Nate Silver he ain't.

A sample size of 1,000 is huge.

One does not need to poll "ten bazillion" people. After the first nine bazillion, the final bazillion are just going to confirm the results you've already observed.

In fact, you don't need to poll anywhere near 9 bazillion. A survey of 50 people is quite accurate.

A poll of 1,000 people gives us 95% confidence that the results are within the 4-percentage-point margin of error (+/- 2%):

"But maybe my favorite addition to A-Rod’s ever-changing narrative is this recent survey of 1,000 baseball fans across the country who have him as the face of baseball. A thousand.

Out of a whole country of baseball fans, about ten bazillion of them.

If you polled a thousand people across the country, Anthony Weiner would have been the face of the New York City mayoral campaign."

A few observations that should be obvious to adults, but are not obvious to mushbrains like Lupica:

1) Picking ARod as the "Face of Baseball" may be intended as an insult to baseball.

2) Weiner may very well be the "Face of the Mayoral Race." This is accurate, as long as the "Face" of the Mayoral Race" is differentiated from the "Winner" of the Mayoral Race.

3) Like it or not, ARod is the Face of Baseball. Lupica should not be so shocked. The Daily News is the vehicle, Madden and Lupica are the drivers, ARod is just along for the ride. Maybe if the Daily News wrote one word about Josh Donaldson ...


"Suddenly there is this notion, because Alex Rodriguez has exceeded expectations as a baseball player in his return to the Yankees, that somehow he’s altered the circumstances of Major League Baseball’s case against him."

No.

Few who admire ARod's performance on the baseball field have altered expectations regarding MLB's case.

Lupica should ask himself why the expectations were so low in the first place. It's because the writers hate ARod and are rooting against ARod. This personal animus poisons their opinions and is a disservice to their readers.

The same writers who drool at the memory of Piazza's post-9/11 homerun.

So please don't tell me they're anti-steroid. They're just anti-ARod.


"Since the Yankees are in Boston right now, by the way, just remember where the Red Sox were one year ago and where they are because of all the moves Ben Cherington made.

Starting with making John Farrell his new manager."

Says the guy who enthusiastically endorsed Bobby Valentine last year.

In normal circumstances, I would conclude that the Valentine endorsement hurt Lupica's credibility. But, since we're talking about Lupica ...


"If you’re going to lose your mind because you think the other team is stealing signs, the way Joe Girardi did in Baltimore this past week, you have to make sure that your guys have never done the same thing themselves, right?"

Wrong, wrong wrong! Wrong, I say!

You really don't get it.



We are not impartial observers, we are not moral arbiters, we are not looking at the big picture.

Stealing signs is good when we do it, but it's bad when they do it. Whatever helps our team win the game.

Whichever team wins the World Series, steroids will be on that field. If you want to take a moral stand and abandon sports, be my guest. I am rooting for my team's cheaters to score more points than the other team's cheaters.

Yankees are finished and the Mets are totally awesome.

A class act who did a fine job managing the Red Sox last season.

Wells batting second, Reynolds attempts a sac bunt.

Girardi is either panicking or giving up.   I don't believe he is incompetent.

Red Sox are old, fragile, and better than the Yankees.

"This was supposed to be the Yankees’ red line, a huge weekend series with the Red Sox that brought you back to this rivalry’s better days in 2003-04. All the peripheral issues had thankfully been peeled away — no more talk about injuries or performance-enhancing drugs or Alex Rodriguez’s schoolyard war with the front office. The Bombers prepared for a sprint to October, and if they weren’t going to catch the Red Sox, they’d at least use the final 20 games as a dress rehearsal for the playoffs."

Meh.

I don't think too many people thought the Yankees were going to make the playoffs.


"It was an intoxicating sales pitch; it certainly helped pack the Stadium over the weekend. If only the Yankees had made good on the promise of pumped-up baseball. Instead, they were nuked again by Boston’s offense Saturday, 13-9, revealing all the dark secrets about a roster that’s too old and too fragile to hang with the Sox."

The Yankees have scored 25 runs in 3 games and a lot of old players are driving in a lot of runs.

Jeter got hurt this weekend, ARod rested one game this weekend. Those are concessions to age.

Robertson, Logan, Phelps, and a lot of other injured players are "young" and the accompanying "athletic."

Kind of like how Ellsbury got hurt again and the Red Sox are on their third closer ... which may be proof that the Red Sox are brittle ... except there is no reason for alarm since the Red Sox won the games.


"None of that matters over these final 20 games, however. The Yankees’ only consolation has been the Rays’ surprise slump, which has kept not only the Bombers but the Orioles and Indians relevant. But don’t be fooled, the Yankees are barely breathing right now. They’ve been humiliated all weekend by their archrival, learning firsthand the Sox are younger, more athletic and on a run-producing surge that would intimidate just about any pitching staff." 

I think the Red Sox are better than the Yankees in every aspect of baseball: starting staff, bullpen, fielding, baserunning, bench depth, coaching, managing, heart, guts, smarts ... and, oh yeah, hitting.

But it's not really the athletic youngsters that are dominating the Yankees.  Victorino is old, Napoli is old, Gomes is old, Ortiz is old.

This game will not be used in their Yankeeography.

Hughes: 1/3 IP, 4 ER.

Joba: 2/3 IP, 1 ER, 3 BB.

Out with the new, in with the old.

Kazmir beats Harvey.

Koufax threw out his arm and has fewer career wins than Kevin Appier.

"But just in case Keith doesn't mention this, I will: One of the biggest problems with saying that modern pitchers get hurt because they're babied -- relative to their forebears -- is that we generally remember only the forebears who didn't get hurt, while forgetting the hundreds and hundreds who did get hurt.

I don't think anybody would suggest that anybody's figured anything out. We don't know if the current amount of babying is too much, not enough, or just about right. But this longing for a bygone era in which men were men and nobody blew out elbows and shoulders is a longing for an era that never actually existed."

 This is not difficult to figure out.  The lineups are better nowadays, so the pitchers have to strain themselves.  

But even if the pitching conditions are exactly the same, Seaver and Ryan (and others) inexplicably forget hundreds of contemporaries who blew out their arms and were never heard from again.

David Clyde and Mark Fidrych come to mind.

My nightmares are much more imaginative.

Can't take your eyes off him, can you?:

"You watch Alex Rodriguez in the Yankee Stadium sun a little before 4 in the afternoon, fielding one ground ball after another, making throws across the infield to first base and occasionally to second, and try to remember what it was like, less than four years ago, when he owned the place."

Infield practice? I sure hope Nunez taking infield practice. I didn't know big-leaguers did that anymore.

Oh, as for "owning the place," my memory tells me that ARod has been the most hated player in baseball since 2001.

My memory is correct.


"Not only did he own the place in the postseason of 2009, when the Twins and Angels and finally the Phillies couldn’t get him out, when he was finally the kind of October Yankee he had always wanted to be, he was supposed to own the place for a long time."

Yeah, it was great.

It's certainly an odd situation when a player inspires such passion, both good and bad. His presence instantly pushed attendance up 1 million per season, but it seemed like 1/2 the people were there to boo him.


"Now it is September of 2013, what the Yankees hope will be a big September as they try to clinch a wild card or maybe still win the American League East from the Red Sox, whom they would play in three hours. And less than four years from A-Rod’s dream October, he has become Major League Baseball’s worst nightmare."

Aaron Hernandez.

Jerry Sandusky.

Sarin gas attack.


"The idea of Rodriguez in the playoffs has to be about as appealing for Bud Selig as it was for the late Pete Rozelle to hand Super Bowl trophies to Al Davis in the 1980s, back when Davis was suing Rozelle and his own league every couple of hours.

Or as appealing as it was for Selig to be in the ballpark when Bonds, an obvious drug cheat, hit the home run that passed Aaron.

Might still turn out to be a dream September for the Yankees. Maybe the best of it starts this weekend. Doesn’t change the fact that their third baseman is their game’s worst nightmare."

My dream, however unlikely, is Selig handing the World Series MVP trophy to ARod in a champagne-soaked locker room.

ARod accepts the trophy with a huge grin on his face. Awkwardly hugs Selig and refers to Selig as "Buddy."


The AL MVP race is between a steroid cheat and a drunk driver. The supposed leader for NL Comeback Player of the Year is coming back from a PED suspension.

Is ARod's presence on the baseball field unappealing for Selig?  Yes.  That's because Selig has a personal gripe against ARod.

Would ARod's presence in the playoffs be Selig's worst nightmare?  Hardly.  Unless good ratings and mountains of money is a nightmare.

Long overdue.

Hughes might actually be effective out of the bullpen.

Cano went 0-for-5, so maybe it's Girardi's fault for batting Cano third.

If anything, I think Girardi stuck with Pettitte too long.  Kelley, Logan, Robertson, Rivera, win.

If Kelley and Logan can't get anyone out ... if your team bats 1-for-10 with RISP ... your team is going to lose:

• Far easier to question the decision to bring in Joba Chamberlain after Boone Logan put two runners on base. It’s been a while since Chamberlain pitched in a real leverage situation in a winable game, so why bring him in today? “The inning didn’t work out the way we want because we used Kelley, and the outs that we thought he would get, he didn’t get,” Girardi said. “And then Boone didn’t get the outs we thought he would get. So we had to make some changes.”

• Chamberlain actually had been better recently, but it’s hard to think he would have been the go-to choice in that situation had Preston Claiborne been on the roster. Girardi said he didn’t want to use Dave Robertson because it would have meant giving him six outs if he were going to form a bridge to the ninth. “I’ve done everything,” Chamberlain said. “So there’s nothing they can put me on the field in that I haven’t been in. It’s just execution of the pitch. that’s the one pitch I made a mistake on and they made me pay for it.”

• Why three straight sliders to Adam Jones? “We needed a double play right there,” Chamberlain said. “I threw him the sliders and just — as aggressive as Adam is — if I threw it in a good spot and hopefully get him to roll over and get us out of that inning, and keep us within one run. That was the thought process.”

• Interestingly, this was Stewart’s take on three straight sliders: “I wanted to throw another fastball just to get them off there, but Joba felt confident in the slider and unfortunately, all three of them weren’t really good sliders. He just didn’t have it coming out of the bullpen, and he left one hanging and he hit a homer on it.”

This is game #136 of the season.  This is Joba's 7th season in the major leagues.  Joba is a fly ball pitcher throwing three straight sliders to a power hitter because he thinks he's going to get a ground ball double play ... and he then refers to this as a "thought process."


As for the game itself, Joba pitched two innings and allowed one run.

Kelley and Logan combined for zero outs and four runs.
 
Joba is a fat, stupid, gutless, sloppy bacon double cheeseburger.  Every time Joba take the mound, he mocks Cashman's long-term plan.  But this particular loss was not particularly Joba's fault, and it also wasn't particularly Girardi's fault.

Felz Stats of the Day

Derek Jeter's 2013 Season

AB: 42

H: 7

2B: 1

3B: 0

HR: 1

R: 4

RBI: 4

BA: .167

OB%: .234

SL%: .262

Why is Hughes still in the rotation?

Boo ARod

3 Ks and 1 GIDP.

Which reminds me, why isn't Miguel Cabrera in prison?

Against Boston this weekend, PED cheat and bullpen-phone destroyer David Ortiz hit a double off Hiroki Kuroda. The hometown fans cheered and none of the NY Daily News editorial staff wrote one word about the sanctity of the game.

In the same inning, ARod tagged out a Boston baserunner who was five feet from third base. The runner was called safe, no instant replay to consult ... the integrity of the game ruined daily by these useless old men with bad eyesight.

The next day, we all witnessed Ryan Dempster's amateurish actions.

Best part was the Boston manager lying to everyone right there on national TV: "Dempster was trying to throw inside." That kind of suppression will give you a heart attack, pal.  For baseball managers, lying to the press is simply habitual.

Besides, rooting against ARod means rooting for the Red Sox.  A fundamental tenet of sports fandom is that Yankee fans root for the Yankees:

"There are plenty of Yankee fans, I’m sure, who only want to believe in A-Rod’s dream scenario, the one in which he is the victim in all of this — victim of baseball’s vendetta against him and the Yankees’ treachery with him — but that he nevertheless is able to fend off all his attackers, rise to the occasion and become an inspiration to all as he leads the Yankees to the postseason. They do not care that he has cheated the game, lied to them, allegedly libeled the organization and even allegedly ratted out his fellow players and own teammate to take the steroids onus off himself, just like San Francisco Giants fans didn’t care that a bloated Barry Bonds was using steroids and lying to them when he made a mockery of baseball’s hallowed home run records. There are fans everywhere who don’t give a hoot about steroids and what they’ve done to the integrity of the game and the sanctity of its records — even though the players themselves obviously now do."

It is still very easy to separate ARod's on-field actions from his off-field actions.  He's not Aaron Hernandez or Chad Curtis.  As far as I know, ARod has never beaten a women, cheated on his taxes, snorted cocaine, refused to play with blacks, or driven a car while drunk ... which makes him easier to root for than about half the players in the Hall of Fame ... and makes him easier to root for than the current AL MVP.



MLB can do its own thing.  It's not up to Selig to prosecute drunk drivers in America.  I'd gladly welcome Miguel Cabrera on my team, just like I welcomed Steve Howe and Dwight Gooden.

But Selig looks silly sitting on a high horse looking down on ARod, pontificating about the character and integrity of the game.

Why does Selig look silly?  Besides the fact that he's a millionaire who buys his suits at Sears?

Selig looks silly because, when he comes down off that high horse, he hands the AL MVP trophy to a drunk and he hands the AL Championship trophy to a junkie.


Madden and Selig have a personal problem with ARod.

Selig uses his powers as MLB Commissioner to carry out his vendetta, Madden uses his baseball column.

It's lame and they both deserve to be called on it.

The Yankees benched him in the playoffs, so ... they weren't rolling him out there in the hopes that he'd fail.

ARod sounds like a paranoid, misguided man:

"The worst scandal in baseball history, the one that threatened the very existence of the game, was the decision by several members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox to intentionally lose the World Series. Alex Rodriguez’s lawyer has accused the Yankees of committing a similar act of treason. 

The lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said the Yankees knew Rodriguez had a torn labrum in his hip but continued to use him in the 2012 playoffs, hoping he would sustain further physical harm and never play for them again. 

To be clear, Tacopina is not implying that the Yankees used Rodriguez while he was injured in an effort to help the team win. That would be immoral but not traitorous. Tacopina is saying that the Yankees deliberately did not field their best team by knowingly using a player who was physically unable to perform. 

'They rolled him out there like an invalid and made him look like he was finished as a ballplayer,' Tacopina said.

...

Tacopina clumsily evoked the legacy of George Steinbrenner, offering a revisionist version of the scheming — but now sainted — former owner who once paid a gambler for dirt on Dave Winfield. That offense earned Steinbrenner a suspension that lasted nearly three years.

Now the player, not the owner, faces a suspension. As Rodriguez fights it, he tries to win for a franchise he accuses of acting unconscionably."

The commissioner works for the owners.

I don't doubt that the Yankees were secretly hoping that a MLB punitive action could relieve them of a lot of their contractual obligations to ARod.

I also think it's important to fight Selig's edicts and put in plenty of checks and balances.


But this lawyer talk is seriously out of line BS. The Yankees weren't trying to injure ARod. That would be flat-out criminal and way beyond a dispute about playing time or a contract buyout.

Own it.

Journalists are supposed to attempt to eliminate biases. The Sports Department of the Daily News are certainly not journalists, but I think they sometimes wish they were. That's why they recoil so viciously to suggestions that they have singled out ARod with particular vitriol. 

Bill Madden did the same thing while stumbling through an appearance on Mike Francesa's radio show.

In the midst of another column devoted almost entirely to ARod-bashing, Lupica drops this cherry-picked defense of himself and his newspaper:

"He’s being picked on? You think Barry Bonds didn’t think the same way? Or Roger Clemens? This newspaper’s I-Team wrote a book about Clemens and broke the story about Melky Cabrera setting up a phony website to cover his own track of baseball drugs. Look at the safe that got dropped on Mark McGwire after he admitted steroids use.

Suddenly, though, in the baseball summer hijacked by Alex Rodriguez, there is the idea that no one has ever been pulled out of line the way he has.

Come on."

No one has ever been pulled out of line the way ARod has.

This newspaper's I-Team seems disinterested in every steroid cheat other than ARod. Jordany Valdespin and Francisco Cervelli got one paragraph each and I still haven't seen any mention of Miguel Tejada.

Sure, you broke the story about Melky's phony website and then never once questioned why Selig didn't throw Melky out of baseball forever for interfering with MLB's investigation.  Instead, Melky signs a $12 million contract and the Blue Jays become pre-season favorites to go to the World Series.

Look, you're giving the public what it wants.  The public despises ARod (and Clemens and Bonds) and the public despised them before the steroid revelations.  The public is mostly disinterested in minor leaguers or bench players who get 50-game suspensions.

Don't pretend you're not singling out ARod.  Don't pretend you're interested in Legal Justice or Journalism.  You're a tabloid rag that puts cartoon caricaturues on its back page.  At least you should own that.




"It is worth pointing out all over again that the same people who like to bang Bud Selig around for not doing enough about steroids in the old days now want to bang him around for doing too much.

You sort of can’t have it both ways."

Lupica's inability to understand nuance is quite remarkable.

Selig is not doing too much about steroids.  Selig has never done too much about steroids. 

Selig has essentially done nothing for twenty years ... and then he suddenly wants to atone for all his shortcomings by focusing on one guy.

Tejada can do lines with Ron Washington.

Quite a noticeable difference in tone. Tejada is not a degenerate ring leader, he's a good man who made "bad decisions":

"As Arangure points out, Tejada never has burned bridges where he's gone. Even those who have been stung by his bad decisions speak well of him. Perhaps the Royals will too.

If he could wipe away lying about Palmeiro, and lying about his age, and getting busted for failing two tests for amphetamines, we might be talking about a major league managerial candidate."

And don't expect to see any angry demands for a lifetime suspension.

He won't be banned from the game forever.

"Is anyone surprised that in addition to being a cheater, a liar and a narcissist, Alex Rodriguez also reportedly is a snitch?

By any measure, that's hitting for the cycle in baseball's Steroids Era."

Only one of those things is against the rules.

I don't know what to make of MLB's leaks. CBS News is reliable ... more reliable than TMZ ... but CBS News is not always reliable, of course.


But to answer your question, no, I'm not really surprised.  If he is stupid and childish and unintelligent enough to do something as self-defeating as this, I'm not really surprised.  He certainly doesn't have the moral authority to call out other players and I don't know why his position is enhanced by leaking these documents.  Especially since the names were going to be revealed soon enough.



"If the '60 Minutes' reporting is accurate, A-Rod not only violated baseball's collective bargaining agreement, he also alienated the last segment of our population that could possibly be on his side: the players' union.

According to the CBA, any allegations of PED use are to be handled privately before a player's name is made public. If A-Rod and/or his associates gave MLB investigators documents including Braun's and Cervelli's names, that would be a direct violation of the CBA. All of a sudden, it looks as if MLB knew exactly what it was doing when it threw the book at Rodriguez in the form of that massive 211-game suspension."

Jeez, listen to yourself.

If you're seriously going to take a stand against leaking in and of itself, then MLB should be on Death Row.

If MLB was playing it straight according to the CBA, there is no "all along" and you have no column and you have no idea ARod's suspension is 211 games.  Because the player's identity is supposed to be kept secret while his case is under appeal.


"We can only hope. After all, what self-respecting union would ever support a guy who ratted out two other members of the union, especially when the snitch is the ring leader of the whole operation? A-Rod is eight years older than Braun and nearly 11 years older than Cervelli, and already admitted to doping from 2001-2003, when Braun and Cervelli were still in school."

ARod is guilty of being eight years older than Braun and nearly eleven years older than Cervelli.

So he's guilty of lying (which isn't a crime), narcissism (which isn't a crime), leaking (which is a crime only in the sense that it gives crummy columnists something to write about), and now he's guilty of being older than other people.


Which brings us back to the same place we always end up.

If ARod is guilty of taking illegal PEDs, then punish him for taking illegal PEDs. 

This nonsense about being a "ring leader" for other grown men is enough to make me puke. 

The idea that he "obstructed" an investigation by a private entity (who paid for their own snitch) is an impossibility.  ARod has as much rights to those documents as MLB does.  In his attempts to fight MLB's investigation, he can lie, cheat, and bribe Tony Bosch.  He can also invoke the Fifth Amendment ... except there is no reason to invoke the Fifth Amendment since he isn't under oath ... since MLB has no subpoena power.


You know what is not a crime in America?  You know what is not a violation of MLB's CBA?  Being unlikeable.


"The good news about this news is that it focuses us even more on just how awful it is that A-Rod continues to play when he should be suspended, as his Biogenesis brethren were. To see A-Rod in pinstripes, pretending as if everything is normal, is worse than watching Barry Bonds' tainted march to the career home run record."

You can watch CSI reruns if you prefer.


"By playing, A-Rod continues to harm whatever legacy he has left. Let's hope that soon, he is kicked out of the game forever, putting him out of his misery, and us out of ours."

ARod has no legacy and therefore nothing to lose by playing baseball.

He is also not going to get kicked out of the game forever.  211 games at most.  So that may translate into an effective lifetime ban, but the people who keep saying that seem to be wrong about everything.


If you're so miserable writing about ARod, then write about something else.

USA Today has five-star Sudokus on Fridays.  That can occupy your time if watching narcissistic baseball players bothers you so much.

Readers scoff at all reports by Bill Madden.

"The report that Alex Rodriguez and his handlers are now planning a federal lawsuit against Major League Baseball, claiming he is being persecuted by commissioner Bud Selig and his drug-enforcement authorities, was greeted with both skepticism and bemusement Wednesday by the owners at the quarterly meetings.

Rodriguez, who appealed the 211-game suspension MLB handed down on Aug. 5, plans to sue if the league doesn’t recant the entire penalty, according to a report on TMZ.com."

TMZ is your source?

That's not much of a source, but I suppose TMZ is more reliable than the NY Daily News.

I was performing this analysis when I was 10 years old.

Baseball writer Jeff Passan never thought of it before and says it's revolutionary:

"Valuable. What is value? Is it gaudy stats? Is it leadership? Does it increase with a spot in the postseason? Does it decrease because of mediocre teammates? Is it some weird amalgamation of all of the above and more? For the 60 baseball writers who vote annually on the MVP award, the definitions vary, and considering the directions emailed out with the ballot – 'There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means' – that is perhaps by design.

An exchange on Twitter this week with Chris Long, a quantitative analyst who consults for the San Diego Padres, brought up a fascinating point that I'd never before considered: Since free agency created the salary imbalance that exists in baseball today, have we been missing what should be one of the chief criteria of value?"

I remember one year where Alfonso Soriano was (more or less) making league minimum while hitting (more or less) 40 HRs and stealing (more or less) 40 bases. So Soriano was more valuable per dollar than Barry Bonds who was sporting a near-.600 on-base%.

I also remember when Don Mattingly instantly went from most-productive-per-dollar to least-productive-per-dollar ... simply because he signed a big free agent contract between seasons.

That is what the big revolutionary analysis will reveal every time: free agency is the dividing line between good value and bad value.

If you want to end steroid use, you have to talk about steroid use.

We want lifetime bans for first-time users, yet Jack Clark gets fired for stating the obvious.

Chris Davis's doubters should not be criticized, the sportswriters who bury their heads in the sand should be laughed at. 


I am not 100% sure Pujols and Davis are guilty, I'm just at least 51% sure.  Since we're all trying these players in the Court of Public Opinion, I don't have to be anywhere near 100% sure. 

Let's not forget that almost none of the Biogenesis crew tested positive.

Let's just suspend a couple dozen players and declare the Steroid Era over ... once again.  It's the 100th time the Steroid Era has officially ended.

I swear, Yankee fans are not as ignorant as you think.

"Here is the new reality for Yankees fans:

The Tigers have the world’s most legitimate slugger in Miguel Cabrera, who blasted his 35th home run of the season yesterday, while Alex Rodriguez, who is supposed to be the Yankees’ power threat, has such physical issues he wasn’t even in the lineup because manager Joe Girardi thought he needed a day off after only four games back from offseason hip surgery and a strained quadriceps."

Miguel Cabrera has been a superstar in MLB for ten years and is the reigning MVP and Triple Crown winner.


ARod is not the Yankees' power threat and not even supposedly the Yankees' power threat.  Cano, Granderson, and Soriano are probably expected to supply more power than ARod.

This is not a particularly new reality.


"His replacement, Jayson Nix, struck out all four times he came to the plate in the Yankees’ hideous 9-3 loss to the Tigers at Yankee Stadium.

In looking at the A-Rod situation and the Yankees’ decline, it’s important to separate the noise from the reality."

Funny you bring up Jayson Nix.

Because when observers proclaim that ARod will help the team, it's only in relation to the terribly unproductive replacement players.


I think ARod is out of shape and will take a while to get his timing back.  Then, he will get suspended for a long time. 

While the Yankees were still clinging to their playoff hopes in the recent past, I was hoping the return of Jeter, ARod, and Granderson would help the offense. 

But I don't think anyone in the entire world is expecting ARod to play like Miguel Cabrera ever again.


"What’s really happening here is the Yankees are in a franchise free-fall and the entire A-Rod saga is a smokescreen that hides other issues that ail this club."

There is nothing hidden. Look at the standings, look at the scoreboard, look at the stats, look at the play on the field.  It's all in the open, every day,  in public for all to see.


If there's a lack of attention to the team's struggles, it's the media that is not paying attention.  The fans are well aware.


This is very typical.

Like Lupica's latest column complaining about all the attention that ARod is receiving ... complaining how he can't escape ARod talk ... and then spending the rest of the article fixated on ARod.


"Phil Hughes had another dreadful outing and his one-time roommate Joba Chamberlain was equally atrocious. Remember, when the Yankees were selling the notion Hughes and Chamberlain would be the home-grown pitching backbone of this club?"

They're both atrocious, and they're both out of shape and stupid.  They never bothered to learn their craft and now their careers are shot.

By the way, the rest of the article is about ARod.

One mention of Hughes and Joba, and then ARod, a player with 15 at-bats in the whole season.

Felz Stat of the Day

In the 2013 season, Miguel Cabrera has 51 hits and 16 HRs with RISP.

In the 2013 season, the Yankees have 219 hits and 23 HRs with RISP.

If the Mets want the back page of the New York Post, they can have it.

Met fans will continue to root for the Mets and Yankee fans will continue to root for the Yankees.  The self-absorbed media will tell you who you're supposed to root for:

"But we may also look back, someday very soon, and discover he was the line of delineation where our baseball market started making a market correction. There are a lot of Yankees fans who support A-Rod. There seem to be more, many more, who are disgusted, appalled and altogether disillusioned this is where the Yankees are with 49 games left in their season:

A bearded lady of a baseball team."

A what?


"Now it is right and it’s fair Yankees fans want to believe in the magic of the uniform and the length of the season, believe all it will take to get from where they are to where they want to be is two weeks of terrific baseball. Look at the Braves, look at the Tigers, look at the Dodgers, none of whom ever lose. Look at the Royals! A few weeks ago their (apparently) doomed general manager, Dayton Moore, said anything was possible even winning 15 out of 20. They’ve won 15 out of 19.

It can happen."

I don't think many fans believe the Yankees are going to make the playoffs this year.

The last two months of the season will therefore generate less excitement and less emotional and financial commitment from the fans.  Still doesn't mean the Yankee fans all going to Citi Field instead.


"It’s a Yankees town in 2013, yes. But it was a Yankees town in 1963, too, and then it wasn’t. It was a Yankees town in 1983, and then it wasn’t. Nothing is forever in our town except for this: we do love ourselves some winners. Neither side qualifies right now. Soon enough, one of them will.

Which one?"

I read somewhere how the Mets are catching up to the Yankees for 2013 bragging rights.  Which is an insult to the definition of the word "brag" when neither team looks like they're even going to finish the season with a .500 winning percentage.


Not to be perpetually optimistic, but I also wouldn't discount the Yankees' ability to get out of the 2013 death spiral in the near future. 

If you follow the beat writers, the Mets have supposedly been taking over New York City baseball for the past 15 years.  They're not writing, they're rooting.

He lasted 113 games.

"See you in Tampa in February. It’s all over. Get ready for 2014 and beyond. The Yankees are going nowhere this season.

When last night’s stunning, 6-5 loss in 12 innings to the White Sox was complete, the equipment truck was parked right next to the visiting clubhouse at U.S. Cellular Field. It truly was a getaway night — to the Yankees’ season of injury and poor play."

 My breaking point was game #98.  Yankees score 7 runs in Boston and can cut the lead to 4 1/2 games.  Sabathia gets bombed and the Yankees lose 8-7.


"The Bombers hit rock bottom, getting swept by a team that came into the week with the second-worst winning percentage in baseball and on a 10-game skid. In this series, the Yankees went 3-for-33 with runners in scoring position. The Yankees lost the final five of six games on this trip.

They have no chance to recover from this loss, the 14th loss in the last 20 games. In one way, this loss does these overmatched Yankees a favor. They can start the rebuilding process for next February in Tampa and 2014. There is so much work to be done."

I have no idea what this means, "start the rebuilding process."

Trade Cano?  Fine.

Trade Kuroda?  Fine.

I don't think you'll get too much in return since Cano and Kuroda would only be rented for a couple of months.


"This is not 1978. This is 2013 and the aging Yankees have no chance to make a miracle run.

In the watered down wild-card race, the Yankees must jump over four teams. That’s not happening either. 

They are not a good team. They are not going anywhere.

Come February, they can start all over again."

Other than removing one's emotional commitment -- you mean to say the Yankees can play with even less intensity? -- I don't what has changed.

I can't think of too many concrete examples of actionable items which can be executed in the last 49 games which will facilitate the rebuilding process.

I suppose there's a prospect or two that can take Sabathia's or Pettitte's place in the rotation for a few starts, but I don't even know who these prospects are.  Try to showcase Joba and Hughes so you can get a smidgen of value from them in a post-waiver-deadline trade?


Give Sabathia the rest of the season off and prepare for 2014?  Or see if he can keep working on his arm angle in big-league competitive games?

You will not make the playoffs. Try to show some pride and win as many games as you can.

Selig's legacy.

John Kruk can keep talking. Curt Schilling can shut up.

This is why it's difficult for me to listen to Curt Schilling sitting upon his high horse while criticizing ARod:

1) If ARod "stole" money from the Steinbrenners, then it's still less morally repugnant than "stealing" money from the taxpayers of Rhode Island.

2) Schilling has three Championship rings and many players on those Championship teams were steroid users, none of whom paid the price in any way.

Basically, just about anyone who gleefully piles on ARod at the exclusion of others is simply not credible to me.

The Yankees are totally doing fine this year.

ARod hasn't played one game this year, so don't blame him for this mess: 57-53 record, 4th place, 9 1/2 games out of first place, 4 1/2 games out of the wild card.

14th in the league in runs scored, .302 team on-base%.


In the recent inspiring weekend series vs. the NL West Powerhouse Padres, Brent Lillibridge came to bat the ninth inning of the rubber game representing the tying run with one out and two on.

 Lillibridge is batting .120 this season with 0 HRs. 
 
It was edge-of-your-seat excitement to see whether Lillibridge would strike out looking or strike out swinging.

He struck out swinging, by the way. 


The potential pinch-hitter for Lillibridge was not Alex Rodriguez, it was Vernon Wells.

Wells batted next and struck out.  Wells has not hit a HR in 2 1/2 months (batting practice not included).


ARod put in the same situation would probably not hit a game-tying HR.  The fans would then complain that ARod is not clutch.  But the chances of him hitting a game-trying HR are higher than 0%.  ARod is an upgrade.


I don't what to hear how ARod's presence will distract this team.  This team might benefit from unwanted scrutiny.

Maybe someone in the press will notice that Cano ... the guy who was the captain of the AL HR Derby team ... has one HR since July 2 (HR Derby and batting practice not included). 

"I hope he throws Rodriguez out for life."

" 'I hope he throws Rodriguez out for life,' former commissioner Fay Vincent told USA TODAY Sports. Vincent was the deputy commissioner when Rose was banned and commissioner from 1989-92.

'There are a lot of similarities between this and Rose. They were very delusional. They lied. They misbehaved,' he said.

'Baseball has to stand for things. It just can't have these drugs. If chemists win, baseball is finished. Otherwise, we'd have the Yankees and Red Sox buying up chemistry departments and not caring about who is pitching.

'Baseball really is going to have to ratchet the deterrent, and make it one-and-done, because anybody who says the (drug) testing is working is crazy. It's not working. You use these performance-enhancing drugs just once, you should be banned for life.' ''

1) If baseball seriously wants a lifetime ban, then go back to the CBA. 

Good luck getting it, but if that's what you propose, it should at least be on a going-forward basis.

Whatever your idea of "fairness" is, I damn sure know it's unfair to retroactively impose a penalty.


2) If ARod goes, then everyone goes.  That's what "one and done" means.

Hundreds of current contracts cancelled.

I must admit, it would almost be worth it if meant David Ortiz would finally be suspended for something.


3) The backlash to the backlash is not based on a delusional belief that ARod is innocent.

Instead, it's an observation that ARod is being singled out by Selig while Selig signs McGwire's paycheck every two weeks. That's simply not fair. When Selig starts wielding his considerable power unfairly, he should get called on it.


4) Pete Rose should be reinstated and put into the HOF tomorrow, alright?

Stop using one unfair punishment as justification for another unfair punishment.

Felz Stat of the Day.

Courtesy of Michael Kay: CC Sabathia has not recorded an out at first base in over two years.

When Hideki Irabu acted that way in Spring Training, the owner called Irabu a fat puss-y toad.

With pitchers like this, who needs PEDs?

Jeff Passan with a fresh take on Alex Rodriguez.

If Jeff Passan was owed $100 million, I suspect he'd fight to collect it:

"This always was going to be about the money, you know. Some of Alex Rodriguez's associates like to tell stories about Alex and his money, how it's at the root of this whole mess he's in now, how all this talk about his love of baseball and desire to be a role model for his children is a smokescreen for the greed that consumes him. He's made $315 million playing baseball, and that's not enough. 

Some of it vanished in real-estate deals gone bad. More of it disappeared as it tends to when entourages swell and ten grand here or a hundred grand there is like the rest of us tossing a couple bucks into the Salvation Army kettle at Christmas. A-Rod is still filthy rich, in no financial danger whatsoever, but that's not the point."

Can I stop right now?

Or am I going to read this entire column and then realize there is no point?


"In this case, he wants to salvage as much as he can of the $100 million or so remaining on his contract with the New York Yankees before Major League Baseball disciplines him for using performance-enhancing drugs, lying about it and a litany of other offenses. That – not this cockamamie burning desire to come back and play baseball – is the grand imperative of his haggling sessions with MLB, two associates of Rodriguez's told Yahoo! Sports. He wants to take his money, he wants to screw the Yankees because he feels like they ditched him and he wants to become a property mogul, buying and selling, wheeling and dealing, away from the sport that turned on him despite everything he did for it."

I think he loves money and he also loves playing baseball. He also loves muscular women and and performance-enhancing drugs.


"Within the next 72 hours, Alex Rodriguez will make his choice to fight or surrender. For a while now, one person close to him has suggested that his decision-making skills are so bad that they oughta let ol' Mr. Murphy off the hook and make it A-Rod's Law: whatever can go wrong will go wrong. No matter what he chooses, the truth is it already has."

I hope he fights and, at the very least, takes down Selig with him. Because if Selig goes to federal court with a proposed $100 million penalty based upon the testimony of a paid-off drug dealer, then ARod is going to win.

As for the shocking notion that ARod is greedy, the column is about 15 years too late.

I agree that the Yankees should not receive salary relief.

Chris Davis is taking steroids right now and the Orioles are ahead of the Yankees in the Wild Card race. 

I don't think the Baltimore manager is the proper guy to question Bud Selig's arbitrary munificence:

"Rodriguez, who is owed $86 million through 2017, is due $25 million in 2014. If, for example, he's suspended for the rest of this season and all of next, the Yankees would suddenly plummet below the luxury tax threshold of $189 million. 

'If Bud lets them get away with that, they're under the luxury tax,' Showalter told the paper. 'If they can reset, they can spend again and I guarantee you in two years Matt Wieters is in New York.' "

Sure, I could see that, as long as Mauer moves to DH.

Jonathan Mahler may be wrong about everything.

But he sounds like an adult compared to the Looney Tunes at the Daily News:

"Orza told me that the lifetime-ban rumor is purely a negotiating tactic: 'Baseball knows it can’t ban Alex for life.' The labor contract language that would presumably empower it -- the specific clause says that players can be disciplined for 'conduct that is materially detrimental or materially prejudicial to the best interests of baseball' -- was designed to prevent players from betting on games. If the provision applied to other situations, why wasn't it invoked during one of baseball’s previous scandals -- the cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, for example? Also, at the insistence of the union, Selig signs a letter attached to the labor contract every year assuring players that he won’t invoke it. So that’s that.


...

Even if Selig is sitting on baseball’s version of the Pentagon Papers -- and he might just be -- I’m still not sure how that justifies his handling of the Biogenesis investigation. If baseball is so confident in its evidence, and the means by which it acquired it, why is it so eager to avoid presenting it before a neutral party in an arbitration hearing? Whatever crimes Rodriguez stands accused of, doesn’t he deserve his day in court?

In any event, it's time to see what evidence of wrongdoing baseball is holding. Show us your hand, Bud."

I'm tired of talking about Alex Rodriguez. Let's talk about Victor Cruz instead.

First question for Victor Cruz: what does Victor Cruz think about Alex Rodriguez?

The Yankee Way.

Which player most embodies the Yankee Way?

Jeter?

DiMaggio?

Gehrig?

How many names would you list before you got to Bam Bam Meulens?

Bill Madden's reliable sources.

It sure looks likely that ARod will never again play for the Yankees, though I'd have bet against it a few weeks ago.

My favorite part is the side comment that Cervelli will get 50 games.  Because here's yet another steroid cheat playing for the Yankees and nobody really cares:

"If Rodriguez and his representatives reject a deal, the embattled superstar's suspension could be announced as early as late Monday or Tuesday. A source close to Rodriguez says the player is sticking to his story that he has done nothing wrong and is unwilling to cut a deal.

'If there is a suspension,' the source said, 'he will fight it.'

According to a source familiar with the discussions between MLB officials and A-Rod's representatives, if Rodriguez accepted a settlement that would call for him to be suspended for the rest of this year and the entire 2014 season without pay, he would still have a chance to collect the $60 million the Yankees would owe him from 2015 to 2017.

The deal would allow MLB to impose the suspension immediately and avoid arbitration. If Rodriguez declines the deal, commissioner Bud Selig is expected to pursue what would be an historic suspension that would ban the 38-year-old Rodriguez from ever returning to the field."

My question is whether or not the arbitrator has to decide all or nothing. 

If it's an all-or-nothing proposition, as crazy as it sounds, ARod still has a chance.

A reasonable person can wonder why everyone else gets a penalty of 50 games and $500,000 while ARod gets 700 games and $100 million.

O.J. Simpson was found civilly liable for the murder of two people.  His fine was $25 million.

I propose a lifetime suspension for 'roid rage.

Alex Rodriguez is stupid and Mike Lupica really wants you to know this.

"It started in the old days with the old man, George (Boss) Steinbrenner, who could work the phones himself the way Alex Rodriguez’s flacks were working them this week, peddling their ridiculous version of things, starting here:

Alex was healthy enough to play and the Yankees wouldn’t let him. . . because they don’t really want to win!"

The theory is not so much that the Yankees "don't really want to win."  (Though I'm glad we're all in agreement than a deteriorated ARod is still probably a better baseball player than Luis Cruz, Travis Hafner, Alberto Gonzalez, Reid Brignac, David Adams, etc.)

The theory is that the Yankees are waiting for MLB to suspend ARod so the Yankees are relieved from their contractual obligation.

The more expansive theory is that the Yankees want to buy out ARod's contract.  Without any leverage, the Yankees would have to pay, I dunno, 90 cents on the dollar.  With the pending threat of a lifetime ban (imposed by MLB, not the Yankees), maybe ARod would accept, I dunno, 50 cents on the dollar.


"But Hal Steinbrenner had nothing to do with embarrassing the Yankees this week. Randy Levine, president of the team did not, nor did Brian Cashman. The manager had nothing to do with this, nor did any of the other Yankee players. There was one guy turning the Yankees back into a Bronx Zoo, even from out of town: Alex Emmanuel Rodriguez, who still has this amazingly stupid idea that he is smarter than everybody else."

In a recent article about Alfonso Soriano, I noticed that Mark Teixeira was quoted.

Why is the press even talking to Teixeira?  Teixeira is on the DL.

Jeter is in the dugout with the same injury as ARod.  ARod is exiled to Tampa and intentionally kept away from the team.

The Yankees are embarrassing ARod on purpose.

Did ARod make his own bed?  Of course.  But this is a team with a vast history of steroid cheats, including a lot of players on its current roster.  So this is a player the Yankees have decided to publicly reject. This is noticeably unusual behavior for the team that embraced Howe, Strawberry, Gooden, Giambi, Hafner, etc.


As for embarrassing the Yankees this week, CC Sabathia took care of that already.

Yesterday, the entire Yankee lineup managed two baserunners in an important game vs. an AL East rival.  In the postgame press conference, the ever-optimistic (i.e., delusional) Girardi said that his team's offense hit some balls hard, but, unfortunately, the Tampa fielders caught the hard-hit balls.

Hughes vs. Moore today as the Yankees try to avoid the sweep.

That's the Yankees' Week in Embarrassment right there.

One hundred million stupid WFAN PR campaigns from a player on the DL can't possibly embarrass the organization as much as their performance on the field.


"So once A-Rod’s flacks found willing partners all over the airwaves, it no longer mattered that it was Rodriguez who first complained about leg problems in the minors; Rodriguez who chose not to show up in Tampa for a rehab game, whether that game got rained out or not; Rodriguez who didn’t want to go to Buffalo and wasn’t ready to play the Texas Rangers at the start of the week."

Right.

I don't understand the whole thing with the doctors.  An ill-advised, hypocritical, and pointless attempt to turn public sentiment against the Yankees.


ARod is not an intelligent person.  His stupid behavior is often misinterpreted as narcissism or arrogance or PR phoniness.  If you really listen to the words that come out of this man's mouth -- especially when he's forced to be spontaneous -- he's really quite ignorant and stupid.  A lot of what he says is simply incoherent.


"I wrote about all this on Wednesday, chapter and verse, and was the first to wonder why someone this wronged and this mistreated, one who is having his flacks and handlers and star-struck doctors suggest that he was the victim of an outrageous medical fraud perpetrated by his own team, didn’t file a grievance with the Major League Baseball Players Association.

When A-Rod finally responded to that, because you knew he would, he said he didn’t know he could file a grievance. Really? We’re supposed to believe that a guy who has a lawyer with him on a conference call with the Yankees, who has been working with a lawyer who represented Ryan Braun, isn’t aware of his rights?"

Oh my freakin' God.

Mike Lupica "was the first the wonder why ARod didn't file a grievance."  The first person in the whole world was Mike Lupica.

"When ARod finally responded to that, he didn't know he could file a grievance."


I don't know how to break it to Lupica, but ARod doesn't read Lupica's column.

Lupica is not steering this storyline in any way.

ARod was not responding to Mike Freakin' Lupica.


I was actually listening to Francesa's show when Francesa asked ARod about the grievance.  ARod's response was something like, "I'm gonna jump off the phone."  ARod said that about 20 times.  The kind of thing a stupid man says when caught off guard and asked to think for himself.

But you know the primary reason I just might believe that ARod isn't aware of his right to file a grievance?Because ARod is preternaturally unintelligent.


"Suckers buy into a narrative like that, into the poor-Alex narrative, into the conspiracy narrative, and about how this is only about his love for the game and not about establishing a legal position to hold on to as much of his money as possible."

Well, once again, I think Lupica is fighting a non-existent enemy.  You'd find almost zero people who buy into the "poor-Alex" narrative. He's guilty.

Having said that, a lot of people are not buying into the "poor-Yankees" narrative or "poor-Selig" narrative.

If someone points out that a lifetime suspension for ARod above all other steroid cheats seems unfair, it's because it absolutely is unfair compared to all other steroid cheats.

If someone points out that the Yankees' outrage regarding steroid cheats seems hypocritical when compared to other steroid cheats -- and this moral outrage is undoubtedly tied to the remaining contract dollars rather than a "love of the game" -- it's because that is also obviously true.

I don't think this stance qualifies as "pro-ARod" or "poor-ARod."  It's just the Yankees are 54-50 and 8 games out of first place.  Until the suspension is official, let's get this lying, cheating, stupid bat back on the field as soon as possible. A stupid cheating liar will fit right in with American pro sports teams.

The Yankees can't hit.

Funny thing is, their July offense has improved when compared to June and the team is over .500 in July.

Larry Brooks surveys the damage:

"It is their longest home run drought in 29 years, since the 1984 team went 10 straight without one. The team that clubbed opponents into submission through the first four years of residence at their new address — a franchise record 245 home runs last season after smacking 222, 201 and 244 the three years before that — has hit 88 through 104 games, 14th in the AL.

They are the only team in the majors without a home run since the All-Star Game.
The power, the glory, the porch, the history. The bandbox of the new place that suddenly has been transformed into Yellowstone, the fences as far from home plate for the home team batters as if looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

Where have all the homers gone? Gone with Curtis Granderson to Tampa and the club’s minor league rehab center. Gone with Mark Teixeira to the disabled list. Gone with a new organizational checkbook mentality. Gone with Nick Swisher to Cleveland, with Raul Ibanez to Seattle, with Russell Martin to Pittsburgh.

Gone with A-Rod, who most surely is going, going away.

Robinson Cano, who went a feeble 0-for-3 against Archer without getting the ball out of the infield, has gone 13 straight games and 48 at-bats since he last hit one out on July 10, his only home run in the last 21 games.

Alfonso Soriano, who was acquired from the Cubs to provide right-handed power — no homers from the right side of the plate for the Yankees in 28 straight games since June 25 — never before had hit cleanup as a Yankee before Friday night."

Legit crisis.

"The $191 million lefty, who underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left elbow last winter, coughed up a seventh run in the fifth. He now has been reached for 22 runs (17 earned) in his last three appearances to fall to 9-9 on the season. His 4.65 ERA through 22 starts is better than only six American League pitchers with enough innings to qualify for the ERA title."

A certain joie de vivre.

Soriano and Cano can have a contest over who spends more time in the batter's box admiring warning track fly balls:

" 'One of my favorite teammates of all time,' Mark Teixeira, the injured first baseman who played with Soriano in Texas, said Friday. 'He's like Robinson Cano, one of those guys who's always happy.' "

Always happy? Robinson Cano plays baseball with the joy of a guy who's working the overnight shift at a Shanghai zipper factory.

You know what makes me angry? The misleading promo for Hideki Matsui Bobblehead Day.

Mushnick seldom disappoints:

"Seems as if everything now comes packaged in bogus hype, bubble wrap pumped with gas. Soon, straight addition — two-plus-two — will be presented as limited edition, act-now, must-see math."

Yeah, and those kids skateboarding on the sidewalk.


" 'Hi, I’m Henry Winkler, here to tell you about the latest, greatest offer on earth — a triple-reverse mortgage!' "

How's Chachi?


"Even an 18-second, in-game promo narrated by Michael Kay during Friday’s Yankees-Red Sox YES telecast, was loaded with moron-targeting bunk."

Well, you've got to admit, there's lots of morons.


"One of the hottest collectibles of the season? Given that Matsui last played for the Yankees in 2009, it sounded more like souvenir shop surplus, a warehouse space-killer, a collectible in that it collects dust."

They totally exaggerated in their promo!


"Or did the Yankees — having announced a Matsui Day back in April — actually then order the manufacture of 18,000 Matsui-in-Yankee-uniform 'hot' collectibles four years after he left? Anything’s possible."

I don't know which it is.

Did the Yankees have pre-existing Hideki Matsui bobblehead dolls collecting dust in a warehouse?

Or did the Yankees order the manufacture of 18,000 Mastui-in-Yankee-uniform "hot" collectibles four years after he left the Yankees?

The world may never know.

Anything is possible.


Anything.

Is.

Possible.


"Even more ridiculous, the full-screen billboard read that the bobbleheads would be given to the first “18,000 guests in attendance.”

Guests? When did customers become guests? When’s the last time you charged your guests 40 bucks to park — just for starters?"

Yeah!

You get 'em, Phil!

You know what happens, don't you? First, bobblehead doll promos exaggerate the importance of the bobblehead dolls ... then, the world start substituting "guest" for "customer" ... and, the next thing you know, cats are living with dogs and Socialist Americans are putting mustard on their french fries.

Dontrelle Willis is pitching for the Long Island Ducks if the Yankees are looking for a reliable lefty starter.

Hot Dog Neck has now allowed a career-high 23 HRs this season.

But if the Dontrelle Willis signing doesn't work out, I have a solution.

1) Pay Anthony Bosch $5 million in "consulting fees."

2) CC's name magically appears on the list.

3) While we're at it, here's another $5 million for Teixeira.

4) Lifetime suspensions.

5) Insurance money.

Little Leaguers don't like Alex Rodriguez.

Next up, the Daily News interviews wide-eyed orphans and squirmy puppies.

"If they get the chance, of course. The News, citing sources close to the Rodriguez affair, has reported Rodriguez is considering claiming he is physically unable to perform and then retire from the game before he can receive a likely suspension for alleged use of performance enhancing drugs provided by the Biogenesis clinic in Miami."

That's why this quad strain bothers me a lot.

Bill Madden may be 100% right. ARod may be going through the motions and preparing to end his career.

The longer ARod stays in Tampa, the more credence this theory holds.

Reputation on the line.

MLB might announce its suspensions Monday (though I assume they'd immediately be appealed).

ARod may get injured before Monday.  ARod may feign injury or perhaps even announce his retirement from baseball.

But if ARod plays one game with the Yankees in 2013, then Bill Madden (and his "sources") will be instantly embarrassed:

"According to all the involved parties — Major League Baseball being the one notable exception — A-Rod time is upon us. Or is it?"

In what way is MLB the notable exception?

Is Madden saying that MLB is going to suspend ARod on Monday morning?  Maybe they will and Madden will be proven right.  I sure haven't seen anything that suggests the suspensions could be enforced that quickly.


"On Thursday, Alex Rodriguez told reporters, 'yeah, of course' he expected to be back with the Yankees in Texas Monday. He didn’t say in what capacity and conceded 'we have one big obstacle' in this weekend of Triple-A games to close out his 20-day rehab session. Then on Friday Yankee GM Brian Cashman said that, if healthy enough to play Monday, A-Rod 'would play third, he would play DH, he would pinch-hit and he would take days off.' ”


Sounds sensible to me.  I'm not expecting much in the field or on the basepaths, that's for sure.

I'm also still not seeing how MLB is a notable exception.


"When further asked why A-Rod wouldn’t be limited to just third base or just DH, Cashman said: 'Why would we do it in the minor leagues but not in the major leagues.' ”

1) What kind of a dumb question is that?

2) Cashman answered a question with a question, but you forgot the question mark.


"What is interesting here is the apparent double standard Cashman is applying to A-Rod as opposed to his adament stance with Derek Jeter in spring training in which he said the Captain needed to prove to the Yankees he could play shortstop before he would be activated. 'We don’t need him to DH,' Cashman said. 'We have plenty of DHs. We need him to play shortstop.' ”

1) Not interesting at all.

2) You spelled "adamant" wrong.  Who edits this newspaper, anyway?


"Well, nothing has changed since then."

Nothing has changed since spring training?

Is that seriously your proposition?



"The Yankees do not need A-Rod to DH. They’ve got plenty of people who can DH on any given day."

The Yankees kind of don't have plenty of people who can DH on any given day.


Wells hasn't hit a HR since mid-May.  Hafner is completely shot.  Even Almonte is now on the DL.



"What they don’t have is a third baseman, unless, of course, you believe Luis Cruz is the answer."

Overbay has been quite good, relative to expectations.  No complaints.

Cano and Garnder have been pulling their weight.  Ichiro is good enough, I suppose.

Everyone else on this team is garbage.

"What they don't have" is a catcher, shorstop, third baseman, left fielder, and DH.  They also don't have any bench depth.


"So why is Cashman seemingly tip-toeing through the A-Rod tulips when it comes to activating him for what the Yankees really need him for? The answer to that is twofold: For one thing, the Yankees do not want to put themselves in a position where it is perceived they don’t want A-Rod back and are deliberately keeping him away from the team, and so, if he says put me in coach, I’m ready to play' they have no choice but to take him up on it."

The team can't hit.


"At the same time, however, does anyone believe A-Rod can play regular third base at an even average level any more? The answer to that one is no — not even A-Rod himself."

No one expects a lot from ARod at third base.


"Of course, no one is going to come out and say so."

For all intents and purposes, Cashman just said so.


"The proof, as they say, will be in the playing — if and when that actually happens. Meanwhile, the long arm of Sheriff Rob Manfred and the MLB drug posse hangs heavily over A-Rod, only adding to the uncertainty of what’s left, if anything, of his career."

Congratulations to Bill Madden.

With the help of pristine MLB sources, a tireless editor, and an adament spell-checker, Madden has been able to uncover a secret Yankee plot.

A secret plot that was just detailed in public by the Yankee GM.

Career over? Still doesn't make sense to me.

The information seem so out of bounds, that I think Bill Madden is being duped by source who are anti-ARod:

"According to the sources, a 150-game suspension might be the best that could be expected for Rodriguez, who is rehabbing from hip surgery with high Single-A Tampa and was chastised by the Yankees Saturday for failing to report to the team’s complex for Friday night’s game following a four-and-a-half hour meeting with MLB officials who outlined their case against him."

So ARod is going to cut a deal to avoid onerous punishment ... and that plea deal results in a 150-game suspension, by far the biggest suspension MLB has ever handed out to any of its hundreds of PED users.

The math seems off.

"His 20-day rehab assignment ends on July 22, and it is unclear where A-Rod will go after that, but according to a source, Yankee officials sent him a notification Saturday telling him that he is obligated to inform them in advance of any absence. Rodriguez also declined to accept an assignment to Buffalo, where the Yankees wanted him to join their Triple-A team, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, saying he was having a problem with his quad muscle. Rodriguez played in Saturday night’s game in Tampa, however."

I mean, look, if he is seriously begging out of a AAA assignment because of a phony problem with his quad muscle, then maybe he really is a week away from the Albert Belle cop out.

“ 'I can see a scenario where if they’ve got multiple offenses (against A-Rod) that rather than going for his career with an arbitrator, baseball might settle on something like 150 games,” said one of the sources.

...

'The bottom line is (MLB) wants these guys out of the game,' said one of the baseball sources. 'In (A-Rod’s) case, 150 games would sufficiently accomplish that.' "

Assuming these sources are accurate, it still doesn't explain Selig's particular animus towards ARod.  That alone should be rejected by an arbitrator.

If MLB wants these cheaters out of the game, a lot of MLB's current rosters would be gutted.

What is the last time a right-handed Yankee batter hit a HR?

I think I found it.

Jayson Nix on June 25th vs. Texas.

ARod is everywhere, ARod is everything, ARod is everybody, ARod is still the king

I don't think they should discuss records before/after the All Star Break because it's not always the same number of games.  Know what I mean?  The records should just be judged on first 81 games and second 81 games.

Anyway, that is just about all I'm going to say about the All Star Game:

"The last time we had an All-Star Game in New York it went 15 innings and didn’t end until nearly two in the morning at the old Yankee Stadium and the longer the game went, the more it became this crazy baseball party, down where I sat with my sons in the stands and all over the ballpark, as everybody who stayed began to wonder how — and when — the game would ever end."

Congratulations, you went to the All Star Game.  It's about you.

"And when it was finally over that night, after Justin Morneau came home on a sacrifice fly in the 15th inning, this is what Derek Jeter — who stayed until the end even though he had come out of the game hours ago, who was standing on the top step of the dugout with AL manager Terry Francona when others like Alex Rodriguez were long gone — said about the last All-Star Game at the real Stadium, which means the old one:

'It seemed like the Stadium didn’t want it to end. That’s what we were talking about. It just wanted baseball to continue.' "

No one ever taught Lupica about a run-on sentence?

"Trust me on this, my boys have seen a lot of baseball in their lives, and all of them can still tell you exactly where they were sitting when they first saw Junior Griffey hit a home run on a Saturday afternoon at the old Stadium. But if you ask them the most pure-fun night they ever spent at a ballpark, they will all tell you the same thing:

That All-Star Game at the old Stadium. On the night when Derek Jeter, who stayed until the end and acted as if he could have been sitting right in front of us instead of standing there with Terry Francona and watching the game like a kid himself, said the Stadium didn’t want the game to end."

It's about you and your kids.

"And yet:

The player who will dominate the conversation is another Yankee who will not be there, and that is Alex Rodriguez, who met with Major League Baseball’s investigators on Friday in the Biogenesis case. And even if A-Rod took the Fifth, as so many of the other Biogenesis All-Stars have, somebody must have been doing some talking down there in Tampa if the meeting between MLB and A-Rod took as long as the 2008 All-Star Game at the old Stadium."

I don't think ARod will dominate the conversation in any way.  Chris Davis, Miguel Cabrera, Matt Harvey, Max Scherzer, Yasiel Puig for starters.

In any case, Lupica's obsessions are clearly showing. 

The 2013 All Star Game has basically nothing to do with the 2008 All Star Game.  The 2013 All Star Game has basically nothing to do with Alex Rodriguez.  The 2013 All Star Game has basically nothing to do with MLB's recent meeting with Alex Rodriguez.

But this is how Lupica bizarrely linked these disconnected events: 

• The 2013 All Star Game is taking place in the same metropolitan area as the 2008 All Star Game.
• The 2008 All Star Game took a long time. 
• The recent meeting between MLB and ARod may have taken a long time.  
• Therefore, ARod.

Then, he complains how everybody is obsessed with ARod.

"So maybe now A-Rod has a better sense of what MLB has on him. So that is the beginning of All-Star Weekend ’13 for No. 13 of the Yankees, as he continues his rehab, as there is a ticking clock on his 20 rehab days, as everybody who has followed baseball’s investigation of the players suspected of getting baseball drugs from this Bosch at this phony clinic of his in Coral Gables waits to see if he will end up suspended, and if Ryan Braun will end up suspended."

'13 for No. 13!

Don't you see?  Don't you get it?  OK, let me explain a little better.  Alex Rodriguez wears number 13 and the current year is 2013.

This is gold.  Comedy gold, you bozos.  If I just keep using it for the rest of the year, I'm sure you people will come around.

"That is where baseball is now, five years after the last All-Star Game in New York, one of the most famous of them all, when the only clock we cared about was the one in the outfield at the old Stadium, the one that said it was 1:38 in the morning, and the Stadium didn’t want to let go and nobody wanted to go home."

What the hell was that all about?  That was just a bunch disconnected thoughts in which you criticized ARod as often as possible, followed by an incoherent conclusion.

I think Colin Quinn was the sidekick to Ken Ober on "Remote Control."

 Lupica is a person who won't stop talking about ARod while complaining about the attention that ARod receives:

"In the real baseball summer of 2013, on the eve of the ’13 All-Star Game Tuesday night at Citi Field, who knew that the big story wouldn’t be Alex Rodriguez once again batting fourth for the New York Yankees, but perhaps becoming the latest Biogenesis All-Star to take baseball’s version of the Fifth with the MLB investigators working the case?"

2013?  '13?  ARod wears number 13?  I think we can all see where this is going.


"To the end, Rodriguez — about to begin his 10th season with the Yankees if he gets the chance — is a baseball season all by himself. He is the center of attention that he has always craved to be, even playing alongside Jeter. Just not in a way he ever imagined for himself."

Lupica may not believe me ... Lupica may know his gossipy audience better than I do ... but most baseball fans don't need ARod to be the center of attention.

I want to read one comment somewhere in the Universe that puts the spotlight on Shawn Kelley.  Does Kelley belong on the All Star team?

"On Thursday, Michael Weiner, the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, issued a statement lamenting all the leaks in the Biogenesis case. Weiner had to amend that statement later, just because anybody who saw the original version had a right to assume Weiner was implying that all the leaks were coming from Major League Baseball, when Weiner has to know better.

Because anybody actually working this story instead of just reading about it knows that is as funny as the best material from Colin Quinn. And remembers that none of this happens if the original story about A-Rod and Braun and the other Biogenesis All-Stars doesn’t end up in a newspaper called the Miami New Times."

The best material from Colin Quinn?  What would that be, exactly ... Lenny the Lion?  So the idea that MLB leaked the info is funnier than Lenny the Lion.

Terrific.

Then it's a moderately funny idea.


"This is the real baseball summer of ’13. The summer of No. 13 of the Yankees. The rest of us talking about who’s taking the Fifth instead of batting fifth in tonight’s game."

Yes!  Number 13 for the Yankees in the summer of '13. 


"The rest of us" talking about the Fifth instead of who's batting fifth.

Probably Lyle Overbay, by the way. 

The disregard of Lyle Overbay is your fault, not ours.  Write an article about Lyle Overbay, please.  I challenge you to write one observation about an actual on-field baseball event instead of digging through the cultural archives for weird references to B-List comedians.

I have not seen much backlash, but here is some backlash.

I think everything Bill Madden is saying is wrong, but at least he is putting his prediction in writing.

I think exactly none of this is going to happen.  I think ARod is out of shape and, yeah, out of sync.  I also think he'll be DHing for the Yankees in a few weeks.

But, hey, it's not my job to know this stuff.  At least Bill Madden is willing to put his reputation on the line.  If he knows something I don't know, then he is actually doing his job:

"But as the Daily News reported June 26, A-Rod’s real mission is to get himself to the safe haven that will protect him from losing any of his money as a result of being suspended by baseball — and that place is the so-called 'unable to perform' list, where he and baseball doctors determine whether the severity of his hip condition is such that it precludes him from being able to perform.

This is what happened with the Baltimore Orioles’ surly slugger Albert Belle in 2001 when a similar hip injury forced him out of the game and he collected the remaining $39 million on his five-year, $60 million contract, with the O’s recovering $23 million of that from the insurance company.

If A-Rod is suspended while on the disabled list, he does not get paid.  

...

Though it’s been speculated that A-Rod is facing a 100-game suspension for multiple violations of baseball’s drug policy in the Bosch case, it appears Selig’s men are looking to kick him out of the game for a lot longer — very possibly permanently.

They have had their fill of what they see as A-Rod’s lies, deceptions and apparent continuing ventures into the PED netherworld — this after visiting schools and lecturing kids on the dangers of drugs on behalf of the Taylor Hooton Foundation, and telling ESPN, shortly after his admission of taking steroids while with the Texas Rangers from 2001-2003, that he wanted 'to turn my mistake into something positive' by focusing on youth anti-steroid education.

Right.

In short, Alex Rodriguez has become a constant embarrassment to baseball and a living, breathing, still-playing symbol of the steroid era, which continues to plague the game and dog Selig’s legacy."

It's all ARod's fault. ARod ruined Bud Selig's legacy.

It's like "Cherry Pie" by Warrant.  Before that video, everyone loved hair metal. 


By the way, did you know four players on the All Star Game roster are:

1) Living

2) Breathing

3) Still-playing

4) On the biogenesis list

So a lifetime ban for ARod seems totally appropriate, don't you think?

Perhaps Puig simply doesn't want to associate himself with steroid cheats.

"During batting practice before Monday's game at Chase Field, Puig was approached by Luis Gonzalez. The former Diamondbacks star introduced himself, and began relating how his family also had roots in Cuba, just like Puig.

Except Puig wouldn't even look up or acknowledge his visitor. And for the record, Gonzalez was speaking Spanish, so nothing was lost in translation.

Gonzalez confirmed the one-sided conversation, but declined to elaborate or comment further.

But it's not all bad.

Dodgers coach Mark McGwire witnessed the awkward meeting, and allegedly jumped Puig pretty good. McGwire pointed out the man he was ignoring merely won a World Series with a hit off Mariano Rivera, and that Gonzalez's number happened to be hanging inside Chase Field."

So last night's game was the breaking point.

Mark Feinsand complains about the Yankees' minor-league lineup and proposes Michael Young as a fix. Kevin Kernan complains about the Yankees' minor-league lineup and proposes no specific fix.

I want to talk about Brett Gardner.

On pace for a mere 20 stolen bases, 11 caught stealing, and a ridiculous 144 strikeouts.

What happened to this guy?

Bartolo Colon makes All Star team.

I have yet to find anyone who condemns Colon's selection:

"It shows a ton of mental and physical toughness for Colon to come out this year and have this good of a showing. He has age against him and of course the little list of paper scandal in Florida where someone scribbled his name on a piece of paper. I’m not sure when that became probable cause for accusing anyone of anything but who cares. What matters is that he has 11 wins on the season. 

What matters is that he has a 2.78 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP that are both better than the season he put up in 2005 when he was last elected to the All-Star team at the age of 32. How great is it that 8 years later he is elected once again and on pace to have an even better season than he had that year?"

Ummm ... boo?

Jeter 0-for-2.

"At the plate the Yankee captain walked, lined out and grounded out against ex-major leaguer Raul Valdez, a lefty whose fastball topped out at 85 mph. But the question isn’t so much if Jeter will hit again for the Yankees as whether he can play short at age 39, coming back from a broken ankle that he rebroke during spring training.


In Jeter’s mind, there are no questions to answer. He says he has pushed himself enough during workouts and simulated games in Tampa to believe he could play shortstop in the Bronx on Sunday if the Yankees would let him."

Of course, ARod's 0-for-2 was not greeted with the same general insouciance.


I get it by now, ARod has been unpopular for a very long time, largely for his off-field antics.

I mean, what kind of narcissistic prick poses nude in a sports magazine?

Just checking: Lupica is talking about the New York Mets? The professional baseball team that plays in Queens?

Mike Lupica's Sunday column focuses on Jay-Z.

I will skip that part:

"Ron Darling made a great point the other day, saying that one of the best things that has happened with the Mets this season, and not just with Ike Davis, is that none of them — with the exception of David Wright — is still allowed to think they have jobs for life."

I was going to say the best thing that has happened to the Mets this season is that the season is already more than halfway over.

"Say it again: The Mets are playing better and the Mets didn’t quit when it looked like the bottom was going to fall out of everything, and how can a lot of the credit for that not go to Terry Collins?"

The Mets are 36-48, .429 winning%, 12.5 games out of 1st place in their division (4th place) and 12.5 games out of the wild card (10th place).

The Mets have a worse record than the Cubs.

There are 4 teams in baseball who have a worse record than the Mets.


As for the supposed improvement of the Mets, here is their record by month:

Apr  10-15
May 12-15
Jun   11-15
Jul       3-3

I guess they have nowhere to go but up.

If that qualifies as praise, then I guess that's one backwards way to praise Terry Collins.

Golly, I sure hope Phelps gets better soon.

It sounds like he came down with a case of Nunez-need-a-roster-spot-itis.

Consulting fee.

Yankees by month.

April 16 W, 10 L, 4.6R/G, +10 R Diff
May   15 W, 13 L, 3.6 R/G, +8R  Diff
June  11 W, 16 L, 3.3 R/G, -34R Diff



Vernon Wells hit .300 in April, .220 in May, and .133 in June.

The Yankees don't need a .300 hitter for the second half, but can't you at least hit a measly .220 instead of a pitcher-esque .133?

Same goes for the team.

I don't think they can really be this bad, can they?

I think the answer is somewhere in between, which is why I think they still have a chance to make the playoffs.