I'm glad to see that Granderson is finally hitting - he's .427 in his last six games. The center fielder is an easy guy to root for, between his engaging personality, and all the charity work that he does. Grandy is also a fellow blogger, so how could I not like him!
Granderson was one of Brian Cashman's big acquisitions this winter; Javier Vazquez was the other one. And Javy struggled so much in the first month of the year that he looked like Cashman's Folly. But since then, his ERA has dropped over five runs, and he's pitched more like the Atlanta Braves ace he was last year, and not the hurler Yankee fans remember from October 2004.
Anyhow, Granderson and Vazquez were the two big heroes of the night. But strangely enough, the New York Post didn't see fit to mention either of them on today's back page. Instead, with their cynical "Who Needs 'Em!" headline, Joba Chamberlain and Alex Rodriguez are lumped together as the forces of evil in Yankeeland. See why I complain about the media!Maybe the Post is just mad that four hours after a headline on a George King blog entry claimed that "Girardi says he is sticking with Joba," Girardi went to Dave Robertson and Boone Logan instead!
As for Joba, I think Girardi is doing the right thing in trying something different. If Joba name were Joe Blow, and not Joba Chamberlain, he would have been demoted a long time ago.
A-Rod, of course, did not hit #600, but he did appear to have a lot of Yankee fans in the house cheering him on. I squawked a lot yesterday about Yankee attendance. As Squawker reader Peggy noted, the Indians have the worst attendance in the majors, averaging around 16K a game. For what it's worth, last night's attendance was 27,224, which ranks third for Cleveland's home game attendance, after Opening Day and Stephen Strasburg's second major league game.
What do you think? Tell us about it!
4 comments:
I'm getting kind of sick of talking about Joba, but holy hell, there's no reason to send Joba to the minors. His strikeouts, walks, and home runs are fine, he's mostly being victimized by a mechanical hitch and an unbelievable .399 BABIP. Those aren't things he's going to get worked out in the minors.
Agreed on the media though. I mean, before last night A-Rod was 8-15 with 3 doubles since hitting #599, but the New York media was acting like he was slumping.
8-for-15 with 3 doubles? I'd love to have a "slump" like that. I'd even eat "Roger Maris eggs" to get into a slump like that! (That won't make sense unless you've seen the movie "61*.")
Actually, the comparison with Maris is apt. Not since Maris has a Yankee been pursued by the media and psycholanalyzed by the media and the fans like A-Rod, not even Reggie Jackson.
And when Roger hit Number 61, there were 23,000 fans in The Stadium, seemingly all of them in right field, hoping to catch the ball that a Sacramento restaurateur had a $5,000 bounty on. Last night, John Sterling kept commenting on the attendance at Jacobs Field (or whatever corporate name they're calling it now), and how a certain area in left-center, by the corner of the bleachers, filled up whenever A-Rod came to the plate, and then scattered when his at-bat was over.
I don't care who steps up to the plate for the Yankees and gets the winning runs home, or who takes the mound for them and gets the big outs, as long as said runs and said outs come. And if A-Rod is getting it done with singles, doubles, walks and good defense, that's fine with me.
But then, we are talking about the New York Post here. The Times is the face New York prefers to show the rest of the world, the Daily News is the face New York prefers to show itself, and the Post is a face only a mother could love.
Eh, I gotta disagree, Brien. If Joba's problems really are due to a mechanical hitch, then that seems a situation where he should go to the minors, so they can fix it.
I do not think sending Joba to the minors is the right move or the realistic move. Aside from totally destroying whatever figment of confidence he has left, teams typically don't demote someone from "setup role" all the way to A-Ball in one step. That's pretty reactionary.
Secondly, it's not really been determined if it is a matter of mechanics. Even if it were, most of us are not in a position where we could actually assess that, so when people propose the idea of sending a pitcher to the minors to get "fixed," they forget it's not always as simple as that. Sending pitchers back down to the minors to revamp their arsenal doesn't usually end up with the same stellar results of Roy Halladay. Food for thought...
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