It looks like Ellsbury should make his season debut sometime in late May, early June?

Jacoby Ellsbury isn't ready to play yet. He's still reporting some discomfort. The Yankees are hoping he plays Saturday.

— Jared Diamond (@jareddiamond) March 25, 2016

Annnddddd we're back.  March 25th and Ellsbury is already in midseason form.  Honestly, just put him on the 60-Day and hope that he can come back in a couple of months and be productive enough to earn a spot in the starting lineup should the Yankees make it to another wild card game.  That's where I'm at with Ellsbury just a little over two years into this contract.  Just five years and $105.7 million left!

Yo Knows Inside-The-Park Home Runs!

Yo picking up right where he left off last year.  Serving up inside-the-park homers better than anyone in the game.  Throwing his hands up and trying to stop play like the ball rolled under a chainlink fence on a field behind a high school somewhere.  Like it disappeared into the ivy at Wrigley.  Literally trying to make up rules on the fly to avoid exerting himself in anyway.  You think Yo is bending over for baseballs in March?  Bitch, please.

"See?  Not stuck.."




And Terry Collins coming out to argue something I guess






That's the beauty of Yo though.  Sure he he went ice cold down the stretch last season and forgets how to play baseball from time to time.  Bottom line is he has cool cars, does awesome bat flips and hit really well for like five weeks once.  Period. Stop.


"Oh, I just gave up an inside the park home run?  NBD, just spring training.  Sure it'll never happen in a big spot.  Here's another sweet underhand throw." - Yo Cespedes

(Not So) Breaking News: A-Rod will retire after 2017 season. The 2-year farewell tour begins today!

NY POST - Alex Rodriguez knows when he will retire.

The Yankees star told ESPN.com that he will hang up his cleats after the 2017 season when his contract with the team runs out. The PED-tainted slugger returned from a one-season suspension last year and belted 33 home runs with 86 RBIs even as he faded under the weight of playing 151 games.

A-Rod will earn $40 million over the final two seasons of the 10-year, $275 million deal he signed before the 2008 season.

Absolute no-brainer move by A-Rod.  This is what you do when you're the most humble, benevolent superstar in the sport.  You give the people what they want.  You think the rest of baseball could prepare a proper celebration of A-Rod in six months?  You think one season is enough time to reflect and commend one of the great careers in the history of professional sports?  Of course it's not.  That's why we're all getting two.  Sure a year was enough for Mo and Jeetes.  They're easy.  Put a patch on your hat, make a sandcastle, build a rocking chair out of broken bats and you've done your due-dilegence.  But when you're honoring someone as revered as Alex Rodriguez you don't just put together some shitty knickknack from Michaels.  We may be talking marble sculptures and child sacrifices for some of these inter-league games this season.

Obviously this isn't surprising.  A-Rod's already slowly transitioning into retirement.  Between adopting a completely different personality, playing broadcaster on Fox and being the head of a wildly successful corporation that almost has a functioning webpage, A-Rod's pretty much all but hung up his cleats.  Mix that in with the fact that he'll be baseball's all-time home run king at the end of 17', his desire to settle down with his daughters (did you know he had those?) and his new homely billionaire life partner and A-Rod's life post-baseball is looking pretty sweet.

PS - watching A-Rod deflect questions about his retirement like a robot with cliches about "the team" for the next two years is going to be great.

Bryce Harper says baseball is "tired'

FOX - Baseball has become somewhat of a gentleman's sport over the years. Ostentatious celebrations and confident bat flips are criticized rather than celebrated, and players are largely expected to act like they've been there before. There is very little room for personality in the game today, and when players like Bryce Harper do show their swagger, they catch heat for their actions.

According to Harper, that criticism of individuality is exactly why baseball is becoming what he calls a "tired sport." In a recent interview with ESPN The Magazine, Harper explained why he thinks baseball's moral code actually hurts the game. 

"Baseball's tired," Harper said. "It's a tired sport, because you can't express yourself. You can't do what people in other sports do. I'm not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it's the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair. If that's Matt Harvey or Jacob deGrom or Manny Machado or Joc Pederson or Andrew McCutchen or Yasiel Puig -- there's so many guys in the game now who are so much fun.

"... You want kids to play the game, right? What are kids playing these days? Football, basketball. Look at those players -- Steph Curry, LeBron James. It's exciting to see those players in those sports. Cam Newton -- I love the way Cam goes about it. He smiles, he laughs. It's that flair. The dramatic."

Harper has a point. Baseball is a tough game to watch for an American public with an ever decreasing attention span. Unlike other sports, there's no clock in baseball, and games can easily drag on hours longer than a football, basketball or hockey game. When there is no personality and nothing that makes a player or a team stand out among the monotony of balls and strikes, line drives and fly balls, it is easy to see why viewers might lose interest. 

Beyond a great play in the field or a monster performance at bat, what really gets people talking these days are shareable moments from games, and oftentimes it takes personality to create those moments. That is not an idea baseball purists will be fond of -- in baseball, players are expected to be professional at all times. Any sign of individuality is a dark mark against a player rather than a positive attribute.

I don't really get what Bryce is saying here.  First he's complaining about how you can't "express yourself" in baseball like he's a fucking starving artist, then he lists off like ten of its most popular players who all perform with some degree of flair or flamboyance and talks about how exciting they are.  I guess the gist of this is he's saying baseball isn't as exciting as football or basketball because there isn't enough song and dance.  That it's not as appealing to kids and to casual sports fans because there aren't enough bells and whistles.  He's totally right.  Showboating and other shit like that does make things more exciting.  It ups the ante a bit and that's fine with me.  Manny Ramirez was the biggest showboat there was but he embraced that and just kept being himself until the day he retired/was run out of the league for always taking all the steroids. I hated him but he made things infinity more exciting and was one of the biggest reasons those 2000s Yanks/Sox rivalries were as awesome as they were.

The problem is today if you root AGAINST a guy like that then you're automatically an old, white, crusty baseball writer.  Every player who showboats needs everybody to unconditionally love everything about their lives and the way they conduct themselves on the field and if there's any dissent at all they need to post a fucking memoir about the "haters" on their instagram and bitch about it to ESPN The Magazine.  Newsflash Bryce - there are MILLIONS of people that love you and guys like Cam Newton and bat flips and hair flips and dabbing and all that other shit.  There's a reason you're two of the most marketable names in sports today.  BUT there's also a lot of people who don't like guys like you and that's OKAY.  In sports we root for players who exemplify character traits that we value.  Some people like the strong, silent type.  Some people like the loud, flamboyant type.  We don't need to start talking about the crumbling of society ever time someone flips a bat or celebrates a touchdown and we don't all need to go flying off the handle about how baseball is boring and NFL fans are racist every time someone with a more conservative viewpoint has an opinion on sports.  Just shut up and do what you wan to do and stop worrying about what everyone thinks.

Judge and Mateo go deep, the future is here (sort of)

Jorge Mateo introduces this baseball to the scoreboard: https://t.co/PhHOPIQK8X #NYYSpring pic.twitter.com/velCW2u4TN

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) March 5, 2016

This is the kind of stuff that gets you hard.  Judge looking like a goddamn Neanderthal out there.  That ball was WALLOPED.  Sounded like a magnum revolver coming off the bat.  And Mateo is basically the best player on the field every time he plays.  I know conventional wisdom is that he has virtually no chance at making the team at all this year but I think we've got to expand our thinking a bit.  Mateo is a year younger than Carlos Correa and looks like every bit the prospect right now.  Triples and homers everyday, zooming around the basepaths, helmets flying all over the place.  Straight boner-fuel.

The kid is back

1st pitch for Alex Rodriguez in Spring Training.

He crushes a homerun!#Yankees https://t.co/Dip6cHIoEh

— Def Pen Sports (@DefPenSports) March 3, 2016

Just when you thought it was over.  I've been saying all offseason I don't have that much confidence in A-Rod going forward.  That at the age of 41 and after the way he finished last season that he doesn't have what it takes to carry his weight at the middle of the order.  But this right here and this alone has changed my thinking.  Everything is coming up Alex.  There's so much good mojo surrounding this guy right now I'm actually starting to think the saga of Alex Rodriguez is destined to end on a magical note.  That this home-run in his first at-bat of the spring was a preamble to some sort of glorious sendoff this October where he brings us home a ring and walks off into the sunset leaving $20 million on the table.  Either that or he's got enough primobolan in him to kill a rhinoceros.

Sevy gets roughed up in the spring opener

It doesn't get any more insignificant than the first game of spring training but this wasn't great to see.  I said a couple of days ago that Severino would have to get absolutely throttled these next few weeks to lose a rotation spot.  Well that was a throttling - 1.1 IP, two hits, two walks, a hit batsman and five earned runs.  Again, it doesn't mean anything.  But it's annoying that Girardi may have actually been sitting there wondering about whether or not Severino is going to be pitching for him in 2016.

There are reasons to believe these Yankees are better than last year's group and Luis is one of them.  I don't think it's unreasonable at all to believe he can become a front-end starter this year.  That may seem like a lot to ask of a 22-year-old who's only pitched 11 games in the bigs, but that's baseball in the year 2016.  It's a young man's game.  Guys 25 and under are taking over the league and we have one of those guys.

On the other side, Starlin Castro's career in pinstripes got off to a nice start yesterday.  A couple of hits and a really nice play ranging all the way across second base.

Good start for another guy who's a real reason to be optimistic about 2016.  This guy don't look too bad either

Jorge Mateo is as FAST as advertised. https://t.co/ahIPSciV0d #Stud pic.twitter.com/SrjspOPtXk

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) March 3, 2016

Chapman suspended 30 games, will not appeal

BREAKING: Aroldis Chapman suspended 30 games by MLB under domestic violence policy, source. No appeal. Story posting momentarily @nytsports

— Billy Witz (@billywitz) March 1, 2016

Statement by Chapman - "Today, I accepted a 30 game suspension from Major League Baseball resulting from my actions on October 30, 2015. I want to be clear, I did not in any way harm my girlfriend that evening. However, I should have exercised better judgment with respect to certain actions, and for that I am sorry. The decision to accept a suspension, as opposed to appealing one, was made after careful consideration. I made this decision in an effort to minimize the distractions that an appeal would cause the Yankees, my new teammates and most importantly, my family. I have learned from this matter, and I look forward to being part of the Yankees’ quest for a 28th World Series title. Out of respect for my teammates and my family, I will have no further comment." 

First and foremost I'm glad to hear there's not going to be an appeal.  The last thing anybody wanted here was for this thing to carry out any longer than it had to but it looks like someone with a brain was able to talk him out of that.  Whether he did what he was accused of doing that night or didn't, it's safe to say Chapman probably made some mistakes and now he has to take his medicine.  To have fought that would have been a huge mistake when trying to get back into everyone's good graces.  Maybe this is just, maybe it isn't.  But this is the nature of dealing with domestic violence.

As for the length of the suspension, this was pretty much the ballpark you had to expect the day the Yanks' signed him.  30 games to start the season is nothing when you consider all the extra off days and the existing power at the back end of the bullpen.  He'll get to pitch in spring training after all so let's try to enjoy the sneak previews while we can.  We'll see you in May.

How about Girardi showing no confidence in Severino heading into this year

TAMPA, Fla. — The assumption has been that Luis Severino has guaranteed spot in the Yankees’ rotation, but Joe Girardi said that isn’t necessarily the case. 

“You have to see how he responds,” Girardi said Sunday. “He does not have a huge body of work. Your expectation is he’s going to be one of our starters from what we saw, but we’ve seen that not always translate that second year.”

Severino impressed after being called up last August, going 5-3 with a 2.89 ERA in 11 starts.

If he has a good spring training, there’s little question the 22-year-old will be in the rotation. In ticking off names of those who are all but assured spots, Girardi did not mention Severino or CC Sabathia, but Sabathia has never pitched out of the bullpen, so if healthy, he’s a virtual rotation lock.

I've kind of always liked the matter-of-fact way in which Girardi answers questions and talks about his team with the media.  It leaves him very little room to put his foot in his mouth and create any kind of controversy or drama with the team.  But come on dude.  You're allowed to get a little bit excited about this kid.  There's a chance he may very well be your main attraction this season.  I'm not asking you to name a horse Luis and ride him into camp everyday, but you can at least commit a rotation slot to him.

Severino is going to have to absolutely BOMB in spring training to earn a demotion.  Like throw straight up batting practice all month long.  That's why this sounds so stupid.  We understand there's always a chance for a sophomore slump once the league gets a book on you and that there are likely still growing pains on the horizon.  And I get what Girardi's trying to do here.  He wants to suppress expectations with Severino because in reality he's just 22-years-old with 62.1 major league innings under his belt.  But to introduce any doubt about his rotation status at this point is kind of awkward and annoying.  Luis is going to get the ball tomorrow afternoon in the Grapefruit League opener so here's to hoping he gets off to a fast start and makes Joe eat his comments.