Dropped Third Strike

We were going to bring this up a while back, but we decided to give the Comeback Christian a chance to prove us wrong, and for a moment we thought he was going to. A word of explanation. As loyal readers (do we have loyal readers? Are you a loyal reader? If so, hello loyal reader!) will recall, we predicted that Josh, here, would wind up the AL MVP. And who wouldn’t make that prediction? Just check out that look of determination. And, if you feel more evidence is necessary, just check out his 98 RBI. So we felt fairly comfortable with this prediction. That is, until Josh went and whomped an unnecessarily excessive 28 home runs in the first round of the Home Run Derby. Way to go, Josh; isn’t that a sin or something? Gluttony, maybe? History has shown that such eye-popping results in the HR Derb are usually followed by a hard-to-watch decline in a player’s performance. (See Bobby Abreu). We thought Prodigal Josh might avoid this awful fate when he hit a Home Run in his first game back after the break. But his numbers over the last week suggest the beginning of a steep decline. (.200 avg, 1 HR, 1 run scored, .623 OPS). It’s possible Josh Hamilton’s superior performance in the Derby wasn’t an intentional attempt to sabotage our predictions, but does that sound likely to you? No, we don’t think so either. So, “Josh,” we’re dropping you from our list of predictions. New AL MVP: Alex “I don’t hate DTS” Rodriguez. Congrats, A-Rod. We assume this honor more than makes up for the pain of your divorce. 

Oh, and by the way, if Hamilton does win it, well then we totally called it.

We would love to, but we’re in it to win it. The war between DTS and Yankees Brass rages on, as we strike another blow, as frequent DTS nemesis Hank Steinbrenner pulls a stunning swerve and joins us in the ranks of Bonds supporters. 

Co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner acknowledged he’d mention Bonds, the indicted home run king who became a free agent when the San Francisco Giants did not bring him back.

“I’ll mention it. We’ll cover everything,” Steinbrenner said before the meetings began. “No stone will be left unturned.”

Thanks for the support, Hank. 

Now, we’ve been going to therapy the last few weeks to try to help us get over this Bonds obsession, and it is our fervent hope that we will leave the topic alone for a while, and get back to the business of covering the wackiness of the game of baseball and the douchiness (yes, douchiness) of baseball’s many players. But no promises.

We finally score a victory in our ongoing battle with Brian Cashman. After Cashman recently rebuffed our repeated calls to sign Barry Bonds, our strongly worded riposte seems to have stung him into doing a little backpedaling:

I would say any rampant speculation on us involving a player of that magnitude would be extremely premature,” Cashman said. “I would caution everybody to not misunderstand that since I’m not saying no to it, that that means, `Oh my gosh, that that might be happening down the line.’ It’s not something we’re focused on at this point. We’re focused on getting Hideki Matsui back rather than, you know, what we’re going to do if he’s not back.”

We’re going to keep at this until the job is done. Cash, you better be ready for a long fight.

No, no we won’t. Word comes down that Hideki Matsui and Johnny Damon might miss considerably more time than optimist Joe Girardi expected. We’re shocked! Appalled! Amazed! Bah. This was, of course, bound to happen, and now we insist that Brian Cashman call Jeff Borris and say, “hey, you know that Bonds guy you represent, yeah I’ll take one of those please.” We love Brett Gardner here at DTS. We love him for his shaved head, his game winning walk off hit against the S*x that are R*d, for his speed, for his defense and for his willingness to take walks. But we want to see him as the centerfielder of the future, not as a corner outfielder/DH. The only fear we have about bringing Bonds into the fold is that he might take a lead pipe to A-Rod’s knees in an attempt to prevent him from surpassing his HR total. But that’s a long shot. We think.

Brian Cashman hates us. From a Newsday piece about the Yankees’ needs:

Barry Bonds is not considered an option. Cashman said: “I guess I can say that they have engaged us in the past and I’ve told them that I have too many people, maybe not too many people with the same ability, but too many people at the same spot that you have a lot of dollars committed to.”

This is a terrible argument and B-Cash must know it. He basically admits that there is a better option out there (and can we reiterate: BONDS WILL PLAY FOR A PRORATED SHARE OF THE LEAGUE MINIMUM — THAT IS LESS THAN 200K NOW) but says that because he has signed lower quality players to bad deals he is unwilling or unable to sign this better option. Sigh. Even if Hideki Matsui and Johnny Damon come back at full strength (they won’t), doesn’t it make sense to have the best possible bench players? Cash is right, though, if Damon and ‘Sui are healthy, then he does have a lot of players to fill in the LF and DH spots. But doesn’t a rotation of Giambi, Damon, Matsui and Bonds seem a lot more comforting than just the first three? There’s no way those four guys can go out there and play every day from here on out. But some combination of those four can probably find their way into the lineup for the entire second half. We’d never have to see Justin Christian again, and with more DH options, Girardi and B-Cash would be more motivated to play Jorge at catcher, meaning we’d see less of Jose Molina.

Check it:

1. Damon/Matsui LF
2. Jeter SS
3. Abreu RF
4. A-Rod 3B
5. Giambi 1B
6. Matsui/Bonds/Damon DH
7. Posada C
8. Cano 2B
9. Cabrera/Gardner CF

Seems to me that that’s a lineup that’s pretty certain to score runs. Ultimately it comes down to this — Matsui, Damon, Giambi and Bonds are 4 guys who are going to be hurt, or worn down during the course of a long year. If Bonds was going to cost upwards of $4 million it wouldn’t make as much sense to sign him (though it’s been said there’s no such thing as a bad 1 year deal [never mind, Clemens disproved that theory last year]) but since Bonds is coming so cheap, it boggles the mind that the Yanks wouldn’t at least consider it. Brian Cashman is a smart, sophisticated baseball man: the argument he gave against signing Bonds was far from smart or sophisticated. We can’t help but conclude that there’s a wholly different reason for his refusal to look at the home run king. Bud Selig, we’re looking at you.