Yankees minor league rosters set

UPDATE: 9:46PM: Chad Jennings of the Times Tribune and AAA beat writer and has his own blog is reporting that Brett Tomko will be the closer at AAA and Austin Jackson will be hitting sixth to start the season. I have been waiting for this to be official for about a week, the Yankees announced their rosters for Scranton-AAA, Trenton-AA and Tampa-High Class A, Charleston-Low Class A. I am not going to list the whole rosters here but you can find it on http://yankees.com/ under minor league affiliates or on http://milb.com/ which is the minor league site. I am going to list some of the top players though first with Scranton: Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, Mark Melancon, Austin Jackson. The Catchers down here are Kevin Cash PJ Pilittere and Chris Stewart. PJ was in Trenton for a couple of years and is known as a good game caller. The other names most of you are aware of, I am looking for Austin Jackson to have a big year and maybe be up in the big leagues in September. I also look for Mark Melancon to be on the big club at some point this year. AA Trenton-Kyle Anson and Francisco Cervelli are here as the catchers both pretty good prospects although Cervelli is thought of as the most advanced catching prospect the Yankees have and could be up in AAA at some point this year, he of course had a lost year least year when he broke his wrist in spring training. They have some interesting pitchers here such as Zach McAllister, Mike Dunn, Wilken Arias, George Kontos and Ryan Pope. Zach McAllister is one of the top young prospects that the Yankees think very highly of. The position players Eduardo Nunez impressed a lot of people in spring training and suprisingly Justin Snyder is at this level, Snyder was in his first year last year. A Tampa- The pitchers here are led by supplemental 1st round pick Jeremy Bleich who could move quickly and Dellin Betances who is just a stud and many have labeled the Baby Unit. They also have the 2 big catchers in Jesus Montero who reminds me a lot of Mike Piazza although he seems to be improving a lot behind the plate and may actually stay as a catcher and also Austin Romine who is a good catcher with a good bat. It will be interesting to see if either moves up and they break these two up for the first time in their young careers. I wouldn't really get too worked up over any of the other prospects but I will be watching the minor league teams all year also and update you on what is going on and if anyone else emerges. A-Charleston- The pitchers here are led by Andrew Brackman they also have Manuel Banuelos, Brett Marshall and the ambidextrous reliever Pat Venditte. The infield has Carmen Angelini who is a well though of ss and also Garrison Lassiter who they drafted last year, these guys are very young and a ways off. I have been to both Scranton and Trenton and love going to both places, its a lot of fun and you get to see some prospects and possibly future Yankees. If you have a chance to go, check it out, neither is too far away and pretty easy to get too. I will be in Scranton for an outing July 5th and plan on having a good post about it afterwards. I don't know if I will get to Trenton this year but that is where I have met Melky Cabrera, Joba Chamberlain, Ian Kennedy, Shelly Duncan, Jeff Karstens and more.

Big night for Asia

The Yankees game tomorrow night in Baltimore is going to be a big deal in Asia. Chien-Ming Wang will pitch for the Yankees vs Koji Uehara. Wang is from Taiwan and Uehara is from Japan and Hideki Matsui from Japan. Hideki Matsui and Uehara played on the Yomiura Giants and in 2002 Matsui won the MVP award and Uehara won the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young. Peter Abraham of the Journal News and the Yankees lohud blog which can be found on http://yankees.lhblogs.com and also Tyler Kepner on his Bats blog and the NY times also had a post on this. Uehara has broken down the last few years and had a hamstring injury in spring training but was cleared to start tomorrows game.

Its 1 of 162 not the end of the world

I admit it was a terrible way to start the season and I get just as upset as everyone else but you have to calm down over one bad game. I think I know enough about baseball and am a big enough fan to say this: I have always thought you can't accurately look at a baseball team until they have played 25 games, not 1, 5, 10 of course we can be upset before then but lets just wait. I also look at the season in series and sometimes more like this 9 game roadtrip. I looked at it at the beginning and say the Yankees should be 6-3m 5-4 would be acceptable but no worse then that before returning home to officially open the new stadium. The object is to play around 500 on the road and win your home games, the Yankees have Wang and AJ Burnett going the next couple of days, if they pitch well they will win those games and be ok. The point is lets just calm down and wait a little before we go nuts or say whats wrong with the Yankees? The Yankees have a very good pitching staff and you are not going to see much of what happened yesterday. The Boston Red Sox play the Tampa Bay Rays today at 4:00pm after getting rained out yesterday. Josh Beckett will go against James Shields. There are a whole slew of other games also today and I will go through them later on today. The Yankees will play 12 straight games starting tomorrow so there won't be much time to get all upset about one game, just got to keep chugging along.

Mets win opener

The New York Mets won their opener today in Cincinatti by a score of 2-1. The Mets ace Johan Santana went 5 2/3 innings giving up 1 run on 3 hits with 4 walks and 7 strikeouts. It wasn't his best performance but it was a terrible day and was effective. The Mets showed off their new look bullpen today and they didn't disappoint. Sean Green, JJ Putz and Francisco Rodriguez combined to go 3 1/3 hitless innings giving up 0 runs with 1 walk and 2 strikeouts. The offense saw Carlos Delgado and Ryan Church go 2-4. Jose Reyes went 1-4 and Daniel Murphy went 1-5 with a homerun and 2 rbi. David Wright went 1-3 with 2 walks and Carlos Beltran was 1-4 with a walk. The Mets are off tomorrow and will be back in action on Wednesday night at 7:05 with Mike Pelfrey on the hill against Edison Volquez. This was a good day for the Mets, but the problem they have is can they get any starting pitching after Johan Santana, lets see what happens on Wednesday.

Will the real CC please stand up

The New York Yankees were spanked by the Baltimore Orioles today by a score of 10-5. This was a horrible way to open the season, the Yankees stranded runners and didn't pitch well at all. The Yankees left 11 runners on base, at least one in every inning. The bottom line though is the Yankees Ace was awful, he just didn't have command of his fastball and couldn't get anything going. He pitched 4 1/3 innings giving up 8 hits, 6 runs and 5 walks with 0 strikeouts. The starting pitcher sets the tone for the game, and the Yankees were in trouble right from the get go. The Yankees got close cutting it to 6-5 and having a couple of chances to at least tie but then the bullpen just let it get away and that was it. The Yankees have gotten off to bad starts the last few years and seem to struggle with Baltimore lately but this year they can't do that, they have to have a good road trip here heading back home to the New Stadium. If Wang comes out and pitches the way he can I am sure the Yankees will be fine and score some runs. The positives of the game were Derek Jeter had 3 hits, Brett Gardner had a hit, a sac bunt and threw out a guy at home plate. Johnny Damon was 2-3, it looks like the top of the order switch worked out today. Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada hit homeruns, the offense looks a lot different with them in the lineup. Jorge Posada also caught all 9 innings with no problem. I hope the Yankees got a bad one out of the way and now go on a good run. Joe Girardi said I guess we won't be going 162-0 and didn't seem overly concerned with the game. He said CC is fine and that they just didn't execute the way they did in Florida. He said it is only one game and you just have to move on. The Yankees will be off tomorrow and then play Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon before heading to Kansas City.