The Futility Infielder

I've had a tough time getting back on track since the blackout here, so at the risk of wallowing, I'm just going to blast through a quick rundown of the Yanks' recent games, along with a few more links.

I missed the first half of last weekend's Yankees-Orioles series in Baltimore, which was full of some appropriately weird stuff. Thursday night's game was played while New York City was blacked out, and with radio station WCBS carrying news coverage of the power outage, there was simply no way to follow the game here. Not that we didn't have better things to do. But I still haven't seen the game-saving catch Hideki Matsui made in the bottom of the seventh, and I'm not sure I ever will.

The Yanks won Friday night's game on a disputed 3-run home run by Aaron Boone. Mired in a 6-for-51 slump since joining the Yanks, Boone came to bat in the top of the 9th with two men on and the Yanks trailing 3-2. His drive down the left field line was initially ruled foul by third base umpire Jeff Nelson (no relation to the pitcher), but the crew overturned the ruling, allowing the home run to stand. The winning pitcher, of course, was the other Jeff Nelson. Like I said, weird stuff. Weirdo Larry Mahnken has a hilarious entry in his Replacement Level Yankees Weblog in which he envisions telling his grandchildren about Boone's blast. Larry's going to sound a lot like Abe Simpson in his old age.

Saturday's game turned into the Joe Torre Bonehead Festival. For starters, Torre failed to catch the Orioles batting out of turn in the first inning. With one out and men on second and third, Tony Batista brought his Samurai Chef batting stance to the box ahead of the listed cleanup hitter, Jay Gibbons. Batista delivered a sacrifice fly. Torre could have appealed under Rule 6.07 and nullified the run, but he didn't notice the flip-flop until after Gibbons batted. The error gnawed at Torre during the entire game: "I was beating myself up in the first inning, and I wasn't in the mood to really make an issue of it," he said. Mike C. has a thorough rantdown of the rule in question and another concerning other notable times this has happened.

Torre's second gaffe of the game was a bit more subjective, but no less excusable. In the ninth inning he called upon closer Mariano Rivera for the third straight day. Now, the Yanks' bullpen has been extremely spotty this season, but Torre's dependence on Rivera hasn't helped matters. This was the third time since the end of July that Torre called upon Rivera for at least three consecutive days, and all three of those streaks had brought trouble:

1) July 31-August 3: In this four-game run, Rivera blew two saves against the Oakland A's and took the loss, his first of the season, in the latter one. Those were only his third and fourth blown saves of the season.

2) August 6-August 8: Rivera not only blew a save against the Rangers, he also made a throwing error on a bunt, setting up a two-run single which hung him with his second loss in as many games. He converted his next two saves, though he allowed a run in one of them.

3) August 14-16: Rivera had allowed a three hits and a homer in the 9th inning of the second game after Boone hit his 3-run shot, but he converted the save.

So sure enough, Torre brought Rivera in for the third straight day, and Rivera yielded a game-tying leadoff homer to Luis Matos, his fourth blown save in 16 days. Hey, I know that's just a week in the office for Armando Benitez, and that Mo's a better pitcher than that, but it wouldn't kill Torre to have rested his closer for a day against a sub-.500 ballclub.

The game, which also featured the weirdness of backup catcher John Flaherty going yard twice, ended up lasting 12 innings. Jason Giambi homered in the top of the 12th, but the Orioles nearly tied the game in the bottom half. With two outs, Jeff Nelson walked Jack Cust, then yielded a double by Larry Bigbie into the right-centerfield gap. In one of the craziest sequences I've ever seen, rightfielder Karim Garcia relayed the ball to Alfonso Soriano, who threw to Aaron Boone at third, where the roly-poly Cust had slipped while rounding the bag. Boone dropped the ball but recovered in time, throwing to Jorge Posada at home to snag Cust in a rundown. Posada chased Cust back to third, but when he threw to Boone, Cust turned again, realizing nobody was covering home plate. Nelson, who should have been covering home, had headed to back up third on the relay. Boone frantically chased Cust toward home as the poor Oriole wiped out about 10 feet from the plate and was tagged out to end the game. That's 9-4-5-2-5 for those of you scoring at home.

Sunday's ballgame, fortunately for the Yanks, was anything but weird. Mike Mussina pitched his best game of the season, slamming the door on his former team with a three-hit, no-walk shutout and giving the bullpen a much-needed day off. Which was a good thing, since the Yanks needed that pen to start their series with the Kansas City Royals on the good foot last night. They piled on K.C. starter Jose Lima (making his first appearance since a trip to the DL) for six runs in four innings, enabling them to feast on the creamy nougat of the Royals' bullpen. Karim Garcia tagged Paul Abbott for a three-run shot, continuing his hot streak (.338/.392/.588 in pinstripes).

The Yanks needed most of those runs. Jeff Weaver slopped his way through 5.2 innings, allowing four, and Antonio Osuna gave up two more. Osuna's now allowed five runs and eight hits in his last 4.2 innings. But Nelson and Chris Hammond managed to close the shop for the Yanks. An ugly win, but a win nonetheless, their fifth in a row. Their lead over Boston is now 5.5 games, and the Sox have their next seven against the A's and Mariners in Fenway. Where would they be without Jeff Suppan?

I'm headed to the other two games of the K.C.-N.Y. series, one tonight and the other tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully the Yanks will have better luck against Kevin Appier this time around. Ape shut down the Yanks last Wednesday, and in his return to Royal blue, he's allowed only two runs in 11 innings.

• • •

I spoke to Baseball Prospectus injury guru/Rose reporter Will Carroll for the first time yesterday. Turns out he's a regular reader here just as I am at his Under the Knife column. Will thanked me for my even-handed coverage of BP's scoop and gave me a bit of a peek inside the case, pointing out that there's a distinction between "Rose reaching an agreeement with Major League Baseball" (which is what B-Pro's report said) and reaching an agreement with Commissioner Bud Selig, the man who can reinstate Rose.

Our conversation moved on to Mariano Rivera. I asked if he'd heard whether Rivera's latest struggles are injury-related and he sad no, he's pretty certain it's just fatigue and bad mechanics. He pointed to something I believe I recall from one his UTK columns: Baseball Tonight's Jeff Brantley mentioned recently that when Rivera is fatigued, his elbow drops and his arm slot gets all messed up. Keep an eye out for that. This means you, Joe Torre.

• • •

The Yanks made a roster move over the weekend, releasing Todd Zeile. With the return of Nick Johnson and the trade for Aaron Boone, Zeile's role had diminished while his bitching increased, making this an unsurprising move. It's been suggested that the Mariners might be interested in Zeile to play third base, and one look at their alternatives will tell you why. Here's a comparison of Zeile with the two organ donors who've been handling the hot corner for the M's:

                                   AVG  OBP  SLG  OPS HR RBI

Todd Zeile's rapidly aging corpse .214 .294 .349 .649  6  23

The Undead Jeff Cirillo           .210 .288 .278 .566  2  22

The Stillborn Willie Bloomquist   .250 .322 .322 .644  1  14

Barring a miracle, Cirillos' going to have to pay up on a wager he made with Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Jim Moore. If Cirillo doesn't hit .280, he will donate $20,000 to the Humane Society (and no, that's not like gambling on the outcome of a ballgame). Is it too harsh a suggestion that the most humane thing to do would be to put Cirillo down?

• • •

Brandon Claussen, the much-heralded prospect the Yanks sent to the Reds for Aaron Boone has been shut down for the season. ESPN's Jayson Stark had reported a couple weeks ago that scouts had noticed Claussen's velocity dropping. Said one scout:

I saw him in his first game (in the Reds' system), and his fastball was 86-88 mph. If he gets back to 90-92, then they've really got something, because his makeup is good, his knowledge of pitching is good and he throws his curve and change to both sides of the plate.

After struggling in two starts at AAA Louisville, the Reds wisely decided to protect the young lefty, who'd undergone Tommy John surgery late last June and had returned on a rapid timetable. The move obviously delays Claussen's arrival in Cincy until next season, but the pitcher isn't upset. Said Claussen, ""My innings and my pitch count were getting to the point where I was getting in that red zone, so we felt like it was a better fit if I shut it down now and got ready for next year."

This news does temper some of my criticism about the Yanks trading Claussen. Based on his impresive major-league debut and Jeff Weaver's continued struggles, I felt that the Yanks should have traded Weaver somewhere instead and inserted the rookie into the rotation, at least until Jose Contreras came around. But the Yanks probably realized that Claussen didn't have much left in the tank this season, easing their decision to pull the trigger on the Boone deal. That's not to say Claussen would qualify as damaged goods, however. In all likelihood the Reds knew exactly what they were getting.

• • •

Speaking of Stark, the ESPN columnist has a lengthy piece on TJ surgery which carries much of the same info as a segment on Outside the Lines I wrote up recently. On the evolution of the surgery from cutting-edge to commonplace, Stark writes:

So isn't it amazing to think that it was only 29 years ago that Tommy John headed into Dr. Frank Jobe's operating room to become the first ligament-transplant guinea pig?

Back then, what Tommy John was doing was almost as revolutionary as landing on the moon. Now, all these John Smoltzes and Kerry Woods later, it's almost as routine as going to the dentist... there's a better chance of something going wrong with the teeth-cleaning machine than there is of something going wrong when Dr. Andrews or Dr. Jobe is borrowing some tendon from your wrist or hamstring to replace your blown-out elbow ligament. There are no guarantees in medicine, but Tommy John surgery is about as close as it gets. Jobe and Andrews now estimate there is a 92-to-95-percent chance patients will recover from Tommy John surgery as good as new. Maybe better.

Stark runs through the litany of major-leaguers who have had the surgery and points to Jon Leiber, whom the Yanks signed to a two-year contract knowing that the first year (this one) would most likely be a wash as he rehabbed: "A two-year contract for a Tommy John patient isn't a sign that baseball contracts are now officially like hitting the lottery. It's a sign that the procedure has become probably the safest bet in modern sports medicine."