The iYankees Message Board Pt.2

Hey everyone. Thanks to those who signed up at the iYankees Message Board recently. You can find the link on the right hand side, or, you can simply click here.

The message board will be a cool place to discuss items that aren’t related to baseball, and of course, you’ll also be able to discuss topics related to the Yankees and create your own. It really hasn’t “popped” yet, socially, but it will soon (eventually). There’s also a music/movies link section, which should be appealing to many of you with fast download speeds…

Check in on it this week, and particularly this weekend (I’ll be adding links). And remember, in order to participate on there, you’ll have to register an account!

Hank Steinbrenner Likely to Discuss New Contract With Brian Cashman

From ESPN:

“I want to concentrate on the season, and he does, too,” Hank Steinbrenner said Monday. “But during the course of the season, we will talk. It will just happen. We’ll be sitting together at the game, and we’ll start talking about it. It’s just that simple.”

Cashman joined the Yankees as a 19-year-old intern in June 1986. He succeeded Bob Watson as general manager after the 1997 season.

“I’ve known Cash for a long time,” Steinbrenner said. “He’s been with our family for a long, long time. I think the big thing is with Brian is the organization he put in place. You know, it’s not based on just one decision as far as do a trade or don’t do a trade, or sign a free agent or don’t.”

Steinbrenner said he hasn’t even asked Cashman whether the GM would want to stay on.

“I have no idea yet,” Steinbrenner said. “We haven’t even talked.”

Cashman is in the final year of his contract. There are plenty of good reasons as to why he should stay, and there are plenty of reason (you can argue) as to why he should go. I think he should stay, but I wouldn’t be heartbroken if he left (I don’t know if he’d even be upset about it). Maybe Damon Oppenheimer could be a good GM?

What do you think?

Capitalism Slaps the Mets in the Face

RAB posted this up a few moments ago, via Eephus Pitch (which is a great blog that I’ve never visited for some reason, until now). Here’s the new logo for the Mets’ CitiField.

Honestly, this is crap. I know that the Mets are making money from this little venture, but at the same time, it really looks pretty terrible. It’s essentially a generic Citi Logo with “Field” tagged across the side. It’s moments like this that make me happy I’m a Yankees fan.

Who knew that the Yankees, out of so many other teams and with their enormous payroll, would use their financial clout to sustain the sanctity of the game (well, what’s left of it) by avoiding corporate sponsorship in such an explicit fashion. Cool huh?

I guess it could be worse for Mets fans, even if their new logo does sort of look like the top of a pizza box. Damn, as soon as I saw the logo, I wanted to post that it looked this way, but Mathew Cerrone of the Mets Blog beat me to it. Dominos sucks too (Pizza Hut has definitely got them beat).

A-Rod’s Circle of Trust Changes

Peter Abraham has a nice piece on A-Rod and the subsequent effect that the loss of people like Larry Bowa and Mike Borzello (bp catcher), both of whom followed Joe Torre to LA, as well as Doug Mientkiewicz (a Pirate), have on A-Rod’s social/physical routine. This same routine gave A-Rod one of his best seasons in 2007, and hopefully, A-Rod will be able to recreate the magic and adapt in order to produce similar numbers.

If A-Rod hits 20 HR’s this season, I doubt we’ll be able to blame Doug Mientkiewicz (although it would be fun to do).

While His Teammates Were Talking Blood Tests, Jorge Was Talking 2007

From Bryan Hoch:

Don’t ask Posada to explain the upsurge. For him, age really is just a number.

“Everybody says, ‘Oh, you’re 36, 37, 38 or whatever,’” Posada said. “A good year is a good year, no matter what. I keep hearing the same things, and for me, it doesn’t matter. I’m really happy with the way it turned out, but it’s over. You’ve got to try to keep the consistency and get better. It doesn’t matter what age you are.”

Posada does point to an improved diet and workout regimen, which he believes has served him well over the past five or so years. A relatively late transition to catching also hasn’t hurt his case.

Let’s hope that diet/regimen helps Jorge out for a long time. Quick side note, I think Hoch’s text could have at least mentioned my boy Jose Molina, who’s a good defensive replacement when Jorge needs a break from the everyday wear and tear of his position.

Whoa Now, The Yankees Speak on PED Testing

Mark Feinsand of the Daily News has a great read today about PED testing in baseball. Specifically, the article features commentary by Jason Giambi, Derek Jeter and Mike Mussina about drug testing in the game, and it delves into a variety of issues pertaining to blood tests, urine tests, and the right to privacy (for ballplayers). It’s really a pretty interesting read and to hear players speak up and be so open about it all (including Jeter who’s usually not this way at all) is very refreshing.

The big issue seems to be conducting blood tests. HGH cannot, at this point in time, be screened using urine and it appears as though testing blood is the only way to truly detect its presence in one’s system. Blood tests are considered by many to be invasive and unnecessary, but there are also those who believe, if you have nothing to hide, let’s do it and restore the sanctity of America’s game.

Here’s some text from the article:

“Nobody else, in any facet of business, drug-tests with a blood test – not in the corporate world or anywhere else,” Mussina said. “If they ever find an HGH test that’s a urine test, great. But until we can test for everything, we’re going to be questioned.”

But what if no urine test is developed? Can baseball continue to ignore its HGH problem?

“I’m not taking one side or the other, because I’m not getting into the politics of it and the right to privacy,” Mussina said. “But I don’t think the public opinion of us will ever be cleared up if we aren’t able to test for everything possible. We can’t test for everything possible doing it the way we do it now.”

Meanwhile, baseball has been pushing Don Caitlin, founder of the UCLA Olympic Analytic Laboratory, to develop a urine test for HGH.

Even if the league began using blood tests to screen for HGH, Jeter believes some other drug would emerge that would cause the skepticism over the game’s cleanliness to linger.

“I think it would be a positive, but then they would come up with something else and people would say, ‘They should test for something else,’” Jeter said. “Where does it stop?”

Although Mussina believes that full testing would help the game’s image, he also said that the obsession with naming guilty parties of the past has hindered the sport’s ability to put the issue to rest.

“If we agree to do the most complete and thorough test, then after a certain period of time, people may believe the game is clean,” Mussina said. “The issue now isn’t whether the game is clean from this point forward; everybody is concerned about whether the game has been clean from this point, back 20 years, and who did it.

“We can’t change what happened. We can’t go back, even if we decide that he did it and he did it and he did it. It doesn’t change anything. What are you going to do? Just erase these people from history? You can’t.”

Giambi agrees with Mussina.

“The fans, everybody has to go forward,” Giambi said. “You can’t keep going in the past. Things happened, there wasn’t a testing program and now there is. The game is going in the right direction. There are always going to be skeptics. There’s never going to be a time when everybody is happy.”

Will the scrutiny of the public eventually convince the players to silence their critics once and for all by agreeing to whatever tests are available? Mussina believes that as long as Bud Selig is the commissioner, that will remain a distinct possibility.

“It may come to that,” Mussina said. “It may lag on for five or 10 years. As long as Bud is in office, he’s going to go after every person he can find from 1980/whatever until now. It may drag on for a while, which is too bad. It’s the nature of it.”

There are a lot of subtle nuances and delicate dynamics involved within this situation. Privacy concerns, health concerns, credability issues, union issues, they’re all at work and are central to the steroid debate. As Mussina, a players’ union representative, stated (who is really the star of the report, not Derek Jeter who simply sells more papers) it’s going to take a long time for baseball to figure out its “next move,” especially with its current emphasis on past (a paradox, indeed).

Sunday’s Bits: Joba’s Start, Humberto’s Recovery and Billy Traber’s Hopes

Hey everyone. Hope you all had a fun and eventful weekend. I’ve got a couple of Yankee Bits to wrap up the day.

• First up, Joba Chamberlain will start Friday, in the exhibition opener, against the University of South Florida. Joba and Kennedy were both seen as potential starters for the game (Hughes will also pitch), so the team tried out a truly objective  technique in order to pick the starter: a coin toss.
• Next up, Ken Davidoff has a nice read on non-roster invitee, Billy Traber. Traber’s a lefty with an interesting story (they usually are) and he’ll be competing with Sean Henn, Kei Igawa, Chase Wright, and others for a spot in the pen. He’s a longshot, but a solid spring could definitely help his case.
• Finally, according to the AP, Humberto Sanchez who has been recovering from TJ surgery, will throw off a mound in 3 weeks. The report also states Sanchez could begin pitching in the minors by the middle of May. He could possibly return this year to fortify the bullpen down the stretch, but I think it’s unlikely.