No one else started it and the game is already in the bottom of the first. I despise Freddy Garcia. I can't stand him being in the rotation. Does Philly have any other starters in the minors?
Alio's World: Freddy Garcia - ERA 3.60. 1.40 WHIP. 2.0 K/BB. Six innings per start from your fifth starter. Total asshole. Ivan Nova - 4.46 ERA. 1.55 WHIP. 1.16 K/BB. Five and a half innings per start from the fourth starter. Possible #2! :smile:
Yeah I don't see why you hate Garcia so much he's exceeded expectations so far. This lineup should be able to beat the hell out of Doug Davis, though...... On to the next one.
Hughes: 4.1 IP, 1 ER, 3 H, 1 BB, 7 K 61 pitches, 41 strikes Sat 92-93 MPH, hit 94 and 95 a few times.
did anyone realize Brett Gardner is now hitting .292 on the season? March/April: .188 May: .301 June: .404 ...and right after i write this, ESPN says over .350 in his last 50 games. Why isn't he hitting leadoff every game?
He doesn't have Jeter's calm eyes and isn't captainy enough. Besides, he's just a fourth outfielder. Fourth outfielders don't have what it takes to hit lead-off. Aging Hall of Famers do.
In a crazy fantasy world, Gardner would be the leadoff hitter every day. But this is the real world, where intangibles and memories of the past are the most important qualities of a leadoff hitter. Remember how great Jeter was in '99? Where was Gardner in '99? High School? Exactly.
Good finish to the series. Yankees take 2 of 3, remain 1.5 out of the East and have a 3 game lead in the Wild Card. (I know its early but still)
It was interesting to hear Bobby Valentine say Gardner has prevented the 2nd most runs by an OF so far this season. Whether that's true or not I don't know, but Gardner is more than a 4th OF imo.
Wow, it's great to come back and see people being assholes as usual. Then talk about wanting to have conversations. Save your bullshit. If you want to be a troll, that's fine, but stop wrapping your garbage in pretty bows. 1) I didn't have a chance to get back to thread and compliment Garcia on winding up having a pretty good outing. However, I still maintain that he's always one-lack-of-a-good-defensive-play from having a meltdown. Has he? No. And I hope that keeps up. He's the 5th starter, and part of the reason I don't like him in the rotation was that Colon was clearly the better starter coming out of Tampa. Does that cloud my judgement? Sure. I don't give a fuck. 2) Nova hasn't been an ace. Shocker. He's been back-of-the-rotation quality. He's got good stuff and will be a front-half guy in the future, which is what I've always maintained. I think anyone who is interested in honesty can admit that I never said he was good enough to be out front right now. Then again, people seem to love straw men around here. 3) I'm not a big Gardner fan. He makes stupid mistakes. At the same time, he makes brilliant plays to make up for it. There are times he makes stupid throws to home that are way off line, don't get the runner, and allow other runners to gain an extra base. Then he goes and makes a play that turns out to be a game winner. Fine. I don't hate that he's playing for the Yankees. I just don't like him. It's not enough that I don't give a flying fuck what the fantasy value of his play is right now? Fuck it. I don't care. 4) Yeah, let's beat up on Jeter again. You know, the guy who boots routine grounders. Oh. Wait. That's the great Eduardo Nunez. For the record, I don't dislike Nunez. However, he does show that not all of those pretty stats douches love to tout are everything. Hate to break it to you clowns, but it's not beyond reason to simply not like certain players. Was Rickey Henderson a great player? Was he a great Yankees player? Yes to both. Was Rickey Henderson a major asshole who I absolutely despised, and still do to this day? Yes. I can say the same exact thing for Reggie Jackson who is one of the biggest dicks I've ever personally met. Was Tommy John a great Yankee? He was okay, but he was a really classy guy when I met him, so I'll always like him whatever his performance. Was Mike Pagliarulo better than Don Mattingly? I'd say not at all. But he was still my favorite Yankee as a kid over Mattingly. I'm not anti-statistics. But when it's all that matters, it's no different than if I were only concerned with seeing-eye determinations. If robots played the game I would only look at the back of their baseball card. They don't, so neither do I. I'm so dearly sorry to not want to sit here and mentally masturbate over a guy's OPS. I come around this board to talk about the Yankees and Jets. Like a normal fan on the street. If you want to be a math nerd, that's fine. But if you want to use it as a trolling opportunity, well, then go fuck yourself. Either you want to have a conversation or not. But if it has to be your way, on your terms, and human emotion or personal observation can have no place in the conversation, well, then I'm just not fucking interested and you may proceed to choke on a dick.
It's fine if you don't like Gardner. There's been plenty of good Yankees I haven't liked over the years. I just don't think you have to be a "stats geek" to see that Gardner's not a 4th OFer. He leads the team in average and OBP, pretty basic stats that even the most old school guys would accept. If you took offense to my last post, I'm sorry, I wasn't speaking to you but just in general to all the people who will blindly defend Jeter no matter what. And I don't think there's anything about Nunez that screams "pretty stats". But the truth is, at this point he's not much worse than Jeter. The difference is, he's not making $17M a year and leading off. And also, I think you can see a lot of the raw talent he has, and he has a good chance of being a solid player. Like a lesser Cano, who was fairly ordinary on paper until he hit the big leagues and put it all together.
I've said in the past and I'll repeat it here that I just don't like Gardner. Was my "fourth OFer" comment fair? No, but I honestly don't care. It's a comment I've made in regular conversations offline and no one has ever given me crap for. Disagreed, sure, but nothing more than that. The internet likes to make things bigger than they are though. Nunez is probably going to be a very good ballplayer in all honesty. Whether that will be as a Yankee remains to be seen. I think you made a Wally Pipp reference the other day. I just can't see that happening with Jeter. If nothing else, Jeter is ridiculously marketable, which is far more important than his stats to the Yankees. The "average" fan doesn't care that Jeter and Nunez are fairly interchangeable offensively. And those are the people buying jerseys. At the end of the day, the money Jeter generates pays for the Yankees to treat the Nick Johnsons as throwaways, so forget all the "intangibles" people like to disparage, Jeter is more valuable to the Yankees winning than his or Nunez's baseball cards. Also on the subject of Jeter vs. Nunez, Jeter makes all of the plays he's supposed to. Sure, his range is less than other shortstops, but he only screws up when he goes outside his range, and that has value in itself. The fact is, I'm not a blind Jeter fan. In all honesty I've always liked him as a person and as a Yankee. He's never been my favorite Yankee at any point during his career though. In Jeter's early career, O'Neill and Martinez were. In more recent years it's been ARod by a mile. In the few intervening years between those eras maybe he was around there, but then again there were Matsui, Soriano, and Sheffield. Do I think Jeter was mistreated over this past winter? Yes. I know it was business, and that's fine. I didn't like it though. And yes, that was for reasons beyond what the math states. In the end, Jeter didn't hold a grudge, and neither have I.
