the lineup card he took the time to knock out the Thunder mascots. Very impressive.

DeAngelo Mack clearly knew I was in attendance and went 4-4 at the plate so that was nice. As I mentioned earlier I neglected to actually take any pictures but he’s been holding his own at the plate so I think that even after Melky Mesa comes off the DL they’ll find space for him on the roster so I’ll get to see him again this year.

Other than that, not much to report about the game. It went extra innings so I got a coupon for WaWa coffee I intend to use at some point before it expires and we harassed Travis D’Arnaud into talking to us but that’s all I have to report.

Here’s the rest of my set from the game if you want to look at some bad pictures:

Trenton Thunder 06-04-2011

The Staten Island Yankees get a special award for accomplishing the impossible and being even more aggravating about season ticket renewals than their big brother in the Bronx. They use a system that they call “Live Seating”. What Live Seating does is throw out any seniority and logical way of doing things and instructs everyone to call the ticket office at the same time. First come, first serve!

How this winds up working is that their phones are busy the whole day and the ticket system goes down at least once. I’ve never actually gotten through to a person while calling during this process, having to either leave a message to call back or sending an email telling them I can’t get through here are my seat preferences blahblahblah. This means that the process isn’t actually first come first serve and also that it doesn’t really work.

It’s the kind of process, actually, that makes me wonder why anyone thought it was a good idea ever. Even if you only have, say, 500 season ticket and mini plan holders why would you implement something where you instruct them to all call a number at the same time using seating location as the impetus? Just send out a renewal form using the plan people had last year and tell them to call for upgrades or to change plans. Maybe people can—gasp!!!—even keep the same seats two years in a row? I guess whoever makes these decisions is too busy thinking of great ways to market the luxury experience on Staten Island.

The last few years SI did give renewals an option to send in their seating preferences if you couldn’t or didn’t want to participate in the live seating fiasco but this year apparently it’s all done by blocking time out of your day to try and get through to the ticket office. I only have the email they sent people since the renewal materials they tell me were sent never arrived in my mailbox (full disclosure: I don’t believe they actually sent them to me). You do have a full business week to call and take care of things as they are not crazy enough to give people only one day to take care of their tickets.

I just want to give the team money without having to play phone tag. I promise that if it goes nice and easy Monday I will write up another post giving them mega-props.

Farnsworth came to the Yankees when I was once again able to attend a large number of games a year after working nights (and having no money anyway) for years. This meant that I got to see him a lot—much, much more than I wanted to for sure. To welcome him back to the AL East here are some of my lasting memories involving Kyle Farnsworth of mine at Yankee Stadium.

Old Timer’s Day 2007 – By the time Old Timer’s Day rolled around in 2007 pretty much everyone who rooted for the Yankees also rooted for Farnsworth to get a blister and go on the DL so they wouldn’t have to watch him pitch. I was sitting in the Loge in left field for the game which gave me a good view of the Yankees bullpen. At one point, Farnsworth got up and started tossing. From my seats you could hear the glove hitting the catcher’s mitt so people looked over to see who it was getting ready. Someone yelled out “ARGH IT’S FARNSWORTH” and a large percentage of those within hearing distance let out a big groan. Some (probably drunk) fans threw their food garbage in the general direction of the bullpen and got kicked out.

September 17th, 2007 vs Baltimore – In 2007 the Yankees had enough unsold inventory in the outer reaches of the Tier Box and Tier Reserve that they discounted a huge chunk of the games in September to the $5 price level. I picked up a pair of tickets for a game versus the Orioles and went with a friend. The game itself was pretty boring and laidback, the Yankees had pretty much locked up a spot in the playoffs and had a pretty substantial lead over Baltimore for most of the game. In fact, pretty much the only things I remember about the game before Farnsworth came in are that Daniel Cabrera was starting and there was an annoying guy next to me who kept talking about how his granddad went to see the Giants play at the Polo Grounds in Brooklyn all the time (I did not stab him though I did consider doing so).

The Yankees went into the 9th in a non-save situation and so Kyle Farnsworth came out to finish Baltimore off. It should have been easy—or at least not too difficult—but oh no it was never easy with Kyle. There were very few people left in the stadium at this point and as the Orioles kept not making outs we grew very irate. Finally someone yelled out “BRING BACK PROCTOR” which promptly started a cheer among the few thousand left at the stadium of “WE WANT PROCTOR”. It lasted until Joe Torre hit the panic button and got Mariano up in the bullpen (it turned into a save situation by that point, of course) after which the focus of the crowd shifted to being annoyed that Mariano had to come in (he didn’t really but that’s a whole other line of discourse). Before recording the last out Mariano gave up an RBI double to that bastard Aubrey Huff and we very rationally decided it was Farnsworth’s fault.

April 30th 2008 vs Detroit – This game was bad. The weather was cold and wet, the Yankees got to Jeremy Bonderman early then stopped hitting, and Andy Pettitte pitched badly. The game started to slip away from the Yankees, and Farnsworth came in to pitch the 8th inning to try and keep the deficit at three runs. My boyfriend who was even crankier than me at this point looked at me and said “If he gives up a homerun, we are going home.” I don’t really like leaving games early, but if you’re not having any fun and the person/people you’re with are miserable I don’t see a reason to stay so I agreed to his condition.

Farnsworth gave up a homerun immediately to Placido Polanco (his second of the game!!!), which caused Chris to jump up and scream something about hating Farnsworth and going home and hating Farnsworth. I said goodbye to my row-mates, told them I’d be at the next game in our plan and shuffled out of the stadium. As we walked down the ramps from the Tier there was a lot more yelling about Farnsworth from various parties. It wasn’t Kyle’s fault that the game was bad he just didn’t help things.

Here’s a link to the spreadsheet, and here’s an embed:

Per usual if you find any ballots please let me know, I am bound to miss some even with news and blog searches and Google alerts. I appreciate your help, kind audience.

As a reward I will highlight the worst ballots that I come across.

Pettitte’s back was locked up, hamstrings tight, leg grabbed in G2 of ALDS. Pitched G3 in ALCS to give him extra time to recover.

Two things to take away from this:

1. Andy is tough as nails. We sort of already knew this but it needs to be acknowledged again. That’s ridiculous, to pitch through that and pitch as well as he did in both of his turns during the playoffs.
2. He might actually really retire this time.

Andy has always said he is going to do what is best for his family, and that is the number one consideration when he determines to come back every year but if he feels he is unable to stay healthy for a full year there is a real chance that he will bow out gracefully. Who can blame him for that?

I’m choosing not to think about it beyond being in awe of his condition plus performance for a few weeks.

Trenton Thunder 09-09-10

It was a huge pain getting in the park, thanks to Mr. Andrew Eugene Pettitte. It was expected but the lots were almost totally full when we got there and apparently Trenton packed 8,000 people into the park. Because of this we were not able to take advantage of the Thirsty Thursday $2 beers. But we had very lovely seats to see Andy so that was okay:

Waterfront Park, Section 17, Row C

Could not really ask for a better view of my favorite baseball player pitching than what I got last night. Hooray for awesome friends.

Because of the mess getting in, my friend and I missed Andy’s first out and how a runner got on first base but saw him induce a weak groundball for a doubleplay to get out of the inning as we dashed over to our seats.

The best part about rehabbing Yankees players is that they have to adhere to the minor league dress codes they set for their affiliates. In short: They wear high socks.

Andy Pettitte in ~high socks~

High socks rule. Andy used to wear high socks in MLB but then stopped. I don’t know why, it made me sad.

Andy Pettitte and Austin Romine

There’s not really a whole lot to say about how Andy pitched. He doesn’t have the fastball a lot of the guys you see in AA feature in terms of velocity but he’s a lefty, he hasn’t yet turned into Jamie Moyer and he has very good breaking stuff. The kids he faced didn’t really stand a chance. Eric Thames whiffed so hard at one point that he blew me over.

After Andy hit his four inning max, he went into the bullpen to hit his pitch count max (he’d thrown 51 pitches in the game and was supposed to throw about 65 total) Adam Warren came out to pitch. I saw Warren quite a bit last year on Staten Island, and I like him a lot as a prospect though I’m not sure if he’ll wind up as a starter in MLB.

Adam Warren

One of the things I was taken aback by was how aggressive Warren was with his fastball which struck me as different from when I saw him 2009. I don’t have an exact count but he threw an overwhelming number of them, exactly where he wanted, and got a lot of whiffs. I didn’t see much of his secondary stuff at all, but with the command he was showing it probably wasn’t needed for this start. Going forward, that will probably have to change. Everyone loves their fastball but you have to use your other pitches as well, especially if they need some work (which Warren’s do, though they are not bad).

I took a couple of videos of his throwing motion for the audience at home:

Warren finished up the night with a line of 6IP, 3H, 3BB, 10K. Two of the strikeouts were hilarious 2 strike foul bunts.

Beyond the pitching staff, Romine has looked very tired all three times I’ve seen him in the last month. However it is his first year catching full time in a full season league so it’s understandable that he’s fading a bit. He had a little trouble handling some of Andy’s breaking stuff (two Wild Pitches were charged but one was definitely a Passed Ball). I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the Arizona Fall League with him but I assume much of it will be work on his catching and that he won’t necessarily put in a lot of time playing in games.

Trenton doesn’t have much of an offense right now with Romine looking tired, callups and Marcos Vechionacci reverting into pre-2010 form. New Hampshire’s pitcher Zack Stewart was very good, and a lineup like Trenton features at this time doesn’t stand a chance.

There were two throwing errors charged to fielders last night (one to Romine, one to Luis Nunez) but honestly they were both on Vechionacci. The throw from Nunez did bounce the the throw from Romine was right there and he just didn’t catch it. A competent first baseman would have made both plays without much effort.

In the end, Trenton pulled out a win with a walkoff homerun by Rene Rivera in the 12th inning. There weren’t many people left in the park at that point–school night and at least half the park left when Andy came out of the game–but those of us that stayed got coupons for free WaWa coffee and bragging rights.

Young Manny Banuelos was on the mound to start for Trenton. He was not at his best but his stuff mostly kept batters off balance. He got some swing and misses on high fastballs and his changeup was a killer but he used a lot of pitches early and wasn’t able to complete five innings.  He recorded six strikeouts in 4.2 innings, walking two. Akron scored two while he was on the mound but both runs scored on an errant throw by third baseman Justin Snyder, making them unearned.

I was definitely impressed by the small lefty and his stuff. He’s but 19 and obviously has a bit of fine tuning to do but the kid’s got a bright future. I would think he starts next year in Trenton getting bumped to Scranton Wilkes-Barre pretty quickly if things goes well.

Here’s a video of Banuelos tossing a pitch, to give you an idea of how he throws:

Not much effort with big results. Pretty freaking awesome.

Austin Romine, who’s been in a bit of a slump lately (likely at least partly because this is his first full season catching all the time) had a decent night at the plate. He was 1-3 with a walk and a 2B, and all of his at bats were quality. He seems to be getting his bat back on track, and he’s headed to the AFL to put a bit more work in. I’m not sure how much he’ll play there, I would be shocked if the organization wants to push him that much given the circumstances.

Austin Romine

Corban Joseph has had some trouble adjusting to AA and struggled a bit more tonight, striking out twice. I think that he’ll adjust and be okay but obviously that won’t be happening until next year. His sometimes iffy defense looked a lot better tonight than when I saw him last, he made a couple of nice rangey plays including a scoop with a nice toss to the shortstop to start a doubleplay.

Corban Joseph

Depending on what the team decides to do with David Adams it’s possible that Joseph starts out playing 3B for Trenton next year, moving back to 2B if/when Adams gets the bump up to AAA. Or vice versa, of course, but Adams is a better fielder and more likely to stick there. Neither of them are sure things at second.

Pat Venditte made his first AA appearance, which was exciting for a lot of people but not so much for me. I saw him several times on Staten Island on 2008 and knew what to expect. He was the same Pat I knew from those wonderful Short Season A days, though he only threw from the left side. His slider (from the left) still has a nasty bite and he got a strikeout and two routine groundouts.

As usual, I took a lot of pictures. If you like pictures of baby baseball players, here’s a link to the full gallery.

Trenton Thunder 09-02-10

Cito Culver hasn’t really done much offensively in the few weeks he’s been on Staten Island but I was again impressed by his defense last night. He has good range and a nice arm, though he did have an almost errant throw that was saved by Kyle Roller. He also bobbled a ball on a routineish play and was charged with an error for that. If both he and Eduardo Sosa are in Charleston next year they’ll have a very nice up the middle defense.

Gary Sanchez tried to make the fancy play on a sac bunt and threw to second instead of first, a good throw would have gotten the runner but unfortunately it was not a good throw. He got absolutely beat up once the bullpen came in. Mike Recchia and William Oliver had no control at all. Recchia threw three (THREE!) wild pitches in 1 2/3 innings of work, and walked five batters. I don’t think Sanchez really had a shot on any of the WP, they were just bad. Recchia has never displayed horrible control any time that I’ve seen him so I was a bit taken aback by his appearance.

The weirdest play in the game was a botched rundown between second and third, the runner was eventually safe at third on a dropped throw. By Kelvin De Leon. I have no idea how De Leon got there and why he was involved in the play but I was very confused felt bad for him.

Dan Burawa pitched the last two innings for Staten Island and once again his stuff looked good. He struck out three and walked two.

Here’s my videos and pictures from the night. Enjoy.

And here’s my photo dump over at Picasaweb:

Staten Island Yankees 08-27-10