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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Friday, July 18, 2008
Primery Memorandum: Storylines from Jonah Keri.
Yankees Offense
Find your most optimistic scenario — Alex Rodriguez goes into full rampage mode, Derek Jeter returns to vintage form, Damon comes back and resumes hitting .300-plus with an OBA near .400 — and the Yankees could still be left out of the playoffs if they don’t get better contributions from their two biggest disappointments: Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera. At least there’s some precedent with Cano. Six weeks into last season, he was hitting a measly .234/.276/.312. He surged from there, ending the season at .306/.353/.488. Cabrera, on the other hand, has always been about strong defense and untapped offensive potential. He’s hitting just .241/.301/.347, a line so weak that his running catches and base runner gun-downs still aren’t enough to make him a significant Yankees asset. Unlike with the 1B/DH situation, though, the Yankees intend to sink or swim with Cano and Cabrera in the lineup.
Mets Fifth Starter
Can Pedro Martinez hold up? His recent track record makes that an open question, even more so with news that he received a pain-killing injection in his hip yesterday, pushing back his next start. With John Maine and Oliver Perez struggling with consistency and generally not as good as last year, should the real discussion be about the Mets’ no. 5 starter, or about a possible no. 2 starter? Status quo could rule here, given the Mets’ lack of tradable assets, Perez’s recent improvement, and Orlando Hernandez still a possibility within the next few weeks.
Repoz
Posted: July 18, 2008 at 09:52 AM | 4 comment(s)
Related News: General, NY Mets, NY Yankees
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Cano, OTOH, is way off, and yet he's gotten little of the acrimony Melky's gotten.
He's gotten plenty at RLYW. I think there's still reason to believe he'll bounce back because of his track record, while this year, especially after April has erased almost all hope of him turning into something.
The clock struck midnight long ago on Darrell Rasner. After getting off to a fast start as a rotation fill-in with Ian Kennedy ineffective and Philip Hughes hurt, Rasner's performance has predictably taken a turn for the worse, with an 8.16 ERA in his past six starts, each time failing to pitch more than five innings. Sidney Ponson's luck hasn't run out yet, but years of spectacular failure suggest that the end is nigh.
After a slow start, Daniel McCutchen is striking out a good number of batters (How does that field and that league play?) with a decent ERA. He's got no real future, he's already 26, I'd like to see what he can offer sometime soon. Kennedy should be ready to contribute soon too.
At what point do the Yankees become sellers?
They're five and a half games out in the wild card chase, trailing three teams and barely ahead of another, and six games out in the AL East race, trailing two loaded teams with the minor league depth and trading assets to get even better.
The Yanks play the A's, Twins and Red Sox in their first 9 games after the break. We'll know a lot more about where they're going to finish the season after that stretch. If they go 2-7, I would guess there will be time to make a deal or two.
But that one double was an absolute rocket.
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