So Happ is a relief pitcher now.
Per CBSSports
Greatest ever Twins comeback starts tonight. Odorizzi will lead us to our first playoff win in 16 tries.
**** the Yankees. Most unlikable franchise in American sports.
Greatest ever Twins comeback starts tonight. Odorizzi will lead us to our first playoff win in 16 tries.
**** the Yankees. Most unlikable franchise in American sports.
Greatest ever Twins comeback starts tonight. Odorizzi will lead us to our first playoff win in 16 tries.
**** the Yankees. Most unlikable franchise in American sports.
Fucking A twins. We have won a single playoff series in my entire life. Beat the moneyball Athletics.
This is horseshit.
The rest of our division has made it to, or won a world series in the last 15ish years I think too.
The Yankees opened wide Wednesday night and swallowed hard cash when they released Jacoby Ellsbury, whom they owe $21 million for the 2020 season and a $5 million buyout on a $21 million option for 2021.
By 8 p.m., the Yankees had to set their 40-man roster to make room for prospects they wanted to protect from being taken in next month’s Rule 5 draft held at the winter meetings in San Diego.
With their roster at 36 and not counting Domingo German, who is likely to be suspended for the start of the 2020 season, the Yankees added seven minor league players, released Ellsbury and designated first baseman Greg Bird and lefty Nestor Cortes Jr. for assignment.
Releasing the 36-year-old Ellsbury, who hasn’t played since the 2017 ALCS due to a buffet of injuries that included hip surgery late in the 2018 season, puts an end to the seven-year, $153 million contract the Yankees handed the left-handed-hitting center fielder before the 2014 season.
This Jacoby Ellsbury-Yankees hot take includes important lesson
The Post learned that Ellsbury’s final season at $21 million wasn’t insured. Even released, Ellsbury and his annual average value of nearly $22 million would count toward the Yankees’ 2020 luxury-tax figure.
The Yankees added outfielder Estevan Florial and right-handed pitchers Deivi Garcia, Luis Gil, Brooks Kriske, Luis Medina, Nick Nelson and Miguel Yajure to the 40-man roster.
...
The Yankees have hired Rachel Balkovec as a minor-league hitting coach. Balkovec is believed to be the first female full-time hitting coach hired by a major league organization, as Lindsay Berra notes in the New York Times.
Berra writes:
Club officials said they had hired Balkovec based on qualifications — including two master's degrees in the science of human movement and experience at several minor league clubs — that were a natural fit with the coaching crew being assembled for next season.
"It's an easy answer to why we chose Rachel for this role," Yankees hitting coordinator Dillon Lawson told Berra. "She's a good hitting coach, and a good coach, period."
Balkovec, 32, will begin her new role in Tampa starting in early February of next year. Previously, she worked as minor league strength and conditioning coordinator for the Cardinals, the Astros' Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator, and then as the strength and conditioning coach for Double-A Corpus Christi. Balkovec also worked as a contract strength and conditioning coach for a Cardinals affiliate and was named Appalachian League's strength coach of the year in 2012, according to Berra. That Balkovec has now been tabbed by MLB's most popular and recognizable franchise makes the historic hiring all the more notable.
Balkovec was hired in early November. Not long thereafter, the Cubs announced the hiring of Rachel Folden as the lead hitting lab tech and fourth coach for the Rookie League in Mesa, Arizona.
The Yankees made a minor trade Monday, dealing left-handed pitcher Nestor Cortes Jr. to Seattle for international signing bonus pool money.
Cortes appeared in 33 games for the Yankees last season, all but one out of the bullpen. He posted a 5-1 record with a 5.67 ERA and 69 strikeouts over 66 2/3 innings.
Cortes, 24, was designated for assignment, along with first baseman Greg Bird, last Wednesday to create room for several prospects on the team’s 40-man roster, the same day the Yankees released Jacoby Ellsbury.
SAN DIEGO — As a way to potentially fit Gerrit Cole more comfortably into their payroll — specifically for luxury-tax purposes — the Yankees continue to shop J.A. Happ, as The Post first reported last month.
Two executives from outside teams described the Yankees as actively looking to trade Happ.
Happ completed the first season of a two-year, $34 million contract in 2019, so he counts $17 million toward the luxury-tax payroll. The Yankees know that in 2020 they will be over the first luxury-tax threshold of $208 million and probably the second penalty level of $228 million as well. But if they were able to move even most of Happ’s contract, then they probably could avoid the top penalty level of a payroll above $248 million.
Happ is not an easy sell. He had a 4.91 ERA last season. He is 37. He has a 2021 vesting option for $17 million that triggers at 165 innings or 27 starts. But he is durable. He was good down the regular-season stretch, with a 2.23 ERA in his final six games (five starts), particularly dominating lefties.
Following the 2017 season, the Yankees attached prospect Bryan Mitchell to Chase Headley in a trade to get the Padres to take on the full $13 million due the third baseman in 2018. That was key to the Yankees getting under the luxury tax that season. They could follow the same script here by attaching a prospect (or two) to Happ as a way to get an interested team to take on all or most of his remaining contract.
Don Larsen had one shining moment in a major league uniform that he professed years later to think about every day of his life.
The only pitcher in World Series history to throw a perfect game, the former Yankees right-hander died Wednesday at age 90, according to reports.
Larsen’s agent, Andrew Levy, told the Associated Press the former pitcher died of esophageal cancer in Hayden, Idaho. Levy said Larsen’s son, Scott, confirmed the death.
Over a 14-year big league career with seven organizations, Larsen went 81-91 with a 3.78 ERA and appeared in five World Series. After his retirement, he became a fixture at Yankees Old Timers’ Day, where he often relived one of the greatest pitching performances in baseball history.
Given the starting assignment against the Dodgers in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, Larsen (who didn’t know until hours before the game he would be pitching) held a lineup that included Hall of Famers Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson without a hit. Larsen, with his no windup delivery, retired all 27 batters he faced in what was then just the sixth perfect game in major league history. The black and white images of catcher Yogi Berra leaping into Larsen’s arms have long endured to capture the moment.
“Where was Don the night before he pitched the perfect game? I haven’t the slightest idea, but you could smell liquor on his breath all day,” Mickey Mantle wrote in his autobiography. “I’ll tell you this: He came to the ballpark feeling pretty good. In fact, to Don, the whole game was a joke. After each inning, guys left him alone, not because of the smell, but because they didn’t want to jinx him, and he’d say with a smile and a laugh, ‘You think I’m gonna do it?’ ”
Larsen became linked to the ensuing perfect games in Yankees history. In 1998, David Wells threw a perfecto against the Twins at Yankee Stadium; Wells and Larsen both graduated from the same high school, Point Loma, in San Diego. The following year, Larsen was in attendance — as part of Yogi Berra Day festivities — when David Cone pitched a perfect game against the Expos.
“We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Don Larsen, who remained a welcome and familiar face at our annual Old-Timers’ Day celebrations in the decades following his playing career,” the Yankees said in a statement.
“Don’s perfect game is a defining moment for our franchise, encapsulating a storied era of Yankees success and ranking among the greatest single-game performances in Major League Baseball history. The unmitigated joy reflected in his embrace with Yogi Berra after the game’s final out will forever hold a secure place in Yankees lore. It was the pinnacle of baseball success and a reminder of the incredible, unforgettable things that can take place on a baseball field.”
Larsen had arrived to the Yankees as part of a 17-player trade with the Orioles following the 1954 season. Other prominent names in the deal were Bob Turley, who later won the Cy Young award in The Bronx, and Gene Woodling, who departed for the Orioles after playing a role for the Yankees on their five straight World Series-winning teams.
With the Yankees, Larsen pitched for World Series winners in 1956 and ’58. He pitched for Yankees teams that lost the World Series in 1955 and ’57. His final World Series appearance came with the Giants — who lost in seven games to the Yankees — in 1962.
This was 10 years ago, and the voice on the other end of the telephone sounded gruff and weary. As many often do when a stranger calls, he asked, “How did you get this number?”
That’s always a tricky one to answer. You never know if you’re spoiling a confidence. But before I could worry about that, the voice softened and strengthened and a loud laugh landscaped by so many New York nights out of the past took over.
“I’m kidding. I’m glad you called,” Don Larsen said. “I was 81-91 as a major league pitcher. If that’s all people knew about me, nobody would ever call.”
A pause.
“You want to talk about my year with the Orioles, right?”
More laughter. He was 3-21 with the Orioles in 1954, when he walked 88 hitters and struck out only 80. There are a lot of ironies involved when you talk about Don Larsen, who died at 90 on New Year’s Day. He was not cut out of classic Yankees cloth. His Yankees battery mate, Yogi Berra, subsisted on a chocolate drink called Yoo-Hoo; Larsen was partial to stronger concoctions.
And he was wild. Man, was he wild. He came to the Yankees in an epic 17-player deal on Nov. 17, 1954, and he would drive his new manager, Casey Stengel, half-crazy with his inability to throw strikes on a regular basis. His best year as a Yankee, 1956, he went 11-5 with a 3.26 ERA but still walked 96. He adopted a no-windup delivery. That helped some.
Still, in Game 2 of the 1956 World Series, he faced 10 batters and walked four of them; given a 6-0 lead, he recorded only five outs. The Dodgers stormed back for a 13-8 win. Years later, Larsen said, “I was so bad that if I were managing me, I wouldn’t have handed me the ball again under any circumstance.”
Such was Larsen’s belief that he went out on the town the night before Game 5. It was through bleary eyes he discovered the next morning that Stengel had put a baseball in his spikes. It was his game.
That day — Oct. 8, 1956 — would instantly become one of the most sacred dates in baseball history. Larsen threw 97 pitches. The last one, a 1-and-2 fastball to Dale Mitchell, was a call strike three that Mitchell half waved at and that was it: 27 Dodgers up, 27 Dodgers down.
Larsen had pitched just the fourth perfect game in the 20th century, the first in 34 years, the first (and still only) ever thrown in the postseason.
Irony?
Dick Young, the most influential sportswriter New York City has ever known, whose later work appeared in The Post, was scrambling on deadline at his then-newspaper to finish two stories, one from the Dodgers clubhouse, one on Babe Pinelli, the home-plate umpire who was retiring so this was his last game ever calling balls and strikes.
Young’s colleague, Joe Trimble, was ashen-faced. The page in his typewriter was blank. He had a terribly timed case of writer’s block. Young grabbed Trimble’s typewriter and without saying a word typed these words:
“The unperfect man pitched a perfect game yesterday.”
Don Larsen, Yankees legend who threw only World Series perfect game, dead at 90
In later editions, that would be tweaked to what has become one of the most famous ledes in the history of newspapers: “The imperfect man pitched a perfect game yesterday.”
That was Larsen. For one day, he was the greatest pitcher who ever lived. The other 411 games of his career? The other 1,539 innings he logged for seven teams from 1953 through 1967? Not so much. And that was always OK with Larsen. You never met a guy happier to have accomplished something.
“Hell, yeah, I’m glad it happened to me,” he told me over the phone in 2009. “I think about it every day — and not just once a day. As long as they play baseball, they’ll remember the name ‘Don Larsen.’ That works for me.”
The call was to commemorate the 10th anniversary of David Cone’s perfect game, which had come on Yogi Berra Day, and Larsen just happened to be in the house that day, too. A year earlier, David Wells had thrown a perfecto; Wells had attended Point Loma High School in San Diego — same as Don Larsen, class of 1947.
Larsen loved everything about being a star in New York, probably loved it too much. Mickey Mantle, who would surely have known, once said, “Don had a startling capacity for liquor.” But he was right as rain on Oct. 8, 1956, and he made it to 90, and he got his money’s worth, both quality and quantity. And he was always happy you called.
Brett Gardner is back with the Yankees — officially.
The longtime outfielder agreed to a new deal with the team last month, but didn’t take a physical until Tuesday and the Yankees announced the deal Saturday.
Gardner returns on a one-year contract worth $12.5 million with a $10 million option for 2021 that includes a $2.5 million buyout.
To make room for Gardner on the roster, Stephen Tarpley was designated for assignment.
Coming off a season in which he set career highs in homers with 28 and an OPS of .829, Gardner was expected to be back in The Bronx — especially with Aaron Hicks out likely until June at the earliest following Tommy John surgery on his right elbow in October.
Gardner, 36, figures to play regularly in center, with fellow lefty swinging Mike Tauchman another option to fill in for the switch-hitting Hicks, who returned from an elbow injury during the playoffs, but then further injured it.
Hicks, 30, signed a seven-year, $70 million extension last spring, but was limited to 59 games during the regular season in 2019.
The longest tenured Yankee, Gardner’s presence in the clubhouse will be even more important this season after the departures of CC Sabathia, Didi Gregorius, Dellin Betances and Austin Romine.
The 26-year-old Tarpley appeared in 21 games for the Yankees last season and was mostly ineffective. He allowed six homers in just 24 2/3 innings and had an ERA of 6.93.
Acquired in the 2016 deal that sent Ivan Nova to the Pirates, Tarpley made the postseason roster in 2018, when he gave up three runs in one innings in a blowout loss to Boston in Game 3 of the ALDS.
He’d been good against left-handed hitters, but could be more impacted than others by the new MLB rule being implemented this season that forces pitchers to face at least three batters or finish an inning in an appearance. The rule was put in place to try to improve pace of play, but will hurt lefty specialists.
The Yankees roster casualty of Brett Gardner’s new contract
By Dan MartinJanuary 11, 2020 | 1:29pm | Updated