Interesting team news for tonight

Tonight’s lineup sees yet more changes – Joe G certainly likes to tinker! Hardly surprising to see Giambi riding the pine after last night’s showing, but it’s good to see Molina back behind the plate, but having Posada at 1B, Ensberg at 3B and A-Rod DHing is a bit of a surprise. Moving Jeter to third in the order seems a good move the way he’s been raking lately, hopefully he’ll be able to do some damage with men on for a change. It lines up as follows;

Damon – LF

Cabrera – CF

Jeter – SS

A-Rod – DH

Posada – 1B

Matsui – RF

Ensberg – 3B

Cano – 2B

Molina – C

I guess we’ll be seeing any runner trying to take an extra base with the lack of arm strength on either side of Melky tonight as well. Here’s hoping Kennedy goes for the zone and doesn’t rack up his pitch count by hovering around it.

Random news…

It seems that Joba is on his way to Baltimore, and could be available tonight. Fantastic news! Not only for us, but also because it means that Harlan must be a good deal better, otherwise Joba would still have been by his side. Great news all round!

Also, Farnsworth has been suspended for 3 days following the whole Manny incident. Jokes aside (I heard Moeller called for a changeup low and away…), this seems a bit harsh – his, and Girardi’s word that this was in no way a form of retribution should suffice to show this.

Mind you, appeal pending, at least we won’t see him meltdown on the mound for a few days…

Re- building

After putting myself through the pain of reading the Yankees message board today i felt the need to say what i think about Phil, Ian and the Yankees plan for this year and the future. Whether Yankee fans like to admit it or not, the Bombers are in a re-building phase just now. We added one veteran in the off-season to the pitching staff(Hawkins) while promoting many prospects to elevated positions within the organisation. Hughes and Kennedy went in the rotation, Chamberlain and Ohlendorf were put in the pen and many others with limited, or zero major league experience(Traber, Albaladejo, Ramirez and even Bruney) have been given innings to prove themselves. The average age of this group is just under 25. If anyone is stupid enough to think that we are not re-building then they do not know much about baseball.

I read a lot of fans complaining about two things: 1 – The young guys aren’t cutting it, it’s time to get more dependable, proven guys in the team(they say it in a much harsher way). 2 – The Yankees do not invest in youth. That’s the reason they don’t produce enough home grown talent. Does nobody else see the massive contradiction in that?

I have been almost completely disappointed in some of the youngsters performance this year, i’ve actually become very frustrated at times. Having said that, i am not going to make snap judgements on the overall future of players based on their very limited time in the majors. Yankees fans are famous for their lack of tolerance to anything new – Joe torre? Tino Martinez? Scott Brosius? Joe Girardi? Those guys ended doing an ok job, right?

The Yankees have set a plan in motion to devote time to their youth movement and 18 games into the season shouldn’t change their thinking. Will Hughes and Kennedy and every other young player become future hall of famers – absolutely not. Will they all become dependable major leaguers – very doubtful. Chances are we’ll find 1 or 2 who’ll cut it at the highest level – i, for one, am more than happy to to take the rough with the smooth when it comes to developing these young players. In the long run it will almost certainly pay dividends, history tells us that much.