Howard Megdal

Morgan Ensberg, backup third and first baseman for the New York Yankees, knows that fans don’t flock to Yankee Stadium to see him.

“For the fans, I am so overshadowed, which makes sense,” Ensberg said, sitting at his locker with a copy of a Dan Brown novel in his left hand prior to Thursday’s game against Cleveland. “I’m not that big-name guy. They get to see me if somebody is hurt, or needs a rest.”  read more »

It’s open season on Mets starter Oliver Perez.

Billy Wagner ripped him for failing to compete, after Perez gave up five walks and seven runs in 1 2/3 innings on April 30. Earlier, Willie Randolph had criticized Perez for failing to go deep into games, even though Randolph twice removed Perez in the sixth inning when Perez had yet to allow a run. After his recent poor outing, the New York Post led with, “The Mets are running out of patience with the maddeningly consistent Oliver Perez.”

OK, so now what?  read more »

When the Yankees chose to open the 2008 season with Phil Hughes, 21, and Ian Kennedy, 23, in the starting rotation, some growing pains were expected. But while Kennedy had less of a track record to count on, there was ample reason to think Hughes, who got the call Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium against the Detroit Tigers, would be ready to log at least league-average innings.

But Hughes hasn’t merely been mixing good starts with bad thus far—he’s been almost uniformly awful.  read more »

Heading into the 2008 season, the Atlanta Braves were the fashionable pick to win the National League East. Seven different ESPN writers had Atlanta on top, with one picking them to win the World Series.

That’s nothing new, particularly. Atlanta is expected to be successful, having won 14 consecutive division titles from 1991-2005, a feat that hasn’t even been approached in baseball history.

But unlike those championship teams, this iteration of the Braves suffers from a lack of overall talent and health, particularly on the pitching staff. Those limitations were on display during this weekend’s series with the Mets, as New York won two of three games.  read more »

With Pedro Martinez eyeing a late-April return, the Mets would appear set to move forward with their planned five-man rotation intact. But if New York wants to make the decision best for the team now, later in the season and even for 2009, they ought to consider a wacky idea: expanding to a six-man rotation as soon as Martinez or Orlando Hernandez is healthy enough to take the mound.

While the starting rotation has been a strength thus far, much of that success has come from the young Mike Pelfrey’s development, and from surprise success story Nelson Figueroa.  read more »

Jorge Posada’s mysterious shoulder injury has not yet healed to the point that he can resume his duties as everyday catcher for the New York Yankees.

"He won't throw today," New York manager Joe Girardi said prior to Sunday’s game against Baltimore. "We'll check again on Tuesday—see how he is and see if the arm is back to full strength."  read more »

Since 2003, the Yankees and Red Sox have been about as even as two teams can be. New York holds a 50-47 edge during the regular season heading into their matchup Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium. New York has won the American League East three times to Boston’s one.

The Red Sox have elite hitters (David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez), the Yankees have elite hitters (Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano). The Red Sox have a top closer (Jonathan Papelbon), the Yankees have a top closer (Mariano Rivera). The Red Sox have promising young starters (Clay Buchholz, Jon Lester), the Yankees have promising young starters (Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy).  read more »

While Nelson Figueroa, scheduled to make his first start for the Mets on Friday night, may be unknown to most American fans, observers from Mexico to the Dominican Republic to Taiwan know the 33-year-old journeyman pitcher as an ace. So do those who have seen Figueroa dominate at nearly every minor league level for more than a decade.

At the major league level, it’s been a different story. He has pitched for seven clubs, and has succeeded in sticking with exactly none of them.  read more »

Jimmy Rollins may have killed the Mets, but he’s not owning up to it just yet.

“Last year is last year, and that team knows it,” Rollins said of the Mets following Philadelphia’s 5-2 win on Tuesday. The game was the first between the two clubs since New York squandered a seven-game lead over Philadelphia with 17 games to play at the end of the 2007 season—one of the greatest, most humiliating collapses in baseball history.  read more »

Don’t let the scoreline fool you: Mike Mussina is living on borrowed time.

His fastball during last night’s 6-1 win over Tampa Bay at Yankee Stadium wasn’t particularly fast—MLB.com’s Gameday listed his initial 85 mile-per-hour fastball offering as a changeup—and his once-great curveball was merely good. This will not be good enough against the American League’s better lineups.

Mussina has built a solid Hall of Fame case on a pair of factors—dramatic difference in velocity between his good fastball and excellent curveball, along with above-average control. But Mussina’s maximum velocity is down considerably, eliminating one of his advantages. It also has led him to nibble off the corners, trying desperately to expand the plate—and eliminating his other major advantage.  read more »

Joe Girardi’s decision to use Jason Giambi as his regular first baseman was anything but a no-brainer. Certainly, Giambi’s recent history argued against it.

Giambi is hoping that a doctor’s diagnosis and his first-ever winter that included running will allow him to be an exception to the rule that first basemen become designated hitters, then slowly fade away. And Girardi is clearly betting Giambi will be the exception to the rule, playing him at first base in each of his first three games as Yankee manager.

Since signing a seven-year, $120 million contract with the New York Yankees prior to the 2002 season, Giambi has been an increasingly irregular presence in the lineup, and seeing him in the field has been an even greater rarity. In his first two seasons with the Yankees, Giambi played in 313 of a possible 324 games, 97 percent, including 177 at first base. But in the past four seasons, Giambi played just 441 of 648 games, and just 211 of those at first base. Last year, Giambi appeared in just 18 games at first base, and often was replaced in the late innings for defense.  read more »

Joe Girardi’s first game as manager of the New York Yankees Tuesday night was an easy one, at least compared to his other Opening Day debut, as a rookie catcher for the Chicago Cubs.

“I was a lot more nervous than I was today,” Girardi said during his pre-game news conference, about three hours before yesterday’s game against the Blue Jays. “I was very nervous. [Cubs veteran pitcher] Rick Sutcliffe said he’d take care of me, that he knew the hitters, and that [leadoff batter] Bob Dernier never swings at the first pitch.  read more »

Mets fans might be forgiven for having unsettling flashbacks when New York took a 6-2 lead in the fourth inning of their first game of the season. Even during the horrendous 5-12 finish last year, the Mets had plenty of early leads—seemingly losing their advantage in the middle and later frames.

But Opening Day, a 7-2 victory for New York against the Florida Marlins, was an encouraging demonstration of why this year might be different.  read more »

It is impossible to overstate the magnitude of the collapse suffered by the Mets at the end of the 2007 season. Seven games up with 17 to go, New York finished 5-12 to land one game behind the Phillies. It was a choke to top all chokes.

And yet, to judge by the lack of radical restructuring over the off-season, the team decided that while the embarrassment was huge, the actual personnel problems that needed fixing were small.  read more »

The dust has cleared on the New York Yankees’ spring, and the many unresolved questions at the beginning of the preseason about their pitching are … still unresolved.

The already fragile coalition that makes up the starting rotation may be splintering. And the veterans at the top of the bullpen have held their spots thus far, but not decisively, meaning that a group of unheralded relievers may end up needing to supplant Kyle Farnsworth and LaTroy Hawkins as the season progresses.  read more »

The New York Knicks’ decision to hire longtime Pacers’ executive Donnie Walsh to run basketball operations should fill Knicks fans with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.

Fortunately, the team has nowhere to go but up, and the fan base’s wish list is likely smaller than it has ever been. No demands for a championship. Basketball that is merely watchable will be a cause for celebration.

Walsh brings an undeniable record of success with him—while Indiana has not won an NBA title, the Pacers have been to the playoffs all but two seasons with Walsh in the front office since 1989-90.  read more »

The Mets sent a pair of pitchers, Orlando Hernandez and Mike Pelfrey, to the mound on Sunday in Port St. Lucie in an attempt to settle on someone to take the fifth spot in the starting rotation. Neither provided much in the way of results—Hernandez gave up five earned runs in three innings, while Pelfrey was touched for eight earned runs in four and one-third in a 14-4 loss to the Cardinals.

But while both are, in many ways, learning how to pitch—Pelfrey due to inexperience, Hernandez with an altered delivery due to an ongoing bunion problem—only El Duque seemed to show any progress.  read more »

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.—It is said a criminal shouldn’t return to the scene of a crime. But Washington Nationals General Manager Jim Bowden was on hand Friday to see his team take on the Mets in Port St. Lucie just months after he lifted Lastings Milledge from New York for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider.

And while spring training results are often skewed, the evidence so far is making the Mets look more and more like victims.

“He’s had a very good spring,” Bowden said as he made his way down the visitor’s clubhouse tunnel. “He’s impressed with small things, too—he hits the cutoff man, he runs the bases well. He’s been a good fit.”  read more »

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.—The Mets certainly hope that last night’s events serve as foreshadowing of the 2008 season.

In front of a sellout crowd at Tradition Field, Johan Santana quickly took command of the game against the Orioles in the first inning. A recent criticism leveled by former major leaguer Jack Morris is that Santana is relying too much on his change-up. And considering that a change-up is merely a slow fastball, such a pattern could be problematic.  read more »

Are you sitting at your desk, panic-stricken now that your boss handed you an NCAA bracket and urged you to join an office pool? Is your knowledge of college basketball less of a Crimson Tide and more like an Akron Zip?

Have no fear: a little knowledge is all you need to succeed at mastering March Madness. Following this outline does not guarantee victory—but it will allow you to love your bracket and defend it to others.

OVERALL STRATEGY  read more »

The Yankees may have been encouraged by Mike Mussina’s second outing of the spring over the weekend, when the 39-year-old veteran struck out 5 batters in just 2 2/3 innings. Then again, he also walked a pair and allowed a home run, failing to finish the third frame.

It’s too soon in the spring to draw conclusions from any pitching performance. But the Yankees are keeping a particularly wary eye on Mussina, who limped to the 2007 finish line.  read more »

While spring is supposed to allow fans of even the most untalented teams to dream of an October championship, the early returns of spring training have not been kind to the Mets. From a draw against the University of Michigan to a home run allowed by Johan Santana in his very first inning as a Met, there has been precious little in the way of good news to help New York move past 2007’s epic collapse.

And then there are the injuries in camp. The good news is that it’s still a long way until April, let alone October. The bad news … Well, here’s a rundown of the injuries, from least worrisome to most.  read more »

While the Mets solved the single largest question about the team’s roster with the acquisition of Johan Santana, there are still a number of issues at the margins of New York’s makeup that spring training will help to answer.

Ultimately, the number of at-bats or innings pitched in the spring is too limited, and the competition too uneven, to make any educated baseball decisions based upon the statistics compiled in Port St. Lucie. But here are a few indicators that will begin to answer the question of whether this team can be great, or merely good:  read more »

Any time a team returns a lineup intact that scored 968 runs, as the New York Yankees did in 2007, chances are that team will excel again the following year.

But there are a number of questions the Yankees will begin to answer this spring that will determine if this year’s team will win ugly during the regular season and fall short against the American League’s best pitching in October, or if the Yankees finally have the right mix of youth and experience.

Like personnel-deprived teams that played during World War II, New York’s starting pitching may be either too young or too old. The Yankees have one starter, Chien-Ming Wang, who is in his prime. He may not be a true ace, given his low strikeout rate, but he is likely to provide better-than-average production, and more importantly, innings.  read more »

The New York Mets have completed a trade for the best starting pitcher in baseball, dealing four prospects to the Minnesota Twins for lefthander Johan Santana late Tuesday afternoon.

The Mets will give up outfielder Carlos Gomez and pitchers Philip Humber, Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra. The deal is still pending both a physical by Santana and an agreement between the Mets and Santana on a contract extension—Santana is a free agent following the 2008 season—but neither is expected to be a stumbling block.

It is believed that Santana will sign for between 5-7 years, at an annual rate of more than $20 million per season.

Despite the outlay of players and likely of cash, make no mistake about it—this may be the finest trade in Mets history.  read more »

While former Senator George Mitchell’s report on steroids and human growth hormone use in major league baseball was thorough, comprehensive and filled with enlightening anecdotes, any serious baseball observer of the past 20 years was left with more questions than answers. Here are the most pressing ones, in alphabetical order by those accused:

Did Manny Alexander, who had been groomed to succeed Cal Ripken Jr. at shortstop for the Orioles, really think steroids would make him more likely to play in thousands of consecutive games?  read more »

Players including prominent New York Yankees Roger Clemens, Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte were named in former U.S. Senator George Mitchell's comprehensive report on steroids use in baseball released Thursday afternoon.

The 77 names ran the gamut, as Mitchell wrote in his report, “from players whose major league careers were brief to potential members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. They include both pitchers and position players, and their backgrounds are as diverse as those of all major league players.”  read more »

Players including prominent New York Yankees Roger Clemens, Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte were named in former U.S. Senator George Mitchell's comprehensive report on steroids use in baseball released Thursday afternoon.

Below is the complete list of players implicated in the report. Depth of evidence varies, of course: Brian Roberts was named by a teammate through hearsay, while the report contains cancelled checks from Paul Lo Duca along with a handwritten thank-you note on Dodger Stadium stationary.  read more »

If Hank Steinbrenner is to be believed, the Yankees are out of the Johan Santana sweepstakes.  read more »

Fifty years after Walter O’Malley pulled the Dodgers out of Brooklyn, baseball honored him with election to the Hall of Fame.

Reaction to the Dec. 3 announcement is mixed, though it tends to become more positive as one moves west. After all, O’Malley built his reputation on moving the Dodgers; it is the primary accomplishment cited by the Hall in its press release on the new inductees, and the lead sentence of his Times obituary.

That record has led to O’Malley being reviled by all manner of Brooklyn fans and assorted baseball traditionalists. A famous story has a pair of New York journalists trading their lists of the three greatest villains of the twentieth century; both men included Hitler, Stalin and Walter O’Malley.

“I’m flabbergasted, is my response,” Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said in a telephone interview following the announcement. “A couple of weeks ago, I read that they were even considering honoring Walter O’Malley. I told them if they insisted on doing this, it would break the hearts of Brooklynites all over again.” Markowitz suggested that the Hall make it up to Brooklyn with the enshrinement of former Dodger Gil Hodges.  read more »

The Mets traded outfielder Lastings Milledge to the Washington Nationals Friday, getting catcher Brian Schneider and outfielder Ryan Church in return.

Not good.

In fact, this is the worst move by the franchise since Scott Kazmir was dealt for Victor Zambrano at the trade deadline in 2004. Worse yet, the Mets will get to see their mistake often, with Washington, an in-division opponent, facing New York 19 times a year.  read more »

Since the Minnesota Twins made their star pitcher available in a trade, the Yankees’ Hank Steinbrenner made it known that the team is negotiating to put him in pinstripes. Meanwhile, Mets general manager Omar Minaya is fixated on landing Santana to throw the first pitch at CitiField, and resolve a three-year obsession with landing a number-one starter.  read more »

Sure, Isiah should go, but so should almost everyone else.  read more »

The old baseball trade saw, “You have to give up something to get something,” only partially explains the Mets’ trade of relief pitcher Guillermo Mota to the Milwaukee Brewers for catcher Johnny Estrada.

While the trade provides the Mets with a viable catcher to pair with the returning Ramon Castro, far more important is what the trade allows them not to do.  read more »

Alex Rodriguez and the New York Yankees have agreed to the framework of a 10-year, $275 million contract, bringing a happy resolution to a process that the Yankees announced had ended on October 28, when Rodriguez opted out of the final three years of his contract.

According to the New York Times, the Yankees are willing to offer incentives to push the contract beyond the $300 million mark if Rodriguez passes current all-time home run leader Barry Bonds.  read more »

While the indictment presents an array of unhappy alternatives for Bonds, it’s a potential disaster for the league.  read more »

Since the Mets are talking with Alex Rodriguez, it's worth considering how the team would make room for the All-Star third baseman.  read more »

This is a team, to put it plainly, that’s built to underachieve.  read more »

In an offseason so far dominated by high-profile departures, the Yankees finally got to announce an addition to the 2008 squad, introducing Joe Girardi as Joe Torre’s successor to manage New York.

We know that Girardi accepted to a three-year, $7.5 million deal. But precisely what else he agreed to still remains unclear.  read more »

The Yankees ultimatum not to negotiate with Rodriguez if he opted out of his contract has backfired.  read more »

The Joe Torre era in New York is over. It was “time for the New York Yankees to move forward,” team President Randy Levine explained.  read more »

Joe Torre has rejected a one-year contract offer with a second-year option to return as Yankees manager, according to team president Randy Levine.

The contract called for a base salary of $5 million, with $1 million for each additional round of the playoffs won by the Yankees in 2008, according to Levine.

The second-year option would have vested if the Yankees reached the World Series in 2008.

“It is now time for the New York Yankees to move forward,” Levine said.

It was the New York Knicks with everything to prove in Thursday night’s game against Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv at Madison Square Garden, before an overwhelmingly pro-Maccabi crowd.  read more »

Ultimately, any of these choices represents a downgrade from Joe Torre.  read more »

The Yankees’ winter unofficially began at 10:19 P.M. Monday night. Trailing 6-2, with runners at the corners and one out, a capacity Yankee Stadium crowd was silenced when Derek Jeter grounded into an inning-ending double play.

New York eventually fell to Cleveland 6-4, falling short of getting to the World Series there for the fourth straight year and making it seven years without a championship.  read more »

Though they showed signs of holding the Yankees in check early, asking Indians pitchers Jake Westbrook and Aaron Fultz to keep the Yankees away from the big innings proved to be futile, while the collapse of pitching icon Roger Clemens was rendered irrelevant thanks to the heroics 21-year-old Phil Hughes.

The 8-4 win by the Yankees, which averted a three-game sweep by Cleveland, was typical stuff for a team that scored 968 times this season, roughly six times per gam  read more »

With runners at first and second and one out, already leading 1-0, the script must have seemed familiar to the Yankees, who are used to jumping all over pitchers.

But they don’t often face pitchers the caliber of C.C. Sabathia, who struck out Jorge Posada, and induced a weak groundout from Hideki Matsui.

The Yankees have not had a pitcher as effective as Sabathia for quite some time—a period of time, incidentally, that coincides with their postseason drought. And their ability to reach a different result in 2007 will be to overcome two pitchers better than any they possess.  read more »

In a series between two very evenly matched teams, the fate of the Yankees and the Indians could easily come down to a breakout performance—or a stumble—from an individual player.  read more »

As has been argued in this space, the Mets can put themselves in a position to win next season with a few meaningful, if not flashy, moves this winter. Signing middle reliever David Riske would solidify the bullpen, for example, but is unlikely to earn headlines from the Daily News or the Post (provided they can resist the endless possibilities his name provides).

But this isn’t to say there aren’t some potential blockbusters out there that would improve the Mets significantly for 2008.  read more »

To: Fred Wilpon

Well, as you once hoped for, your Mets played plenty of “meaningful games” this past September. Even in the season’s final week, they were involved in seven vital contests at Shea Stadium.

Unfortunately, the Mets won just one of them.

Changes are undoubtedly needed. But it’s vital here that you resist calls from fans for a mass execution.  read more »