Yanks Role the Dice
The Yankees have signed OF Marcus Thames another potential role player to a minor-league contract. They also invited 20 Non-Roster players trying to find that diamond in the rough.
Thames, who will earn $900,000 if he makes the roster, will compete for playing time in left field with Randy Winn and Brett Gardner.
“He has a great bat against left-handers,’’ Joe Girardi said of Thames, who was dealt from the Yankees to Rangers for Ruben Sierra in 2003.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying he has a great bat against lefties Joe. In 105 AB’s he hit .257. Against righties he hit .248 in 153 AB’s. Against lefties he had 4 HR’s and 14 RBI’s. Against righties he hit 9 HR’s 22 RBI’s. Again he had 48 less AB’s against lefties. Splits
FanLaughs Fantasy Analysis: Thames will have to prove himself in spring training to make the team. He hit .252 with 12 homers and 36 RBI with the Tigers last season. Even if he makes the Opening Day roster, his playing time will be limited, so don’t pay for the stats he put up in Detroit.
RAB wonders if Thames can be more like 2006 and less like 2009. Are they serving Kool Aid Again or are they serious? They don’t want to piss off their frequent flyer posters but there’s enough in their breakdown to make a judgement, then again that’s why they play the game.
Thames had a real power outage in 2009, result of an injury or a result of whatever, not eating enough Cannolis maybe.
The reason for the power outage becomes apparent when looking at Thames’s batted ball breakdown. He hit 47.4 percent fly balls in 2009, which ranks on the lower end of his career. RAB jumped all over his scouting report Source
Other non Roster invitees to Yankee Camp
A more Direct Source for invitees
C Jesus Montero, 20, combined to bat .337 with 45 runs, 25 doubles, 17 home runs and 70 RBI in 92 games with Single-A Tampa and Double-A Trenton in 2009, ranking fourth among all Yankees minor leaguers in home runs. Named to the midseason All-Star teams with both Tampa and Trenton, he had his season cut short when he was hit by a pitch while behind the plate on 8/1, fracturing his middle finger. Originally signed by the Yankees as a non-drafted free agent in October 2006, the Venezuela native, played for the World Team in the 2009 All-Star Futures Game at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium. He enters the 2010 season ranked by Baseball America as the Yankees’ top prospect and the fifth-best prospect in all of Baseball (top catcher)
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“It’s no secret that Johnny Damon purposely hooks the ball in Yankee Stadium and changes his swing on the road,” Boras said. He added that Damon, a left-handed hitter, is a “strong guy” whose Yankee Stadium homers would have cleared the rightfield fence at Comerica Park.
February 8th, 10 Days till Pitchers and Catchers.
RAB gave us an idea on how to kill the 10 days until Pitchers and Catchers so if your a stat nerd you’ll be in heaven. If your doing battle on the internet with some cocky Redsox fan you need to be armed with all the stats, so Fanlaughs is just one of many sites that will prepare you for battle. Personally I’m gonna follow U K until they finally wrap up the NCAA tourney. Speaking of wrapping up, Congrats to the Saints they played a good game yesterday in Miami, I was actually surprised at the outcome. Weeks ago I was rooting for the NO Saints to get to the Superbowl. My corner bookie gave them no chance saying Minnesota / Colts was the chalk pick. I went with Jets Saints, ( sorry DB and Joey no Shoes, it’s business not personal, mic pre-amps ain’t cheap) so I was sitting @ .500.
I’ll be honest I was rooting for the city and the kid Drew Brees, I liked his approach Re: helping the Katrina catastrophe victims (sorry no X’s and O’s reasoning), a tip of the fedora to the Manning family who also have been instrumental in helping rebuild the City, but as we moved closer to kick off time, the Saints bandwagon started to get too crowded, and I jumped off, rather got pushed off a week after the Saints got to the finals defeating the Vikadins in OT.
Yesterday I was rooting for Manning and the injured Dwight Freeney and Co. to take the trophy back to the midwest where they hate NYer’s, but I had enough Saints pom poms for one week and a Colts victory would have deepened the off season pain for Redsox Nation. Hey we could of used the support in 2001 when Arizona stepped on our neck in game 7, buying the World Series with Schilling and Randy Johnson shutting the Yanks down post 911. So my guilty feelings about poor New Orleans left in about 5 minutes.
It was a strange game once it got going, and with no dog in the fight I found myself actually nuetral and just enjoying the play on both sides. It was a fun listen at halftime, as the Zak Starkey show rambled through some good old rock and roll hits from Townsend and Daltry, too bad the famous duo can’t play or sing anymore because the songs their back up band worked out were diamonds, the light show was incredible, and Ringo’s kid Zack does a nice job keeping those Keith Moon licks in the pocket, it looked like the great Pino Palladino playing bass in place of Entwhistle.
Anyway Fanlaughs has splits on every player since 2002 I believe, and once you get to their site you can navigate to the players page and click away. I’m focusing on the new guys because we haven’t read enough about Curtis Granderson or Nick Johnson, or the new center fielder Bubba Gardner or Randy Winn this winter.
I’m Looking forward to spring training, hopefully we can get some footage from Tampa. Uncle Sal has an old runnin partner living in Fort Myers who might send us back some spring training youtube’s, and of course the BBT will have Scoops in Tampa keeping us up close, we’ll grab some of their footage from the mother ship at LB’s and post it here.
The links I’m posting will take you directly to the 2009 splits, standard stats, you can navigate around the page to get deeper into the players digits, scroll down to enjoy the metrics calculations.
Johnny Damon, had a rough July and Sept/Oct
Did Boras Screw Damon Washburn and Lopez ? So Far Yeah. Source
Joel Sherman whacks our buddies the Mets. Ouch! Source
An Oldie but Goodie from Fact Youk Source
You want smart ? I have it here, this is a model Franchise Philosophy
Damon ReHab Center
Fans love too hate the Yankees because they out spend everybody. Last year they were 70+ million above the Mets, the second highest payroll in baseball. You don’t care? A lot of fans do care, but it makes the rooting interest against the Yanks sky rocket, so it’s good for baseball?
“I would bet if the Indianapolis Colts played the Cleveland Browns 100 times, and the Colts were motivated, they would probably 95 of them — maybe even more than that. But if the New York Yankees played the Kansas City Royals 100 times, and the Yankees were motivated, I suspect the Royals would still win 25 or 30 times. That’s baseball”.
So you have this sport baseball that tends to equalize teams.
What is Boston gonna do with Josh Beckett ? At 32 yr’s old he’s gonna want a 5 year deal worth 90 million bucks, it’s very unlike Boston to pony up that type of dough for an older guy especially for 5 yr’s. I don’t think they have a choice, who else are they gonna go after to replace him? For a team that fancies themselves so smart, they ain’t so smart. They have a ton of money coming off the books, they can afford him. Let’s hope Beckett doesn’t drink the Kool Aid and holds them up.
It’s obvious now that Johnny Damon’s career as a Yankee is history. On paper it doesn’t look like the Yankees replaced him adequately on offense. JD and agent Scott Boras mentioned Sunny D is ready to help turn Detroit into a World Champion just like he helped turn NY into one, so as soon as Detroit can get him at a bargain basement price, JD could replace Curtis Granderson which of course isn’t making Detroit fans very happy. I don’t understand why everybody doesn’t like Johnny Damon. Anyway that’s not our problem Nick Johnson Damon’s replacement is.
We all know Nick Johnson is an on base machine, a career .402 OBP, he’s not very fast so a yellow flag. Johnson averages 19 HR’s over a 162 game season, something he’s never done all in one stretch, 147 games was his high water mark but he hasn’t come near that since 2006. Last year he jacked 8 HR’s in 133 games. There’s more to a player than hitting HR’s but that’s the one glaring weakness outside of injury most Damon supporters chime in about, not to mention Damon is bona fide clutch. I checked out some late and close type splits and Nick Johnson isn’t bad in those spots. Since time is money I’ll leave a link for you. Click splits for all you cats from Saugerties and Easton P.A., the rest of you boys already have the numbers memorized or know where to get them. The one split that caught my attention, is .175 BA the second time around in the order for the Head ouch! 2 outs, RISP/ late and close/ and 2 outs send up Nicky I’ll take him. Stats
Here you go incase things get hectic at Larry’s and drinks are on the boss splits
It’s likely that Johnson regains some of his power this year, especially as a left handed batter in New Yankee Stadium, and Fangraphs predicts he will be worth well above his salary ( I’m sure that makes you feel better) if he can only stay healthy – a task that should be made easier by the DH role. Between Johnson, Derek Jeter, and Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees will have 3 players with a 2009 OBP over .400, and with Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher, 5 players over .370.
RAB did some heavy lifting Re: how many fastballs the #2 hitter in the 09 Yankee line up saw, (69%) and that Sunny D was a good fast ball hitter, hence the drama with the contract dispute resulting in Johnny wanting more money than anybody wants to give him.
Damon was replaced in the two hole by new-old Yankee Nick Johnson, who will soon control the cushiest lineup spot in the game: hitting behind Derek Jeter and ahead of Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez. While he may not see seven fastballs out of every ten pitches like that spot did in 2009, chances are he’ll see more than the 61.4% fastballs thrown to him last season. And that’s good news, because Nick Johnson straight up murders fastballs.
Here shoot the messenger not Uncle Sal, but personally I’ve always liked Nick Johnson, was sad to see him get traded in the Vazquez deal, and sitting here on a cold February morning I’m glad he’s back. I’ll find as many Nick Johnson Kool Aid articles as I can for your Johnny Damon Rehab but keep in mind one of Sal’s Consigliere’s one great Yankee fan and top 5 in the country Colts fan reminded me yesterday :
“The Yanks are doing what they do periodically, get penny wise and pound foolish-saving money on Damon will end up costing them more, when they have to get someone in July to replace the useless GARDY, it will cost $ and prospects”.
More on Damon from Foxsport.com
Bob Klapisch on Joe Girardi and his state of the Union Address
“I think Brian [Cashman] has learned a lot about running a team,” said one rival executive. “He’s made some mistakes, but if you go around and ask people what they think of the Yankees, the answer you’ll get is that they’re intelligently run.”
“I’ve got a good group of veterans who I can count on. That’s important to me,” Girardi said. He was talking about Jeter, Rivera, Pettitte and Posada, of course, his clubhouse cops who’ll be watching Robinson Cano and Joba Chamberlain, in particular.
