May 3 - Panic in Pinstripe Nation

It took all of twenty-six games, but the Yankees officially reached for the panic button last night. And in one fell swoop, an aging member of the “core” was disgraced, a weak-armed and far from fleet leftfielder was moved to Center, a soft-hitting guy who has never played left was moved to left and a kid from Columbus was called up to play second base. This wasn’t a shakeup – it was a shakedown, ordered of course, by an owner who still can’t figure out where his $200 million dollars went. So what happened? Well, to begin, Bernie has been benched and that effectively ends his career as a centerfielder in New York. He may get to DH here and there, but his career is now effectively over. Next, you have Hideki Matsui moving over to center where his speed will surely be a liability and his arm is barely an upgrade over BW. Then you have Tony Womack moving from second to left where he has never played before. Are you kidding me – Tony Womack is now the leftfielder for the 26-Time World Champion New York Yankees. I guess Karim Garcia wasn't available. And finally, you have Robinson Cano coming up from Columbus to play second. Who the hell is Robby Cano and why did the Yanks have to overhaul their whole lineup to get him some major league at bats? If Cano was that good, there is no way he would still be in the Yankees system. And if that isn’t enough, Randy Johnson is now gimpy with a groin injury and may be headed to the DL and Steve Karsay is headed to the open market. It would be a huge understatement to say this team is in chaos. Disrepair is more appropriate and all the blame lies at the feet of Mr. Steinbrenner and the panicky Mr. Cashman. After all, these were the guys who thought the Yanks could squeeze another year out of Williams. These were the guys who passed on Carlos Beltran. These were the guys who threw all that money at Giambolic. These were the guys who took a chance on Wright when everyone else in baseball took a pass. These were the guys who let Jon Lieber exit over a few million dollars. In sum, these same guys have been making mistake after mistake for years and the end result is players playing out of position, a scrub playing leftfield and a AAA second baseman that the Yanks couldn’t pay the DBacks to take over the winter. So the Yanks are now left with huge question marks all over the place. The lineup has a bunch of embedded outs – especially at first and left, the bullpen is a Superfund Cleanup Site and there are holes all over the staff. And while I think it is still premature to put the final nail in the coffin, it is looking more and more like this team’s playoff streak will come to an end this October. I just don’t see how this team is going to win 90 games, let alone the 95 that is will surely take to win the East. In fact, if this Johnson thing is serious and the bullpen doesn’t improve, 90 wins is a pipe dream. Yankee haters – wash up because the feast is now being served. Enjoy!

I could not believe my eyes when I read this morning that David Stern had fined Houston coach Jeff Van Gundy $100,000 dollars for saying the league’s referees are a bunch of clowns who are out to get Yao Ming. It seems, according to various reports, Van Gundy was tipped off by a league referee who said other referees would be "targeting" Houston’s Yao Ming during the playoffs. Yao is a huge star so this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but let’s not get bogged down in details. What matters here is the Commish absolutely snapped when he heard Van Gundy’s claim. “If he’s going to say things like that, he’s not going to continue in this league,” said Stern, clearly upping the ante. Lighten up Dave; it was only a joke and a bit of gamesmanship. Despite Stern’s edict, Van Gundy is not backing down and he responded by saying “I didn’t see anything wrong with what I said.” Either does this scribe who is siding with the Houston gunslinger on this one. For some reason or another, this isn’t a joke to Stern who feels that the integrity of the league is now at stake. I guess he feels that Van Gundy basically left the impression that the series is fixed but that is only one interpretation of what Van Gundy said. Sure, you could construe it like that, but you could also interpret Van Gundy’s words to mean the league wants to make sure that Yao is properly officiated. After all, the key word here is "targeting" and there is some ambiguity attatched to that word's meaning. And what if Van Gundy did leave the impression that the league had picked sides in this one? Would that be so shocking? As an aside, I think the most interesting facet of this story is that Yao offered to pay half of Van Gundy’s the fine. You don’t see that kind of charity in the league too often, or in other sports for that matter. I bet if they passed the hat in the Houston locker room and Yao started out by putting fifty grand in the till, only three g’s would be left by the time it made its way around the room. That pretty much sums up my feelings on the NBA and its players.

Notes from the National: In a matchup of the NL’s two top off-season signees, Pedro out dueled Jon Lieber on the flooded fields of Shea Stadium, as Carlos Beltran delivered the deciding blast. Victor Diaz is fading just as Mike Cameron is due to return, making life much easier on manager Willie Randolph. Do you think Jim Thome would have sat if Jae Seo had been the starter? Where are all those clowns who claimed Pedro had become a six inning pitcher – he has gone seven in five of his six starts. Cincinnati led 9-3 in the ninth last night yet still lost as David Weathers and Danny Graves gift-wrapped one for the Cards. You know things are going bad for the Reds when starter Eric Milton kept all but one ball in the park yet his team still couldn’t win. Jim Edmonds and John Mabry each had two-out blasts off Graves who faced six batters and gave up four hits. On the bright side for Cinci, Grif hit his second home run of the season and Sean Casey upped his trade value by going four-for-four. Andy Pettite finally got some run support courtesy of Craig Biggio and Morgan Ensberg. The Assholes are finally starting to hit but will Oswalt miss some time with this sprained foot? The Giants got a big win at Arizona although Jason Schmidt was awful. Fortunately for them, Dback hurler Russ Ortiz was worse. There were a ton of pitchers used in that game and that is why it took almost FOUR hours to complete. The Padres got well last night against Colorado as Adam Eaton picked up his third win. Clint Barmes is still hitting .400 for the Rocks, but only .326 on the road and .313 over the past week. Phil Nevin is starting to show signs of heating up for Los Madres. The Dodger’s Jose Valentin experiment at third is wearing thin. Valentino is hitting .185, slugging .350 and has made five errors. The Dodgers corner infielders are amongst the worst in baseball, but can GM Jerry DePodesta fit Todd Helton or Sean Casey into LA’s restricted budget?

Airmail from the AL: Toronto did a huge favor for the Yanks and Sox by slowing down the birds in Baltimore. The Orioles M&M boys were a combined 0-10 last night while stud reliever Todd Williams got crushed in the eleventh. Corey Koskie had three more hits last night which officially places him in the white hot category. Explain this to me: The Birds lead the East by a bunch of games yet only 15,000 showed up at Camden Yards last night. I know Monday night games are tough, but last night proves to me that the O’s are losing gate to the Nationals down in Washington. The Tigers had seven extra base hits last night against the Red Sox, three of which were triples. For those of you have never seen him, Carlos Guillen is the second best shortstop in the AL and has been for the past year. The Sox got a decent start out of emergency replacement Gonzalez, but the bullpen was atrocious once again. Allen Embree is quickly blowing through his yearly allotment of poor showings. We covered the Yanks above, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Gayrod went 0-5 and stranded seven, while Andy Phillips went 0-5 with five whiffs. Last night was a pretty good example of why Phillips has been in the minors for ten years. Texas got a couple early off Rich Harden and Kenny Rogers made it stand. Jerod Washburn gave the Angels another strong start last night and it just seems like the Angels are about to put some space between themselves and the rest of the AL West. ESPN magazine published a fluff piece last week on the M’s Wilson Valdez who is 0-19 since the story hit the newsstands.

Marion Jones may have won a race the other day in Martinique, but she continues to get slaughtered in the 2nd Circuit Court of Public Opinion. For those of you who don’t scan the results of backwater track meets, Jones won an early season 100 meter race in a pedestrian time of 11.28. This time doesn’t even sniff her personnel best of 10.65, which many, including myself, think was run with the help of Victor Conte’s secret sauce. You see, Marion is completely caught up in this whole BALCO steroid scandal. She has been fingered by Victor Conte as a steroid abuser although she has vigorously defended her innocence. Now Conte’s word doesn’t necessarily compel a verdict of guilty, but the evidence against Jones is fairly compelling. The most glaring piece of evidence is Jones performance on the track - which coincidently fell apart the moment accusations began to fly. Prior to these allegations, Jones was considered to be a 2004 Olympic favorite in a couple of events, but Marion had an absolutely awful Olympic year, as she failed to make the U.S. team in the 100 meters. She did earn a trip to Athens based on a pretty average long jump performance, but once in Greece, she didn’t sniff the medal podium. And what has this year brought? Well, she opened the season by getting blasted in a 400 out in California and we now have this crawl down in Martinique. I understand the outdoor season has just begun and therefore times are likely to be slow for the next six weeks, but Marion is certainly not impressing to date, regardless of what the calendar might say. 2004 may have been a fluke, but if she follows that up with a lackluster 2005, those skeptics, like myself, are going to have plenty of ammo to fire away at a women who is every bit as defiant as Barry Bonds. She may have never failed a test, but if she keeps running eleven plus, it won’t matter. She can scream all she wants about lies and slanderous accusations, but at the end of the day, the clock doesn’t lie. For her sake, she better put up a 10.9 this year, or she has some explaining to do.