While you’re at it, SG, email Jeter and tell him to stop being a little bitch.

Isn’t it cute how Derek still calls him “Mr. SG?”

I love SG’s outsized plaque out in monument park.

Mitre isn’t a big deal, but I just do not see anything appealing about him, especially with guys like Phelps, Warren, Noesi, etc. basically ready for some spot starts.  I don’t think they’re likely to be good yet, but probably no worse than Mitre and at least they might learn and improve going forward with the experience. 

I can’t imagine a scenario where it makes sense to bring Moseley back that doesn’t involve Scranton’s bus exploding while the Yankees plane crashes into the ocean at the same time.

[4] I don’t mind the Mitre deal.  He can be tossed overboard at a moment’s notice or less.  The minor league guys you mention could probably use more work.

[4] And even in that case, I would hope the Yankees would first spend 6 wasted years trying to find the island where the Yankees players might either be alive or in some sort of weird purgatory with polar bears and smoke monsters.

At least if Aceves is ready for opening day, I don’t see a need for Mitre.  I think Nova should be the long-man (I think it’s better for his development to face major league hitters), so going with a 7-man pen:

1.) Mo
2.) Logan
3.) Joba
4.) Robertson
5.) Aceves
6.) Nova
7.) Wood or another FA

I guess if they don’t sign another FA there’s a spot but I would rather have kept Alba and given him another shot than Mitre.

Mitre isn’t a big deal, but I just do not see anything appealing about him, especially with guys like Phelps, Warren, Noesi, etc. basically ready for some spot starts.

I’d imagine that if Mitre goes into 2011 as a Yankee, he’ll be one of the first people on the cut list.  Considering his relative youth (30) and some evidence that he’s pitched than his raw stats (career xFIP of 4.28) I can see trying him out again a further year removed from surgery and seeing how he looks.  We also have to remember that while it seems inevitable the Yankees are going to sign Cliff Lee and bring back Andy Pettitte, right now their rotation is:

Sabathia
Hughes
Burnett
Moseley
Nova

Having another potential starter around makes sense.

I am not sure how much the Yankees are going to want to expose Phelps/Warren/Noesi in MLB.  They’ve got to have 40 man roster issues coming up soon with keeping all those arms, and it may be easier to trade them for value if they’re pitching well in AAA than it would be if they were pitching sporadically in MLB.

At least if Aceves is ready for opening day, I don’t see a need for Mitre.

Between the back and now the collarbone, Aceves’ uncertain status probably factored into their decision.

Phelps, with half a season in AAA is the veteran of the three.  Noesi had 3 starts, Warren’s not been out of AA.  I’d much rather see some sort of more normal development curve rather than starting the clock on any of them.  It’d be nice if Brackman were finally ready to pitch, given his roster status.

Sounds like Aceves won’t even begin throwing until early March.

Having another potential starter around makes sense.

That’s true, and like I said, it’s not a big deal.  I prefer him to Moseley or Gaudin, but I don’t think any of the three are likely to be much more than replacement level, and no matter who we sign, none should be considered for anything more than mopup/spot starter duty.

A guy named Buddy Carlyle should be a game show hostess.

Mitre and Nova are good back up plans to have, at least for the beginning of the season by the end of the season, Noesi, Phelps and even Brackman could be options. Warren and Betances are outside possibilities if they run through AA and AAA like they did A and AA last year. I expect the Yankees to be a bit more cautious with Banuelos because he’s so young.

Does Banuelos mean “small bathrooms” in Spanish?

[15]  Yes, and you know what’s weird?  Juan Miranda means “looking at John,” or, colloquially, “toilet inspector.”

[16] How’s Miranda going to inspect little bathrooms now that he’s in Arizona?

[17]  Do I look like some kind of travel secretary?  Wait, don’t answer that.

FWIW, Kay on Jeter: The Yankees are willing to go a little higher, but they want something done within the next few days or they will try to make a trade for a SS. They may be willing to go to a fourth year with “reachable incentives.”

btw, There’s something kind off about Kay starting his show with Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind.”

[19]  Huh.  Kay, being an employee, is obviously parroting the Yankee FO…which is threatening a trade???  For who?  Not credible.

[20] That’s why I included “FWIW.”

More: The Jeter camp is bringing up Babe Ruth as a comparable.

He’s not getting $23m no matter how long he waits.

[21]  That’s a comparable that cuts two ways…

[21] I hear Jetes is considering the competitive eating circuit to catch up on Ruth’s hot dog numbers.

[21] Babe Ruth had a better year than Jeter.

Is Babe Ruth on the Verge of Collapsing?

[24] But should Jeter make more than the POTUS?

That is not tangible which can eternal play/And with strange aeons, even GIDP may pay.

[26] Obama had a better year than Jeter too. 

[27] But if thou live, remember’d not to be,
    hit singles and thine image dies with thee.

[24] Current-day Babe Ruth could also be the third starter on the staff SG posted in [8].

[28] And he had a pretty bad year…

I could see opening with “Derek Jeter is the modern day Babe Ruth”, but.. still? Come on.

[27]  Seriously, is there ANYTHING you haven’t read?

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2010/12/02/2010-12-02_source_yankees_increase_offer_to_derek_jeter_move_from_initial_threeyear_45_mill.html?r=sports/baseball/yankees&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+nydnrss/sports/baseball/yankees+(Sports/Baseball/Yankees)&utm_content=Google+Reader

Oy the yankees are bidding against themselves.

Dunn deal with White Sox a done deal.

[34] badum kish

32 wondering that myself

[32,36] I’m beginning to think that Mel Hall is the ghost in the machine of RLYW. It’s just an e-entity that has slowly absorbed our collective knowledge and personality.

But [32] was about [27].  Are rilkefan and MH two sides of the same being, light and dark?  Yin and yang?  George and Kuato?

[38] whoops, totally misread that. stupid reading comprehension.

back to 8th grade with me.

[37, 38] MH is a fan of Rilkefan (they share a room), making MH a meta-Rilkefan, or Rilkefan squared.  Additionally, MH is a fan of the great Federico Gaspirini, director of Satyricon and The Walking Dead, both of which are about the Jeter negotiations.

Jenks and Joba would equal about 600 pounds of set up relief in the Yankee pen.

[41] They might need to get Edwar back to crack 600. But it would be close.

I wonder if re-signing Jeter would impact the pursuit of Lee:

a) positively (who wouldn’t want to play with Jeter)
b) negatively (who would want to pitch with that range-challenged left side of the infield behind them)
c) no effect (show me the money)

[43] I vote for c.

[44] Yeah, probably only Nolan Ryan and Chuck Greenberg would vote b)

[32] I’m actually not well read, just unembarrassed about forcing the quotes I know to fit whatever situation.

E.g. I haven’t read the Dr. rilkefan and Mr. Hall ripoff.

In Nabakov’s Despair there is a character who know what quotes to insert in a conversation to impress people without really having read the source material.  So at a party he would say and I’m paraphrasing “as Turgenev said some thoughts are best be expressed in music.”  Rilke of course has read Despair in both Russian and English.

Like the guy in “Metropolitan” who doesn’t read the books, just the reviews.  It does save time.

[48] Reviews take too long. Just read the blurb on Amazon.com and check out the star rating.

[47] I started to learn Russian in order to read Dostoevsky in the original, but the alphabet and the verbs were too hard.

I’ve only read _Lolita_, _Pale Fire_, and _Ada_, and found each of them in parts scintillating in parts deeply annoying.  If there’s a less-annoying-than-usual N. novel that one of the local Russian experts can recommend, I’ll give it a spin.

I’ve been reading the Horatio Hornblower novels, and I alternately want to shake Forester’s hand and wring his neck.

Funny to think that reading books can be a lot like following the Yankees: the expectation that they will be good makes the bad parts more irksome.

[50]  Did you read the Patrick O’Brien books?

Or the Classic comic version.  Do they still exist?  An English teacher once told me of a student who in an essay on a book changed the heroine from a prostitute to an opera singer having read the Classic comic instead of the real thing.

I can read pornographic braille by rubbing the dirty parts.

Yankees non-tenderize Moseley AND Aceves.  The latter is obviously a surprise.

Major league relievers shouldn’t ride bikes in Mexico in the off-season.

I can read pornographic braille by rubbing out the dirty parts.

TMI…

[54] Aceves’ injury concerns have to be fairly significant.

[50] depends on what you mean by annoying and how much it stems from the same source as the scintillating.  Pnin?  It’s N-lite; you’ve read the best.

Mo, Jobber, Boone’s Farm, D-Rob, Meat Tray and two question marks in the bullpen.

I wonder if they’ll pay the big bucks and give up the picks for Downs.

Bring back Jose “In Vino” Veras!  He was just non-tendered by the Marlins.

[50] I had so much fun learning Cyrillic. Actually in general i didn’t find Russian to be all that difficult. Although I didn’t study as much as I would have liked to. At some point I’d really like to pick it back up. I had more issues with declensions, mostly because I had never run into anything like them before.

[51] I’ve been reading them slowly, like two a year over maybe four years.  _Post Captain_ is pure awesomeness, the rest are good so far, but I can’t take too much at a time.  Following the detailed naval stuff is pretty hard and he really torments his characters so I have to overcome some aversion every time I start a new one.

[57] Ok, thanks, I would probably get more out of rereads then new reads if I happen to ever feel like investing the effort.

They will probably try to re-sign Aceves.  Non-tendering lets them try to re-sign a player to a contract that’s more than 20% lower than their prior contract. 

They may even try to re-sign Moseley too, athough I doubt they’d go nuts with that.

[62] Otoh they’ll have to compete with the other clubs to re-sign Ace, which may bid up his price higher than if they’d tendered him.

I took a Russian for scientific reading and quit after two weeks because of the alphabet also.  Now I don’t feel as stupid.

[63]  In which case, shrug, there are other arms in the system with fewer injuries.

I filed a complaint today against the Metropolitan Museum of Art seeking replevin of this painting:

http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/european_paintings/madame_cezanne_nee_hortense_fiquet_1850_1922_in_paul_cezanne/objectview.aspx?collID=11&OID=110000308

Haven’t served the complaint yet.

[65] Who are the likely internal candidates to replace him?

If recent history is any guide, the Pirates could make Aceves and Moseley their top offseason targets.

[68] I lol’ed.

[64] The alphabet is the hardest part. Once you get past that it’s not horribly difficult.

Actually, studying Russian made me really interested in studying other languages. I just need to motivate myself to do so.

[61]  _Post Captain_ is pure awesomeness

Took me a minute to realize this wasn’t about the Jeter negotiations.

Oh Captain! My Captain!  rise up and hear the bells;

Lots of Nabokov is worth reading, and sometimes stellar, Rilke, but none of it will not be annoying.
“The Gift” is great, but hard for non-Russians, in my view.
“Invitation to a Beheading” might be as close as you can come to what you’ve asked for, although it’s among his most “abstract” works.
But - yes, it would be hard to argue that he’s done better than Lolita or Pale Fire (again, not a few Russians might argue for “The Gift”).

You know what still gets me about “The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled” is that it’s a true story.

I expected students to learn the Cyrillic alphabet BEFORE THE FIRST CLASS.
(And yes, they generally did.)
Shouldn’t take more than an hour if you drill yourself with flash cards.
It’s just an an alphabet, after all.

[66]
Interesting.  Are you in NY, MH?
And - I think this pretty much proves that MH goes beyond what our collective knowledge and personality would likely produce.
And [24] was very funny.

The only Russian that I know is Black.

[75]  But you’re a genius.

[66] Is this a WWII-related replevin, or other?

[76] I’m in Massachusetts but also admitted in New York.

[78] No.  The Bolsheviks confiscated the original owner’s art collection in 1918, which included the painting.  In 1933 the Soviets sold the painting on the black market to a wealthy American collector, Stephen Clark (whose chief claim to fame was founding the HOF in Cooperstown, his place of birth). Clark bequeathed the painting to the MET in 1960.  We represent the heir of the original owner.

We’re also involved in a fierce dispute with Yale in federal court in Connecticut regarding ownership of this masterpiece:

&imgrefurl=http://dlthomas.wordpress.com/2010/05/22/expressionistpaintings/vincent-van-gogh-night-cafe/&usg=__7IdWm0Lu5sxFwrJdhi-EFOxtj-o=&h=642&w=800&sz=514&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=7cYLXPaRjA6dBM:&tbnh=145&tbnw=197&prev;=/images?q=vincent+van+gogh+night+cafe&um=1&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1024&bih=578&tbs=isch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=354&vpy=234&dur=525&hovh=159&hovw=199&tx=95&ty=104&ei=iWD4TOjpBYnLnAeI5snHAg&oei=iWD4TOjpBYnLnAeI5snHAg&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=8&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0

Clark bought this painting from the Soviets as well and bequeathed it to his alma mater.

Yale’s conduct in this and other disputes regarding ownership of cultural property reminds me of LaRochefoucauld’s expression, “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.”  I’ve included the expression in many drafts but have thought better of it and wound up deleting it.

[51, 61, 71 -hmmmm] Just finished Thirteen Gun Salute for the around the fifth/sixth spin through the series. O’Brian’s best and worst parts are simultaneously the introspectives of Maturin. Fascinating commentary on the human condition but sometimes the pace gets glacial and you just want Aubrey to load with grape and sweep the decks.

Once upon a time I was able to follow the sailing technicalities but now I just move through.

[61 cont’d] Forrester lived most of his life just across the bay in Berkeley. I think he emigrated around age 30 or so in the early 40’s ?

I alternate between new material and re-reads. I find it very restful to re-re-re-read familiar and well liked books just before falling asleep. Unlike a new book that keeps you up, there’s a lot of relaxation in not having to turn the page to see how it turns out, I can simply drop the book without worrying about marking my place, and I find when you are no longer paying attention to the story you pick up more about the author’s use of language than otherwise.

Perhaps not on the same literary level, Cornwell’s Sharpe series is incredibly interesting historical fiction, particularly the epilogues where he reveals where the true history leaves off and his fiction begins, along with “what you’ll find if you go there today”. His other work is meh.

Major league relievers shouldn’t ride bikes in Mexico in the off-season.

Except for Kenny Powers.

Liked Invitation but Lolita was amazing and his 3rd language to boot.  That opening paragraph wow.  I even liked both movies James Mason especially but Jeremy Irons was good also as Humbert.  I can still hear Mason saying her name.

Lolita is one of my favorite books.  Nabokov gets the credit for prepping me for Pynchon.  Although, to be honest, I’ve only read the book about the rockets.