Forever Yankees

The Yankees made Jorge Posada the highest paid catcher in the game, keeping him for 4 more years and likely a Yankee for his career. There really wasn't another choice for the Yankees to make--no other great catcher was on the market, Posada had a career year at age 36 showing he can still play, and there isn't a catcher waiting in the wing. The one concern in this is, how much longer Posada can actually catch? But the answer to that is, he can become a part-time and then full-time DH sometime in the next couple of years as long as the Yankees don't continue to have older players competing for the DH spot.

Posada has come a long way and will be rejoined by his catching mentor Joe Girardi this year. On the field he seems to handle pitchers well and communicates well in times of trouble. He can still hit, has a good batting eye, and in many ways is an unsung hero on the Yankees especially during the dyntasy years.

Not a Yankee yet for the rest of his career, but I expect him to sign soon is Mariano Rivera. Rivera is showing signs of cracking after this past year, but still has success closing out games. And it may be likely that he has a shot at passing Trevor Hoffman's save record. After all he has done he'll be back for at least three more years, it's almost expected that "Enter Sandman" be played as the Yankee closer comes into the game at Yankee stadium and not elsewhere (I know about the Wagner thing). Like Posada, he is a Yankee great and would be hard to let go.

Sometime this weekend I will comment on the new Fake-Rod outlined contract to stay a Yankee as well as baseball's best friend, Barry Bonds, being indicted.

Abreu & Pettitte: One here, one gone?

In some old news, the Yankees took the option on Bobby Abreau's contract so that he'll be a Yankee in 2008. This was pretty much the Yankees only move, unless they wanted to go after Tori Hunter or Andruw Jones, shifting Melky to right. But my guess is both those players would want just about the same amount and honestly, Abreu's better at getting on base even if his power's pretty much sapped.

Pettitte on the other hand is up in the air on what he wants to do, but he declined his option. Is he pulling a Roger Clemens by saying he may want to retire and then want more money? The Yankees seem to understand and are giving Pettitte his space and time to decide. But obviously if Pettitte is gone, the pitching rotation is in much rougher shape.

Blog Offseason:Things To Come

This is the slow time of year for me with sports--although I do watch football and am trying to get back into hockey after a hiatus with that (along with UMass football or b-ball whenever that's on)--once baseball ends, being able to turn on the TV or MLB.TV everyday is over. So now that baseball isn't everyday until March or April 2008, my blogging won't be as frequent.

But I can promise a few things will be written:

1. Anytime there's a Yankee or Red Sox transaction that's newsworthy (trade, free agent, Fake-Rod) I'll post my reaction to it.
2. If there's something newsworthy in baseball I find worth commenting on, I'll post.
3. I will give an assessment of the Yankees 2007, a player-by-player blow of 2007, and what we can expect from the team and key players in 2008.

I'm hoping, really hoping Doug comes back and posts and I would like us to do some sort of debate or Q&A each other on our teams.

So for now, check back every couple of weeks or if you see something big, check in. Also email us at rivalryredux@gmail.com, we're happy to take some questions (I will be getting to one long overdue from this summer).

Head Over Heart

The Yankees took care of business quickly and picked Joe Girardi
as their new manager. I was already sad to see Joe Torre go, but now it looks like Don Mattingly, who I thought to be the next Yankee manager, is going to go. Mattingly a fan favorite, and my favorite player of all time, certainly had expectations to be the heir after serving as bench coach for the past two years, but it looks like the Yankees made their decision with their heads and not their hearts. So now it will be sad to see Mattingly go and who knows if he'll ever wear the pinstripes again.




Looking at Girardi as the next manager is a solid move. The key points to picking him are as follows:

• Girardi knows the Yankees organization, its expectations, and how things are run from being a player from 1996-1999 and bench coach in 2005.


• Girardi has managerial experience as the Marlins manager in 2006 where he won NL Manager of the Year for putting a young, inexperienced, and low budget team on the field and doing much better than expected (they were in the playoff hunt if you remember).


• From his Florida experience, he knows how to work with young players which fits right into the who rebuilding strategy the Yankees have going.


• He has a strong reputation of being a no nonsense leader, strict but fair, wants to win, intelligent (he's a Northwestern grad), articulate, prepares well, pays attention to detail, and handles the media well.


• As a catcher he'll know how to work well with the Yankees young pitching staff, possibly use the run more, and be able to analyze other teams' pitchers as well.

Right now it's pure speculation how he'll fare as the manager in New York, we won't know until spring training starts. In the mean time, the Yankees have Rivera, Posada, and Abreu to think about as well as a hole a thirdbase, their starting rotation, bullpen--lots of decisions. But I think Girardi was the right way to start.

To My Red Sox Friends,

Congratulations, I thought the Red Sox deserved to win and the comeback against the Indians was amazing to watch. This new century has brought a new definition to what it means to be a Red Sox fan, player, Red Sox Nation--you name it. You can throw out the curse, however you look at it this is a new franchise that will continue to do well.

Someone rubbed it in that because I'm a Yankee fan, a Red Sox World Series win should hurt my team the most. The thing about a World Series win is that one team is the best out of 29 other teams. Twenty nine of us don't get to celebrate, just remember that, we all suffer, or whatever you want to call it.

I'll leave it to Doug to summarize, celebrate, whichever he chooses to to this win. He's been absent since August and he'd best able to talk Red Sox on here.

Fake-Rod

"You're asking me what my sincere feeling is. I want to 100 percent stay in New York. Period. That's it. I don't know how many ways I can say it."
-- Alex Rodriguez, on WFAN-AM's "Mike and the Mad Dog." 3/2007

"Either New York is going to kick me out of New York this year, say 'I've had enough of this guy, get him the hell out of here,' and we have an option. Or New York is going to say, 'Hey, we won a world championship, you had a big year, you were a part of it and we want you back.'"
-- Alex Rodriguez, in the same interview. 2/3007

My emotions have the best of me, but I'm officially going to start bashing A-Rod--or as I will now call him--Fake-Rod. As just announced during the World Series, Fake-Rod has opted out of his contract with the Yankees, which shouldn't be a huge surprise given his agent Scott Boras' greedy ways. But I'm a bit more upset at Fake-Rod because of what he said above, something he always said since putting on the pinstripes.

Now, let me be clear, I was never a fan of Fake-Rod, but I also never hated him. Sure he had the biggest multi-year contract ever, but that was the Rangers fault. As a Yankee fan, I gave him a chance but he never fully became a true Yankee because he always disappointed in the playoffs. With that aside though, he's the best player the Yankees have had since--well maybe Mantle.

I was going to write a post on this whole saga and what the Yankees should do, but it's clear now they won't negotiate a new contract. At least they better not. Even so, something I have never been comfortable with about Fake-Rod is that in NY, you never really knew what kind of player he was going to be. He suffered two sub-par years (2004 & 2006) relative to his entire career but also two-MVP season (2005 and yes, he'll win it this year). His fielding and move to 3B was never a solid decision and overall he had a love hate relationship with the fans.

Fake-Rod is still the best ballplayer in the game today, even at 31, but even the greatest players never win a championship. But all along, Fake-Rod talked the talk that he wanted to win one in NY, end his career as a Yankee, and win the fans over. Apparently his talk is worth shit.

All of this will be labeled, the "business of baseball", and the main excuse Boras gave (not Fake-Rod directly) is that basically he (Fake-Rod) didn't know what was going on with the Yankees in terms of a manager, ownership, and certain teammate. Though curiously Boras added, "He really didn't want to make any decisions until he knew what they were doing." So opting out isn't a decision at this juncture?

I'm sure more details will come out in the days to follow. If the Yankees are truly done with Fake-Rod, then only a handful of teams could pay him for whatever he wants, which will be yet again the biggest multi-year contract in baseball. Could he be a Red Sox next year? It would be amusing seeing how adamant Sox fans have been calling him A-Fraud, cursing him out, and seeing the teams payroll likely increase upwards of $200 million like that other team.

Anyway, I'm done with Fake-Rod and so is New York, good riddance!

Before the Meds Kick in

It looks like the Red Sox pulled it off and I wanted to quickly post here to congratulate them. I honestly did not think they were going to come back like this. But the Indians lost this one--a reversal of sorts, bad starting pitching and an offense that wasn't effective (which the Red Sox had earlier in the series).

So before my meds kick in to relieve pain and make me pass out, congrats to the Red Sox. This 2004 onward looks like a new era for you guys and I think that's a good thing considering your history before that. And the best team in the AL is going to the World Series.

I was on the phone with my aunt before the game, and my uncle--a lifelong Red Sox fan--said he wouldn't gloat. I've been around Red Sox fans my whole life and honestly I love them. They are the most passionate fans in baseball in my view and they make the Rivalry an awesome sporting event every year. So eventhough they beat the Indians, I can understand why they may gloat just a bit.

But it's onto CO for them against a hot Rockies team. I think this will be a good World Series.