Results tagged ‘ Andrew Bailey ’
Nova Seeks To Rekindle His Lofty Orbit In 2013
The New York Yankees will enter spring training with a virtually set starting rotation. That is a luxury among major-league clubs but there are some concerns about the staff and how effective it will be. Let’s examine each starter individually in a five-part series.
PART 5
IVAN NOVA (12-8, 5.02 ERA)
Entering the 2012 season it was not surprising that the Yankees believed they had something special in right-hander Ivan Nova. After all, Nova was nothing short of sensational in his rookie season, going 16-4 with a 3.70 ERA.
Despite the fact he was demoted for a month in midseason, Nova came back and refused to lose another game for the rest of the season. At age 25, Nova seemed to have past fellow minor leaguers like Manny Banuelos, Dellin Betances, David Phelps and Hector Noesi and even was outshining older Yankee young pitchers like Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain.
However, Nova’s path to stardom took a long detour in 2012 and he enters 2013 with no guarantee he will even be able to keep his job as the team’s fifth starter.
Nova, now 26, struggled mightily in spring training last season, posting a 1-2 record with a 8.06 ERA in six starts and it did not get much better as the 2012 season unfolded.
In June, Nova posted a 3-0 mark with a 1.26 ERA. But in the other five months his ERAs were: 5.18 in April, 5.87 in May, 5.97 in July, 7.03 in August and 6.23 in September. Nova was so bad that manager Joe Girardi took him out of the rotation entirely in September and inserted the rookie right-hander Phelps in his place.
Command of Nova’s pitches was his undoing in 2012.
At times Nova’s curve would desert him and at other times it was his normally electric slider. On occasion he could not throw either for strikes. So Nova was forced to use his fastball when he was behind in the count and hitters took advantage by blasting him for 28 home runs in just 170 1/3 innings (a home run every 6.1 innings).
For Nova it was a stunning reversal and the doubts about his ability to rebound are swirling even before he reports to spring camp in Tampa, FL. Phelps, 26, who was 4-4 with a 3.34 ERA in 33 appearances (11 starts) last season, is coming into the spring with the expressed intent of taking Nova’s job away from him.
Competition is a healthy thing but Nova has never shied away from it since he came up as cocky youngster at the tail end of the 2011 season and posted 1-2 record with a 4.50 ERA in seven starts.
Truth be told, Nova – scouts will tell you – may actually have the best stuff of any starter on the Yankees’ roster, including CC Sabathia.
Some in Nova’s camp point out that a number of rookie pitchers tend to regress a bit in their second seasons. Tampa Bay Rays rookie right-hander Jeremy Hellickson beat out Nova for the American League Rookie of the Year Award in 2011 by going 13-10 with a 2.95 ERA.
Last season, Hellickson was below .500 with a 10-11 ledger.
The previous two A.L. Rookie of the Year winners were relievers Neftali Feliz of the Texas Rangers in 2010 and Andrew Bailey of the Oakland Athletics in 2009 and neither have had smooth sailing in their years since. The last National League rookie starting pitcher to win the award was Dontrelle Willis of the then Florida Marlins in 2003 and how did his career turn out?
So Nova enters 2013 with some lingering doubts surrounding him but he also has a chance to return to his 2011 form. Spring training will be a pivotal time for him to prove the problems with his command are over and he can be trusted to pitch consistently every fifth day for the Yankees.
In addition, the Yankees would be foolish to give up on Nova so soon. Nova can be downright untouchable when he is on. Who can forget his heroic “relief” performance in the rain-delayed Game 1 in the American League Division Series against the Detroit Tigers in 2011?
Nova throws a mid-90s fastball and compliments it with an excellent curve. When he was demoted in 2011 he added a devastating slider to the mix and he was unbeatable when he returned. He was the Yankees best pitcher this side of Sabathia.
That is probably why Nova’s 2012 travails were so baffling to Girardi and pitching coach Larry Rothschild. Physically there was nothing wrong with Nova. But the command of his pitches seemed to elude him throughout the season.
The fact Nova turned in a 12-8 record was a testimony to his competitiveness, which has always been a hallmark for him. Nova is simply not afraid of hitters and he does not back down even when he is getting hit hard. Who can forget after Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays took him deep in his first September 2010 start that Nova buzzed Bautista inside his next time up?
Nope, fear is not in Nova’s lexicon.
That just might serve him well when he battles Phelps for the fifth starter job this spring. Nova ceratinly has to be better simply because it hard to believe he can be any worse than he was last season.
Nova also has a lot of things in his favor. He simply has better stuff than Phelps. His fastball is better and his breaking pitches have more bite. The question will simply come down to that command issue that plagued him.
Phelps is not exactly a marginal starter just trying to hang onto a major-league job either.
After four seasons in the minors in which Phelps was 38-15 and the highest ERA he recorded was the 2.99 mark he posted in 2011, Phelps entered the 2012 season behind Nova, Banuelos, Betances, Adam Warren and D.J. Mitchell despite the fact he was named the organization’s Pitcher of the Year in 2011.
The ex-Notre Dame star was 0-1 with a sparkling 2.08 ERA in seven appearances last spring, which earned him a surprise spot on the roster in the bullpen.
Phelps immediately impressed Girardi with his ability to attack the strike zone when he was called into games. Though Phelps is considered to have a rather pedestrian assortment of pitches, he proved early on that he was still able to get major-league hitters out using nearly pinpoint control.
He struck out 96 batters in 99 2/3 innings last season and Girardi had no qualms about using him as a spot starter, including his stint replacing Nova in late September.
So if Nova thinks that Phelps is just going to cede that No. 5 spot to him he is in for a big surprise. Phelps has always dealt with scouts doubting his abilities to pitch in the major leagues. That has fueled Phelps and he would love nothing more than to prove those scouts wrong.
The fact that the No. 5 spot comes down to two young right-handers who both came out of the Yankees’ farm system is also a testament to the efforts general manager Brian Cashman has made to invest heavily in scouting, signing the best pitchers he can find and keeping them rather them trading them to other teams.
Teams in the current era have been trying to develop the best young pitching they can find and they try to sign the best of them to long-term deals to retain them up to their 30s. That is why you do not see many young quality pitchers become free agents anymore.
So unless the Yankees either trade for a young pitcher like Michael Pineda or develop a Nova and/or Phelps they are going to have a tough time fielding a pitching staff going forward.
Cashman planned ahead and now Nova and Phelps could both play a big role toward making the Yankees’ 2013 a successful one.
Whoever wins the job will mean the loser more than likely will become the long reliever and spot starter for the team. Nova has much less experience in the bullpen and his command issues could get him sent out to Triple A early of he fails to throw strikes out of the bullpen.
But the smart money is that Nova will keep his role and Phelps will resume his in the bullpen.
Nova has come too far in the Yankees’ minor-league system to let this opportunity slip away from him. Of course, Phelps won’t back down either.
So that means that watching these two compete this spring will be the most fun to watch this spring.
Ibanez Ties It In 9th, Wins It In 12th As Yanks ‘Raul’
GAME 161
YANKEES 4, RED SOX 3 (12 INNINGS)
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman badly wanted to sign Raul Ibanez this winter but the front office told him he had to trim salary before he could. Cashman finally was able to trade A.J. Burnett to the Pittsburgh Pirates the weekend before spring training opened to clear enough salary and Ibanez was signed.
That signing looks huge now because in the 161st game of the season Ibanez blasted a pinch-hit two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth to force extra innings and then delivered a game-winning RBI single in the 12th as New York reduced its magic number to just one with a thrilling come-from-behind classic defeat over arch-rival Boston on Tuesday.
The 40-year-old outfielder first brought the paid crowd of 41,564 at Yankee Stadium to its feet when he stroked a low line-drive home run off Red Sox closer Andrew Bailey into the fifth row of the right-field bleachers with Curtis Granderson aboard to turn a 3-1 deficit into a 3-3 tie.
Unfortunately for the Yankees, the team then managed to load the bases with one out in the same inning but Mark Teixeira, who spent all night dashing the team’s scoring hopes, and Robinson Cano could not deliver off reliever Mark Melancon.
So the game, played on a very chilly 62-degree and rainy evening, trudged on to the bottom of the 12th.
Things did not look promising when left-hander Andrew Miller retired Teixeira and Cano to begin the inning and Francisco Cervelli, pressed into service because manager Joe Girardi had pinch-run and pinch-hit for Russell Martin and Chris Stewart earlier in the contest, was making his first plate appearance of the season.
He also was down in the count 0-2 on the first two pitches. But Miller threw four straight pitches out of the strike zone to walk him. Granderson then came to the plate and he drew a four-pitch walk to advance Cervelli into scoring position.
Girardi was also forced to keep potential pinch-runner Chris Dickerson in the dugout because Cervelli was the last catcher on the roster.
But Girardi’s concerns became moot when Ibanez laced an 0-1 pitch into the hole between shortstop and third base. Cervelli raced around third and headed for home as Daniel Nava scooped the ball and threw it towards home plate. But Cervelli crossed the plate well before the ball arrived and the Yankees flooded the field to celebrate one of their most hard-fought comebacks of the season with the division title on the line.
The Yankees knew that the Baltimore Orioles had defeated the Tampa Bay Rays 1-0 earlier on Tuesday. A Yankee loss would have hurtled them back into a flat-footed tie with the Orioles atop the American League East.
The Yankees can clinch their third division title in the past four seasons on Wednesday with a victory over the Red Sox in the final game of the regular season or if the Orioles lose to the Rays.
Derek Lowe (9-11) came on pitch two scoreless innings in the 11th and 12th to pick up the victory. Miller (3-2) took the loss.
Frustration as a word does not begin to tell the story of the evening for the Yankees.
They collected 11 hits and a walk over the first eight innings of the game but they failed to get any big hits to add to the one run they scored in the second inning off Red Sox starter Jon Lester.
With two out, Granderson reached first on an infield single and advanced to second when third baseman Pedro Ciriaco’s throw to get Granderson bounced into the stands. Eduardo Nunez, who started as the designated hitter instead of struggling Andruw Jones, delivered a hard-hit single off the glove of shortstop Jose Iglesias to score Granderson.
That run halved the deficit to 2-1 because the Red Sox jumped on rookie right-hander David Phelps early.
Jacoby Ellsbury laced a leadoff single and Dustin Pedroia, playing despite a fracture in his left thumb, then stroked an RBI double in the gap in right-center to score Ellsbury.
Pedroia advanced to third on a infield groundout off the bat of Nava and he scored on a sacrifice fly to deep center by Cody Ross.
However, Phelps pitched well the rest of the way. He left with one out in the sixth after giving up just two runs on three hits and two walks while he struck out four.
Lester, in addition to his teammates in the bullpen, kept walking the tightrope between trouble and disaster but he kept escaping thanks to some poor hitting by the Yankees with runners in scoring position:
- In the first inning, Derek Jeter singled and and reached third one out later on a bloop single by Alex Rodriguez. However, Teixeira – still hobbling on a sore left calf – hit into an inning-ending double play.
- In the third inning, Nick Swisher slapped a one-out double and advanced to third on an infield single by Rodriguez. But, Teixiera again hit into an inning-ending double play.
- In the fifth inning, Cano led off with a single and Nunez stroked a two-out double. Alas, Ichiro Suzuki lined a shot into center but right at Ellsbury to end the inning.
- In the ninth, Bailey gave up a one-out double to Jeter after Ibanez’s game-tying home run. Swisher was intentionally walked and Rodriguez followed by drawing a walk to load the bases. However, Melancon entered the game and retired Teixeira on a broken-bat pop to shallow center and Cano grounded out weakly to Pedroia at second.
- In the 11th inning, Swisher slapped an opposite-field single with two out off Vicente Padilla and Rodriguez followed with a blast to the warning track in center that Ellsbury was able to run down before he crashed into the wall.
Lester left after five innings having given up one unearned run on eight hits and one walk while he fanned one.
The Red Sox added to their lead in the top of the ninth when James Loney uppercut a 2-1 offering from Rafael Soriano in to the second deck down the line in right-field. The Red Sox and their beleaguered manager Bobby Valentine were figuring that it was the insurance run that would put the Yankees away with Bailey on the mound.
Ibanez had other ideas.
The Yankees ended up with 16 hits and five walks in the game and they stranded a total of 14 runners. Teixeira left nine runners on base in his six at-bats.
But none of that all matters much now because of Ibanez.
The Yankees, thanks to the Oakland Athletics’ 3-1 defeat of the Texas Rangers late Tuesday, now also hold claim to the best record in the American League at 94-67. The Red Sox had their season record fall to 69-92.
PINSTRIPE POSITIVES
- Ibanez entered the game in the ninth and ended up 2-for-3 with a home run and three very big RBIs. Since Sept. 22, Ibanez is 14-for-34 (.412) with five home runs and nine RBIs in largely a platoon role against right-handers. He is hitting .235 with 18 homers and 59 RBIs on the season. His single in the 12th was his 11th career walk-off hit.
- The bullpen, with the exception of Soriano’s hiccup to Loney, was actually very good. In 6 2/3 innings, they gave up one run on five hits and two walks and struck out seven batters. Lowe was especially good in his two innings of work. In a game when the relievers needed to hold the Red Sox down long enough to wake up the bats, they did a very good job.
- Girardi chose to go with Phelps in place of Ivan Nova and Nunez in place of Jones. Both moves paid off for the Yankees. Nunez was 2-for-3 with an RBI until Ibanez pinch-hit for him in the ninth and Phelps pitched into the sixth and kept the Yankees in the game. You have to give the manager credit for those moves.
NAGGING NEGATIVES
- Fans do have a right to question Girardi’s move to put Swisher second in the order with Rodriguez and Teixeira behind him. That left Cano, the team’s hottest hitter batting fifth. Teixera ended up 0-for-6 and he only got that weak pop to shallow center out of the infield in those at-bats. Teixera’s at-bats killed the Yankees all night long and it was Girardi’s fault. Shifting Suzuki to ninth did not seem to make sense either. Suzuki has owned Lester throughout his career.
ON DECK
The Yankees end their regular season with a chance to clinch the division and home-field advantage in the playoffs with a series sweep of the Red Sox on Wednesday.
Hiroki Kuroda (15-11, 3.34 ERA) will start for the Yankees. Kuroda won his last start despite giving up 10 hits and two walks in 5 1/3 innings against the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday. He is 1-1 with a 3.60 ERA this season against the Red Sox.
The Red Sox will counter with every hitter’s dream in Daisuke Matsuzaka (1-6, 7.68 ERA). Matsuzaka gave up five runs on nine hits and a walk in three innings against the Tampa Bay Rays in his last outing on Sept. 19. This likely will be the last start of his career for the Bosox, who can’t wait to shed his huge contract. He is 3-3 with a 5.52 ERA lifetime against the Yankees.
Game-time will be 7:05 p.m. EDT and the game will be telecast nationally by ESPN and locally by the YES Network.
Yankees In Boston To Witness Red Sox Turmoil
The New York Yankees will pay a visit on Friday with their old pals in Beantown.
They also will see a team in the Red Sox reeling after a week of injuries, bad pitching and a blowup between the Bosox egotistical skipper and the most committed player in his clubhouse.
Ahhh! Good times!
I do not like to say I told you so to Red Sox Nation and Kevin Youkilis but I did write a post on March 1 titled “Bosox Just Finding Out Valentine Is Big Scumbag.” In it I wrote the following:
Congratulations, Red Sox, on hiring the complete opposite of a classy and knowledgeable baseball man in Terry Francona. I am now counting the days Valentine will be the manager when the Red Sox finish third and about three Red Sox guys are grousing under the cloak of anonymity about what an idiot Valentine is as a manager.
Trust me, the day is coming. Bobby V. has a way of wearing out his welcome with the players, management and the fans. Why else would it have taken him this long to get an offer to manage? Boston needed a name manager and Bobby was out there self-promoting himself for the job before the ink was dry on Francona’s walking papers.
I hate being wrong, though. Those three players likely will not be grousing what an idiot Valentine is anonymously. They likely will be saying it his face. Such is the turmoil that engulfed this team in a few short weeks into the 2012 season.
Youkilis might have been hitting .200. He might have had an awful spring. Injuries may have ruined the second half of the 2011 season for him. But he always has been emotionally and physically committed to the Red Sox. He and Dustin Pedroia bring the intensity to the team that drives it.
It appears that Valentine has stupidly lost both players’ support. Youkilis will play hard no matter what but he won’t be chilling in Bobby’s office after the game sipping a brew after a victory either.
Pedroia, for his part, went on record with a public castigation of the manager by saying: “That is not the way we do things around here.”
Pedroia is right, too. Valentine did his questioning of Youkilis in a public forum and not in his office with the door shut, mano a mano.
But this gutless stuff and Valentine have a way of following him around from his various managing gigs.
He purposely tried to fan the flames of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry this spring by picking on Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. He also publicly dissed manager Joe Girardi for ending a tied exhibition game after nine innings.
Whoa, the gall of that Girardi to save his pitching for a two split-squad games scheduled 12 hours from that point. But we all know Bobby V was stoking the fire for the regular season. It is what he has to do to take the fans and pundits off the subject that his team is not a very good one right now.
Short on quality starters, even the good ones like Jon Lester, Josh Beckett and Clay Buchholz are getting battered like punch-drunk fighters. The bullpen was centered around the acquisitions of closer Andrew Bailey and setup man Mark Melancon. Now Bailey is out two months and Melancon is riding buses in the International League after taking an unmerciful pounding on Monday.
The team was without starting left-fielder Carl Crawford, who is still yet to prove he is worth the seven-year contract GM Theo Epstein kissed his feet to sign last season. Now MVP runnerup Jacoby Ellsbury ia out two months with a bad shoulder.
Because the Red Sox spent so much money on players like Crawford and John Lackey and traded their best prospects to get players like Victor Martinez and Adrian Gonzalez, they are right at the very edge of incurring the luxury tax. So they can’t go out and buy their way out of mediocrity.
So Valentine’s hands are tied because of a bereft minor-league system and the realization they can’t add payroll to fix what needs fixing.
Meanwhile, the players are already not on board with Valentine and his way of doing things. Pedroia already signaled that at the exhibition game Valentine got upset with Girardi in Fort Myers, FL. When asked by Buster Olney of ESPN what it has been like with Valentine as manager, Pedroia refused to spout the company line.
He said, “It has only been a few weeks so I can’t tell you.”
That speaks volumes about the chasm Valentine has driven between himself and the players. Pedroia did not say it was different than with Terry Francona and he was excited to play for a knowledgeable baseball man like Valentine, etc. He just said nothing and at the same time he said an awful lot to us reading between the lines.
Red Sox Nation is no longer a democracy, or even a plutocracy. It is now dictatorial and repressive. It will not take long for the combination of the unhappiness and the losing gets to the players and they start venting what they really think.
If I were Bobby V, I would not put a down-payment on that sprawling mansion in Beacon Hill just yet. He might be using Bekins to pack him and his sorry butt back to New York. I just have a feeling this marriage was forced and needs to be annulled immediately.
The Red Sox never knew what hit them when the canned the best manager they ever had and their GM got out of Dodge just ahead of the posse. Now they are finding what life used to be like before 2004 and it couldn’t have happened to more arrogant and obnoxious fanbase in the history of baseball.
RIP.
Despite Triple Play Yankees, Sabathia Fall To Athletics
- Marcus Thames, inserted into the lineup as additional right-handed hitter against the lefty Braden, touched Braden for a solo home run to left in the fifth inning. Thames is batting .500 on the season.
- Mark Teixeira hit his second home run of the season in the sixth inning to cut the Yankees’ deficit to two runs.
- Francisco Cervelli was used to catch Sabathia for the third time this season and give Jorge Posada a rest after a night game. But he had a great game, too. He was 2-for-3 at the plate with a double and a single. He also threw out Kevin Kouzmanoff at second base with a laser-like throw in the fourth inning.
- On defense, Alex Rodriguez engineered the first triple play in Yankees’ history since 1968 in the sixth inning. Sabathia gave up a single to Daric Barton, threw a wild pitch to allow him to move to second and then walked Ryan Sweeney. But Suzuki followed with a grounder to Rodriguez that took him to the third base bag. Rodriguez stepped onto third base to retire Barton, fired to Robinson Cano to get Sweeney and Cano relayed to Nick Johnson at first in time to beat Suzuki.
- Though Sabathia did not pitch well, he kept his pitch count down enough to be able to complete eight innings and allowed the bullpen to rest going into the weekend series with the Los Angeles Angels.
- Control was Sabathia’s undoing in this game. He walked Rajai Davis and Sweeney in the first inning and Suzuki made him pay with a three-run home run. Sabathia walked a total of six batters in the game.
- Cano was unable to turn a routine double play in the fourth inning and his relay to first skipped into the Yankees’ dugout. Later Adam Rosales cashed in the error by hitting a sacrifice fly that extended the lead to 4-0.
- The Yankees’ No. 9, No. 1 and No. 2 hitters — Brett Gardner, Derek Jeter and Johnson — combined to go 0-for-10 in the game.
- Braden managed to make most of the Yankee hitters look silly all day by throwing change-up after change-up after change-up. He struck out only two batters but he also induced some easy outs with the pitch.
- The Yankees also killed themselves with two ill-timed double plays. In the fifth inning the Yankees scored on Thames’ leadoff homer and Cervelli singled. But Gardner killed the rally by hitting into a rare double play. In the sixth inning, it happened again. After Teixeira’s one-out home run, Alex Rodriguez singled. However, Cano hit into an inning-ending double play.
ning he acted like a two-year-old by yelling at Rodriguez after the A’s completed a double play to retire Rodriguez at second and Cano at first. Braden was upset because of what happened just prior to the double play. When Cano had hit a looping ball to left that just fell into foul territory. Rodriguez, who was running from first base, rounded third base and then jogged back to first over the mound. Braden claimed it was a violation of an unwritten rule in baseball. Braden told Rodriguez to “get off his mound.” Rodriguez was amused by the incident and put the pitcher properly in his place: “I’d never quite heard that, especially from a guy who has just a handful of wins. I thought it was pretty funny actually.” . . . The Yankees decided to give Teixeira a “half-day” off by starting him at designated hitter and playing Johnson at first base. . . . The Yankees’ last triple play before Thursday’s gem occurred on June 3, 1968 against the Twins with a line drive off the bat of Johnny Roseboro. The play went 1-5-3 — pitcher Dooley Womack to third baseman Bobby Cox and on to first baseman Mickey Mantle. . . . The Yankees presented the ball they used to record the triple play to Rodriguez after the game. Rodriguez indicated he will keep the ball. . . . Despite the loss Thursday, the Yankees still tied an all-time franchise mark set in 1926 by winning their first five series to start the season. Only one other team has started the season with as many as four series wins to open a season — the 1922 Yankees.
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