Tagged: first place
This is Fuuun…
For the first time in my brief time as a Yankee fan, I can peacefully say without objection: Red Sox suck, Red Sox suck.
Mwahahahahaha.
Since the All-Star break, the Yankees have been about as close to unbeatable as humanly possible, as we’ve gone from a few games out of first place to tied for the best record in the game. We are, without a doubt, the best team in baseball, and I think that that’s pretty clear. We’re tied… for the best record in the game… and we play in the AL East, where we have a comfortable 3.5 lead. I feel like a Red Sox fan!
And hey, you others might think that us Yankee fans are being too spoiled and stuck up about our success. But the people who say that are probably on non-first place teams, and therefore are envious of our sexiness, basically.
Because, we’re really, really, sexy.
I was about to post up a suggestive photo(not of myself, of a hot Yankee girl, put down the barfbag… unless you’re into me, in which case, *wink*) but I thought better of it. Google Images, men. That’s all I’m saying. 😛
Anyway, there was a massive load of trades yesterday, and the Yankees made one, but it wasn’t… it wasn’t a big move, which doesn’t surprise me, but apparently it surprises other Yankee fans. We traded for minor league righty starting pitcher Jason Hirsh. Now, let me give you a little information on Hirsh in case you wanted to know.
Jason Hirsh is, first of all, still somewhat young. He’s 27 years of age, born in Santa Monica, California, and of the Jewish faith. He has a decent amount of MLB experience, as a starter in 9 games in his rookie season with the Astros in 2006. In 2007, he was a member of the NL champion Colorado Rockies, starting in 19 games with them. His numbers were not impressive; 5-7, 4.81 ERA, 112 innings pitched, but considering he had a 6.04 earned run average in ’06, he really didn’t do a bad job in Denver. Last year he pitched 8.2 innings, with a 55 ERA+(not good). This year, pitching solely in AAA Colorado Springs, he’s been very ineffective, with a 6-7 record and a 6.66 (ZOMG POSSESSED BY THE DEVIL) ERA. He’s a former AA all star, a guy who, according to this scouting report, has or at least had really good stuff. But according to my video game, his stuff ain’t that impressive. Here’s Wikipedia’s scouting report on him, notably a little dated:
“Hirsh has good leverage and pitches down to hitters. Hirsh had one of the most refined repertoires in Triple-A in 2006. He has a plus 2-seam fastball that has sink and good movement at 91-94 mph, while Hirsh’s plus hard-breaking slider is consistent and has bite at 80-86 mph (managers rated it the best breaking ball in the Texas League). Hirsh continues to refine his moderate changeup, which has fair deception and movement in the low-80s. He also throws a 4-seam fastball in the 94-96 mph range, and touches 97-98. [10][11] He’s not afraid to pitch inside, and throws strikes to both sides of the plate.”
Hirsh is also big and pretty athletic, he’s 6’8″ and 250 pounds, no lightweight by any stretch of the imagination. He might not pitch at all this yet, this move was simply to get a little depth at the starting pitcher position and, frankly, they made a pretty nice move for what they were looking for.
Today’s Song of the Day is the most gangsta song ever, and I picked it partially because I feel like a gangsta, and partially because the Red Sox need to “run n!gga run n!gga, duck n!gga, duck n!gga, run motherf–ker run”. I’m really enjoying first place. The Song of the Day today is Vato by Snoop Dogg.
Stay positive, Yankee fans.
-EJ the Kid From New York
Fun with Special Effects!
Nick Swisher summons energy from the sky…
AND BLASTS GABE GROSS WITH A SPIRIT BOMB!!!!
Song of the Day is Sound of Madness by Shinedown.
Stay positive, Yankee fans.
-EJ the Kid From New York
Santa Maria!
We won again yesterday, 6-3, thanks to a good inning offensively and another nice 7 inning outing by Sabathia.
The highlight of the game was arguably Mark Teixeira’s 2 run blast, a shot into the 2nd deck in right field that was his 24th of the year, putting him into a 4 way tie for the league lead in home runs.
But for some reason, I don’t feel like our 7 game winning streak is really that big of a highlight. I feel like something else happened in the MLB yesterday that was more significant. Hey, do you know if something big happened in Chicago yesterday?
Oh yeeeeah!
Mad props to Mark Buehrle for throwing only the 18th perfect game in MLB history.
Mad props to Ozzie Guillen for putting Dewayne Wise in on defense in the ninth inning.
Mad props to Dewayne Wise for making quite arguably the catch of the year.
Mad props to Ramon Castro, the catcher of Buehrle’s perfect game and New York Met at the beginning of the year(Ahaha! Ahah! Ahhh…).
Oh, and there’s also some trade news, and it’s pretty big as well.
Matt Holliday is going from Oakland to St Louis for 3 Cardinal prospects, so now the Oakland A’s are no longer the Hollid A’s.
I give mad props to Billy Beane for trading a big money 2 and a half month rental to the Cardinals for their best prospects and two other pretty good ones. If the Cardinals don’t make it to the NLCS at least, he’s coming to us I would think. I don’t know how Beane pulls some of these trades off. In the future, the A’s are looking to be pretty beast.
However, until this season ends, barring injury, the Cardinals now have one of the most monstrous lineups in the game. You have Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday back-to-back, follwoed by Ryan Ludwick, a guy who was great last year and is really starting to rake this season following kind of a slow start. It’s hard to find 3-4-5s better than that. And then you have Mark DeRosa, who can play any position and can swing the bat better than a lot of guys, and you couple it with that pitching staff which is truly dominant sometimes and coached by Dave Duncan, than you have one of the best teams in baseball. They’ve got to at least get some consideration for the World Series with the ballclub they’ve got.
So that’s it for today’s blog, hopefully we can pull off a series sweep of the now Matt Holliday-less Athletics.
The Song of the Day is Grey by Yellowcard.
Stay positive, Yankee fans.
-EJ the Kid From New York
Yankees SERGE To First Place
Muahahaha.
The Yankees are in first place thanks to great defense and good pitching by Sergio Mitre, combined with timely hitting. We’re executing everything as well as we need to. We’re SO GOOD!
Oh yeah, and the Red Sox have also apparently engaged in an encounter with THE ENDCAT.
See that Julia? Worked it into a post about the Yankees. Rico suave…
In all seriousness, Sergio(one of the coolest Hispanic names btw, cause then you can call him SERGE) had his sanker last night, and Mitre wasn’t playing around with that thing either. That was a SANKER. It had magnificent action on it at times with good velocity and the location was good.
As I’m writing this, Derek Jeter has just whacked a double into left center. DJ’s really surprised me this year; hitting for a great average, stealing some bases, even knocking the ball out of the park. Any time you can get that outta Captain Crunch, you’ve gotta appreciate.
Hey look at that, A-Rod with an RBI knock. 1-0 already! Jeez’m.
Anyways, back to the matter at hand, which is…
…the power sinker of Sergio Mitre. While his final linescore of 5.2 innings pitched, 3 earned runs, 8 hits doesn’t seem all that impressive, keep in mind that Brian Roberts got 3 of those hits and that two of them came in the last innning he pitched.
4-0 Yankees! Two run single for Swisher! This is amazing!
Sergio Mitre could definitely be an effective, strong 5th starter for the Yankees judging on that stuff and command. He has a tough, 92-93 mph sinker that just takes a nosedive sometimes, a slow slurvey slider that can fool hitters at times, and a decent changeup, and he locates those three options pretty well. I’d like it if he can continue what he did in his first start throughout his tenure with us. It’s all that we really need from him.
Hopefully this is no Matt DeSalvo flash in the pan here.
And as for the Red Sox?
Well, they’ve just made a trade for Adam LaRoche with the Pirates, so that’s really got to suck for Andy LaRoche, his brother. This acquisition of LaRoche has got to mean something’s up with Mike Lowell or maybe even Big Papi. So something’s up there. Another reason they’re struggling is because of two acquisitions in which I remember I was never high on in the first place: Brad Penny and John Smoltz. I remember there was a lot of fuss over both signings. People were saying it was a good acquisition, getting Penny because he’s a former all star, he could give them something etc. I was all “Whatchu talkin’ bout, Willis?” on that, and I knew that Brad Penny was going to have a bad year. You can see that in my comparison of the Yanks’ and Red Sox’ rotation.
And the second acquisition was John Smoltz. People were thinking he’d be a great veteran presence who’d still be able to dominate at times. They thought he’d return to his injury and go back to his dominant ’07 form, and that he’d be a great presence in the postseason. That’s the one thing they brought up the most, the postseason. Well ladies and gentlemen, he was injured and he’s also 42 years old(and by the way looks every bit of it).
So now the Red Sox are frustrated, as you can probably tell from the above image of John Smoltz. They’ve scuffled all the way to 2nd place, and now they’ve got to watch out for them Rangers and Rays. Tampa Bay is 4 days away from making my pre season predictions for the playoffs even more ballsy and fairly correct(I’m still recovering from the Indians and Mets prediction though).
The Song of the Day is Workin’ by Good Charlotte and Young Dre…
Stay positive, Yankee fans! 4-0 Bombers and we’re in first!
-EJ the Kid From New York
Reduncutron
This 2nd half for the Bombers has only one word to describe it:
Reduncutron.
Don’t ask what it means.
After Hideki Matsui’s long home run to win the game in walk-off fashion, the Yankees have won their first 4 following the All-Star break and are now tied up with the Red Sox at the top of the AL East thanks to my second favorite team, the Tex-izz Rangers.
I didn’t even jump around and shout like I usually do when there’s a walkoff when Matsui hit it out last night. I simply repeated in a calm voice, “Unbelievable.” Because, while it is unbelievable what we’re doing right now, we’ve been playing so well and doing this so often… simply reduncutron.
Song of the Day is A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 hit Check The Rhime.
Stay positive, Yankee fans.
-EJ the Kid From New York
I’ve Always Loved the Royals.
Summarizing the Draft
Yes, I’m still alive.
I don’t like being in second place, but I gotta admit, the Red Sox are a great team. I was very balls-to-the-wall in saying that the Red Sox wouldn’t make the postseason this year, and unfortunately, my plane has just hit a building. But now it’s time for me to discuss something I love discussing. Why? I dunno. I just do.
It’s the MLB Draft. As you know, there’s one every year, and I enjoyed watching the first few picks before the game came on. We had a few interesting picks all over the place this season. Our first overall pick was Zachary Heathcott, or Slade Heathcott, a toolsy outfielder from Texas High School(guess where that is).
Heathy(he’s already got a nickname, w00t) is 18 years old and is very similar to Grady Sizemore, not just because he’s got power, speed, and is a plus defender at the same position that Sizemore plays in. Heathcott also looks very similar to Sizemore in my opinion. The picture that MLB Network showed looked a lot more like Sizemore than the only one I got here. MLB.com describes him as an “intense competitor who’s only question is about some character issues off the field”.
Oooh.
I don’t know what to think of this. I mean, I love having guys like this on a team. Fiery. Hot-tempered. Ready to beat someone. Okay, maybe not that bad. But those guys fire up a team, they’re interesting.
On the other hand, it’s interesting that the New York Yankees would pick a guy with questionable character issues. That’s something the Bombers are well-known for not really tolerating. I hope he can keep it together off the field, obviously.
The name of the game in this draft for the Yanks was college pitching. College pitchers, all over the board.
From righty Adam Warren outta UNC Chapel Hill to Gavin Brooks, a finesse southpaw(as far as I can tell) from UC Los Angeles. You got pick 855, Aaron Meade from Mizzou State, a lefty I know nothing about. I know nothing about any of these guys except from what I see in scouting videos and that they’re college pitchers.
Also worth noting, in the 40th round, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim drafted Asaad Ali, son of boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Asaad is a big bodied catcher who had a good season of high school ball last year, leading his team to a division title and batted .367. The Angels scouting director, former no. 1 pick Eddie Bane, stated that the Angels want him to get in better shape, since he is pretty overweight. Ali was adopted by the Ali family back in 92 and is the youngest of their nine children. Yes, nine.
Well, that’s it. Let’s hope we can get a win today over them darn Red Sox and force a tie of first place to end the series. Definitely not how we wanted it to be, but I’m still pretty satisfied with our season thus far.
Stay positive, Yankee fans.
-EJ the Kid From New York
EDIT: The Yankees drafted first baseman Luke Murton, kid brother of Colorado Rockies outfielder Matt Murton, making this the second consecutive season that the Yanks have drafted a player who’s brother is an MLB player. A little more odd: last year’s younger brother, Luke Greinke, is the brother of Kansas City ace Zack Greinke, making both younger brothers of Major League Baseball players named Luke.
The Taste of First Place
Does first place ever taste bitter?
Sour, maybe?
It doesn’t seem like it ever does. For the first time ever, Joe Girardi’s Yankees are in first place in the AL East standings, and it’s a compelling feeling. It’s not a sweet, calming feeling; rather, it’s the feeling of domination over the other teams in the standings. For a while, the Red Sox have been dominating the American League East, and the Blue Jays were leading in it earlier this year, they were running 100 mph before slamming themselves into a wall. So now check out the white hot Yankees, all of a suddden they’re head honcho. Bow down to the kings!
We’ve got pitching, hitting, defense and we do everything we need to to win. We are the 2009 Yankees, and as you can tell, we feel pretty confident right now.
But wouldn’t you feel the same if your ballclub was so darn good? And don’t deny it, we are fabulous.
…I don’t know what else to talk about. Ooo, Phobia by Breaking Benjamin‘s a fantastic album and if you are a modern rock fan, you should undoubtably buy that album. I bought it off iTunes a few days ago, and it’s unbelievable. I listen to it whenever I get the chance to get a hold of my iPod, it’s so terrific, words cannot describe how I feel about this album. Have I emphasized my point enough? It’s amazing. Get it. Now!
Stay positive, Yankee fans!
-EJ the Kid From New York
The Squad 