Big lessons to take from Small memories

A few weeks back, I was watching coverage of Old-Timers Day at work when Michael Kay introduced Aaron Small to a generous ovation. My colleague — a Red Sox fan and staunch Yankee hater — started cackling wildly then made a condescending remark about Old-Timers Day not being what it used to be in the Bronx.

In a way, he was right. With the exception of Reggie, Yogi and Whitey, all the team's icons of yesteryear have joined The Boss at that big ballyard in the sky. (The only other living Yankee great who can electrify the Stadium happens to be trapped in baseball Siberia as manager of the Dodgers. Ugh.)

This has created a transitional period for Old-Timers Day, a period that will abruptly end when Andy Pettitte's Core Four pals join him in retirement, grow out the necessary guts and double chins and begin attending the event themselves.

As for my Red Sox fan colleague, I gently reminded him that Ted Williams has been turned into a RoboCop security guard in Scottsdale, Ariz. We didn't talk much the rest of that day.

But back to Small.

Before my Teddy Ballgame frozen-head riff, I explained that Small is one of those guys that Yankees fans will always remember fondly. For whatever reason, we love referencing mediocre players from the past — the likes of Andy Stankiewicz, Horace Clark, and Homer Bush get brought up in bars and around T.V. sets far more than logic would dictate.

Small, of course, was a savior of the 2005 Yankees in much the same way Bartolo Colon has rescued the current Yankees. Calling Small a journeyman is a slight to journeymen: The right-hander played for more than 20 teams at various levels before getting called up to the Yankees in July 2005. Incredibly, he proceeded to go 10-0 in 15 games (nine starts), helping to dig New York out of a deep early hole to win the American League East.

That Yankees team entered the postseason riding high ... only to be eliminated in five games by the Anaheim California Angels of Los Angeles County Angels in the ALDS. Small entered Game 3 in relief and took his only loss of the season.

There could be a lesson to be learned there for this year's Yankees, as the '05 and '11 teams share similar DNA strands. If Colon is Small, then Freddy Garcia is Shawn Chacon, another drifter who became a stalwart in the back end of the rotation. Both team's had a veteran offensive core with most key players in their 30s. Both leaned on their aces (CC Sabathia and Randy Johnson) in an excessive way. Both had veteran No. 2 guys (Mike Mussina and A.J. Burnett) who struggled to be consistent on a start-by-start basis.

The great Sabathia over a decaying Big Unit is the biggest advantage the current Yankees enjoy, though this team also has substantially inferior versions of Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada ... not to mention a less-sturdy edition of Mariano Rivera.

Brian Cashman should remember that 2005 team as the trade deadline approaches this season. Given the landscape of the AL this season, it's likely the Yankees will win the 93 or so games necessary to advance. But are they built for the postseason?

There are certainly question marks: Can Rafael Soriano be counted on to be productive once he returns? Is Boone Logan really going to be depended on in big spots? Should we assume Phil Hughes can get back to being Phil Hughes? How about that veteran Yankee lineup? Is A-Rod expected to be good-as-new once he returns from knee surgery? Is Derek Jeter going to be suddenly rejuvenated by 3,000 as so many people seem to think?

The Yankees have put together a half-season worthy of our respect, especially in light of the injury issues they've managed to overcome. That said, it's hard to shake the feeling that this is merely a very good team masquerading as a great one. Cashman shouldn't let a cushion in July dictate whether the team should be improved for October.

Dan Hanzus can be reached at dhanzus@gmail.com or on Twitter @danhanzus.

Jeter gets closer, Yanks sleepwalk into second place

During Casey Kotchman's at-bat in the top of the seventh on Thursday, Yankee Stadium fell so silent, I wondered if 47,787 people had simultaneously dozed off.

I'm (almost) serious about this. If you have this game on your DVR, listen for yourself. It was so strangely calm I was surprised when Michael Kay or John Flaherty didn't make reference to it.

There are a few possible explanations for this. We'll start with the game itself, a 5-1 stinker in which the Yankees seemed only marginally invested. Then there were the paid customers, who likely featured many more parachute fans than usual with the Derek Jeter hoopla surrounding the team.

Ah yes ... the Derek Jeter hoopla. The captain had another hit tonight, going 1-for-5 to move within two of 3,000. That march toward the milestone has certainly altered the fan experience of watching the team, which begs the question: Is it also having an effect on the Yankees as a unit?

Regardless of who or what's to blame, the Yankees' sudden funk — they've followed seven straight wins with four losses in five games — has dropped them out of first place after the Red Sox beat up on Baltimore.

Just as Justin Masterson had silenced their bats in the finale in Cleveland on Wednesday, the Yankees had no answers for Rays right-hander Jeff Niemann on Thursday. He allowed just one run on six hits over 7 1/3 innings, escaping early trouble before locking into cruise control.

Bartolo Colon, meanwhile, looked much more like the pitcher most Yankees fans expected him to be when he was signed off the scrap heap in January. After a stellar four-start run in which he compiled four wins and an ERA of 1.00, Colon's two-seamer deserted him against the Rays in a bad way. Stripped of his most effective pitch, Colon had to lean on his less-than-stellar off-speed assortment.

It was not a recipe for success, as the 38-year-old's final line told the story: 5.2 IP, 5 ER, 10 H, 4 BB, 1 K, 2 HR.

Colon certainly deserves a pass here, considering his immense contribution this season. But after every clunker, there's always the lingering concern that big Bartolo is ready to turn back into a big pumpkin.

Stray observations:

• Hector Noesi is alive! Someone call his family and deliver the incredible news!

• Johnny Damon is 37 years old. I love the guy, but at some point the mohawk hairstyle needs to be put to rest. C'mon, Dad.

• We had both a Tino Martinez and a Gerald "Ice" Williams sighting in the Derek Jeter Box.
  

• Quick rant: I know some people say that batting average is dead, but to me, Mark Teixeira's .241 average accurately reflects that he's no longer a complete hitter. The monster run production is great, but are we all comfortable with his transformation into a rich man's Jessie Barfield? Not me.

• Alex Rodriguez (0-for-4) continues his career-worst home run drought. As Flaherty alluded to after A-Rod hobbled to first during a groundout, wouldn't it make some sense for him to rest his knee (and hips and shoulder) during the All-Star break?

• Robinson Cano had two hits, including his 15th homer, to extend his hitting streak to 11 games. He's up to .297.

• Kyle Farnsworth is one of the best closers in baseball. We're in the Twilight Zone.

Dan Hanzus can be reached at dhanzus@gmail.com or on Twitter @danhanzus.

With CC as foundation, Yanks on good footing

The Yankees are on pace to win 100 games this season. If you're a student of the game, and looked at what was on paper on March 31, this is fairly remarkable.

(OK, this is the Yankees, an organization that spends more freely than 1992 MC Hammer at a gold-plated bathroom fixture convention. Just play along.)

Several things had to go right for the Yankees to be in this position a week before the All-Star break, and nearly all of them resided in the starting pitching department:

1) Back end of rotation: After Andy Pettitte walked, Cliff Lee got cold feet, and Phil Hughes broke down, Brian Cashman had to hit on some bargain basement alternatives to fill out the rotation. He did just that with the troika of veterans Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia along with newbie Ivan Nova, who have combined to go 21-13 with a 3.37 ERA over 270 innings. I don't care if you're Buster Olney, Bill James, or a sports almanac-toting Biff in Back To The Future II, there's no way anybody could've predicted this.

2) Burnett bounce back: If the rotation had any chance of forming a cohesive unit, A.J. Burnett needed to rebound from a disasterous 2010 in which he may have single-handedly cost the Yankees from returning to the World Series. Burnett has hardly been great (8-7, 4.12 ERA over 113 2/3 innings), but he's far from the trainwreck liability he was last year ... at least for now. If nothing else, he's been consistent, posting ERAs of 3.93, 4.06, and 4.15 in the first three months of the season. He's on pace for right around 15 wins, which is basically the most you could ask from him.

And last but certainly not least ...

3) The Big Man had to be The Big Man

Given all the obstacles the Yankees faced, CC Sabathia had to deliver a season that bordered on the best of his career. Of course, he's done just that. After throwing seven more scoreless innings in a win over the Indians last night, Carsten Charles now stands at 12-4 with a 2.90 ERA over 136 2/3 innings. He might not be an All-Star (dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb), but Sabathia is the closest you can get to a sure thing in baseball right now.

The standard-bearer for all Yankee pitching seasons is Ron Guidry in 1978. The Gator went 25-3 with a 1.74 ERA over a whopping 273 2/3 innings that year, winning the Cy Young unanimously and leading the Yankees to their 22nd title. He finished with nine shutouts and struck out 248. I had less dominating seasons playing MVP Baseball 2005 on my old PS2. Aces such as Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez have posted similarly impressive seasons in subsequent years, but I'll take Guidry's '78 campaign as the best of the past 35 years.

Sabathia won't match the dizzying heights Guidry reached in the disco days, but he's every bit as important to this Yankees team as Guidry was to his. Translation? Cashman might as well rip up CC's contract right now. The Big Man has earned a raise.

Dan Hanzus can be reached at dhanzus@gmail.com or on Twitter @danhanzus.

The cruel nature of Citi Field

If Alex Rodriguez finishes with 699 homers , or 713, or 761, I will always remember the majestic drive he hit on July 1, 2011.

Though I wasn't listening to the radio broadcast, I'm assuming John Sterling informed his listeners that the ball was high ... it was far ... it was gone. And dear old John would be right ... mostly. Because while the blast was indeed high, and quite far, it was not gone, not at cavernous Citi Field.

The ball traveled roughly 400 feet before striking about 13-feet up a 16-foot wall in left-center field. A glamorous home run was relegated to unsexy double status. And back in Miami, A-Rod's centaur portrait shed an oily tear.

You can always tell when A-Rod knows he got all of a pitch. He pauses his follow through and tracks the flight, opening up his hips so that he's almost completely facing the pitcher he just beat. If he's in a particularly dick-ish mood — and let's admit it, this is often — he'll take a quick glance into his own dugout as he flips the bat and starts his trot.

Rodriguez did these things in his final at-bat last night. And yet we wake up this beautiful morning and A-Rod is still sitting on 13 homers. Huh?

I suppose these are things you get worked up about when your team is on a winning streak. And we can't go on without mentioning that A-Rod's home field, Yankee Stadium III, has been very kind to the third baseman and many of his teammates.

But Friday's double. I mean, wow.

I mentioned in yesterday's recap that the Mets will perennially struggle to sign elite power hitters if they don't alter their dimensions at some point. If they were to ask me what I would do — which would be weird, but if they did — the first thing I'd say was to cut the height of the 16-foot wall that runs from left to center in half.

This move wouldn't be unprecedented. Amazingly, the center-field wall also used to be 16-feet before they mercifully lowered it prior to last season (likely following a particularly commendable David Wright hunger strike.)

It's kind of funny when you think about it. Two hugely expensive big-league ballparks open in the same year, one many say is too big, and one many say is too small. Makes you wonder if there's a field somewhere in the tri-state area that got it just right, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" style.

If it's out there, I'm guessing Kevin Costner owns it. If you build it, Jason Bay will come.

Onto the links ...

• A-Rod is being linked to the high-stakes poker ring that included Spider-Man, the "I'm the king of the world!" Titanic guy, and Will Hunting. This makes sense.
• Derek Jeter is getting closer.
• Eduardo Nunez had a night to remember in the Subway Series opener.
• The Yankees are rolling, but are they vulnerable?
• In case you missed it, A-Rod called Jose Reyes the "world's greatest player." Brian Cashman said it's actually Robbie Cano, don't you know?
• Nearly a year after his death, The Boss is gone but not forgotten.

Until next time, hang onto the roof ...

Dan Hanzus can be reached at dhanzus@gmail.com or on Twitter @danhanzus.

Yanks Keep Rolling in Subway Opener, Top Mets 5-1

When you're playing good baseball, this is how you build winning streaks.

It's not always going to be flashy, there won't always be tape-measure blasts or 13-strikeout efforts. Sometimes you just grind it out, which is exactly what the Yankees did in a 5-1 win over the Mets in the opener at Citi Field on Friday night.

The Yankees have now won six straight. They are 15-4 since being swept at home by the Red Sox last month.

It might not go down as the most memorable game in Subway Series history, but that doesn't matter to the Yankees, who maintain their 2.5-game lead in the AL East.

The Yankees jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first inning and stayed ahead the rest of the way. Mark Teixeira continued to be a monster run-producer, driving in two runs with a double of losing pitcher Jonathan Niese. Robinson Cano drove in Teixeira with another double.

Ivan Nova wasn't particularly sharp, but he pitched effectively with men on base to pick up his eighth win of the season. He allowed one run on seven hits in five innings, throwing 89 pitches.

He could've went deeper, but Joe Girardi lifted the right-hander for pinch-hitter Jorge Posada in a bases-loaded situation in the top of the sixth (Posada struck out). Girardi then used six different pitchers to take the Yankees home, including the downright baffling decision to summon Mariano Rivera in a non-save situation in the ninth.

(You cannot tell me The Binder said that was the right move.)

The most memorable moment in the game occurred in the seventh inning. With the Yankees leading 3-1, Jose Reyes (2-for-5, .352) led off the frame with a single off Cory Wade. Justin Turner followed with a flyball to deep center that was caught by Curtis Granderson. Reyes tagged and slid safely into second, and when Eduardo Nunez didn't field the relay cleanly, Reyes took off for third. Nunez's strong throw beat Reyes to the bag and Rodriguez tagged out Reyes to complete a double play.

At least according to home-plate umpire Jerry Layne, who had rotated over to the bag to make the call. Replays were inconclusive, though the SNY crew were absolutely certain Reyes had evaded the tag. (I think Keith Hernandez's head exploded at one point.) It would be the last time the Mets threatened in the game.

The seven Yankees pitchers allowed 10 hits, but the Mets were never able to get a big hit when it counted, dropping their record back to .500 at 41-41 in the process. The Yankees are now 49-31, which trails only the Philadelphia Phillies for the best record in baseball.

Stray observations:

• That high wall in left-center field at Citi Field is a joke. A-Rod hit an absolute bomb in the ninth inning that would've been a homer in any other park in the league. Instead, he had to settle for an RBI double. The Mets will have difficulty signing power hitters for generations unless they make changes to the dimensions.
• Nunez might be a mess defensively, but the young man can hit. The shortstop had his best day as a pro, going 4-for-4 to bump his average from .234 to .261.
• The game marked the largest crowd in Citi Field history with 42,020 paid customers. This is why interleague play will never disappear.
• Speaking of attendance, according to an unscientific estimate by WFAN mid-day guy and Met die hard Evan Roberts, the crowd was only 55/45 in favor of the Mets.
• "That's three." -- A-Rod to Teixeira after the game. Tex saved A-Rod three errors on low throws tonight. To A-Rod's credit, he made a couple of great throws as well. Busy night at the hot corner.
  
• Just for fun, here are the Yankees' record through July 1 the past five years — 2010: 48-30; 2009: 45-32; 2008: 44-40; 2007: 38-41; 2006: 45-33.

Dan Hanzus can be reached at dhanzus@gmail.com or on Twitter @danhanzus.

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Why Brian Cashman should walk

Over the weekend, Buster Olney wrote a blog titled, "Why Cashman Could Walk," which included industry chatter about the general manager's uncertain future with the Yankees.

"I think maybe he's finally had it," said one GM. "That's a job that will take a lot out of you."

If this all sounds familiar, it's because we've been down this road before. Every three years, Cashman's contract runs out and every three years the 43-year-old ultimately returns to the only baseball home he's ever known. Cyclically-speaking, it's like the Olympics of Yankee beat reporting.

Quoted by Olney, Cashman didn't sound like a man itching to skip town, either.

"I'm not looking to leave. I'm not looking to go anywhere. I firmly believe this will be the best job I'll ever have."

There will always be the debate in Yankees Universe of how good Cashman actually is at his job. Is he the ultimate company man, a hard-working, well-connected executive responsible for New York's annual postseason appearances? Or is he a below-average talent evaluator who can sweep his many mistakes under the rug thanks to the Yankees' largess?

Carl Pavano aside, I tend to fall in the former camp, though I can certainly understand the other end of the argument.

And that's really the problem with Cashman's job, isn't it? No matter how well he does — and let's not get it twisted, the signings and subsequent success of Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia have saved this Yankees season — there will always be the detractors who say he's just a privileged rich kid who gets to use daddy's credit card.

Cashman has both the hardest and easiest job of any general manager in sports. It just depends on who you ask.

You have to wonder if the murkiness that surrounds his professional reputation gnaws at Cashman. The man certainly has an ego, no longer the wallflower who stayed in the distance during clubhouse controversies of the past. From the messy Derek Jeter negotiations to the fallout from the Rafael Soriano press conference to his blunt honesty when Jorge Posada benched himself, Cashman has become the unlikely source of some of the juiciest back-page headlines in New York.

Taking that healthy sense of self-worth into account, wouldn't it make sense for him to try to prove himself in a new market?

Think about it. Say Cashman walks after this year and catches on somewhere like Kansas City or Seattle or San Diego. If he built any of those franchises into winners, wouldn't he be completely vindicated? All those GM rankings lists you see will finally have to bump him to the top of the list, right?

Meanwhile, the bill is coming due on this veteran Yankees team, as the next five years will be the most difficult in terms of transition since Mickey and Whitey got old in the mid-60s. Does Cashman want any part of that dirty work?

"I don't think he has any idea how different his life would be if he wasn't general manager of the Yankees," one high-ranking executive said.

High-ranking executive guy is right. Cashman doesn't know anything about anything other than the Yankees. Still young, and undoubtedly in demand, the time might be right for Cash to go on a new adventure.

Dan Hanzus can be reached at dhanzus@gmail.com or on Twitter @danhanzus.