• Percentage results have been added, both actual and public only
• Total number of votes cast by each voter has been added
• I tried to make it look a little less ugly, but didn’t really succeed.

The actual results and public ballot results were pretty close in most cases, which is nice. There were some exceptions, of course.

• Lots of people who don’t make their ballots public love Don Mattingly. He got 17.8% of the total vote but just under 10% from the public ballots.
• Jack Morris was on 58.7% of public ballots, and 66.7% total ballots.
• Tim Raines was the opposite of Morris. He was on 57.14% of public ballots and 48.7% total ballots.

Tim Raines received 37.5% of the total vote last year, so I was really happy to see him gain 10%. It means he will probably hang on through the crazy ballot time coming up and has a real chance to get voted in by the writers at some point.

You can check out the final version of everything here. If work stops kicking my ass I’ll see if I can figure out anything fun to do with it in the next few days.

Here’s the link to the tracker itself — I’ll be putting up a link for it in the header as well in case this post gets buried.

As a warning, if you tag along on Twitter I post a lot about my cats and other non-baseball stuff.

1. Scrubbed down litterboxes. Just merely changing the litter was not enough to distract me so I went the extra yard and scrubbed them down. When I finished, Rafael Soriano had recorded what I believe was his second 1-2-3 inning of the year.
2. Installed and updated custom firmware on my PSP. David Robertson is one of the best relief pitchers in MLB this year but he was due to face some of the best hitters in MLB this year and has a tendency to walk people in bunches if his control isn’t just right. There was only one way to keep my stomach intact: Not watching the inning. When I checked back in the inning was over and the Yankees were still in the lead though I still don’t know how it all went down, exactly. I can, however, play ISOs of my PSP games instead of listening to the WHIRRWHIRRWHIRR of the stupid UMD drive once again.
3. Cleaned the Hellish area around my computer up a bit. The bottom of the 9th was the least concerning of all innings, even with a Mariano in decline. I knew that if he retired Ortiz there wasn’t much to worry about. Not to belittle the three guys following him, but we’re talking about Mariano here. So I was able sort of to watch this half inning. It was a good inning.

A bunch of pigeons were hanging around in Center Field for the first couple of innings.

The Mariners vs CC Sabathia: Nope

Bye-bye tarp

Fries left behind in the rain. Soggy but perhaps still edible?

I’ve seen Betances a few times now, and this was the worst I’ve seen him. His secondary stuff, particularly his curveball, looked great and he got a ton of swing and misses on everything but he had a lot of problems locating his pitches. Because of his stuff, he wasn’t all that hittable but a lot of the time he was so far off the plate that nobody was going to swing. On a positive note, what I liked other than the whiffs was that he was able to come back out after a rough inning in the fourth (a HBP, a walk and a few singles) and rebound to have a mostly uneventful fifth, striking out two.

If you haven’t seen him before, here is some video of Betances’ pitching motions from warming up before the start of an inning:

Austine Romine got knocked around in a collision at homeplate a few days ago and nobody is quite sure what is going on with him, so he was not in the lineup. That leaves Trenton kinda boring from a prospecting point of view outside of Corban Joseph. I am admittedly a fan of Joseph, and in the time I’ve seen him he’s improved his defense at second and he holds his own at the plate. He’s not an outstanding prospect but he has the chance to be a solid player, I think. Especially if he can stick at second base. Here’s a picture of him at the plate for your enjoyment.

While watching minor league shortstops is a barf party most of the time every now and then someone like Adeiny Hechavarria comes along and gives you something pleasant to watch. When I saw Hechavarria last year, he was impressive but sometimes went for splashy plays and made a few mistakes. Last night he showed great range on both popups and groundballs, and was completely on in the field. His bat looked as bad as it did the last time I saw him, but I do think that he’ll get every shot to start in the majors with the hope that his bat is below average and not outright horrible.

As fun as it was to listen to impatient people whine about Betances the real highlight of the game was Sal “Looks like a guy who knows a guy” Fasano. He was working as the 3B coach on top of his managerial duties for New Hampshire and even put on a catcher’s mask and warmed up a pitcher between innings.

While coming out to give the umpire the lineup card he took the time to knock out the Thunder mascots. Very impressive.

DeAngelo Mack clearly knew I was in attendance and went 4-4 at the plate so that was nice. As I mentioned earlier I neglected to actually take any pictures but he’s been holding his own at the plate so I think that even after Melky Mesa comes off the DL they’ll find space for him on the roster so I’ll get to see him again this year.

Other than that, not much to report about the game. It went extra innings so I got a coupon for WaWa coffee I intend to use at some point before it expires and we harassed Travis D’Arnaud into talking to us but that’s all I have to report.

Here’s the rest of my set from the game if you want to look at some bad pictures:

Trenton Thunder 06-04-2011

I made a lot of jokes that if/when Andy retired that I’d cry and do my best Greek mourner impression and be generally inconsolable. It seems I got that out of my system when he left the Yankees for Houston after 2003, however, because while I felt a little tinge of sadness it was nothing over the top. My in my head response was “Goddammit” and then I got caught in a coughing fit and made a face and sent some kind of swear out over my Twitter account I think.

And then, strangely, the next thing that popped into my head was “Who is Alex [Rodriguez] going to talk to now?” The last few seasons of watching Alex run and immediately find Andy for hugs, talks, whatever have been really amusing and I’m sad that there won’t be any of that to watch out for during not very exciting games anymore.

I first remember seeing Andy pitch at a game in 1995 that I went to with my mom’s best friend. It was a Friday night and we were missing the X-Files to attend a game where the Yankees couldn’t get anything off Chuck Finley which was always aggravating. I didn’t really know who Andy was then, when we got home and my mom asked who pitched for the Yankees I told her “some guy with too many ts in his name”. I don’t have a path that I can trace from that moment to when Andy became my favorite baseball player but it happened at some point. I wish it was some kind of revelation I could relate that sounds cool and interesting but I’ve really got nothing to tell.

However it happened, though, I really loved Andy beyond the normal “I like watching this baseball player, he is good at his job” feelings. I got really nervous when he was pitching with runners on base, and I was known to cover my face with a cat/book/pillow when he was working “into and out of trouble”. It was very stressful–not just because of how I felt about him but because of his mound mannerisms. When a player you are very fond of is yelling at himself on the mound as he pitches it’s hard to stay calm. Obviously it usually worked for him (if it hadn’t he would have been branded with the HEADCASE label rather quickly) but Jesus it was nerve wracking to watch.

There was a lot of Hall of Fame and number retirement rumblings from fans pretty much as soon as the word got out that Andy was retiring so I also wanted to get this out of the way: I don’t think he really fits the criteria for either. I think that a lot of why Yankees fans want these things to happen is because of the love they feel for Andy, and really want to see him honored and not forgotten. I completely understand that, and it’s a shame that the Yankees do not have a traditional team Hall of Fame because he certainly belongs there. Nobody is going to forget about Andy, though, so I don’t get that fear. There are simply too many people that love him.

I think Andy should get a plaque in Monument Park like Allie Reynolds, and an Andy Pettitte day, and come to every Old Timer’s Day until he can no longer make it because he had a very good career and was very important to the teams he was on…but I just don’t see that jump to number retirement and the Hall. Maybe I view them a little differently, but when the Yankees eventually give 46 to someone new it won’t bother me. Perhaps it’ll even go to a young LHP who loved Andy, I always like when things like that happen.

The Staten Island Yankees get a special award for accomplishing the impossible and being even more aggravating about season ticket renewals than their big brother in the Bronx. They use a system that they call “Live Seating”. What Live Seating does is throw out any seniority and logical way of doing things and instructs everyone to call the ticket office at the same time. First come, first serve!

How this winds up working is that their phones are busy the whole day and the ticket system goes down at least once. I’ve never actually gotten through to a person while calling during this process, having to either leave a message to call back or sending an email telling them I can’t get through here are my seat preferences blahblahblah. This means that the process isn’t actually first come first serve and also that it doesn’t really work.

It’s the kind of process, actually, that makes me wonder why anyone thought it was a good idea ever. Even if you only have, say, 500 season ticket and mini plan holders why would you implement something where you instruct them to all call a number at the same time using seating location as the impetus? Just send out a renewal form using the plan people had last year and tell them to call for upgrades or to change plans. Maybe people can—gasp!!!—even keep the same seats two years in a row? I guess whoever makes these decisions is too busy thinking of great ways to market the luxury experience on Staten Island.

The last few years SI did give renewals an option to send in their seating preferences if you couldn’t or didn’t want to participate in the live seating fiasco but this year apparently it’s all done by blocking time out of your day to try and get through to the ticket office. I only have the email they sent people since the renewal materials they tell me were sent never arrived in my mailbox (full disclosure: I don’t believe they actually sent them to me). You do have a full business week to call and take care of things as they are not crazy enough to give people only one day to take care of their tickets.

I just want to give the team money without having to play phone tag. I promise that if it goes nice and easy Monday I will write up another post giving them mega-props.

Joe (New York)

Why is Gary Sanchez so low? What impressed you the most about Banuelos? What is a fair comparison to him?

Klaw (1:21PM)

Sanchez is low? He was 17 in complex ball and has to prove he’ll stay behind the plate (I think he will). Banuelos’s command/feel really impressed me, and now it’s stuff – the Yanks might not consider it but I think he’d appear in the majors in 2011 if he was in most other organizations.

Sanchez ranked at 68 on the list after his first pro year, in which he played only short season ball. This is a testament to his immense upside. The reason I am highlighting this is Law’s belief that Sanchez will stay behind the plate. Law doesn’t play nice when projecting whether a player will stick at catcher so it immediately popped at me and is very nice to see (see his comments on Austin Romine’s receiving skills).

I assume that Sanchez will be headed to Charleston in 2011 even if he only plays half a season there, but I was able to see him during his short stay in the NY-Penn League. He was not the hitting machine there that he was in the GCL—the NYPL has advanced college pitchers out the wazoo—but he didn’t often seem completely overmatched which is in itself a pretty big feat considering his age.

Knowing how this all went down, I felt myself that Pearlman’s piece was a bit disingenuous. Having spoken to both Andy and Matt they didn’t really apologize meekly as he claims, and Pearlman also fails to mention that he found them ranting by doing a namesearch on Twitter (not through replies to his handle) rather than direct contact.

Andy wrote up his side of the story today, which you can read here at his blog, Inside Mr Met’s Head.

–

SI.com columnist Jeff Pearlman is receiving a lot of kudos from around the media today for a new piece he wrote for CNN.com.

Tracking down my online haters

Matthew is a college student from a small suburban town in Missouri. He loves the Kansas City Chiefs and spending Sundays in front of the TV watching football.

Recently, in response to something I wrote on my blog about Jeff Bagwell and the Baseball Hall of Fame, Matt tweeted me a couple of times.

The words were snarky and snide and rude. His final message, however, left an extra special impression: “I got caught up in the anonymity of the internet. I’m sorry and here is a legit post with my criticisms.” Upon opening the pasted link, I was greeted by a nasty pornographic image that would make Sasha Grey vomit into the nearest trash can.

The gist of the column is that Pearlman boldly confronted his online critics, shattering their veil of anonymity and showing them their place, before retreating into a self-congratulatory pat on the back and token call to ramp down the rhetoric. Of course those nerds sitting in their basement hurling insults in the dark would back down at the slightest hint of confrontation. This narrative of a wordsmith conquering internet mudslinging through the sheer civility and gumption could not possibly provide better catnip for journalists (writers who I respect a lot, like Keith Law and Rob Neyer, had favorable reactions). What actually happened to provoke the outbursts in question is a fair bit more complicated than Pearlman lets on.

This story goes back to late December, when Pearlman wrote a series of blog posts decrying Jeff Bagwell’s candidacy for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Here’s a sampling of how it all started off.

Joe blames some of us (and I’m among the us) for speculating that Jeff Bagwell cheating by using PED? Well, what the hell are we supposed to think? A. Have you seen the photographs of a young Jeff Bagwell, first as a prospect in the Boston system, then with the Astros as a pup? He looks, perhaps not coincidentally, like a young Jason Giambi; like a young Barry Bonds; like a young Sammy Sosa; like a young Bret Boone. I know … I know—people gain weight as they get older. And, hey, he lifted! And used natural, over-the-counter supplements! And … enough. I’ve heard enough. Seriously, look at the guy as an in-his-prime Astro. Dude looks like Randy (Macho Man) Savage. And while I can already hear the “Just because he had muscles atop muscles doesn’t mean anything” argument brewing, well, it does—in the context of a sport overrun by cheaters—mean something. In fact, it means a lot.

Pearlman’s argument boils down to the assertion that, in the absence of any direct evidence of Bagwell’s alleged PED usage, he will go ahead and assume Bagwell doped anyway because of circumstantial evidence. Fine writers and bloggers like Joe Posnanski have already done a wonderful job in addressing this argument, so there’s little point in rehashing and lifting their points here, but I think this reasoning is ridiculous to a fault. Not to the point where I would hurl insults, but if I regularly wrote about baseball I probably would have penned my own lengthy rebuttal.

After these posts started to garner a negative response, Jeff Pearlman started searching for his name on Twitter, which is how he first came in contact with one (distant) friend of mine quoted in the piece, who tweeted “jeff pearlman is a fucking retard” (a comment which was not directed at Pearlman’s account). While uncouth, I understand the impulse to take him to account, having ripped Selena Roberts earlier in the week for engaging in the same practice of hurling allegations without any thing resembling solid evidence.

Partial contrition or not, Jeff Pearlman comes out of this story looking worse for the wear, displaying far too thin a skin; especially when compared to the criticism that he regularly levels towards athletes in his work. His critics should not have crossed the line into incivility, and absolutely should not have tricked him into looking at a disgusting internet meme. However at the same time, it’s important to remember that Pearlman’s tormentors did not have a public forum until he gave them one.

They aren’t the professional journalists using media platforms for disparaging a player’s personal reputation. Before ripping these ne’re-do-wells too harshly, step back and consider which side is actually caused the most direct harm to concepts like civility or fairness. Jeff Pearlman is the real villain here, for helping to foster a poisonous discourse in the first place without regard for the same decency he now demands. If Pearlman really wants to strike a blow for intelligent discussion, then he should formally make his case and provide any solid evidence for his claims, or retract them and apologize to Bagwell.

Farnsworth came to the Yankees when I was once again able to attend a large number of games a year after working nights (and having no money anyway) for years. This meant that I got to see him a lot—much, much more than I wanted to for sure. To welcome him back to the AL East here are some of my lasting memories involving Kyle Farnsworth of mine at Yankee Stadium.

Old Timer’s Day 2007 – By the time Old Timer’s Day rolled around in 2007 pretty much everyone who rooted for the Yankees also rooted for Farnsworth to get a blister and go on the DL so they wouldn’t have to watch him pitch. I was sitting in the Loge in left field for the game which gave me a good view of the Yankees bullpen. At one point, Farnsworth got up and started tossing. From my seats you could hear the glove hitting the catcher’s mitt so people looked over to see who it was getting ready. Someone yelled out “ARGH IT’S FARNSWORTH” and a large percentage of those within hearing distance let out a big groan. Some (probably drunk) fans threw their food garbage in the general direction of the bullpen and got kicked out.

September 17th, 2007 vs Baltimore – In 2007 the Yankees had enough unsold inventory in the outer reaches of the Tier Box and Tier Reserve that they discounted a huge chunk of the games in September to the $5 price level. I picked up a pair of tickets for a game versus the Orioles and went with a friend. The game itself was pretty boring and laidback, the Yankees had pretty much locked up a spot in the playoffs and had a pretty substantial lead over Baltimore for most of the game. In fact, pretty much the only things I remember about the game before Farnsworth came in are that Daniel Cabrera was starting and there was an annoying guy next to me who kept talking about how his granddad went to see the Giants play at the Polo Grounds in Brooklyn all the time (I did not stab him though I did consider doing so).

The Yankees went into the 9th in a non-save situation and so Kyle Farnsworth came out to finish Baltimore off. It should have been easy—or at least not too difficult—but oh no it was never easy with Kyle. There were very few people left in the stadium at this point and as the Orioles kept not making outs we grew very irate. Finally someone yelled out “BRING BACK PROCTOR” which promptly started a cheer among the few thousand left at the stadium of “WE WANT PROCTOR”. It lasted until Joe Torre hit the panic button and got Mariano up in the bullpen (it turned into a save situation by that point, of course) after which the focus of the crowd shifted to being annoyed that Mariano had to come in (he didn’t really but that’s a whole other line of discourse). Before recording the last out Mariano gave up an RBI double to that bastard Aubrey Huff and we very rationally decided it was Farnsworth’s fault.

April 30th 2008 vs Detroit – This game was bad. The weather was cold and wet, the Yankees got to Jeremy Bonderman early then stopped hitting, and Andy Pettitte pitched badly. The game started to slip away from the Yankees, and Farnsworth came in to pitch the 8th inning to try and keep the deficit at three runs. My boyfriend who was even crankier than me at this point looked at me and said “If he gives up a homerun, we are going home.” I don’t really like leaving games early, but if you’re not having any fun and the person/people you’re with are miserable I don’t see a reason to stay so I agreed to his condition.

Farnsworth gave up a homerun immediately to Placido Polanco (his second of the game!!!), which caused Chris to jump up and scream something about hating Farnsworth and going home and hating Farnsworth. I said goodbye to my row-mates, told them I’d be at the next game in our plan and shuffled out of the stadium. As we walked down the ramps from the Tier there was a lot more yelling about Farnsworth from various parties. It wasn’t Kyle’s fault that the game was bad he just didn’t help things.