Posada Injured, Yanks not prepared

Well, who saw this coming?

After playing in 51 games last year, and then starting off this season batting .312/.402/.584 with four homers and 20 RBI, Jorge Posada is back on the disabled list due to a hamstring injury.

For those of you who have been following my blog from the beginning, you will know that I put Jorge Posada as the 2nd most important person in the Yankee organization this year, and the most important player overall. If an Outfielder went down (as it has, with Xavier Nady), Nick Swisher or Melky Cabrera were ready to take over, If Tex went down, Swish could go there as well.

With Posada on the other hand, just like last year, we now have the one and only Jose "Panda" Molina being our everyday catcher for the time being. Now, this injury is not as large as it was last year, the Yankees are saying he will only be out 2-3 weeks, but the whispers inside the clubhouse are that it may actually be closer to 3-5 weeks.

This year I was finally beginning to lighten up on Panda Molina. He was doing a decent enough job as a back up and Posada was playing so well it made me completely forget about his injury. Well, that was a bad idea. As soon as A-Rod is getting ready to come back, we have another big bat, possibly our best hitter so far this year, going down.

As seen last year, the AL East is a battle until the end. It is no longer just the Yankees and Red Sox, the Rays are clearly a force to be reckoned with, and even though I don’t see it lasting all year, Toronto is currently in first place right now at 19-10.

I don't know if the Yankees can handle having Jose Molina and his line of .216/.263/.313. They called up Francisco Cervelli from AA, the man who I think will be Posada's back up next year. He won’t contribute much, considering he was at AA and was hitting .190, so for the next month or so, don’t expect anything out of our catcher spot. It is going to be ugly. I think the Yankees should be able to deal with this for a month and still make the playoffs, but if they don’t, this can be a huge factor.

It all goes back to this past offseason, when the Yankees spent the entire year without a catcher and still decided not to sign a back-up catcher who can hit half way decently. Gerald Laird, Gregg Zaun and Ramon Hernandez were all available this offseason through free agency or trade availability. The Yankees could have offered Pudge arbitration, something I talked about numerous times on Talkin' Baseball.

I am a big supporter of Brian Cashman but one thing he doesn’t pay enough attention to is the bench and it is times like this where my support for him decreases a little bit. Posada was out all of last year; we got no production from out C spot and didn’t make the playoffs. Posada only got a year older, was there any chance this could happen again and maybe this time we could actually prepare for it?

Like I said, the Yankees should be able to get through this, especially with A-Rod coming back, but it still is upsetting to see Posada go down and to see that we still have no catching depth. It will be great in two years when Romine and Montero are actually old enough to legally drink, which means they will be about ready to play in the majors. Until then, enjoy Posada and the Panda, the greatest catching tandem in the history of baseball. One can no longer stay healthy and the other is a panda.

Now that I am thinking about this, maybe we can't survive this. Right now, our Starting 3B who is one of the best players in baseball is on the DL. Joining him there are his own back-up Cody Ransom, our starting Catcher, Jorge Posada, who was hitting .312, the two guys who were supposed to be our 8th inning guys in Damaso Marte and Brian Bruney, and our #2 starter in Chien-Ming Wang. That's 6 players who were supposed to be major players this year, all on the DL. How are the Yankees over .500?

I Hear You Knocking but you Can't Come in

Joolz and I were at the Yankee game last night. Got there at 6:30, didn’t leave until around 1:30. There was never an announcement made that the game was cancelled, so why did people leave and expect to be able to get back in?

If you guys didn’t hear, there were riots at Yankee Stadium last night and multiple people got arrested because they thought the game was cancelled, and they left, but when they found out the game was still on, they were not allowed back in.

Maybe I sound like a jerk, but I have no sympathy for these people. If you know anything about baseball, you know that as soon as the game is cancelled, there will be a formal announcement, don’t base your plans off of what some random guy says when you're at the urinal.

Also, the number one rule of baseball stadiums, of football stadiums, concerts and whatnot is, if you leave, you can't come back in. Everyone knows that, its common sense. If there is no formal announcement, don't leave. If you do leave, don’t complain when they don’t let you back in.


Hot Dog, Hot Dog Man


Outside of Mark Teixeira's two home runs, the highlight yesterday definitely came during the two hour and 20 minute rain delay. "Macho Man" was playing and the hot dog vender gave us all his cover of it entitled "Hot Dog Man". Sounds dumb, but I guarantee that if you were there you would have gotten a kick out of, especially you Mike from Manhatten.