The biggest question in 19 games this year, and having a REAL PLAYOFF?

How is it?

Jorge is sensitive?

Guys who piss ontheir hands (on purpose) are NOT sensitive, but it's a nice line, Joe.

February 18, 2006 -- TAMPA — Jorge Posada's pride has been dented. You bet it has, he says. After all, pride is as much a part of his game as power and patience, and the catcher has endured a year when his abilities and his cherished spot as a Yankee have been under assault.

"I try to ignore it," Posada says, "but it is tough to ignore."

Of course, it is. It is in his face. The ace of the staff, Randy Johnson, did not want to pitch to him. Suddenly, his mental abilities behind the plate were being impugned. His offensive numbers fell across the board for a second straight year. Now, his physical skills were viewed as slipping with age. And then there was an offseason in which his name was more in trade rumors than any teammate's. That threatened what surges through his very veins, that the Yankees are in his blood.

"Jorge is sensitive," Joe Torre says.

This is what GM Brian Cashman has to say about Posada being on the trade market because the Yanks do not want him to start the 81 games behind the plate in 2006 that would trigger a $12 million option for 2007: "What I worry about is how are we ever going to replace Posada, not how to get out of next year's option."

AMEN. Maybe for a YOUNG, Munson, Bench, or the best clutch guy ever, Yogi, otherwise, sorry Poundstone, not even for a Carlton, or Varitek.

And in the 'you can never have enuf pitching category...' chapter 2

There were moments the Yankees staff was so shredded and the options at Triple-A so dismal that Cashman literally was authorizing his scouts to suspend their standards and recommend the least horrid of their bad alternatives. That, for example, is how Tim Redding and Darrell May ended up employed and landed in an infamous corner of pinstripe lore. Redding now has the worst season ERA (54.00) in Yankees history for anyone who has completed an inning, and May has the worst (16.71) for any Yankee who reached seven innings.

And so Scott Erickson.

Lifetime 142-136, 4.57, 38 years old, hasn't pitched since 2002, Orioles, 5-12 5.55 era.


Hey I want a fantasy tryout myself

Empire Strikes Back

Even in minors, Yanks-Sox is a major battle

BY JONATHAN LEMIRE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The scorching Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is burning up some new turf in the minor leagues.

A Massachusetts Single-A team fired the first shot, and now the Staten Island Yankees are striking back.

The Lowell Spinners, the Red Sox affiliate in the New York-Penn League, offered last week to replace the uniforms of any Massachusetts youth team named the Yankees so the pint-sized players wouldn't be teased or booed at town parades.

"It's in good fun and we laughed, but we knew we had to retaliate," said Gary Parrone, assistant general manager of the Staten Island squad. "And, befitting the style of the Yankees, we wanted to do it with class."

So when the Spinners travel to Richmond County Bank Ballpark Aug. 4-6, they will be greeted with an array of Sox-slamming promotions.

First, any fan who gives up a Sox hat or shirt - later to be donated to a New England homeless shelter - will be given a free ticket. Any man getting a shave and haircut at the park in honor of formerly long-maned outfielder Johnny Damon, who abandoned Boston for the Bronx, also will get a free ducat.

Free tickets also will be offered to any Massachusetts Little League team that resists changing its name from the Yankees. And if any fan comes to all three Staten Island games, he will be given a talking Babe Ruth doll.

"The real rivalry is intense, but this is minor-league baseball. It's supposed to be fun," said Tim Bawmann, Spinners general manager, whose team has agreed to exchange the uniforms of 44 youth Yankee teams in the Bay State and - to stick it to its rivals - one in upstate New York.

Evil knows no bounds

Anti-Yankees fever grips youth leagues

30 teams want to change name

By Chris Forsberg, Globe Correspondent | February 16, 2006

In the future, when kids ask their parents why none of the teams in their local youth baseball and softball leagues is named the Yankees, they will be told the story of a blood-thirsty rivalry and two persistent 9-year-old girls.

Therein lie the seeds of the so-called ''Yankee Elimination" movement sweeping though the region.

The Lowell Spinners, the Red Sox Class A affiliate, announced last week that they would foot the cost of jerseys for any youth league that was willing to change the name of its Yankees squad to the Spinners.

The response has been overwhelming. At the start of the week, the Spinners had been contacted by more than 30 baseball and softball leagues from 25 communities across Massachusetts.

On Monday morning, a call came in from Rochester, N.Y., where a team wanted to join the fun and the Spinners were happy to oblige on their rivals' home turf.

The HORROR, the HORROR !

Is the Unit as good as Roger?

Randy Johnson is selling his 2005 season and he is selling it hard. At times, he sounds more like the tallest member of the Elias Sports Bureau than perhaps the greatest lefty pitcher ever.

Actually, he sounds a little desperate. As if spewing his numbers will make you believe, in retrospect, that his 2005 Yankee debut was far better than the perception. Seventeen wins was the fourth most in the AL. Two hundred eleven strikeouts was second, and his 225 2/3 innings ranked fifth in the league.

I saw maybe one or two dominating performances. I saw NOTHING comparable to the guy who pitched in the 2001 Series.

He may just be too old. Maybe not. Maybe it's repeat of Roger, who certainly failed to impress from the hill on River St. his first year. Amazing that 17 wins can be so disappointing and unimpressive.


Opening day rotation...
Unit, Mussina, Wang, Chacon, Wright?
Pavano sounds better but hasn't demonstrated better

Aaron 'unreal' Small deserves consideration. Is his stuff as good? No. Is his history as good? Just last 1/2 year. But he is pure grit. He also shows up on the mound in the Bronx, ready to heave on THAT mound. With THAT pressure, and battle for 3 runs over 7, with anything that comes out of his hand.

Pavano sinks further

Carl Pavano is behind schedule because of a balky back that may not be ready by Opening Day.

Warm up Aaron, Joe. He shows up.

Slated to throw off a mound yesterday for the first time since a minor-league rehab game last summer, Pavano didn't make it to the hill because back specialist Dr. Robert Watkins suggested Pavano not throw until March 1.

What?

And here's a head banging number

Whatever connection Flaherty and Johnson had, it translated to results. Johnson was 12-2 with a 3.29 ERA throwing to Flaherty and 5-6, 4.55 when Posada caught. But Johnson and Posada had one game together that could bode well for this season - Johnson threw 4-1/3 scoreless innings of relief in Game 5 of the division series against the Angels, pitching to Posada.

Yes, Virginia, you can never have enough pitching

And under the 'I Knew It !' column we have this.

Now, I never thought that Contreras had enough time (although he looked rattled on that special mound whenever there was a leadoff walk, which was, if nor frequent, more than rare by some real measures)

I never thought that Vazquez had enough time, but have to admit (in the post Weaver era) that there ARE some people who just can't do it in the Bronx. Especially if they think Whitey (33 consecutive scoreless innings in the Fall Classic) might be looking in the playoffs

But we now have in Pavano's shoulder last year and a potential 'back' before anything even happens this year the proverbial, 'what the hell did "we" pay for?'

Rumours that the problem last year were not Pavano's shoulder, but the thing that pumps blood were, if not rampantly up front, always quietly whispered reassert their nasty influence on one's mind.

I'd like to see Carl win 20 with a 2.3 era, but he is going to have to walk out there and do it from the hill in the Bronx, not the ones in Tampa, Detroit, or Kansas City.