55,000 is a big number ... think about that.

"Inside the Yankee clubhouse, he left another legacy. That was his personality and his sense of humor and his humility. It's unlikely any Yankees player has ever tried hard to be a good teammate and to fit into the fabric of the clubhouse. As Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said in a statement, 'Hideki Matsui, in many ways, embodied what this organization stands for.'

Upon learning of Matsui's retirement, Jeter released a statement calling him one of his favorite teammates. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman added, 'People naturally gravitated towards him, and that's a direct reflection of his character.'

Matsui's humor and grace extended off the field, too. In those first years, he was covered by a contingent of Japanese reporters that sometimes numbered more than three dozen. Matsui worked hard to be accommodating to the reporters while also attempting not to be disruptive to his teammates as they went about the business of preparing themselves to play."

All that, and a porn collection rumored to consist of 55,000 videos.

Because the Yankees play in the majors.

Inbox with Felz:

"Why did the Yankees decide to sign Youkilis as opposed to giving the position to a Minor Leaguer until Alex Rodriguez is ready? They'd save quite a bit of cash and might discover a future star or trade bait at the same time.
-- Al S., Morocco"

The Yankees should play a theoretical minor league third baseman for half the season so they can either save quite a bit of cash (and spend it on a player like Youkilis) or so the minor leaguer will play well and acquire trade value (maybe for a player like Youkilis).

Or the Yankees can just sign Youkilis.

Thanks for writing,
Felz, America

Phil Hughes is going to be so good, the Yankees will not be able to afford him.

"In this quirky new baseball reality, the Yankees have lost out to the Cubs (Nate Schierholtz), White Sox (Jeff Keppinger), Pirates (Russell Martin), Diamondbacks (Eric Chavez) and Mariners (Raul Ibanez) because they were either outbid or simply decided not to bid at all. And they never even considered retaining Nick Swisher (Indians).

Next up could be Scott Hairston, and wouldn’t it be something if it were the Mets who outspent the Yanks this time?"

Joel Sherman's definition of "lose out" must be different than my definition of "lose out."


"The ramification is probably going to be fewer runs in 2013, especially when you factor in the uncertain statuses of Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, as well."

Catcher; Teixeira; Cano; Youkilis; Nunez(?); Gardner; Granderson; Ichiro.

I don't know who's going to get injured, but I really don't see the problem.


"But to be among the best in the majors and provide greater protection against the fragility atop the rotation and the regression of the offense, the Yankees need this irony: Phil Hughes to pitch so well in 2013 that he prices himself off the team in 2014."

The idea here is that Hughes will demand a lot of money after a 17-win season and the Yankees will therefore lose him to free agency and this will ultimately help the Yankees. Actually, I'm not sure if Sherman is saying this will ultimately help the Yankees.

The logic evades me, but any plan that starts with "Phil Hughes pitches so well" is not a plan worth thinking about too hard.

The Yankees are so old. How old are they?

They're so old ... they're so old ... ummm ... I got nothing:

"Hiroki Kuroda turns 38 in February.

Andy Pettitte turns 41 in June, the same month Derek Jeter turns 39.

A-Rod’s 38th birthday is in July and Ichiro turns 40 next year and the great Mariano Rivera is already 43.

And you have to wonder if any baseball team with this many geezers on it has ever won a World Series."

You're the Pretend Journalist. Please do the Pretend Research and provide your readers with your Pretend Conclusion.


Too bad they didn’t bring back Raul Ibanez — he turns 41 next season — just so he could sit with the other old guys when they’re talking about the Beatles."

The Beatles?

That's your go-to Generation Gap reference point?

The Beatles are the band a 60-year-old imagines 40-year-olds talk about when 40-year-olds reminisce about music.

Blue Jays sudden favorites to win World Series.

I sure don't see it, but a lot of my predictions are way off:

"Bovada.lv has released its latest odds for 2013, with the Blue Jays leading the way with 15-2 odds. The Blue Jays were 12-1 at Bovada.lv before acquiring Dickey."

Wow.

I mean, they must think R.A. Dickey is really, really good.

Maybe he is. Maybe he unlocked the secret. Maybe he will be unhittable the playoffs.

Let's get carried away.

Nothing is impossible. Travis d'Arnaud could end up a lot like HOF catcher Gary Carter:

"You can see here, with his July 2011 acquisition of Zack Wheeler, one of the top-rated pitching prospects in the minors, from the Giants for Carlos Beltran, and now Syndergaard as the second player in the Dickey trade, Alderson is following Cashen’s formula of stockpiling power arms. But it was Cashen’s trade of Brooks and three others to the Montreal Expos for Carter in December 1984 that will always go down as the defining trade of his term as general manager because it instantly stamped the Mets as legitimate contenders."

So the R.A. Dickey trade nothing like the Gary Carter trade, at least not from the Mets' perspective.


"It remains to be seen if d’Arnaud will become the All-Star catcher the scouts all seem to think he’s capable of being. But from Alderson’s standpoint, on potential alone, with this deal he was able to maximize Dickey’s trade value. Mets fans can only hope now that history will eventually repeat itself and d’Arnaud turns out to be a cornerstone of a championship team, as Carter did. Then it will truly have been Alderson’s defining trade."

Yes, if d'Arnaud turns out be be a cornerstone of a championship team, as Carter did, then it will truly have been Alderson's defining trade.

Kevin Youkilis is not old.

"Little by little, the Yankees’ old-age home is filling to capacity, so much so that the word now is they are already in the process of filling the clubhouse with rocking chairs."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Rocking chairs?!?!

Because old people sit in rocking chairs!

Get it?


No, on a more serious note ... though it's hard to get my train of thought back on track after that hilarious rocking chair joke ... the only Yankee who needs a rocking chair is a lazy slob like Robinson Cano.


"Until Tuesday, the Yankees’ only off-season business, other than passively watching the free agent defections of Russell Martin, Eric Chavez and likely Nick Swisher, was the re-signing of 37-year-old Hiroki Kuroda, 40-year-old Andy Pettitte and 43-year-old Mariano Rivera."

So they lost three old players and replaced them with three old players.

Swisher is 32, Chavez is 35, Martin is 29.

You conveniently ignored Andruw Jones (35) being replaced by Brett Gardner (29).


"The Youkilis signing is, of course, the most intriguing of all these Yankee comings and goings in that, for the better part of the last seven seasons, the bald, goateed, glowering 'Youk' has been about the most loathed opposing player to venture into Yankee Stadium as the gritty personification of the cowboy-upped arch-rival Red Sox."

It's not an intriguing signing at all and, frankly, I had no idea that "Youk" was loathed at Yankee Stadium.

It doesn't even matter. It's a one-year deal and no one-year deal is intriguing. All of these deals -- Youkilis, Ichiro, Pettitte, Rivera -- are one-year and therefore low-risk.

I don't really care if they're old, I just hope they're good.


"But for those Yankee fans making their travel plans for spring training in Tampa next month, don’t expect to be seeing any exciting rookie hopefuls vying for the right field or third base jobs. In Yankeeland, 'youth will be served' has been replaced by 'age is good.' "

Nunez will be a legit candidate for the third base job. He ought to be fielding fungoes as I write this.

Right field? Probably not anyone who's young. No one I can think of.

In a Spring Training game, the Yankee fan thirsting for youth will see Romine at catcher, Phelps/Nova/Hughes on the mound, Nunez at third, and Gardner in the outfield.

I'm not sure when Pineda is coming back.

It's quite possible all of these young players will be on the roster in the regular season.

Convenient online scalping.

"Although the Yankees cannot ban ticket buyers outright from using StubHub to resell tickets, they can make it far less convenient.

With the StubHub link removed from Yankees.com, buyers will no longer be able to print StubHub Yankees tickets from home. The seller will have to send the tickets or give them to the buyer in person, said one source."

It's illegal to scalp tickets in person outside Yankee Stadium.

But the Yankees can link to an online scalper with no qualms.

I don't see how the Yankees can limit StubHub's delivery mechanisms.


"Not everyone blames StubHub for falling attendance. Ticket reseller Joe De Laura says the Yanks are charging too much. He predicts resellers will buy fewer season tickets now that the Yanks are ditching StubHub.

'Taking out the free market will cripple their business. A ton of guys are going to pull out,' he said. 'StubHub is good for the Yankees, not bad, because it puts people in the seats for the less desireable games.' "

The New York Post spelled "desirable" wrong. The spellcheck on blogger caught it, but not the esteemed editors at the New York Post.

Other than that, I must agree with Joe De Laura and the general tone of the article. De-emphasizing StubHub won't "crippled their business," but the Yankees don't lose money when people resell their tickets on StubHub, for crying out loud.

It's a secondary market.

The Yankees even get their cash up front.


I don't complain too often about ticket prices or the Yankee management decisions, but this is some serious short-sighted, blameshifting nonsense.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I could swear that Mike Lupica is pro-Mets and anti-Yankees.

"Maybe some team will bowl over the Mets and give them some big prospect, maybe its best prospect, for R.A. Dickey.

And if that happens, how can they not think about it?

But I hope they work something out, and I hope he stays with the Mets beyond this year, because over the second half of last year, he and David Wright were all the Mets had, and sometimes all their fans wanted to watch.

As he went for 20 wins and made himself more and more of a legit Cy Young candidate, you waited for the day or night of his next start, and he was somebody who made you want to watch the Mets in another lost season.

It doesn’t mean the Mets are supposed to pay him whatever he wants, that’s not the way it works.

But R.A. deserves to get paid."

It will be totally fun to watch the Mets overpay for an aging, year-and-a-half wonder. This guy could be the second coming of Esteban Loaiza.



"The best part about the Yankees’ new payroll constraints is how offended members of the local media seem to be that Hal Steinbrenner won’t spend the way they want him to."

First of all, there is no good part of the new payroll constraints.  It's pointless and dumb on many levels.

But I'm wondering who on the local media is offended about it.  Are there so many members of the local media that you can't even name them?  Most of the local media I've read are completely buying into the idea that the Yankees are going to try go get under the payroll tax threshold.


"Right.

Hal needs to continue to give his guys unlimited resources because the money they’ve been spending is almost like an E-ZPass on the way to the Canyon of Heroes."

"The money they've been spending is almost like an E-ZPass on the way to the Canyon of Heroes."

I don't understand that analogy.

Did Damon Runyon rely on confusing metaphors? If so, this dude definitely deserves the Damon Runyon Award.


"And having said that?

How can anybody be surprised that you now hear this name — Josh Hamilton — with the Yankees, no matter what they’ve been saying about practically being on the verge of going over the fiscal cliff?"

No one I know is surprised. Just worried about the party atmosphere of the Big City.

But this guy can find a hotel bar in any city, so the real question with Hamilton is how much protection and opt-outs will be built into his contract.


"You know I started talking about Hamilton a month ago, just because he fit the Yankee profile — including the boatloads of money they might have to throw at him — in so many ways."

I started thinking about Hamilton in pinstripes 4 years ago.


"Plus, it would make everybody in our business so happy."

But not you. Because you don't buy into the pathetic Yankee party line. You're not a fanboy sellout punk for the Yankees.

You're just a fanboy sellout punk for the Red Sox and the Mets, but never for the Yankees.


"And if Hamilton-to-the-Yankees ever did happen, you know it will be treated like the single most brilliant purchase since the island of Manhattan."

The single most brilliant baseball-related idea since the Red Sox hired Bobby Valentine last season.

The only free agent who matters.

If the Yankees want to save money, I can do the background check on the cheap.

Yankees sign Pettitte, Rivera, unable to sign Keppinger to complete the Fab Five.

It's a lot like 1992: The players will go on strike in two years and the Yankees will win the World Series in four years:

"Suddenly it feels like 1992, when nobody wanted to play for the Yankees. Except this time it’s not Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux, and David Cone shunning the pinstripes, but Eric Chavez, Jeff Keppinger, and Marco Scutaro.

...

Mere role players are saying no thanks at a time when the Yankees have provided the surest path to the postseason for the last 17 years."

I see your point.

Because Eric Chavez, Jeff Keppinger, and Marco Scutaro are a lot like Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux, and David Cone.


" 'I just saw Cash,' said ex-Yankee Jim Leyritz, referring to GM Brian Cashman, 'and I told him if I got in shape I might be able to help him at third base.' "

You did not just see Brian Cashman.

That would violate your parole.

The dumbest journalist in the history of sports.

"This is what the Yankees hope and this is where they are, still owing Rodriguez $114 million because they were so sure five years ago that he was going to break the all-time home run record that they signed him to what will go down as the dumbest contract in all of sports history."

Since the main purpose of this blog is to vent, if Lupica is going to keep saying it, I'm going to keep disputing it.


The only way I can interpret the value of the contract is expense divided by production (and this ignores the real value of ARod over the years, which is selling tee-shirts).

Is Lupica seriously only looking at size of the contract?  I prefer to look at bang for the buck.

Even with an eye on opportunity cost ... which is largely mitigated for the Yankees due to their large payroll and enormous assets ... this is not the worst contract in the history of sports.


Since the post-2007 extension, ARod has already delivered a WS title and 129 HRs and 447 RBIs.

ARod has 5 years/$114 left and that still might be a better value over the next five years than Ryan Howard, Jose Reyes, Vernon Wells, Carl Crawford ... and who knows if (more popular players such as) Mark Teixeira or David Wright or Joey Votto foul a ball off their big toe and hit the skids.


Josh Beckett was paid $17 million by the Red Sox/Dodgers in 2012 to win 7 games. There are 3 years and (approximately) $50 million remaining on his contract.

Yinka Dare was a first round draft pick who average 2 points, 3 rebounds, and 0.1 assists for his career.

Allan Houston was so overpaid, the NBA changed its rules in the collective bargaining agreement.

Ryan Leaf was overpaid if he was paid twenty dollars.  A bad QB choice sets an NFL franchise back for several years.  That contract, whatever the dollar amount, was worse than ARod's.

Michael Vick.


In a way, I wish Lupica was right.  I wish ARod's contract was the worst in Yankee history.

If it was, maybe I could easily forget about Kevin Brown, A.J. Burnett, Steve Kemp, Jim Abbott, Jason Giambi, Kei Igawa, Nick Johnson, Carl Pavano, Mike Witt, Pascual Perez, Jose Contreras, and that one year where Roger Clemens got a prorated $30 million to win 6 games -- Goodness Gracious!

ARod will have 14 HRs by the end of July.

Irony doesn't work when you say a lot of stupid things:

"If there is a bright side, it is the virtual certainty that A-Rod will never collect on the $30 million in bonuses built into his new deal based on reaching home run milestones that now seem insurmountable. Anyone want to bet that he even gets the 14 home runs he needs to pass Willie Mays and pocket the first $6 million?"

Yes, I will take that bet.

I think Matthews is kidding, but it's difficult to tell. He is not a smart man in the first place and he destroys the meaning of words such as "catastrophe" and "disaster" -- words that don't apply to ARod's salary when ARod's salary is juxtaposed with current events regarding Javon Belcher and Hurricane Sandy.


Other than that, Matthews seems to be suggesting that injured players are not productive players. Which is indisputably true. So big ups to the ESPN columnist for his daring observations about professional athletes. This startling conclusion has made me rethink the game entirely.


MOTO Matthews also recently revealed that the Yankees have insurance on ARod's contract.

On every other contract they sign, too, down to the peanut vendors.

Joel Sherman is correct.

Anybody who watched ARod play in the last two months of the season knew it was possible he was still injured. I thought it must have been his wrist or his conditioning, but it's certainly plausible that he was unable to generate his typical power because of his hip:

"He became the punching bag for a team-wide offensive flameout and it might be, as opposed to say Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson or Nick Swisher, that he had a legitimate excuse. He told the Yankees his surgically repaired right hip wasn’t firing after being pinch-hit for in Game 2 of the AL Division Series, went for an MRI and nothing was found.

It sounds like a shamed man grasping for extenuating circumstances, except eventually a tear, a bone impingement and a cyst were found in his left hip and, well, how do you fake that? Rodriguez had a real issue, a real explanation for going from a decent player — albeit not the star of his prime — to pretty much an automatic out, an empty uniform.

'It’s a likely scenario that the struggles we saw in September and in October are more likely than not related to this issue,' general manager Brian Cashman said."

Right. Makes sense to me, and not just because I'm wishing.


"Thus, we have yet another last stand for A-Rod, another comeback attempt for his body and reputation. The odds are steep, complicated by injury, age and whatever self-doubt is floating around in Rodriguez’s congested brain.

He will not get the benefit of the doubt — but what if he did?"

He's 37, not 47. He could very well be a productive player if he can get healthy.


I disagree with Sherman about one point. ARod gets no bonus points for playing through the injury and failing to produce.

Red Sox lose payroll flexibility.

A 31-year-old pseudo-catcher who hit .227 last season.

$13 million per year.

Wow.

Maybe they'll end up trading him to the Dodgers for Carl Crawford.