The Enemy Uptown: The 2012 Yankee Thread

[Edgy MD]

Ichiro, looking for that True Yankee moment, lines out to end the eighth. Sox/Yanks go to the ninth tied.

[Frayed Knot]

Sawx finally win it with a run in the 9th but not before getting the short end of several calls -- Bobby got hisself tossed after the worst of them.

[Guest The Second Spitter]

Confirmation Teixeira is a compulsive masturbator .

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

He could be out for awhile, interesting to see if this outs any more pressure on the MFYs to deal for Daniel Muffy who could fill in for both Gayrod and Gayxiera.

[Edgy MD]

He'd add ten homers to his total before the season was over.

[G-Fafif]

Don't worry, MFYs are reportedly moving in on Dempster.

[Ceetar]

heard a couple of radio callers/hosts (in all of the 20 minutes I listened today) lining up the playoff rotation. They're all content if pettite gets back by mid-September that he'll be good to go in the playoffs. yup, he'll just turn it on, turn back the clock, not get hurt, and will be just awesome!

[Frayed Knot]

Teixeira's wrist "inflammation, not structural damage"

DeWayne Wise, dropped when Ichiro was added, refuses AAA assignment and will be FA.
Don't think he'd be of much use to us, but could see him hooking up with Philly for the rest of the year to serve as a kind of Victorino-lite.

[G-Fafif]

Dempster to Texas. MFYs announce thawing of cryogenically frozen Ewell "The Whip" Blackwell for fifth-starter role.

[G-Fafif]

They are getting Casey McGehee for Chad Qualls. I'll just go ahead and say I hate Casey McGehee after not having thought of him since the last time we played Milwaukee.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Always hated McGehee. Now I know why.

[Frayed Knot]

G-Fafif wrote: They are getting Casey McGehee for Chad Qualls. I'll just go ahead and say I hate Casey McGehee after not having thought of him since the last time we played Milwaukee.

Pittsburgh actually.

McGehee fills in at 1B & 3B/platoons with Eric Chavez

[Ceetar]

Frayed Knot wrote: G-Fafif wrote: They are getting Casey McGehee for Chad Qualls. I'll just go ahead and say I hate Casey McGehee after not having thought of him since the last time we played Milwaukee. Pittsburgh actually. McGehee fills in at 1B & 3B/platoons with Eric Chavez

Gee Golly McGehee just homered for the Yanks!

[TransMonk]

I've always said McGehee's name as if it were a Michael Jackson vocal riff.

[G-Fafif]

I always think of Casey McGehee when the Mets play the Brewers. I just block him out when they play the Pirates.

[Guest The Second Spitter]

Neal Huntington ......smh. He's either on drugs or on the MFY payroll.

[Vic Sage]

i love that they got Mcgehee. He sucks. I hope he plays every day.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

TransMonk wrote: I've always said McGehee's name as if it were a Michael Jackson vocal riff.

Same. (And same with Shawon Dunston.)

[G-Fafif]

Jeter reportedly out for surgery.

[Edgy MD]

Not that Deadspin has a conscience, but they really shouldn't reward gay-hatin' hackers.

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: Not that Deadspin has a conscience, but they really shouldn't reward gay-hatin' hackers.

and the first two comments are Mets bashing. yay.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Deadspin made a story the other day of teen olympic gymnasts period.

Because they're really Important for changing the dialog of sports in this country.

[MFS62]

Don't worry. ESPN Radio is still hasn't lost its focus. They're talking about the NFL the NBA and who will be transferring from Penn State.

Later

[Edgy MD]

And of course, their army of [crossout:1v08h1gi]dittohead attention whores[/crossout:1v08h1gi] citizen journalists follow that up by hacking in to a bunch of other MLB twitter accounts and posting juvenile shit.

[Frayed Knot]

This post is a bit long (OK it's a lot long. It started short but I got carried away) all for a pretty small point, but, wtf, we�re in a 30-some hour holding pattern between games here.


Let me just start this off by saying how much I love BB-Ref.com
For many reasons obviously, but mainly just for the information that used to be hidden from almost everyone but now is look-up-able in the matter of minutes by almost anyone.
And this morning I was able to look up something that's been bugging me much of this season.

You know when you watch games you pick up what certain players seem to do a lot, and I emphasize seem because it's hard to be sure if they really do that thing more often than most or if it's just a coincidence wherever you're watching. Like at one point a bunch of years back when I swear I went two seasons without seeing Keith Lockhart make an out. I'd look at the stats and he'd be hitting .231 with a .280 OBA and yet when I watched Braves games (and I watched often in those days via TBS) he'd get hits, or he'd get walks, or he'd get hit by pitches, but never make an out. It became almost an obsession with me, especially after the one time I'm watching a Braves game and Lockhart comes up with men on and I'm dreading the double in the corner that I know is coming; except that Lockhart suddenly popped up, and I�m amazed that the Atlanta opponent is going to get out of the inning, and not only that but I'm finally going to see Keith Lockhart make an actu ...
and the infielder dropped the ball!
At that point I'm looking around the room for ghosts but at least I knew KL�s out-less streak was just my bad luck because it was universally knowable that he actually made outs more than 70+% of the time, even if they all happened to be while I wasn�t looking.


Well I've had a similar thing going this year, and it involves a certain Derek Jeter and infield hits.
I usually catch a decent amount of Yanqui games although a lot fewer than my usual this year. But I�ve still seen Jeter get what seems like (there�s that key phrase) a TON of IF hits and I'm wondering if it's just one of those Lockhart things again. And the whole problem with even bringing up this topic without being able to prove it one way or the other is that the legion of Jeter defenders will just simply dismiss my so-called observations (and admittedly partial ones at that) as playa-hating from my Met-tilting brain which is programmed to dismiss all Jeter success as the result of luck. And maybe they'd even be right in this case.

But that's why it's great that we have BB-Ref
Using their 'Hit Location' breakdown under the yearly 'Splits' section we can easily see that more than 20% of Jeter's hits this year (28 of 137 for 20.4%) have been in the infield. �Well sure� the Jeter-ites will say, �it�s because he�s fast and hustles more than any other human ever created�. Except that that reasoning doesn�t explain why, at age 38, his current IF-hit pct turns out to be the 2nd highest of his career (below only the 22% from 14 years ago) and nearly 50% higher than his career average of 14.3%

And what we're seeing aren't speedy-guy slap/bunt hits anyway - not like back in 1980 when the career .265-hitting Miguel Dilone managed, for exactly one season, to hit .341 by slapping the ball as he ran out of the batters box. No, what I keep seeing are the kind of topped "swinging bunts" that can't possibly be done on purpose but all just happen to wind up in a place where no one can make a play on them.

So anyway, this is just a long-winded way of saying that, no, I'm not wallowing in paranoia screaming to my TV set that the Yanx get all the breaks; that the facts point to Jeter really getting an absurd amount (even for him) of cheap hits this season to the point where at his normal rate (which I suspect is still higher than most) he'd lose some 20+ points off his current BA, and that I don't see any other conclusion except to think that he's just being really, really lucky these days at a pace which would be incredibly difficult to sustain.

[Edgy MD]

Well, you could really go off the deep end and conclude that a .330 hitting Jeter has been deemed to be good for baseball and American League infielders have been ordered to play him impossibly deep --- give him the cheapies to pump the stats and polish his image, but not tilt the outcomes of games so much as letting flares drop into the outfield for doubles would.

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: Well, you could really go off the deep end and conclude that a .330 hitting Jeter has been deemed to be good for baseball and American League infielders have been ordered to play him impossibly deep --- give him the cheapies to pump the stats and polish his image, but not tilt the outcomes of games so much as letting flares drop into the outfield for doubles would.

Could this not be true (that it's the defenders?) he plays on a team nicknamed the Bombers, when he's actually more like Luis Castillo. Everyone played Castillo short, but if he'd had the short porch, or had just taking a full freaking swing once or twice, defenders would've lined up normally and he would've gotten more hits, had a higher BABIP like Jeter, and hell actually contributed more. The comparison isn't a bad one, Castillo was often the leader in infield hits.

I've noticed the same with Jeter but it's been going on a while now. I think it also has something to do with his funky inside out swing, that puts some sort of crazy spin on the ball that infielders have more trouble fielding it. I don't get it though, it's Yankee Stadium and if he hits it hard it'll float out, so play him like Castillo and you'd do well right?

Also he gets a ton of benefit of the doubt in terms of beating out throws, and hits that should be errors.

[Ceetar]

this is a fun one. Derek Jeter's OPS against AL Teams, starting from the worst

Red Sox: .752
Mariners: .769
White Sox: .774
Rays: .803

His highest BABIP, minimum 20 games? the Mets. .401. He's not a "Mets killer" he just gets all the breaks.

Shouldn't the aggressively shifting Rays be good at taking away these cheap hits?

10/49, no home runs this year. .529 OPS .227 BABIP
18/63 with 1 home run last year. .729 OPS .370 BABIP
25/83 no home runs in 2010. .699 OPS .347 BABIP

[Edgy MD]

More interestingly, the Twitter hacks supposedly weren't actually hacks at all, but an inside job.

[MFS62]

Two things:
1) I'd love to see what those unseen "best ones" were.
2) The person who did it could write for The Onion, where they share the same opinion of Jeter.

Later