Non-Answers, Math Review, And Pitching Scared

Depends On How You Define "Is."

I happened to catch a little of Brian Cashman interviewed on WFAN this morning. Kim Jones asked Cashman: "I heard that Philip Hughes is pitching for the [Class A] Tampa Yankees Monday. Is he?"

This would appear to be a simple question. It wasn't. Cashman started talking and I quickly zoned out. Cashman spoke for what seemed like three minutes but I'm pretty sure the answer to the question was "yes." Hughes is pitching for the Tampa Yankees on Monday. Probably.

In other Cashman "news," another non-answer answer revealed that Kei Igawa is going to get another start after the All-Star Break. Sort of. Unless there's some other option, or something else happens. I think.

Kim asked Cashman if he had a number in mind, as in, how many wins in his mind the Yankees need to end up with. Kim wondered if 95 was a number Cashman might have thought about, since well, getting to 95 wasn't going to be too easy now. Not surprisingly, Cashman said he doesn't think of a particular number, we have to try to win each day and be consistently better blah blah blah.

B. S. Cashman thinks about a target number all the time, even if for some reason he feels he can't reveal what that number is. (Don't want to put pressure on the team, after all, right? They might not perform well. Oh . . . wait . . . they're already not . . . ).


In The Year 5525.

Speaking of numbers. We sit at 40-42. 80 games remain. 90 wins means we go 50-30 the rest of the way . . . .625 baseball. 95 wins would require a record of 55-25 -- a winning percentage of .6875.

Most likely 90 wins isn't going to get us into the playoffs but 95 will. So let's forget 90 and say the Yankees need to play .688 ball over the last 80 games.

As down as I've been on them, as much as I am convinced that Torre has been the wrong manager for this team for a couple of years, at least, now, I do not think it's impossible, honestly. If the lineup can just perform to the back of their baseball cards, if there is normal luck with calls and breaks, if thee are no more big injures, it can be done. Will it? I'm not sure. But it will be a fun final 80 games if the team addresses those 80 games with the proper sense of urgency, i. e., you can only win one game at a time but losing comes in bunches.


The 75% Solution / Strike Zone, Paging Mr. Mussina.

A good week, taking three of four from the Twins. Honestly I expected to lose three to the Twins, but the offense and pitching came through very nicely in the first two games, and yesterday, their crappy pitcher was a little worse than our crappy pitcher, and our bullpen was a tiny bit better than theirs. (Very satisfying when Shemp took Neshek deep -- Neshek is one of those pitchers whose mound mannerisms make him easily and instantly unlikeable.)

The Mussina-Santana game is one that, on paper, you could have written off ahead of time and in truth I had done so. But the reality is that for two-plus years now, more often than not Mussina has pitched just well enough to lose in big spots. Wednesday was a highly winnable game. [Why Torre doesn't pinch-hit Posada for the hitless wonder in the fifth inning when the game could be broken open, but then does use him with two outs, none on, down two runs, is beyond me, but even with that it was a winnable game.]

And that has everything to do with Mussina's refusal to not pitch scared. Has anyone noticed that some of Mussina's best starts are those right after returning from injuries, when he's limited to 80 pitches? The reason for that is that in those starts he's not nibbling because he knows he can't do that and last too long under the pitch count.

All these pitchers that can't throw 90 that the Yankees can't hit have one thing in common aside from their 86 mph fastballs: They throw stirkes. When they don't is when they get hurt.

Know it, learn it, live it, Mike. There's no point in making the perfect pitch if 1) it's too perfect for the ump to see that it's a strike, and 2) it costs you four pitches to throw that perfect pitch, one or more of which stands a good chance of getting hit hard or of walking the guy.