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alejr88

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Haven't been watching baseball... Just saw that triple play on that vid link there, and I have to say that's bad baserunning/poor judgment by the runner originally on 1st.... the runner orig. on 2nd got hung out to dry & had no choice but to try to advance b/c it was so sharply hit..... Nonetheless, the right decision by Nix to throw it over to (*smh*) Youkilis.....

 

....and what's with all these players dropping like flies so far this year? Broken collarbone in a brawl, broken elbow dodging out of the way of a line shot, what's next, someone breaking their jaw sneezing, I mean good grief......

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....and what's with all these players dropping like flies so far this year? Broken collarbone in a brawl, broken elbow dodging out of the way of a line shot, what's next, someone breaking their jaw sneezing, I mean good grief......

 

well i dont know whats worse pavano on the yankees or those injuries you mentioned

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Perhaps the move to the AL has finally exposed RA dickey for being average? I guess not even his personal catcher was enough. Speaking of pitchers, wow at halladay with the phillies, talk about declines.

 

Smh at the grenke loss. I just hope they got insurance... And still glad the Yankees never signed him. Yes I also agree the 'painvano' signing remains among the worst deals for basically less than a full year's worth of season. But igawa for being probably the higher paid aaa player; I mean yeah he sucked, but couldn't they have tried to use him as a mop up guy from the pen? They just outright banished him for being a failed starter. They didn't even try to see if he'd be better as a reliever.

 

Hughes, good god, just let him walk at the end of the year. If he's going to stink up this bad they may as well use him as a long reliever and save the bullpen the wear and tear to finish off for him.

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Perhaps the move to the AL has finally exposed RA dickey for being average? I guess not even his personal catcher was enough.

Speaking of pitchers, wow at halladay with the phillies, talk about declines.

 

Smh at the grenke loss. I just hope they got insurance... And still glad the Yankees never signed him. Yes I also agree the 'painvano' signing remains among the worst deals for basically less than a full year's worth of season. But igawa for being probably the higher paid aaa player; I mean yeah he sucked, but couldn't they have tried to use him as a mop up guy from the pen? They just outright banished him for being a failed starter. They didn't even try to see if he'd be better as a reliever.

 

Hughes, good god, just let him walk at the end of the year. If he's going to stink up this bad they may as well use him as a long reliever and save the bullpen the wear and tear to finish off for him.

- Been telling mets fans I know, that - That he'd be minimized to nothing more than average as an AL pitcher....

How many players have moved from the NL to the AL & have been utter busts (compared to the opposing scenario; AL to NL).....

I mean, the guy's a knuckleballer that throws a harder knuckleball over other knuckleballers....

 

- With halladay, I think it's due to IP.... Today's players aren't as durable as the pitchers of way back when.... Sure, it's admirable when you rack up as many CG's (or 8+ inning games) in this era of baseball, but with all these supplements (I don't necessarily mean steroids when I say that either) these guys are taking nowadays, it decreases your effectiveness (matter fact, it accelerates your ineffectiveness) over the longhaul.....

 

- Again, haven't been watching the games, but I saw the highlights on ESPN of yesterday's game.... 3 solo shots he have up huh... Lol.... Hughes' achilles heel has always been giving up the longball; you're gonna get that with a "flyball" pitcher (Not that I'm excusing him - because his location/accuracy I always found to be questionable)... They can let him walk after season's end if they wish, but personally, I'd be more worried about Nova.....

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Yup. RA wasn't going to have the same success going to the al vs staying in the NL, but it doesn't matter to the mets as they sold high and weren't going to keep an old guy for a team in rebuilding mode. As an outsider, I had to agree with management there,

 

Good point, he has pitched a lot of cg/innings. Though I still wonder what the difference is about the innings vs pitches thrown. I mean a person can have many innings but if they are economical with pitches, it shouldn't be a big deal.

 

Hughes is gonna have to be reasonable if he wants to stay, if he keeps this up he better hope he asks for less or maybe goes back to being a reliever again which was a role he did very well in 2009. Nova, yeah he's been on the decline again. I am losing hope for him as well.

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Remember how much Hughes sucked last year on April. I'm calling a slow start and he'll have a good year like last year of course allowing tons of HR's. I think the Yankees will let him go, he'll be much better in the NL West with those pitcher's parks (except Arizona).

 

I'm not worried about Hughes, you know what you're getting out of him. As for the bullpen stuff, everyone pitches better in the bullpen. David Phelps is an example of how great he is as a long reliever than as a spot starter. Rookie pitcher Adam Warren too, he started last year against the White Sox and got pounded and during the Boston series he pitched in relief for the injured Kuroda and did well.

 

To GC: I don't know if you remember but years back Kei Igawa had an awesome relief appearance he had against the Red Sox. I forgot who got lit up that day but he came in relief (with sunglasses) to pitch 4 dominant innings. They also tried him in middle relief (as a LOOGY) but that didn't work.

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Very good points on Hughes, and I admit I am overreacting about him. But I do agree the NL will suit him better. He needs to pitch in places like Citifield or someplace where the field is deep enough that suits him as a flyball pitcher.

 

I think Jeff Karstens was pitching and his leg was broken by a comebacker. Shame too as he was the better of the 2 (other guy being Rasner). But I think Igawa pitched like 6 innings? But easily his best game ever. So that explains it. I guess he had 1 good game and just sucked afterwards... Oh well, he's gone... hopefully.

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Very good points on Hughes, and I admit I am overreacting about him. But I do agree the NL will suit him better. He needs to pitch in places like Citifield or someplace where the field is deep enough that suits him as a flyball pitcher.

 

I think Jeff Karstens was pitching and his leg was broken by a comebacker. Shame too as he was the better of the 2 (other guy being Rasner). But I think Igawa pitched like 6 innings? But easily his best game ever. So that explains it. I guess he had 1 good game and just sucked afterwards... Oh well, he's gone... hopefully.

 

Who? Igawa? Last I heard of him, he was still in the Yankee AAA team... I heard that the Yanks thought that it was best for Igawa to stay at the AAA level... With that being said, the Yankees had no intention on bringing him back to the MLB...

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Kei Igawa has been with the Orix Buffaloes of Japan since 2012.

 

I posted this story about Igawa back a year or two ago. Had to shorten it a bit:
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/sports/baseball/kei-igawa-the-lost-yankee.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Kei Igawa: The Lost Yankee
By BILL PENNINGTON
Published: July 23, 2011
 
TRENTON — In the middle of a bright Manhattan summer afternoon, the Yankees’ $46 million pitcher steps from his fashionable East Side apartment building and slips into a waiting Lexus for a chauffeured ride to the ballpark.
But the car does not turn north for the five-mile drive to Yankee Stadium. The destination is instead Trenton or Scranton, Pa., where for the last five years Kei Igawa has pitched for two Yankees minor league teams. Day after day, start after start, complete with the return trip to Manhattan.
Plucked from a Japanese baseball all-star team roster in 2007 and introduced at a lavish news conference, Igawa was expected to be a staple in the Yankees’ starting rotation. He lasted 16 games, most of them regrettable outings that were sometimes spectacularly inept. Booed off the field, he was called one of the worst free-agent signings in Yankees history.
After his last, losing appearance for the Yankees in early 2008, he was banished to the farm system and he has not come back.
Except for his nightly returns to Manhattan. But Igawa’s unusual commute is only part of a long, strange journey.
The five-year saga is a story of a giant mistake of a contract and an overmatched pitcher, a huge organization digging in and a quiet, somewhat mysterious Japanese pitcher with a sense of honor and a durable love of the game. The Yankees made it pretty clear Igawa would never pitch again in the Bronx, but they were determined that he pitch somewhere for his $4-million-a-year salary. They tried to return him to Japan, too. Igawa refused to go, standing fast to his childhood dream of pitching in the American big leagues.
And so, the stalemate — remarkable, if almost entirely un-remarked upon — continues.
The Yankees let him gobble up innings before small crowds in distant outposts as a cavalcade of younger prospects push past him on their way to Yankee Stadium. Igawa never complains, and in a tribute to either willpower or lower level longevity, he has set farm system pitching records. And with just a few months left on his contract, he still dreams of the major leagues, if no longer as a Yankee.
About two weeks ago, on a rare day off, Igawa celebrated his 32nd birthday alone at his Manhattan apartment. He did not consider attending a Yankees game in the Bronx, nor did he tune them in on his television.
“I don’t watch their games anymore,” Igawa said. “I never follow them.”
...“Everybody respects what he’s done and he never has an attitude that he’s too big for this,” Romine said. “Whether they send him up or down, whether they put him in the bullpen or the starting rotation, his disposition is always the same. But come on, we know how he feels.”
During Trenton games, there is often no room for Igawa to sit in the dugout. He will trundle out to the makeshift bullpen in foul territory along the right-field line. He sometimes sits under an umbrella beside a children’s playground. He rarely reacts to the action on the field.
“He doesn’t want to be here,” Romine said. “He’s doing what he’s told. It’s hard when someone owns you.”
...By the time his minor league existence became more permanent, the driving habit had become routine, and Igawa likes a routine. Somehow, his minor league managers say, he has never been late to the ballpark in five years.
...Igawa is married and has children, and they visit him in New York for a couple of months each year, usually just as the baseball season is ending. But Takeshita has never met any member of the family. Asked when he was married and how many children he has, Igawa smiled and said he does not give out that information. He also declined to give the name of his wife.
...“It is just safer that way,” he said, somewhat cryptically.
...Bobby Valentine, now a broadcaster with ESPN, has managed in the American and Japanese professional leagues.
“The concept that less might be more does not compute in Japan,” Valentine said. “It’s a problem for Japanese pitchers over here. If Igawa was throwing when the Yankees didn’t know it, he wasn’t doing it to be a contrarian. In Japan, they think if you don’t throw every day you not only won’t be successful, you don’t deserve to be successful.
“So that doesn’t surprise me.”
But Valentine was surprised that Igawa was still in the Yankees minor league system.
“I thought he had gone back to Japan years ago,” Valentine said.
...Asked last week to assess Igawa’s five years in the Yankee organization, General Manager Brian Cashman answered: “It was a disaster. We failed.”
Cashman quickly added that in 2008 and in 2009 he had negotiated a deal to return Igawa to two different Japanese professional teams.
...In the end, Cashman sounded mystified by Igawa. “It’s the most curious case I’ve ever heard of,” he said. “And frustrating. The lesson is to be very careful with Japanese pitchers. I give him credit for living a dream and for fighting the fight. It can’t be easy. It has to bother him, too.”
...Igawa, who often snickers when he begins to answer a question, was stoic and straight-faced last week when he was told he had now pitched in 104 minor league games and thrown more than 525 minor league innings. He had sat on the bench or waited in the bullpen through more than 5,700 innings, riding buses from Maine to Kentucky and from Richmond to Rochester. Teammates, managers, trainers and pitching coaches came and went. Igawa stayed, the only journeyman left who could tell new prospects where to park their cars so they would not get hit by a foul ball or explain how the outfield walls were different at the home park five years ago.
Was this the odyssey he envisioned when he agreed to leave Japan in 2007?
“No,” Igawa answered before another Trenton game, sweaty from the pregame sprints and toweling off so he could slip into his game uniform. “But it is still baseball. I get to pitch. I love being on the mound. It is my job, but it’s also what I want to do. I get to see new places I would never have seen otherwise. And it is my duty to do my best.”
Igawa, whose complete major league record from 2007-8 was 2-4 with a 6.66 E.R.A., concedes he did not pitch well in his time with the Yankees. But he also thinks he could have done better had he been given more than 16 pitching appearances.
“America is a different world from Japan and so is American baseball,” he said. “I had never pitched out of the bullpen. I had never pitched on four days rest. The hitters here also have more power — another adjustment. I look back now and I have developed a cut fastball, I throw my changeup differently. I understand American hitters better. So I think I would have done better if I had more time the first season. And I wish I had then what I have now.”
The goal next year is to show off what he has learned to another team, anywhere in the world. He would even return to the minors again, if he thought he had a legitimate chance to make his new team’s major league roster.
Towers believes some American and Japanese clubs will show interest.
“Once his Yankees contract is out of the way,” Towers said, “the landscape might change. It’s like he’s been out of sight in the minors forever.”
As Valentine said, “I’ve seen lefties with less stuff than he has have success in the majors.”
Igawa is aware that baseball fans, and especially Yankees fans, view him as a renowned bust.
“Yankees fans may always think of me as not being successful,” said Igawa, whose record this season at Trenton and Scranton is 3-2 with a 3.68 E.R.A. “But I’ve grown as a pitcher and as a person. I’ll be better for these five years. I do not regret coming here.”
Spend enough time with Igawa, however, and it becomes clear that he has moments when he is dismayed. On July 14, the Yankees signed J. C. Romero, a 35-year-old left-hander who had just been released by the Washington Nationals. Romero was assigned to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
Igawa got the news standing at this locker in Trenton. His shoulders sagged slightly and he slumped to a chair.
He was asked if he ever wants to shout, “What about me?”
He shook his head.
“I am Japanese,” he said. “I don’t go crazy too often. I’m not going to throw things or make a scene. In five years, I have seen this happen over and over.”...

A version of this article appeared in print on July 24, 2011, on page SP1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Lost Yankee.

 

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Guest Charles

Haven't been watching baseball... Just saw that triple play on that vid link there, and I have to say that's bad baserunning/poor judgment by the runner originally on 1st.... the runner orig. on 2nd got hung out to dry & had no choice but to try to advance b/c it was so sharply hit..... Nonetheless, the right decision by Nix to throw it over to (*smh*) Youkilis.....

 

....and what's with all these players dropping like flies so far this year? Broken collarbone in a brawl, broken elbow dodging out of the way of a line shot, what's next, someone breaking their jaw sneezing, I mean good grief......

Broken jaw? please. Mat Latos would like to one up you.

 

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/San-Diego-Padres-pitcher-Mat-Latos-on-DL-for-aborted-sneeze-071610

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Well so far the Yankees seems to be doing well despite the slow start. Haffner seems to be our Ibanez with the hr to give the team the lead and later win.

Smh at the snowed out games for the Mets. If I had it my way the only games played in the north right now would be places with a retractable roof or a dome. Why couldn't they play one of those Twins game from the Metrodome? Seems better than to make it up sometime later in the year. Basically in the beginning and end of the season, all games should be played in the south and the middle of the season they are played in the north. That way there would be none of this snowed out shit.

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I'm sure the majority of you don't keep up with west coast sports, but even if you haven't you can't deny the Los Angeles Dodgers haven't been doing anywhere near their best. They've been lagging it these first few games, and the brawl between Zack Greinke and Carlos Quentin sure didn't help matters.

 

Regardless, I know it's going to be interesting this next month.

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Well so far the Yankees seems to be doing well despite the slow start. Haffner seems to be our Ibanez with the hr to give the team the lead and later win.

Smh at the snowed out games for the Mets. If I had it my way the only games played in the north right now would be places with a retractable roof or a dome. Why couldn't they play one of those Twins game from the Metrodome? Seems better than to make it up sometime later in the year. Basically in the beginning and end of the season, all games should be played in the south and the middle of the season they are played in the north. That way there would be none of this snowed out shit.

I read somewhere that the Twins refuse to ever play a game at the Metrodome again. Seems short-sighted to me but that's their stance and obviously MLB backs them up. It's supposed to be demolished next year but the Twins should have used it this week. Seems like the Mets schedule has been screwed up royally so far. I feel sorry for the person who handles the Mets travel arrangements.

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I read somewhere that the Twins refuse to ever play a game at the Metrodome again. Seems short-sighted to me but that's their stance and obviously MLB backs them up. It's supposed to be demolished next year but the Twins should have used it this week. Seems like the Mets schedule has been screwed up royally so far. I feel sorry for the person who handles the Mets travel arrangements.

So the Minnesota Vikings are going to get a new stadium? I thought the Metrodome was for them only.

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I think that the person that handed out the schedule for the mets should be fired for this.

 

As for the metrodome, the Vikings aren't playing now. That is why they should have made the exception to play that one game there. It is also foolish to have built target field as an open aired stadium without a retractable roof.

 

I think the Vikings are getting a new stadium, which doesn't surprise me given that infamous snow collapse. They will play from a college football stadium till the new one is built. Metrodome is going to be demolished. * going by the wiki article.

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That injury of Latos' says more about him than it does about my comment..... Same deal with Sosa when he blew out his back sneezing....

 

Well so far the Yankees seems to be doing well despite the slow start. Haffner seems to be our Ibanez with the hr to give the team the lead and later win.

Smh at the snowed out games for the Mets. If I had it my way the only games played in the north right now would be places with a retractable roof or a dome. Why couldn't they play one of those Twins game from the Metrodome? Seems better than to make it up sometime later in the year. Basically in the beginning and end of the season, all games should be played in the south and the middle of the season they are played in the north. That way there would be none of this snowed out shit.

That's all Hafner was on the Indians anyway - a pull hitter w/ pop in his bat..... The older he got, he became a dead pull hitter....

When they signed the guy, I immediately knew what the deal was.... The Vernon Wells pickup though is one I don't really understand; esp. for 13 mil...

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Guest Charles

I think that the person that handed out the schedule for the mets should be fired for this.

 

As for the metrodome, the Vikings aren't playing now. That is why they should have made the exception to play that one game there. It is also foolish to have built target field as an open aired stadium without a retractable roof.

 

I think the Vikings are getting a new stadium, which doesn't surprise me given that infamous snow collapse. They will play from a college football stadium till the new one is built. Metrodome is going to be demolished. * going by the wiki article.

The Metrodome's showing its age, even as a football stadium. Home field advantage, however, is phenomenal for the Vikings -- but the stadium was the absolutely worst thing for the Twins - a baseball stadium isn't supposed to be like that. Obviously the Vikings will get their better stadium, but there's a certain character to the Metrodome that the Trop (down in Tampa) doesn't have.

 

Regarding Target Field, I'm usually w/ you on MLB thoughts, but gotta disagree with you this time -- I think it was a great move for the Twins. It's a beautiful ballpark, and it's always better than a shared park. Yeah, it'll probably see it's share of snowouts in the future especially in April, but honestly it shouldn't be too big of a problem. It brings its own distinct character to MLB, which is obviously a plus. In addition, when the Twins become relevant again, a playoff game held at Target Field at night under a light snowfall should be a spectacular scene.

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That's all Hafner was on the Indians anyway - a pull hitter w/ pop in his bat..... The older he got, he became a dead pull hitter....

When they signed the guy, I immediately knew what the deal was.... The Vernon Wells pickup though is one I don't really understand; esp. for 13 mil...

 

The Angels casted Vernon off for something on the Mcdonald's dollar menu basiclly

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