He had surgery this winter to remove elbow chips from his elbow.
And I agree that the rotation is in better shape than the starting lineup–but that doesn’t make it a good rotation. I’d give the rotation maybe a B or B- at this point, and the starting lineup a D. Maybe D-.
I see the Jays running away with it.
Jays
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Yankees
Well looks like Porcello will be the fifth starter for the Tigers. Common wisdom around here was that he was being showcased for trade during Spring Training.
But after making the WS last year, and adding Hunter and Martinez for this one, expectations are pretty damn high. Old man Illich doesn’t have much time left from all appearances, so They better get it for him now.
Assuming that you can choose which games are part of your package, this is a very clever way to sell tickets to bad games: the best way to “win” this promotion is to choose to go see bad teams, where the Brewers are more likely to win. Not surprisingly, these are also the games that will probably have the worst attendance under normal circumstances.
Aren’t those things one and the same?
I just going to say that I’m cautiously optimistic about my Mariners this year. Got some pop up in there. Their 16-0 shellacking of the Reds a couple days ago was fun to listen to 
The rotation are the five starting pitchers. The lineup are the starting position players.
On a related baseball note: I picked up Baseball Mogul 2014. DO NOT BUY IT. It is a hopelessly awful ripoff.
Oops. Yeah. See? See what happens when baseball is gone for so long? My baseball IQ atrophies!
FGE-The Red Sox had the same experience with Bard that the Reds had with Chapman.
The Astros have made the rather odd move of announcing that Erik Bedard is their fifth starter, but that Alex White and Brad Peacock are still in competition for the fourth starter role. Uh, ok.
Would *you *trust Bedard as anything more?
Well, yeah, but then why not make Peacock #4, White #5, and send Bedard off to the bullpen and hope to have him pitch as rarely as possible? Anyway, weird move.
What arms do the other starters use? Maybe they’re operating under the common delusion that they need a lefty in the rotation somewhere, even if they wouldn’t trust him any higher than fifth, and even if there’s a decent righty available.
This lefty-righty matchup stuff has always seemed badly overblown to me. Just put your best guys out there and don’t worry about it.
Bedard may be one of those bad-arm starters who takes all day to warm up, and can’t be used in the bullpen. If he were a righty, he’d be out of the game.
You might be right about the “lefty in the rotation” thing, which also makes no sense to me. The other 4 are all going to be righties. Also, the question of whether either Peacock or White are going to actually be “decent” is still open. (Though Peacock might have the lowest major league ERA of any pitcher entering the season at 0.75).
Also, looking at his stats it looks like Bedard hasn’t been used out of the bullpen since his rookie year (and only once then), so you might be on to something with the all day to warm up thing.
You know, I’ve never understood this, either. What difference can it possibly make if you have no lefthanded starters? Is there some team out there with all lefthanded batters that you’re going to face every fifth day in a one-game series?
For that matter, WRT to Erik Bedard thing, the “third starter/fourth starter/fifth starter” thing is stupid, too. Most teams go with a strict five-man rotation, rarely skipping the fifth starter, so it really makes no difference what order they go in. The rotation’s probably going to be out of order by May anyway.
Anyway, I came in to hypothesize what the Yankees Opening Day lineup will be:
Ichiro Suzuki 9
Brett Gardner 8
Robinson Cano 4
Kevin Youkilis 5
Travis Hafner DH
Vernon Wells 7
Eduardo Nunez 6
Lyle Overbay or maybe Juan Rivera (Dan Johnson? Who knows) 3
Francisco Cervelli 2
Unless there’s a Fountain of Youth in the Bronx, that might to be the worst lineup in baseball. Cano can rake. Everyone else can’t, or used to, but maybe can’t anymore.
Well Ichy and Gardner will do well enough, but after Cano is 5 question marks and Nunez who can hit but cannot field. I think Nunez will hit 9th actually. I suspect Youk will not embarrass himself. But Hafner, Wells, Overbay/Rivera will probably suck and Cervelli will hit OK for a catcher but that means not well.
Ichiro is 39 and hasn’t hit well the last two years. He’s in great shape and I would not put it past him, but “really old and his last good season was 2010” isn’t a great sign. A lot of my pessimism about the Yankees is based on the fact that, at least among the hitters, the problem with the healthy guys is the same as the problem with the hurt guys; they’re old. Youkilis is 34, coming off his worst season, and tends to get hurt every year. Hafner is 36 and his uniform number has been ceremonially retired by the Disabled List. Even the younger guys aren’t THAT young; there are no Brett Lawries or Will Middlebrookses here.
But I really think the pitching is more solid that they are given credit for, so who knows. If they can keep the Yankees close until everyone’s healthy (if that happens) they may make a run for it. It could be a VERY close division.
On Ichiro, his numbers once he came to the Yanks were great. I guess that is what I and many other Yankee fans are looking at. He hit .322 with 5 homers in those 227 At bats. Even better were the 13 doubles and excellent defense. He also add 13 steals in 18 attempts. This year as they have to manufacture runs, him & Gardner and even Nunez should help quite a bit.
Youk to me could easily have a bad year. His promising spring training is giving me hope but you are probably right about him. I don’t expect anything from Hafner but I do expect fortunes to turn a bit as the regulars return from the DL and I feel like if the staff can keep the Yanks around .500 until Granderson returns the Yanks will be OK.
Godo or bad spring trainings, who cares. I wouldn’t be excited about the guys hitting .375 any more than I’m worried about the guys hitting .175, which is not at all. It’s so routine for players with bad spring training to have great seasons, and vice versa, that’s I don’t even bother looking at the numbers anymore.
What really matters is who’s HEALTHY.
In addition to the small sample size of his Yankee career (vs. the huge sample size of his last few years with the Mariners) the above figure pretty well equates into “useless.” The Yankees would have done about as well if Ichiro had never tried to steal a base.
My larger point is that if you were figuring Ichiro to be an adequate fill-in for a month or two in a less than full-time role, ok, but you’re actually planning on him carrying the offense and being one of your strong players, which is pretty delusional. The best you can hope for with him is that he has a good start, and then your offense comes back to health and reduces him to a part-time fill-in spot player, but if you need him to get your offense going, you’re in trouble.