Results tagged ‘ Brian Cashman ’
Youkilis needs surgery; Teixeira back on DL
What was considered good news about Mark Teixeira wasn’t entirely good. The first baseman does not have a tear in the sheath of his right wrist, just inflammation. That is why everybody thought that was good news. But after getting a cortisone injection, Teixeira had to go back on the 15-day disabled list, which is not good news.
“We knew that we would be without Tex for at least a week,” manager Joe Girardi said. “We did not want to be short-handed for that long. I am confident that Tex will be able to come back full strength when the 15 days are up.”
The news on Kevin Youkilis was not good at all. He remained in southern California at the end of the Yankees’ West Coast swing and was examined by Dr. Robert Watkins, the noted back specialist in Marina del Ray. Youkilis has a herniated disk that will require surgery. Dr. Watkins will perform the procedure Thursday. The recovery period will be 10 to 12 weeks.
So the player who was supposed to keep third base warm until Alex Rodriguez was able to return from hip surgery will now be lost for up to three months. Youkilis, who was batting .219 with two home runs and eight RBI in 105 at-bats, has been troubled by back issues in recent years. He had a strong spring training for the Yankees and got off to a hot start, but a lumbar sprain forced him onto the DL in late April for an entire month.
“We are going with what we have,” general manager Brian Cashman said about what the Yanks would do at third base with Youkilis out. Tuesday night’s lineup before the rainout had David Adams at the position. The Yankees will also use Jayson Nix, who has also been used quite a bit at shortstop because of the injuries to Derek Jeter and Eduardo Nunez.
To replace Youkilis on the 25-man roster, the Yankees called up outfielder Zoilo Almonte from Triple A Scranton. The switch hitter played all three outfield positions for Scranton where he hit .297 with 12 doubles, six home runs and 36 RBI in 68 games and 259 at-bats. The Yankees also recalled pitcher Adam Warren from Scranton and designated pitcher Chris Bootcheck for assignment.
Overbay stays, gets a shot in the outfield
The Yankees found a way to keep Lyle Overbay in uniform. Unfortunately for Brennan Boesch, it came at his expense. To create space on the 25-man roster for Andy Pettitte, who was activated from the disabled list to start Monday night’s game at Yankee Stadium against the Indians, the Yankees optioned Boesch to Triple A Scranton.
The move ended much speculation over the past week around the Yankees about who would go when Pettitte was ready to get back on the mound. There was some talk about optioning infielder David Adams and even perhaps a trade of Overbay, whose playing time was reduced with the return of Mark Teixeira and Kevin Youkilis off the DL.
But there was Overbay back in the lineup Monday night and playing right field, a position he had not played since early in his pro career in the minor leagues. Overbay has been a first baseman – and a good one – and occasional designated hitter as a major-leaguer and was a major fix-it at first base for the Yankees over the first seven weeks of the season as Teixeira was recovering from a wrist injury.
“We have been forced to be creative because of all the injuries,” manager Joe Girardi said. “Lyle is willing to do anything. We don’t expect him to be a Gold Glove right fielder. The area here at the Stadium is small.”
The Yankees decided to keep Adams, who started at third base Monday night, because he can support Youkilis at that spot and also give Robinson Cano a day at DH on occasion. Adams was primarily a second baseman in the minors but filled a more urgent need at third base since his call-up May 15.
Speculation had fallen on Adams, who has two options left, instead of Overbay, who would have had to be designated for assignment. It is doubtful that he would have passed through waivers considering his productivity (eight home runs and 29 RBI in 178 at-bats), and the Yankees would have lost a player without getting anything in return. Overbay borrowed a glove from relief pitcher Boone Logan to man the new position.
Like Adams, Boesch also had options remaining, so he was the odd man out for the second time this season. It was a bit of an unkind cut for Boesch, who had 5-for-8 (.625) with one double, one home run and three RBI in three games since his May 25 recall that raised his season average to .275 with three home runs and eight RBI in 51 at-bats. Boesch had also been the Yankees’ best pinch hitter at 3-for-9 (.333) with one home run and four RBI.
Overbay found himself in the defensive position that had been manned primarily the previous four seasons by Nick Swisher, who made his return to the Stadium as the Tribe’s first baseman. Swish was treated to a standing ovation from the Stadium crowd in his first at-bat in which he was called out on strikes for the last out of the first inning. The bleacher creatures also accorded a roll-call chant in the bottom of the inning for Swisher, who was always one of their favorites.
Grace Cashman, daughter of Yanks general manager Brian Cashman, did a nice job singing the National Anthem before the game.
Yanks acquire Brignac in trade from Rockies
The Yankees made another roster change Saturday with the acquisition of infielder Reid Brignac from the Rockies in exchange for cash considerations. To make room on the 25-man roster for Brignac, the Yankees designated infielder Alberto Gonzalez for assignment. Brignac, 27, had been designated for assignment by Colorado last week. He was not expected to report until Sunday at the earliest.
Although Brignac is known more for his defense than offense, the fact that he bats left-handed made him more attractive to the Yankees than Gonzalez at this point, general manager Brian Cashman asserted. “He’s a left-handed fly ball hitter that is beneficial at Yankee Stadium” Cash said.
The others on the left side of the infield, Jayson Nix and David Adams, bat right-handed.
Brignac, who is in his sixth season in the major leagues, batted .250 with one home run and six RBI for the Rockies this season. He was traded to Colorado in February from Tampa Bay where he had played for five years. Brignac, a .228 career hitter, has played 187 games at shortstop, 75 games at second base and 12 games at third base as well as four games in the outfield.
Gonzalez hit .333 in limited action (nine at-bats) in three games for the Yankees and also pitched one third of an inning earlier this week against the Mariners. He had been working recently with bench coach Tony Pena at the catcher position in an emergency capacity behind Austin Romine while Chris Stewart is nursing a left groin injury.
Pettitte joins crowded disabled list
The Yankees’ disabled list continued to grow Friday night, adding Andy Pettitte, who came out of Thursday night’s game against the Mariners because of a tight left trapezius muscle. Pettitte said he felt better Friday but understood that he needed more time to get better, which frankly the Yankees do not have right now.
Pettitte’s next scheduled start would have been Tuesday night in Baltimore. He told general manager Brian Cashman that he could long-toss on his regular bullpen day and still be able to make the starting assignment. Pettitte reneged when it was explained to him that the Yankees could not afford to dig into the bullpen if he tightened up early in that game. Cashman pointed out that they lost CC Sabathia early in a rain-delayed game in Denver, had a doubleheader at Cleveland earlier in the week and an abbreviated start Wednesday night from Phil Hughes (2/3 innings).
“I’m frustrated, but it makes sense,” Pettitte said. “I hope we can get it cleared up and I can get back out there. I don’t see why it should be more than that [15 days]. I had high expectations of being able to pitch a full season, but I’ll have to deal with it.”
The Yankees will recall lefthander Vidal Nuno from Triple A Scranton to take Pettitte’s spot in the rotation. Nuno earned his first major-league victory in the second game of the doubleheader Monday with five scoreless, three-hit innings at Progressive Field.
Chris Stewart’s groin injury is not as serious as it might have been. An MRI on the catcher was negative. Stewart is still in some pain, but he is not a candidate for the Yankees’ large disabled list where another catcher, Francisco Cervelli, is among those on the mend. Yankees manager Joe Girardi said that Stewart probably won’t play in the three-game series against the Blue Jays but could catch in an emergency.
Because of that, the Yankees do not plan to add another catcher for this weekend’s series as a backup to Austin Romine. That role for the time being will be filled by utility infielder Alberto Gonzalez, whose primary position is shortstop but who has also already pitched for the Yankees for the first time in his seven-season career. Gonzalez retired the only batter he faced Wednesday night in the Yankees’ 12-2 loss to the Mariners, so his ERA is 0.00.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Tuesday marked only the fourth time since the Cy Young Award was instituted by the Baseball Writers’ Association in 1956 that seven former winners started on the same day. CC Sabathia was among them, along with Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, R.A. Dickey, Bartolo Colon, Jake Peavy and Barry Zito). It also occurred April 21, 1974 (Vida Blue, Steve Carlton, Mike Cuellar, Bob Gibson, Jim Palmer, Jim Perry and Tom Seaver) and on both April 5 and April 10, 1993 with the same pitchers (Roger Clemens, Doug Drabek, Dwight Gooden, Orel Hershiser, Greg Maddux, Rick Sutcliffe and Bob Welch).
Patrick Vieira, former World Cup-winning soccer star and current head of the Elite Development Squad for Manchester City Football Club, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Vieira played on five World Cup-winning teams and nine league champions during his career. He made 107 appearances for the French national team, including winning performances at the 1998 FIFA World Cup and 2000 UEFA European Championship. His time as a Manchester City player, which began in January 2010, concluded with an FA Cup Final victory in May 2011, marking the club’s first major trophy in 35 years.
Since retiring from the game in the summer of 2011, Vieira has worked as a Football Development Executive for Manchester City, traveling extensively in an ambassadorial role for the club and its academy. He has spent the last year developing his understanding of the business side of football and working on his UEFA coaching credentials.
Manchester City will make it first appearance at the Stadium in a 5:30 p.m. match Saturday, May 25, against Premier League rival Chelsea FC.
Pinstripe Bowl charity golf outing May 20
The New York Yankees Foundation will be the host of the third annual New York Yankees/New Era Pinstripe Bowl charity golf tournament, sponsored by UnitedHealthcare, Monday, May 20, at Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y.
Net proceeds from the event will benefit the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Pediatric Cancer Center, Tourette Syndrome Association of Central New Jersey, Boomer Esiason Foundation Fighting Cystic Fibrosis and UnitedHealthcare Children’s Foundation. More than 400 individuals have participated in the tournament the past two years, and in excess of $200,000 has been raised for charity.
Registration and lunch will begin at 11:30 a.m., followed by a 1:30 p.m. shotgun start for the scramble-format tournament. A cocktail reception, dinner and an awards presentation will take place at 6:30 p.m. For more information, fans can call (646) 977-8400.
This year’s event includes Yankees alumni and broadcasters, football Giants alumni and select head coaches from Big East football and basketball teams.
Among those scheduled to attend are Yankees president Randy Levine; general manager Brian Cashman; former Yankees players Ralph Branca, David Cone, John Flaherty, Ron Guidry, Pat Kelly, Lee Mazzilli and Mickey Rivers; former Giants players Mark Bavaro, Luke Petitigout and Amani Toomer; Rutgers head football coach Kyle Flood; Syracuse University athletic director Dr. Darryl Gross; Syracuse head football coach Scott Shafer; Princeton head basketball coach Mitch Henderson; CBS sportscaster Don Criqui; WABC-TV weatherman Bill Evans; Sports Illustrated writer Jack McCallum, ESPN analyst Jesse Palmer; WPLJ Radio personality Scott Shannon and New Era Cap Company chief executive officer Chris Koch.
Westchester Country Club offers two championship golf courses and a nine-hole executive course. The West Course continues to be a regular location for professional golf events, including the Westchester Classic, Buick Classic and most recently, The Barclays, the first of four stops on the FedEx Tour. Westchester Country Club was also the site of the Senior Players Championship in 2011.
The New Era Pinstripe Bowl will take place Saturday, Dec. 28, at Yankee Stadium, pitting a team from the Big East Conference against a representative from the Big 12 Conference.
Posthumous honor for GM’s dad at Meadowlands
The Meadowlands Racetrack announced Thursday that the Nat Ray Free-for-All Trot will now be known as the John Cashman, Jr. Memorial, beginning with this year’s race Aug. 3, which is Hambletonian Day, the biggest event in harness racing. First raced in 1981, this important event counts among its winners many of trotting’s greatest champions.
John Cashman, Jr., who died in 2012, was elected as a Living Member to the Harness Racing Hall of Fame in Goshen, N.Y. in 1992. He was the father of Yankees general manager Brian Cashman. John’s influence is found in many facets of harness racing, including his vital role in the launching of the Breeders Crown championships.
Setback for Jeter, out at least til All-Star break
Forget about seeing Derek Jeter back with the Yankees next month. The club got disturbing news Thursday that the Captain suffered a setback in his recovery from off-season left ankle surgery and is now not expected to return to active duty until after the All-Star break in mid-July.
Jeter had been working out in the extended spring training camp at Tampa, Fla., taking batting practice and fielding ground balls. His workload was halted recently as apparently the shortstop was dealing with some discomfort. He last played in an extended spring game March 23. A CT scan of the area revealed the cause. Jeter has a small crack in the area of his left ankle.
The ailment is not serious enough to require another surgery, but a time frame of anywhere from four to eight weeks of rest is required. Yankees manager Joe Girardi has said that Jeter needs the equivalent of a full spring training before he can return, and this situation pushes him back even further.
Jeter, 38, was scheduled to travel to Charlotte, N.C., Thursday to visit Dr. Robert Anderson, who performed the operation last October on the left ankle DJ fractured during the American League Championship Series against the Tigers.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said that he was pleased with the work Eduardo Nunez and Jayson Nix have done at shortstop in Jeter’s absence and indicated that help at the position from outside the organization is not expected. The Yankees are not the only club with an injured shortstop. The Blue Jays’ Jose Reyes will be sidelined for two months because of a sprained left ankle.
For those who thought that Jeter had a chance to chase Pete Rose’s career hits record, this latest development probably queers that for good. Not that Jeet was expected to make such a run. He continually avoided questions about challenging Rose’s all-time hits mark of 4,256. Jeter ranks 10th on the career list with 3,304 – 11 hits behind ninth-place Eddie Collins. Jeter would have to play at least five more seasons for any shot at catching Rose, an unlikely scenario for someone who turns 39 in two months.
GM ends up on DL
On second thought, it would have been better for Yankees general manager Brian Cashman if he had limited his sky dives Monday to one. The daredevil executive has made an annual Christmas event of his shimmying down the Landmark Building in Stamford, Conn. Monday in Miami, he took part in a parachute jump with the U.S. Army Golden Knights at the Homestead Air Reserve Base to help raise awareness for the Wounded Warrior Project.
Cash ended up getting wounded himself. The first jump went smoothly, so much so that he went up a second time. He landed poorly, however, and suffered a broken right fibula and a dislocated right ankle. He was scheduled for surgery to be performed by Dr. Dominic Carreira at Broward Health Medical Center.
“I’m in great spirits, and it was an awesome experience,” Cashman said. “The Golden Knights are first class. While I certainly didn’t intend to raise awareness in exactly this fashion, I’m extremely happy that the Wounded Warrior Project is getting the well-deserved additional attention.”
Hall for Col. Ruppert; knife for A-Rod
NASHVILLE – There was good news and bad news for Yankees fans coming out of baseball’s Winter Meetings Monday at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center.
First, the good news; another person associated with the Yankees was elected to the Hall of Fame. The Pre-Integration Era Veterans Committee elected former club owner Jacob Ruppert to the Hall, along with 19th-century catcher-third baseman Deacon White and umpire Hank O’Day.
Among Ruppert’s many contributions to the Yankees in his time as owner was the design of their pinstriped uniforms, the purchase of Babe Ruth’s contract from the Red Sox and the construction of the original Yankee Stadium, a palace among baseball parks in the 1920s. Ruppert’s nickname was “The Colonel,” even though his time as a colonel in the National Guard was short, certainly less than his four terms as a United States congressman from the Democratic Party.
“The election of Jacob Ruppert to the Hall of Fame is a great honor for the Yankees organization,” managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said. “Under his leadership, the Yankees became the most popular and successful team in baseball, setting the standard which we try to uphold today.”
Ruppert becomes the 48th individual enshrined in the Hall to have played, managed, coached, owned or been a general manager for the Yankees. He joins Ed Barrow, Larry MacPhail, Lee MacPhail and George Weiss among Hall of Famers who had ownership stakes or were general managers of the Yankees but never played for, coached or managed the club.
The bad news, however, is quite grim. Alex Rodriguez will require surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left hip and will likely miss at least the first half of the 2013 season. The news, first reported by George King in the New York Post, is a severe blow to the Yankees but also serves to explain in part why the third baseman may have struggled so much during the past postseason when he hit .120 with 12 strikeouts in 25 at-bats.
“I do think that it’s a likely scenario that the struggles we saw in September and in October are more likely than not related to this issue,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said during a press conference here. “Clearly Alex was dealing with an issue that although he might be asymptomatic but the lower half and the way the mechanisms work, he wasn’t firing on all cylinders. There were times that we thought watching him that he was all arms and no legs, but again, there were no complaints, no pain, and then in the playoffs when he got pinch hit for, he did have a complaint that he felt his right hip wasn’t working right, and that was all clear.”
According to Cashman, Rodriguez told manager Joe Girardi in the dugout the night of Game 3 of the American League Division Series against the Orioles when A-Rod was lifted for pinch hitter Raul Ibanez, who hit a game-tying home run, that his right hip did not feel right. Rodriguez had an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) exam after the game at New York Presbyterian Hospital that did not reveal any damage.
Rodriguez had a checkup during the offseason in Vail, Colo., which showed a tear in the left hip that was confirmed in a second opinion by Dr. Bryan Kelly, who will perform the operation at the Hospital for Special Surgery after A-Rod completes a four- to six-week pre-surgery regimen. The procedure is expected to require four to six months for recovery.
With the surgery likely to be scheduled in January, the earliest Rodriguez could be expected to play would be June and more realistically after the All-Star break in July.
So what do the Yankees do about third base for the first half of next season? Cashman all but ruled out the possibility of Eduardo Nunez playing there (“We see him as a shortstop,” the GM said) and pointed out that the club got through 2012 with several players in left field filling in for injured Brett Gardner.
Jayson Nix, who has re-upped with the Yanks for 2013, could be used in part of a platoon. Eric Chavez, who played in 64 games (50 starts) at the position last season, is now a free agent.
“My sole interest is just improving the entire club,” Cashman said. “Whether we solve any issue specifically at that position of third base, I can’t really answer.”
The good and bad of the rainout
Did Wednesday’s rainout help or hurt the Yankees?
Well, a little bit of both.
On the positive side, the extra day made Phil Hughes and Boone Logan available if need be in Game 4, which as a potential elimination game is an all-hands-on-deck situation regarding the pitching staff.
On the negative side, the delay means that Game 4 starter CC Sabathia cannot come back in the series if the Yankees somehow push this series to the limit and start Game 7. The only way that would happen would be if Sabathia had a brief outing Thursday, which the Yankees do not want, of course.
Meanwhile, Derek Jeter is now looking at perhaps a lengthier recovery period from his broken left ankle. Jeet will undergo surgery Oct. 20 in Charlotte, N.C., by foot and ankle specialist Dr. Robert Anderson, who said that the Captain’s recovery is expected to take four to five months, rather than three months, which had been announced initially.
It was speculated that perhaps there was more ligament damage to Jeter, who got hurt in the 12th and final inning of Game 1 of the American League Championship Series while fielding a ground ball. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said that was not the case.
“I believe that Dr. Anderson just put in a more conservative timeframe on it, as it was explained to me,” Cashman said, “So there’s no new information, nothing seen worse than what our team doctor saw. But in terms of the timeframe, I just think he wanted to be more conservative with it. So that’s what we’re going to go with. My understanding is that it’s possible he will be ready earlier than that timeframe, but it is best to at least put out there four, five months as a safer bet.”
The Yankees are still expecting Jeter to be ready by the start of spring training, although the more conservative timeframe could delay him until early March.
Jack O'Connell
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