Visions of Joba

-The Yankees celebrated their Simcoe Day (or is it Colonel By Day, or maybe Natal Day?) with a sweaty one-run victory keyed by a 4-run 6th. The Blue Jays came in on a 5-game winning streak that has J.P. Ricciardi's boys again believing in October baseball north of the border. Today with the Yankees in town, they conveniently overcame their four game-long amnesia regarding Pop-UpGate and decided to congratulate A-Rod on his 500th home run the Blue Jay Way, with a little brushback/throw-behind. It led to some dirty looks from Mr. Torre and some hard slides by A-Rod and Damon, but not much else. Perhaps now this puts an end to all the "notorious Ha! Game" references during every Yanks/Jays telecast.

-This game served as a strong reminder of the importance of two players: Melky Cabrera and Joba Chamberlain. One was supposed to be the 4th outfielder this year, the other wasn't supposed to sniff the majors until next season at the earliest. Yet with Melky thriving while seeing his name in the lineup daily, combined with the quagmire that is the Yankees' middle relief, those two players have superceded their preseason expectations. It's now officially reached the point where those two, along with Phil Hughes, are completely necessary to the team's playoff hopes. Their necessity may seem absolutely ridiculous on face value, judging by their total inexperience as well as their high-priced teammates. Yet it is unmistakable, no matter how long the organization tries to play overly coy when it comes to Joba being promoted, or when it came to Hughes regaining a place in the rotation.

The expulsion of Proctor and Myers places the writing the firmest it's been on the wall all season. In fact, it's basically now in permanent ink, at least as it pertains to Joba's role in the bullpen:

"We need Joba Chamberlain to be better than those guys, in fact, we passed on Eric Gagne because we think Joba provides us the same thing without sacrificing Melky and Ian Kennedy to the altar of the 2-Month Rental Gods."

Watching Jim Brower tip-toe through two batters without completely imploding made me think of Brian Cashman, tightly crossing his fingers and hoping to catch some of that Aaron Small Mojo in the form of a retread middle reliever. He knows the perils of putting his 200 million-dollar team on the backs of such unproven performers, yet his new approach has made it an unavoidable occurrence.

Brian's wishful thinking re: Brower will soon fade, though, after an underwhelming outing or two. He will be faced with the ramifications of his own decisions, which as it pertains to hording young talent, have been good ones. The fact remains, though, that this is a sea change in comparison to the playoff pushes of years past, one that both he and Yankees fans might not be ready for. Where in the past, the weight of New York expectations fell upon the shoulders of seasoned, high-paid vets, this summer, no matter how much lip service is paid to the importance of the team's veterans returning to their past performance levels, it will be the contributions of Joba, Melky and Phil Hughes that determine how the season ends.

Part of me sees this fact as a complete affirmation of the legitimacy of Brian's Plan, since in years past guys like Melky and Hughes and Joba would have been traded to the Rangers or drafted by the A's via the compensation picks.

Another part of me, for the first time in a long time, is genuinely excited to see the notoriously high-spending gluttons that I call my team injected with some bona fide high-end talented young players (Melky not projecting as high-end, but nonetheless a talented youngster.)

And then there is that third part of me: the part that acknowledges how it's an extremely dicey proposition to have a team's hopes live or die by two young, unproven, untested arms. That may be the justification of Rocket Redux, Andy Again, and Multi-Moose: to keep it like a secret that Phil Hughes is the Most Important SP down the stretch, and that Joba is K-Rod circa 2002 in Pinstripes, but it doesn't fool me.

The only chance this team has of being anything but another Division Series casualty is for these two young pitchers to be more than just small contributors in August and September. It's a heaping helping of great expectations for two guys who deserve the chance to carve out their niche naturally, as opposed to being thrust into a pennat race. What they deserve and what they're actually getting are two different things, and as a fan it's my pleasure to see which direction the youngsters go. I feel compelled by some unknown force to root for them even harder now, with my mind on what success this year could mean for the future. That would be a future with no ceiling for two 21-year-old arms, or perhaps a future where it takes a little while for the 21-year-olds to figure it out. Regardless, though, we're going to find out one way or another before this season's over. That in itself might be the unfriendly reality the Yankees are faced with this season: the future is unavoidably now.

An Introduction

This is not the ideal date to launch a blog focused on baseball. Five months removed from the bubbling anticipation of April 1st’s level playing field and identical records, early August is a weird point in the season. The pennant race hasn’t quite reached that fully frenzied point yet, with hungry teams charging towards an October berth. However, the magnitude of the solitary game exponentially increases from now through September, so perhaps I am getting started on the cusp of the final rise towards the season’s ultimate climax.

Regardless of the timing, I want to lay out what exactly it is I’ll be writing about. I can not claim that this will be anything but a vehicle for me to write passionately, analytically and logically about the New York Yankees. I am a lifelong fan, but my goal is to present a kind of writing that transcends pointless and uninteresting fan-blather full of emotional outbursts, insults, etc. I’m trying to ride the season’s rollercoaster and formulate fresh observations, instead of whining when my team loses or flaming a particularly loathsome performer.

Seeing that I consider myself decently informed on what’s happening in the rest of the league, I also aspire to discuss interesting and important developments on other teams in other cities. I’m nowhere near as immersed in the baseball cultures elsewhere as I am in New York, or am I anywhere near as interested in them, so I can’t christen this an all-encompassing “baseball blog”.

The sources I will draw upon for links, talking points, etc. will mostly be major news outlets in New York as well as online. I don’t frequent any team-specific or baseball-specific websites, message boards, blogs, etc., so I don’t really know what the blueprint is or if there even is a blueprint for doing this kind of thing.

With that said, at this point, I have no idea what the content appearing here will look like, or what this page will read like. My hope is to post new writing daily. That writing will most likely contain links to news stories about the Yankees’ game or some other pertinent game or story, perhaps links to a player’s statistics, and things of that nature. If I get truly adventurous there might even be a picture or two once in a while. My technical acumen when it comes to web design and layout is virtually non-existent, so I don’t foresee anything flashy.

In the end, my basic hope is that this becomes my permanent mouthpiece for what crosses my mind as I watch games and then read about them afterwards. I’ve always been a little reticent to put my thoughts about games millions of people watch for themselves out there as if they mean something, but maybe this is the right way to do it. Only time will tell.

A real baseball post will follow this evening, sometime after the conclusion of this unorthodox Monday matinee in Toronto. For a slight laugh, it might be worth checking out the Rockwellian official MLB photo of Jesse Litsch. Also worth noting in Mr. Listch’s player card are the numbers of his only start prior against the Yankees.