Why?

• The Yankees let Eric Chavez go to the Diamondbacks for $3 million - petty cash for the Yankees; and now
• Poor Joe Girardi is now so desperate for a lefty hitter on the bench that he is auditioning Dan Johnson at third base. 

It blew my mind to read the latter. Dan Johnson has played a total of 43 innings at third base in his career. And the fact that he has 291 PAs since 2007 tells you how the professionals that construct rosters evaluate Johnson's batting skills.

To give Johnson credit, he has hit some clutch HRs in his career. But it just makes me think of Enrique Wilson. He destroyed Pedro Martinez to the point where it was comical, but overall was an awful hitter.

Yankees Lineup vs. the Blue Jay Lefties

It's well known that the Yankees have a weakness against left-handed pitching. This could especially be a problem against the Blue Jays, against whom the Yankees play 19 games - 12% of the schedule. Since the Jays appear to be a serious contender for the AL East, this could prove significant in a close race.

The Jays are very well-stocked in lefty pitching. The following table shows the 2013 Marcels projections for the top 13 pitchers on Toronto's depth chart, sorted by throwing hand:

Pitcher	Throws	IP	ERA	FIP	WHIP	SO/9	SO/BB	Reliability
Buehrle, Mark	L	182	3.96	4.3	1.28	5.5	2.61	81%
Romero, Ricky	L	173	4.27	4.51	1.376	7.1	1.83	81%
Happ, J.A.	L	145	4.84	4.45	1.421	8.1	2.13	75%
Oliver, Darren	L	58	3.26	3.55	1.224	7.8	2.94	53%
Perez, Luis	L	54	4.17	4.09	1.352	7.8	2.35	48%
Dickey, R.A.	R	197	3.34	3.89	1.193	7.2	3.08	81%
Johnson, Josh	R	162	3.5	3.42	1.228	7.9	2.73	75%
Morrow, Brandon	R	140	3.99	3.70	1.236	9.2	2.86	75%
Lincoln, Brad	R	81	4.33	4.38	1.296	7.6	2.72	59%
Rogers, Esmil	R	78	5.19	4.24	1.5	8.2	2.29	65%
Janssen, Casey	R	62	3.34	3.68	1.161	8.4	3.41	55%
Delabar, Steve	R	59	3.97	4.24	1.22	9.6	2.86	42%
Santos, Sergio	R	34	3.97	3.82	1.324	9.5	2.57	41%
Total	--	1425	4.28	4.05	1.291	7.7	2.50	---

The Jays will most likely be throwing 2 lefty starters; Happ appears slated for a bullpen-spot starter role. The Jays will also be throwing a couple other good lefties, Oliver and Perez, out of the bullpen. Overall, 43% of the innings projected to be thrown by these guys will be from lefties; by comparison, in MLB last year, 30% of innings were thrown by lefties.

The Yankees are ill-equipped to match up, on paper anyway. Last year the Yankees struggled against lefties - here are their team batting splits:

Hand	PA	BA	OBP	SLG %	GPA	BA Plus	OBP Plus	SLG % Plus	GPA Plus
L	1842	.240	.311	.393	.238	95	97	97	97
R	4225	.258	.322	.451	.258	101	101	110	105

As the Plus stats indicate, the Yanks were below average against lefty pitching, above average against righties. And the Yanks are likely to do worse against lefties in 2013, for a few reasons:

• In the off-season, the Yankees lost 2 key right bats - Russell Martin and switch-hitting Nick Swisher. Their likely replacements - Cervelli, Stewart, Romine, Rivera, Diaz - do not exactly inspire confidence.
• The front office did pick up Youkilis; however, that was to plug the hole A-Rod's hip injury created, so that's more or less a wash. 
• Everyone else got a year older.

So as things stand, you could see the Yankees throwing a lineup like this against lefties:

1. Jeter
2. Nunez
3. Cano
4. Teixeira
5. Youkilis
6. Rivera/Diaz
7. Granderson
8. Suzuki/Gardner
9. Cervelli/Stewart/Romine

That has potential to be a poor lineup against lefties - moreso since Granderson's lefty-on-lefty skills seriously regressed last season. What's worse, this may be the best-case scenario - if Rivera or Diaz are washed up, and Nunez can't field, then the lineup against lefties could include Jayson Nix and 3 left-handed outfielders.


Still, hope spring eternal, especially as spring approaches. The following list described some items Yankee fans can hope for in this respect - if a few of these materialize, the lineup against lefties may not be as poor as I fear:

• Granderson hits like he did against lefties in 2011, as opposed to how poorly he's hit them in his career.
• Ronnier Mustelier hits his way into the lineup in spring training. He's hit well in his minor league career, and strikes me as the Yankees most major-league-ready hitting prospect.
• Nunez can play shortstop competently and allow Jeter to DH without inflicting Jayson Nix upon us.
• Rivera or Diaz surprises (me anyway) with some hitting competence against lefties.
• A-Rod returns in good form. after the all-star break.

I'm not confident in most of these items; as a whole, the Yankees off-season strategy here strikes me as more of a wish than a plan.

Finally, let's put this in context - I do not mean to make too much of appearances against Blue Jay lefties. The Jays' best starters, Dickey and Josh Johnson, are likely to be righties, and the Yankee regular lineup against righties also went downhill this off-season. Other teams will also have an opportunity to load up on lefties. But I just found it interesting to note that the Yankees are particularly weak against an area where the Blue Jays are strong.

Doubts Raised About Alleged A-Rod Scandal

The New York Times published an article in which a couple of business associates of Anthony Bosch, the owner of the clinic at the center of the A-Rod PED allegations, express doubts about the whole story.

For example, the Times reports that one of these associates, Jorge Jaen, apparently said "would not be surprised to learn that Bosch had embellished his patient notes to lure an investor to his clinic".

The Times story of course does not prove anything; Bosch's associates could be wrong about him. However, it obviously is important information to anyone interested in gauging whether the allegations are true.

If this is the first time you've read about these doubts, it is because the hack "journalists" who have been having a field day with this scandal have omitted telling you about this part of the story. For example, I checked out the New York Daily News Yankees page, and of course there's not a single article with a headline referring to doubts.

This omission is not surprising. Most members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America are participants in a journalistic business model that attempts to generate revenue by exploiting scandal. A corollary of this business model is that reporting information that casts doubt on a scandal is merely bad business.

A-Rod Inspires Verducci To New Levels of Nonsense

Last Tuesday, Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci graced us with the following sober, reasonable assessment of the A-Rod allegations' impact upon the Yankees:

   "[W]ith this story, the franchise and to 2009 championship are smeared by Rodriguez's connection to PEDs."
 
I must be a bad man, because I have looked into my heart and found that even if these allegations prove true, I'm always going to feel a thrill whenever I envision Robinson Cano closing out the 2009 season by fielding a meek ground ball induced by Mariano Rivera. Or Hideki Matsui's exploits. Or A-Rod doubling to left to put the Yankees up 3-1 in the World Series. Etc. It was awesome.

But what I wanted to draw attention to is another Verducci comment related to 2009, which he wrote a week later:

     "A discrepancy in dates assigned to a notebook labeled 2009. The notations refer to Feb. 7, 14 and 28 as falling on Mondays -- which was true in 2011, not 2009. 

    "The notes in the 2009 book list "Alex Rod" and Yuri Sucart under "Mon./Feb. 14." It was on Feb. 5, 2009 that Selena Roberts of Sports Illustrated confronted Rodriguez while training in Miami about information that he flunked his 2003 survey test for the steroid Primobolan. The story... was posted Feb. 7, 2009, a Saturday -- making it more likely the "Mon./Feb. 14" notation refers to 2011"

This weird juggling of dates gave me an unpleasant sense of cognitive dissonance - which I recovered from once I remembered that this is just crap from Sports Illustrated, a magazine I have detested from the first very time I came across its slick, superficial articles in a dentist's office as a child.

Anyway, there are a few things here worth questioning:

• If the date on the notebook is not 2009, then if Verducci deals honestly with his readers, shouldn't he at least be questioning whether he prematurely tried to taint the 2009 Yankees?
• If the details in these documents are supposed to be so damning, isn't it troubling that the dates are wrong? Shouldn't that be a rather clear signal that we should not be so hasty in coming to conclusions about handwritten entries in unauthenticated documents? 
• Isn't it weird and telling that the sole conclusion Verducci draws from the dates being wrong is that they would be the correct dates if they had occurred in some other year!?

Now I am not saying A-Rod is innocent. Anyone who has a firm opinion right now, before the investigators share their finding, is just being a fool. Which also explains why the only issue of Sports Illustrated that is ever worth "reading" is the swimsuit issue.