Now that the stadium is closed it seems like some of the Yankees are finding it hard to get motivated to play baseball. First Hideki Matsui and now Andy Pettitte have shut their seasons down along with “The House That Ruth Built.”

Pettitte, who is normally a very strong second half pitcher, has struggled lately and has been complaining about a sore shoulder in recent weeks. Unlike Matsui he will not need surgery to repair anything, but he and the Yankees both thought that with the team eliminated from the playoffs there was no need to further tax his ailing shoulder.

“(The shoulder) has given me a little trouble,” Pettitte said. “I just wanted to go out and pitch, to do what it takes to get out there and pitch. Now that it’s over, now that we’re not going to the playoffs, there’s no sense in trying to do what it takes to go out there.”

Now that he’s shutdown for the season the free agent to be could have played his final game ever. The Yankees will entertain the idea of bringing him back on for next season, but if they don’t Pettitte has made it clear that he will either pitch for the Yankees or retire.

It is likely that the Yankees will discuss a contract with Pettitte at some point this off-season, but there are a few factors that need to be worked out first, such as whether or not Brian Cashman returns.  A new general manager might want to go in a different direction. Also the two sides could run into a money issue. Pettitte made $16 million each of the past two seasons and the Yankees would likely ask him to take a pay cut for 2009.

One thing that is telling is Joe Girardi’s stance on the issue. He wants him back and isn’t afraid to say so. The question is in what capacity does he want the southpaw back as he has also told Bernie Williams that he would like to see him come back next season, but that would be in a coach’s role. It is possible that is what Girardi was thinking for his friend Andy.

In Pettitte’s place Sidney Ponson will get the start, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Instead they should use other guys on the 40-man roster like Ian Kennedy or Chase Wright, but neither has made a start for a little while and at least Kennedy is probably getting set to pitch in the fall league.

While Mike Mussina is preparing to go after his twentieth win of the season Phil Hughes is just trying to get his first.

Injuries are what mostly has stood in Hughes’ way and I’m not just talking about this year. He has had three major injuries over the past two years and that has cost him a significant amount of time he should have spent developing.

He didn’t pitch must last season so he was not fully prepared to pitch in the majors this season. That may have led him to overexert himself and possibly could have led to the stress fracture in his ribs. So he sat on the DL for most of this season as well and when he was healthy enough to return the Yankees kept him in the minors for another month so he missed more time.

Here we are today, and he’s set to make just his second start since April tonight and he has yet to get a win. For the most part Hughes is still not ready to take on major league hitters. Sure his stuff looks good, but he can never finish off batters and he runs into wild streaks which cause him to go deep into counts while not pitching very far into games.

It’s always the same way, it was this way in 2007, same again in April, and in his last start. Hughes’ inability to put hitters away cost him a victory in his last start. He pitched pretty well in that start, but a high pitch count forced him out of the game in the forth inning and he was not credited with a win.

Luckily for Hughes the cause of this problem is also the reason why he should be able to make it through this. Although it may not be to the liking of Yankee fans. He was rushed through the minor league system. In 2005 he missed time to injuries, in 2006 he had his best and most productive year in double-A, and in 2007 he was sent to the majors way before he was ready and he started this season as one of the youngest pitchers in baseball at 21.

So now just 22, Hughes needs to start 2009 in low pressure situation. It should be about his development and not the bombers need for an emergency starter. If he goes through the Arizona Fall League this off-season ready to make the majors next season then fine, but Hughes should be worried about becoming a more refined pitcher without the pressures of being the savior of the Yankees.

If he spends 2009 in the minor leagues then so be it. He took advantage of his time down there this season by adding a cutter to his repertoire so clearly he is still learning at that level. Maybe that’s what he needs.

Here at Hot Stove we have been paying much attention to Mike Mussina these past few weeks as the aging starter gets closer to winning 20 games for the first time in his career.

He picked up win number 19 in his last start against the Blue Jays and should have a chance to get number 20 against the Red Sox on the final day of the season. The only problem is that Mussina might not be able to make the final start of the season.

Mussina was hit on the elbow by a ball off the bat of Travis Snider with one out in the third inning. Manager Joe Girardi and trainer Gene Monahan came out to check on the pitcher. He took a couple of warm up tosses and stayed in the game. He finished the inning and even managed to pitch two more, but he had to leave the game after five innings and just 73 pitches.

Mussina said he left in the fifth when his elbow stiffened and couldn’t guarantee that he’d be good enough to pitch for a chance to win 20.

“Now I gotta worry about if I can actually go out there,” Mussina said. “We’ll have to see how it feels in a couple of days.”

This sounds like bad news for Mussina. Even if he makes his next start a sore elbow could make his stuff less effective. Also he may not be able to pitch deep enough into the start as the elbow is likely to get tighter after every inning.

On top of all of that he is going to be facing a tough offense in the Red Sox who he has a 1-2 record and a 4.57 ERA against. Although most of that was damage done by Manny Ramirez, but Mussina has never faced Jason Bay who has a .910 OPS since joining Boston.

Although he my luck out and face a team who could be resting their starters the day the final season ends. Even then Mussina’s chances at winning 20 have taken a severe downturn. Still gives me a reason to watch the Yankees on an otherwise meaningless day.

]]> http://www.hotstovenewyork.com/2008/09/24/mussina-could-miss-chance-at-20/feed/ 0 http://www.hotstovenewyork.com/2008/09/24/yankees-eliminated-but-its-ok/ http://www.hotstovenewyork.com/2008/09/24/yankees-eliminated-but-its-ok/#comments Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:50:30 +0000 Rob Abruzzese http://www.hotstovenewyork.com/?p=8448
Last night the Yankees kept up their recent winning ways and beat the Toronto Blue Jays to keep from being eliminated from the playoffs. Unfortunately for them the Red Sox were beating the Indians at the very same time to eliminate the Yankees. Thing is I’m not really that upset. I mean obviously I’m sad that [...]]]>

Last night the Yankees kept up their recent winning ways and beat the Toronto Blue Jays to keep from being eliminated from the playoffs. Unfortunately for them the Red Sox were beating the Indians at the very same time to eliminate the Yankees.

Thing is I’m not really that upset. I mean obviously I’m sad that I won’t be watching playoff games this year and that my Mets fan friends are probably going to be more annoying than ever, but the Yankees couldn’t keep winning forever and I knew that.

Also coming into this season I was ready for a let down. Using a young pitching staff has advantages, but they are mostly long term. Hardly does a team which is relying on guys under 25 to make up about 60 percent of its rotation win many games no matter how good the rookies are.

But the gamble the Yankees took was a good one because they needed to get out of the rut they were in recently where they barely make the playoffs and then are easily over matched once there. By taking this one step back, OK it may have been two steps back as none of the starters really logged as many innings as they wanted, but soon they will be in a position to take a few steps forward and hopefully begin a new dynasty.

Besides this years team wasn’t even that bad. It took a lot of little things to go wrong for them to miss the playoffs. Things started early when Jorge Posada came down with a lingering shoulder injury. Without Posada’s bat in the lineup the offense took a beating and I’m sure it couldn’t have helped the pitching staff.

Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy shouldn’t have been this bad. It is expected that young pitchers are going to struggle, but it’s September 24 and neither of them have one win in the majors this season. Nobody really expected that, back in April it would have been conservative to guess they’d combine for 10 wins this season.

Robinson Cano had an unexpected terrible season. Coming into this year his worst season was his rookie year where he still managed 34 doubles, a .297 average, and a .778 OPS. During the first half of 2008 he couldn’t have gotten much worse batting .246 without much pop, and a .643 OPS. Then when he was expected to have a big second half he came up short. For the most part he hasn’t let it effect his defense, but in a few big spots he came up looking like he wasn’t even trying and cost the Yankees when it counted.

Poorly timed injuries also lead to this team’s downfall. Heading into the second half of the year the Yanks were finally starting to get their stuff together, but Chien-Ming Wang went down on June 15 and with him went the rotations chances at staying consistent. Without their top starter that meant guys like Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson would be forced to continue making starts which eventually came back to bite the Bombers in the ass. Losing Joba Chamberlain from the rotation for good on August 4 further exacerbated the situation when the team still had a chance for a comeback.

The list of bad omens didn’t end there. Derek Jeter played poorly in the first half due to a hit by pitch on his hand which he never received X-Rays for and probably played for weeks with a broken hand. There is also Melky Cabrera to consider, he was the team’s starting center fielder who played so poorly he lost his job to an outfield platoon.

With all of this the team is still 15 games over .500 and have a legit chance at getting to 90 wins and in the past 10 years two teams have won the World Series with a worse record than 90 wins. They may even finish this season with a better record than three playoff teams. So they didn’t miss by much.

They are also expected to turn over a good portion of the roster which should give them the flexibility they need to put together a good off-season. Finally, they have a decent group of young talent which should be able to produce a few players which will stick around this team for years to come.

Yankee Stadium is gone after last night’s final game and celebration and going with it is Hideki Matsui whose season will be ending prematurely as he has season ending knee surgery.

Matsui has been hobbled by his left knee for a while now and probably didn’t get surgery earlier just so he could take part in the final game at the stadium. He missed part of June and all of July as he tried to rest the knee instead of opting for surgery.

After he returned in August it was clear that he was not fully healed, but he tried to play through it anyways. Early in September it was clear he wasn’t pulling his weight and he was taken out of the lineup.

His numbers were pretty ugly after his mid-summer break to rest the knee. In 24 games he had a .209 average, a .594 OPS, 2 homers, 11 RBI’s, 7 walks, and 17 strike outs.

Matsui had a similar operation on his right knee last off-season. He should be ready to go by next spring training and he has one year left on his four year contract. The Yankees looked to trade the aging outfielder last season, but didn’t as they felt they were never offered a good enough package.

It would have been likely they would have explored dealing him again, but having two knee surgeries two years in a row may scare off potential trade partners. Matsui also has a full no trade clause in his contract so he would have to approve any deal the Yankees did want to pull off making dealing him even less likely.

Overall this season Matsui played in 93 games while hitting .294 with nine homers and 45 RBI’s and a .795 OPS.

When Brett Gardner plated the winning run in today’s game Yankee fans rejoiced because they are getting a last chance to cheer for their team in their stadium’s final week.

It could have been an entirely different tone today if the guy Gardner replaced hadn’t been able to go tomorrow. See Gardner pinch ran for Derek Jeter in the bottom of the ninth after he was hit on the left hand. The same hand he took a hit on back in May right before he went into a terrible slump.

Jeter was sent to the hospital after the game, but fortunately for the Yankees and their final day they came back negative and the captain should be good enough to play tomorrow.

When I say he should be good enough to play I mean there are no broken bones so he will play. It takes a lot to get Jeter out of a game. Back in May when he did take the shot on his hand Jeter came back and played the very next day even though he went into such a bad slump that many people look back at it and say think that there may have been something worse than he let on to.

Now that they’ve confirmed that nothing is broken in his hand there will be nothing stopping him from playing in tomorrow’s game. It’s a good thing too because it seems impossible that the Yankees would allow the stadium to close with their leader and captain sitting on the bench.

When Jeter was lifted in the ninth for Gardner everyone took a deep breath. Well it’s safe to breathe, he’ll play tomorrow.

A big reason for the downfall of the Yankees this season has been their shaky rotation. They counted on rookies who failed early on and lost starters to injuries which kept them from mounting a late season come back.

In order to compete next season they are either going to need to make some changes. Yes those rookies may eventually come around, but now the Yankees know they cannot count on them. One surprise rookie which may be part of the changes next year is Alfredo Aceves.

Aceves came out of nowhere, Mexico actually, and has been a very pleasant surprise for the Bombers. So far in 26 innings he has allowed just four run, good enough for a 1.38 ERA. While a number that low isn’t likely to last he has turned himself into a viable option next season because he has helped to steady the Yankees rotation late in the season.

Today’s performance of six innings, five hits, no runs, three walks, and three strike outs has been just another positive sign from the 25-year-old former Mexican Leaguer.

As the rotation stands right now the only lock really is Chien-Ming Wang. After that the Yankees have a lot of decisions to make, but Joba Chamberlain will likely be a part of the rotation eventually and one or both Andy Pettitte and Mike Mussina are likely to return. They could also take a dip in the free agent pool, but throughout that entire process don’t expect Aceves’ name to go away.

He’ll likely start next spring training out of the rotation and as of now you have to figure it’s his job to loose. Why not? After all he did all Yankee fans a favor by kicking Darrell Rasner out of the rotation and he’s likely the reason the Yankees will be forced deal the inconsistent young starter.

If he is not part of the rotation next year that could be a good sign. The reason it’s good is because for that to happen he would have to be pushed out of the rotation by five other starters having great springs. Even if that were to happen though Aceves would likely only spend a limited amount of time in the minors as he would likely be called up at the first sign of trouble.

Signed this past off-season the Yankees didn’t know what they were getting. Or it was great scouting by the Yankees and a smart decision by Brian Cashman. Either way the success he’s showed is a great sign for 2009.

After 85 years Yankee Stadium is finally closing tomorrow. Seems weird to type that, but nonetheless it should be an emotional game to watch and it would be an understatement to say that there will be plenty of pre-game ceremonies.

If you are planning on soaking up as much as Yankee Stadium as possible on the last day then you’re probably going to want to start at noon. Yes the game is scheduled to start at 8:15, but that hasn’t stopped ESPN Classic from beginning their programming at noon. At that time they will kick off 20 consecutive hours of old classic Yankee games starting with game five of the 1976 ALCS where Chris Chambliss hit a walk-off homer to send the Yankees to the world series.

At one o’clock you can switch over to ESPN as they begin their SportCenter specials which should help you fall asleep for that afternoon nap until inevitably one of the ESPN announcers begins to yell at you.

If you are going to the game one o’clock is also the time when they open the gates to the public. The Yankees remind you that there is no reentry so you’re going to have to keep busy by checking out monument park or walking around the warning track on the field until four.

At three ESPN will re-air it’s special, Yankee Stadium: Baseball’s Cathedral. It’s a pretty good documentary and it could be worth checking out.

At four ESPN goes back to their SportsCenter specials for a while and fans at the stadium will have to go back their seats as the Yankees and then the Orioles take the field for BP. Monument park will still be open.

At six Baseball Tonight will be aired on ESPN which will be good to watch until seven when you should switch over to ESPN2 where you can watch more Baseball Tonight, but this time they will cut away for live coverage of the pre-game ceremonies which should begin around the same time.

Via Yankees.com:

Pregame ceremonies, scheduled to begin at 7:05 p.m., will encompass the chronology of Yankees greats who have played at the famous Stadium. Among the distinguished alumni scheduled to take part in the festivities will be Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Goose Gossage, Ron Guidry, Graig Nettles and Bobby Richardson. A historic artifact from the Yankees’ past will also be unveiled during the ceremony. The Yankees are urging fans to be in their seats by 6:50 p.m.

Then of course there should be a game starting around 8:15 although I could see it being a little later maybe 8:30 as undoubtedly there will be some crying ball players that they won’t want to cut off. Andy Pettitte is scheduled to pitch in the game which should be good. Thankfully they were smart enough to not pitch somebody like Carl Pavano which would have been a disaster.

The game will be shown on ESPN with a post game wrap up following the show. Although I haven’t confirmed this, I’d imagine that the YES Network will also be televising pre and post-game shows of their own. So you have an option of which announcers you want annoying you, Michael Kay or Joe Morgan and John Miller.

Then after everything is over you can switch back to ESPN Classic because their marathon should just be getting going or you could cry when you realize that you don’t have enough money to ever afford good seats at the new stadium. I’ll be doing the ladder.

A couple of years ago when the Yankees acquired Bobby Abreu to play right field they had to figure out what to do with Gary Sheffield and they decided it was best to try to trade him.

It was no easy task as Sheffield was a surly aging ball player with a hefty contract to boot. Just finding a team who was interested in taking on that amount of salary was tough enough and on top of that they had find a team who wasn’t worried about his attitude. Because of those two issues getting something valuable back would be tough.

What the Yankees did was they traded him to Detroit for Humberto Sanchez along with two other lower level minor league prospects. Sanchez represented a pitcher with a high ceiling who was also a significant injury risk. The risk proved to be true as he needed Tommy John surgery almost immediately.

The surgery cost him the entire season of 2007 and many thought that he might be able to pitch in for the Yankees this year, but sometimes it takes time to comeback from Tommy John and he rushed back and had a few minor setbacks which cost him most of this year as well.

Now he’s ready to go and this former starter has been converted to the bullpen and made his major league debut last night. He pitched pretty well pitching one perfect inning and striking out one batter. His control looked good too as he threw 11 pitches and nine of them for strikes.

Having a healthy Sanchez for the 2009 season could be a big boast to the Yankees pitching staff either in the bullpen or the rotation. The Yankee have not committed to one or the other just yet, but the fact that he’s coming out of the pen now is a sign that they might want to keep him there in the future. He could fill a pretty big hole in the rotation, but after this season with failed young starters they may shy away from that next year. Also taking him out of the rotation may relieve some health issues.

This kid’s arm is strong so and having him in the rotation could be a big deal for the future, but if injury concerns are legitimate having him in the pen is better than not having him at all. The only reservation about using him in relief I could see is that the bullpen is stocked with good young arms and the rotation is only filled with question marks.

I think it’s likely that they will start him in spring training next year as a starter and keep a close watch on his health. At that point they’ll see where the bigger need is before making a final decision.

There is still hope.

I don’t mean that there is still hope for the Yankees, nope, this team washed their chances down the drain a couple of weeks ago. Instead there is still hope for Mike Mussina to be able to grab that elusive twentieth victory.

Thanks in big part to the Yankees of last night playing like the Yankees of old. They came out and hit right away which was crucial to turning around a game where Moose gave up a run in the first inning. They came back thanks to a two-run homer by Bobby Abreu in the top of the first.

The biggest thing though was that the offense kept the pressure on which helped to take the pressure off Mussina. Abreu again played a big role in this thanks to his second homer of the night that came in the third inning. But they weren’t done there and they really took the pressure off the man with a four-run fourth inning and when the Yanks added on two more in the fifth they had a very comfortable 9-1 lead half way through.

Mussina did the rest and really pitched himself a decent game. He threw six innings and allowed just five hits, one run, two walks, and he added four strike outs.

The bullpen came in after his six innings were up and they held the lead. It was a comfortable lead, but if Mussina was a Met do you think he would have felt comfortable? I didn’t think so.

Slamming the door behind Mussina was Jose Veras, who pitched a scoreless inning, Humberto Sanchez, who made his major league debut and pitched a scoreless inning, and finally Chris Britton allowed a run, but kept things relatively quite.

Like I said last night, good defense needed to be apart of this run if Moose is going to have a shot at 20 and it was. Nothing was too spectacular, but everything was solid. They’re going to have to keep it up though because a 39-year-old pitcher doesn’t need to be giving extra outs away.

He one number 18, now he must the Toronto Blue Jays next Tuesday for a shot at number 19. Stay tuned.