I guess rain is a great way to hide the inefficiency of a starting rotation. With a rain out last night, A.J. Burnett and Phil Hughes will now make their scheduled starts tonight and tomorrow night, respectively. After that, Joe Girardi is "undecided." Freddy Garcia could be skipped in favor of Ivan Nova, allowing him to be skipped again. Anyone in favor of a four-man rotation at this point?
I'm starting to wonder if Sergio Mitre actually had blackmail on Joe Girardi or on someone in the front office. I'm also starting to think he lost or misplaced whatever he had on them, which led to his trade. Maybe Freddy Garcia just needs to find whatever Mitre lost to finally make a start for the Yankees.
Things aren't going so well for Pedro Feliciano, according to this ESPN article, which couldn't help but poke fun at Brian Cashman's apparent disdain of having Rafael Soriano in the bullpen.
The guy he wanted in his bullpen, Pedro Feliciano, tried to play catch for the first time in two weeks on Tuesday afternoon. That went so well that, on Wednesday, he's headed back to the MRI tube and might just wind up on the 60-day disabled list by the end of the week.
Bad news. I can't help but wonder what Cashman will do if Feliciano is out for such an extended period of time. I don't know if I could handle the outrage here on PSA if Boone Logan was the only guy attempting to put lefties away.
By the way, ESPN, there is a difference between not wanting a player and not wanting to pay a lot of money for a player. I'm sure a lot of teams would love to have CC Sabathia, but that does not mean they want to pay the salary that goes along with him. Brian Cashman simply did not want to pay Rafael Soriano a lot of money. He never said he did not want him to be a Yankee.
If we can start to worry about Phil Hughes' slow start, is it okay to start worrying about Derek Jeter's?
Of the 29 balls Jeter has put into play this season, 23 have been grounders; of the six hits Jeter has eked out in 34 at-bats, three were infield hits, three more came on ground balls that got to the outfield, and one lonely hit came on a sharp liner.
Obviously, the small sample size rule is in effect here. But right now, Jeter is pounding 79.3% of the balls he puts in play into the ground. Just 3.4% have been line drives. If we can worry about Phil Hughes after two starts, maybe we can worry about Jeter after nine games.
By the way, ESPN really should do some more editing, or at least check stats before they post, especially since Brandon went on an angry rant about poor journalism just last night. Maybe they could even look in the quote above to realize something with their math was wrong.
According to that quote, Jeter has three infield hits, three ground balls that got to the outfield, and a sharp liner. That looks like seven hits to me. A quick click on the "stats" section of the Yankees' website shows seven hits for Derek Jeter, not six. Okay, end of ESPN rant.
Either way, Jeter is burning worms at an alarmingly fast rate, and I'd really like to see him start hitting some line drives.
Make sure to come back to Pinstripe Alley at 11am for Travis' piece on why the radar gun is dated.