A Tour of the Penthouse

With the season nearly upon us and the moans of Blue Jays fans everyone growing louder by the day, I thought I'd seek out the opinion of a Yankee fan. What are they thinking heading into the season? What do they think of the Jays? Do they think of the Jays? Below you'll find the hard work of J from 3:10 to Joba. Enjoy

(stumbles in out of a Rolls Royce)

Well, hello there Jays fans and Canadians alike. It appears I have left my usually friendly confines and wound up in the wrong corner of the Internet again. Damn this Garmin to hell.

(eats Almas caviar and crackers, wipes mouth with funny-looking Canadian money)

Lloyd graciously asked me to help him preview the Yankees season and let me tell you, after I finished playing squash in the indoor court in my house, I was all too glad to do it. You see folks, my excessive behavior before you today is actually a result of the team I love as much as my own family. Simply being a fan of the Yankees supplements your income... it's like being on welfare, except without the stigma. Or the lack of being white.

All kidding aside, with the way the Yankees front office conducts its business, the fans seemingly are only one step away from demanding that the Yankees start paying them for their loyalty too. Fans (and this includes me obviously) were all undoubtedly spoiled by the 1996 - 2000 dynasty, and as such we enter every season with ludicrously high expectations for success. Couple those four World Series titles with the fact that the brass has no qualms with outspending every other team on the face of the planet and it's hard to blame the fan base for expecting a championship every year. Spending that much money demands results and in an offseason where the team spent almost half a billion dollars on free agent talent, the expectations for 2009 have officially reached ludicrous proportions. CC Sabathia loses his first two starts? Booed. Mark Teixeira only hits .260 in April? Booed. A lot of outsiders seem to think the harsh treatment of the fans was solely directed at Alex Rodriguez in recent years, but we're talking about the same group of people that have willingly booed Derek Jeter as well. As a realist (who thought A- Rod was getting a terrible rap up until the revelation that he is liar and a cheater), this behavior is fucking absurd. You simply do not boo Derek Jeter. Ever. That would be like Lloyd heckling Roy Halladay. Both Derek and Roy have done too much for their respective franchises to have earned even a moment of ire from the fanbases, yet in NY it's a whole different ballgame. The "what the fuck do we pay you for?" mentality permeates every aspect of the organization from management down to the guy sitting in the bleachers. Sure it can be funny when a member of the Steinbrenner family threatens to have a pitcher deported for coming up short in the quest to reach 200 IP and 25 wins, but it makes any lack of performance by the team all the more brutal to witness. The amount of money that the Yankees spend on a yearly basis insists on the concept that nobody within the organization is safe and if a player or coach isn't comfortable walking on eggshells, he had had better get used to it. You know the saying, "Mo money mo problems"? You're looking at its physical manifestation on earth, people.

Having said that, it's a lot of freaking fun to see my favorite team outspend everyone. It makes the offseason a bit more meaningful and fun to watch when the checkbooks are opened and the team could have a new face added at a moment's notice. For all the complaining about the Yankees free-spending ways, people don't realize something: they almost have to do it this way if they want to succeed. Their success in recent years doomed them to having poor draft position so they couldn't necessarily develop a Mark Teixeira from the inside, but rather had to buy his services from teams that could no longer afford them. Heck even the players that we have drafted are generally flameouts to begin with anyway. Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes mark the first time in years I've been excited about home-grown prospects and they still are not even fully on the radar within the organization's plans. I'm not looking for you to "feel bad for us" because we have to spend loads of money, I'm just pointing out that some teams just can't or won't play the Moneyball-style game.

No team in Major League Baseball gets extra wins or a World Series ring for being an idealist, you simply have to do the best you can with what you have. The Yankees have money (a lot of it, to be exact) and they do the best they can with it, and as a result are subject to an entire fanbase's excessive expectations. Yet in recent years, the absence of a championship has had the somewhat unintended effect of detracting from intensity. Both the team and the fanbase seems to be caught up in thinking that because of the Yankees bottomless coffers that the team can simply reload during every offseason. I don't have to share in the mentality of Jays fans that the year 2010 is a sort of a last ditch effort for the team to get into the big dance before they lose all of their stars because the Yankees can always reload with the "get 'em next year" mentality. Well next year has come and gone more than a few times now and with nothing to show for it except a lot of cash changing hands, the Yankees have to be a bit concerned about apathy growing within a perennially fickle fanbase. While this would never apply to me personally, the extended absence of A-Rod deals a huge blow to the lineup and no doubt there are some fans (read: insane people) already considering 2009 (or at least the first 2 months or so) a wash. Such is life when you expect a title every year. In a way, I almost wish the organization and fanbase shared the "now or never" mentality of the Blue Jays because really the only things that separate the two of us is a pile of money and a willingness to spend it.

Read J here 8 days a week. Thanks J!

Long Weekend Enjoyment

Sit back, enjoy a refreshing beverage, and let Travis Snider's growing pains take you into fall. Perhaps some Whiffleball is in your future. That is the kind of future I can only dream about. Another dream of mine is finishing ahead of the Yankees, which this weekend will go a long way in deciding. Carl Pavano versus future Yankee AJ Burnett! John Parrish v. Darrel Rasner, a match up worthy of Yankee Stadium's venerable history. It brings a tear to my eye.

If you do find yourself online this weekend, come by Walkoff Walk, where I will be plying my trade once again. Labour on my brothers!

Stairs Trade Update: ESPN is reporting that the Jays will receive pitcher Fabio Castro from the Phillies. It appears that Castro is left-handed and terrible.

Know Your Enemy: White Tar Edition

Adam Lind having popped the clutch on the Blue Jays bandwagon, this week's series against the Bronx Bombers is being billed as a Big One. Perhaps we should gaze into the smoggy depths of Yankeeland and find out what we are getting ourselves into.

• Bad news for Jays pitching as Hideki Matsui will be coming off the DL for tomorrow's game. Matsui's had success against the Jays, knocking 10 tater tots in 90 games. Matsui's knee will only allow him to DH, meaning both Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi must both strap on the leather. Giambi's defense has improved greatly this year, and his more into latex than leather.
• Another boon for Yankee opponents is the possible return of Carl Pavano. The move up from punchline to rotation contributor is huge, but if Mike Hampton remains employed, there is hope for Pavano.
• With two full years left on his contract, it is already time to begin the Derek Jeter=Brett Favre laziness. Oh heavens! What if Derek Jeter isn't a Yankee for life? It really makes me long for the days when players were cattle, and had no right to choose where they played or for how much. How else can we romanticize our legends? How else can a retired ballplayer ensure he'll never pay for a meal again in his life?
• The Yankees are going to squeeze every last cent of revenue from the new Stadium that they can. They are going to ban all outside food and beverage; forcing the lowly plebes that can afford Yankee tickets to shell out even more for the honor of buying a sponsored drink.
• Carnies are to be pitied, and are unanimously Yankee fans.

The pitching matchups for this series are a real "who's who" of wife beaters and cups of coffee. Darrell Rasner against the man with career highs in wins, ERA+ (high meaning low) and WHIP AJ Burnett. Guess which one of those things will ensure him 3/45? Andy Petitte and David Purcey hook up Wednesday, which should be interesting. Halladay and Ponson will close the series, and hopefully the book on Ponson's sad career.

The Winds Of Change

The life of a baseball writer is one of endless pain and suffering. Woe unto the man forced to visit Florida midwinter while his pitiless editor demands a season preview at gunpoint. Since the playoffs ended in October, that only leaves 3 1/2 months to take stock of all the trades and movement and bang out something coherent before heading off to the dogtrack. I suppose that since all most season previews are horseshit (watch for ours in the coming weeks, now with 150% more presumption!) these writers don't bother putting any thought into them whatsoever. Case in point, the New York Yankees.

Despising the Yankees is achieved with more ease than being bored in Vancouver; it simply comes with the territory. Discrediting them is more difficult, however. They have made the playoffs every year since 1995, first with a decidedly unglamorous yet wildly successful band of journeymen; then with a big-budget, Michael Bayseball cacophony of hate. They were a force of nature, and it brought us all to tears.

Things are different now. They still write huge checks, and if that goes south they write an even bigger check to compensate. But they come into this spring looking nothing short of vulnerable. Question marks now precede dollar signs when I think of the Yankees. But that doesn't seem to matter to most prognosticators, who just pencil the Yankees into 2nd place and go back to their Warcraft guild, where experience points make them important, not jaded.
Note: nothing about Warcraft is important.

Let's change the setting, just a for a moment. A team (the Iowa Wheatchiefs, let's say) have a lineup that, while potent, features 1 guy under the age of 32. The rotation features two washed up guys, two kids that are complete unknowns, and one "top of the rotation" guy that isn't even considered the ace by the man who signs the paychecks! The team is visibly old and deeply mired in the Witchell Rehunt and associated scandals. Almost all their major contributors have missed time in each of the last few seasons, and they are laughable thin at all positions. They play in the same division as the defending World Series champions, everyones' (well the same people that default the Yankees to 90 wins) darkhorse/sexy pick Tampa, and a Jay team with 4 top line starters and an emergent offense. Do you give this team of hoary bastards 90 wins without a second thought?

Does this seem like a team you can pencil in for 88-90 wins just like that? What kind of confidence does Phil Hughes instill that Dustin McGowan does not? Who the fuck is Ian Kennedy? When in his entire life has Mike Mussina ever won anything? When did Chein-Mein Wang become better than Roy fucking Halladay?

Some of the zzzzzzZiPS projections floating around put the Yankees on or around 93 wins. I call shenanigans. This is it. This is the year it all comes crashing down in the Bronx. I just hope a team with solid pitching, defense and a patient yet explosive offense is around to take advantage.

Know Your Enemy

Given the glut of information presented by the interwebs, we Jays fans can easily keep tabs on the wheelings and dealings of the vile pink hat producers to the south.

Heavily circulated rag the New York Post is reporting that histrionic wunderkind and gnat-beacon Joba Chamberlain will go the way of the Papelboner and start the season in the bullpen. Much like the easily-amped Boston stopper, Joba displayed unhittable stuff right from the embryonic stages of his Major League career. The team went to great lengths to protect his virginal arm, enacting the "Joba Rules" to prevent notorious slave driver Joe Torre from grinding his tender ligaments into a fine paste.

But much like Red Sox of their closer Papelbon, the Yankees feel he is too valuable in the setup role and will hold off until mid-season before unleashing Joba on unsuspecting interleague opponents. The big-spending Yanks will then be heading into the stretch run with a rotation of kids, and god-willing, a heaping spoonful of poetic justice.

Insert obligatory picture of the gold bikini......now

...and then, when everybody loses

Crazy Yankee Fan is suing team...

Evidently a long-time New York yankee fan is suing the team over "some players"
reported use of performance enhancing drugs, saying he wants payback for $221 US
dollars in tickets and a public response from his once-cherished and beloved team.

Calling it consumer fraud, Matthew Mitchell, a 30 year old Brooklyn resident who saw
his first live Yankee game in 1984 says, "If I'm going to watch a baseball game, then I
expect the real thing".

The Yankees shockingly have declined to comment.

Mitchell filed his lawsuit in small claims court in Brooklyn last week, about a month after former US Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell released a report linking 85 Major League Baseball players - including 20 current and former Yankees - to illegal use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs such as HGH (Human Growth Hormone).

Mitchell wants to be reimbursed for tickets to five games between 2002 and 2007. They include Game 2 of the 2003 World Series, in which pitcher Andy Pettitte led the Yankees to a win.
Coincidently Pettitte recently admitted to have used HGH to "help him rehab" following an injury.

Mitchell claims he's filed this lawsuit to "force" the team to come forward and answer his claims.

NOTE - I hate the New York yankees including their idiot fans such as this Mitchell character.
File your lawsuit against MLB if you're going to file it against anyone you clown.