Life is good when you’ve banked over $38M in your career and have a contract in place guaranteeing you another $82.5M despite having a 110 OPS+ ERA+, zero All-Star appearances and zero Cy Young votes. So what do you do with all that cash? Why have a ridicuously awesome home theatre custom built in your house of course. Electronic House toured AJ Burnett’s theatre, and let’s just say it’s plush. Despite all the cool stuff he had installed, Electronic House only gave Burnett’s set-up the Bronze Medal in the $250k+ category. For shame. (h/t Deadspin)
Big inning Yanks take series opener 7-4
For the third straight start, A.J. Burnett did not bring his A game. In the first he gutted through 6.1 innings against the Indians, allowing just three runs while throwing a paltry 54 percent of his pitches for strikes. The next was the infamous Saturday game against Boston about which we will not presently speak. At the beginning this looked more like Boston than Cleveland, but Burnett settled down after the 2nd and finished seven innings, putting the Yanks in a position to win 7-4. They couldn’t have done it without yet another big inning from the offense.
The game started in an inauspicious manner, with Chone Figgins tripling past the outstretched glove of Johnny Damon. It took just a groundout to plate him. Three batters later Burnett was out of the inning, but his troubles wouldn’t end there. Mike Napoli started it right back up in the second, homering to right on a low, outside pitch. It seemed like a typical New Stadium home run, a hard hit ball that just carried. A few batters later it looked to get worse, with Erik Aybar hitting a sac fly to deep right — while shattering his bat. It’s not like Aybar is a power hitter by any stretch. A broken bat that deep? Uh oh.
Thankfully, A.J. was for the most part able to keep things under control the rest of the way. The only damage was again caused by Chone Figgins, as he singled home Erik Aybar after the latter doubled to lead off the fifth. This was particularly disheartening, as Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu had just given the Yankees the lead. Oh, Bobby. Your defense we do not miss.
Burnett finished the game having allowed four earned runs over seven innings. His strike percentage, 61 percent, was right in line with Saturday’s start, though obviously better than his previous one against Cleveland. In other words, he’s going to have to start throwing more strikes one way or another. However, of the 27 batters he faced 19 saw first-pitch strikes — though that includes Napoli and his damn home run. The Yanks will take this kind of start from A.J. from time to time, but we’d all clearly like to see more games like Tampa than like Cleveland.
The offense had another big inning last night, this time the eighth (or, should I say, teh eighth!!!11!1!!1!). The whole sequence unfolded pretty quickly, as the Yanks loaded the bases on essentially two pitches. Cano pulled the first pitch to right for a single, and Posada smacked the second pitch of his at bat into the gap for a ground rule double. Scioscia and company decided to intentionally walk Nick Swisher, and Melky Cabrera made them pay for it on the first pitch, singling to right and scoring Cano to take the lead for good. Not comfortable with a one-run lead, Ramiro Pena pulled the second pitch of his at bat to right for a two-run double. They could have gotten more, too, as Derek Jeter walked to re-load the bases with one out. But Johnny Damon looked like he wanted a grand slam bad and ended up popping out to short. Mark Teixeira then had a good at bat that ended with him getting fooled on a curve.
The game got frustrating at times, but the Yanks took advantage of their opportunities and came up with a big W. It’s still April (well, May by the time you read this), so checking the standings is kind of silly, but it’s nice to know that both Boston and Toronto lost. They’ll do it again tomorrow night, Andy Pettitte vs. Jered Weaver.
AJ f/x
For the first time this season we can take a look at some Pitch f/x data and not have to try to figure out what went wrong. Except for a minor third inning hiccup, AJ Burnett handled the Orioles well yesterday afternoon, throwing 98 pitches in five and a third innings of work. You’d like to see him be more efficient, but it’s only April. Plus the ump was a little tight on the corners, which certainly didn’t help AJ or Alfredo Simon.
Those 98 pitches were made up of 59 fastballs, 34 curveballs, and just 5 sliders. Pitch f/x says he didn’t throw any changeups, which is kind of surprising, but whatever. Burnett was pretty overpowering at times, but when he missed his spots the O’s really put a charge into it. It was great to see a Yankee pitcher be able to get out of a tight spot by striking a guy or two out; in years past we were stuck watching contact oriented pitchers rely on a shotty defense to escape a jamb.
Let’s kick this off with the usual, the flight paths. Hopefully you’re familiar with these by now. Remember, click on any graph in this post for a larger view.
Caption Contest: A.J. Burnett and an elephant
One of the publicists for Busch Gardens in Florida sent us this photo of A.J. Burnett feeding Karnaubi, a 7300-pound Asian elephant. The park has five of these endangered animals in its Nairobi area, and Burnett, looking rather thrilled, helped feed one of them with his family on Thursday.
Now, that’s all well and good, but that is also a stunningly boring caption. So RAB faithful, let’s have a caption contest. The winner will receive a copy of The Greatest Game and the undying affection of everyone on RAB. We’ll do it run-off style with a general big vote and then one or two rounds of voting with the top entries.
To be eligible for the voting and the prize, make sure to put a valid e-mail address in the e-mail field down below. We’ll leave the caption contest open through Monday night. Click the image for a larger version, and have fun.
Some CC & AJ contract details
The AP, via ESPN, has some details about the new contracts signed by CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett. Let’s do this bullet point style:
- Sabathia’s contract includes a $9M signing bonus paid in three equal installments over the next 8 months: one on December 31st, one on March 1st, and the last on July 31st.
- His salary breakdown is simple:
2009: $14M
2010-2015: $23M each - Sabathia will be paid semimonthly over all twelve months of year; most players are paid semimonthly during the six-month regular season only. He’ll earn $583,333 every two weeks in 2009.
- He gets a suite on road trips, not uncommon for big name free agents. And, of course, he can opt out of the deal after the 2011 season.
- Burnett’s deal isn’t front or backloaded, and apparently doesn’t include a signing bonus. He’ll get $16.5M per year for the next five years.
- Both contracts include full no-trade clauses.
So Sabathia will have already been paid $9,499,998 before he throws a pitch in the 2009 season. Livin’ the dream baby, livin’ the dream.
Sabathia/Burnett Press Conference Liveblog
So today’s the day: the Yanks will be introducing their two new prize pitchers at a 1pm press conference at the Old Yankee Stadium. Supposedly you can watch it on YES, but their TV schedule doesn’t agree. You will, however, be able to follow along on MLB.TV or ESPN/ESPNEWS. If you can’t get near a TV (stupid work), then follow along here, I’ll be liveblogging the whole schabang.
Now that the signings are official, I’ve updated the 2009 Draft Order Tracker. The Yanks surrender their first rounder to the Brewers and their second rounder to the Jays. Remember, they can’t lose the comp picks for Gerrit Cole and Scott Bittle, so their top pick is #29 overall, followed by #76 overall. There’s no possibility of that changing; that’s when they’ll pick come June no matter who else they sign. As it stands right now, the Brewers have three of the top 36 picks with the potential to add two more if Ben Sheets signs elsewhere.
So stick around for the next … I dunno, half-hour to an hour and follow along as CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett are thrown to the media wolves welcomed to New York.
Olney: CC, Burnett good fits for Yanks
One of the implications of my post on fan sports coverage is that I’m not too enamored with most national personalities. So it was refreshing to see Buster Olney’s article on ESPN.com this morning (the relevant part is free). I was just going to set this as an aside, but there are some relevant passages I’d like to quote. A lot of it you read on RAB last week.
So the Yankees, in the end, were patient and got Sabathia, and the pundits who are saying that the team has blown up its plan for player development are simply not paying attention. In fact, the signings of Sabathia and A.J. Burnett are absolutely in keeping with the refocus on the farm system.
Because the Yankees waited to pursue Sabathia, rather than deal for Santana, they still have Hughes and Ian Kennedy and Austin Jackson and all the players mentioned in the Santana talks, and as the pitching talent pool has increased at the major league level, there is now more time for those youngsters to develop. It’s actually been more than a decade since the Yankees have had as much minor league talent stacked up as they do now.
Yes, they will sacrifice draft picks, in landing Sabathia and Burnett. But keep in mind that the Yankees will have picks in the first and second round of the draft in 2009 because of players unsigned in 2008; it’s not as if they are being shut down.
Olney goes on to list the Yankees projected rotation, noting how it is considerably younger than that of past teams. Except last year, of course. This one, though seems a bit more balanced overall.
[TABLE=6]
So here’s what the Yankees have done so far this off-season:
1. Added the two top pitchers on the free agent market.
2. Retained all of their relevant prospects.
3. Kept payroll at worst to the 2008 level, probably shaving a bit.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- Next Page »