I have to admit something.
Some of my best friends are die-hard Boston Red Sox fans.
Hell, my aunt is a die-hard Sox fan.
As we know, the Red Sox won two championships between the Yankees' 2000 and '2009 World Series titles.
Regardless of what we were arguing about, when it came to the Yanks and the Sox my buddies loved to pull out one line over-and-over again: "stop living in the past."
I'm telling you this because last week, when we took a look at the 20 greatest pitchers to take the mound for the New ...
Whitey Ford, it has been revealed, had no more than an average season in 1961. He was 25-4 with a 3.21 ERA in 1961. He started 39 games, completed 11 of them, worked 283 innings and had 209 strikeouts. I have always thought that Ford was the best pitcher in the league in 1961. He won the Cy Young Award when only one was awarded. He finished fifth in the MVP voting. Boy, was I wrong. A pitcher’s performance and value to his team should be measured by wins above ...
It has become almost heresy to still think that a pitcher's wins are a good measure of a pitcher's effectiveness. When put in context, wins are a valuable, but they are an extremely limited measurement. At the close of play on Sept. 5, 2011 there were 12 American League pitchers with at least 13 wins. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient between those 12 pitchers' wins and ERA+ was calculated. The result revealed that a positive correlation of 0.70 exists between the two measurements. Simply stated, wins and preventing runs are ...
In New York, it's either World Series or bust for the fans. The Yankees are expected to be in the hunt every year, but unfortunately that is never enough. No doubt it will be a tough road for the Bombers this season, much tougher than the World Series run in 2009. Here are four major reasons why the Yankees will not be raising their 28th World Series banner in 2011.Begin Slideshow
Major League Baseball's regular season offers 162 opportunities to each player every year to hash a reputable name for themselves into baseball's immortal, and extensive stat books.In each of these regular seasons, we witness epic heroics, massive failures and a more than healthy share of mediocrity.However, the legacies built in the six-month long grueling marathon that is the MLB regular season lose all meaning in October, the month where regular season legends fall, and the unheralded become heroes.Yes, the postseason brings with it a wondrously strange ability to suck the ...
There is always a certain amount of hype leading up to the debut of a highly touted prospect in the major leagues.I can think back to David Price debuting for the Tampa Bay Rays and immediately wreaking havoc on the Boston Red Sox in the 2008 ALCS. Another debut that comes to mind is the debut of the Baltimore Orioles Matt Wieters. He was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 2010 and this switch-hitting catcher went on to be named to his first All-Star team this 2011 season.However, ...
Jesus Montero may be the most exciting rookie in baseball right now. Yes B/R readers you heard that right. Four games in to his Major League career and he has already left everyone impressed.September 5, 2011 was no different.The Yankees played the Baltimore Orioles in a nail-biter today, narrowly defeating them 11-10. Mark Texiera got the Labor Day party stared with a home-run in the first and Robinson Cano topped him by hitting his third Grand Slam of 2011 in the second. The Orioles stayed close though, and after three ...
Derek Jeter has done more for the New York Yankees than any other player has this century. Yes, he has been more valuable than even Mariano Rivera. And those who believe Rivera has been more valuable cannot deny Jeter’s contributions. Jeter has returned to the Jeter that Yankee fans know and love since coming off the disabled list on July 4, but he will be 38 in 2012. He is not as good defensively as in the past. It is extremely difficult to determine what the current Yankees ownership and ...
Everyone jump onto the bandwagon. Let’s all agree that Joe West, whom players ranked as baseball’s second-worst umpire in 2010 (C. B. Bucknor was the worst) and a smarmy writer for a New York City tabloid are right. The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees should care more about the length of their games than winning them. In 2010, West criticized the teams for the slow pace of their games. The umpire said, "Their compliance to the Commissioner's edict on pace of game is pathetic and embarrassing." The smug ...
The Red Sox and Yankees have been flipping and flopping the AL East lead for what seems like months. The pennant race may not be decided until the last day of the season, but everyone should know the most impressive team. The Yankees—it’s not even close. For the first time in what seems like decades, the Yankees really made no major moves heading into the season. The Bombers’ biggest acquisition was Rafael Soriano, who hasn’t provided much. Cliff Lee did the unthinkable and snubbed the big-money Yankees to form a ...