Missing Thurman Munson

Today is the Anniversay of Thurman Munson's death. Alex Bleth posted this on facebook and I'm sharing it to whoever may be checking out this blog.

http://thestacks.deadspin.com/thurman-munson-in-sun-and-shade-1001467402

When the Yankees bring Thurman Munson to New York after only ninety-nine games in the minors—after playing in Binghamton and Syracuse—he just says to anyone who will listen: What took them so long? He’s not mouthing off. He means it, is truly perplexed. What took them so goddamn long? Time is short, and the Yankees need a player, a real honest-to-God player who wants to win as much as blood needs oxygen or a wave needs water. It’s that elemental.

And wham, Thurman Munson becomes that player. He wins the Rookie of the Year award in 1970. He takes the starting job from Jake Gibbs as if the guy’s handing it to him and plays catcher for the next decade, the whole of the seventies. He’s named the Yankees’ first captain since Lou Gehrig forty years earlier and shows up at a press conference in a hunting vest. He wins the Most Valuable Player award in 1976, and he still wears bad clothes: big, pointy-collared shirts and dizzying plaid sport coats.

Not even disco explains his wardrobe. He helps lead the Yankees from a season in which the team ends up twenty-one games out of first place to the 1976 World Series, where they fall in four straight to the Cincinnati Reds despite the fact that Thurman Munson bats over .500. Then he helps take the Yankees back to the Series in 1977 and 1978—two thrilling, heaven-hurled, city-rocking, ticker-tape-inducing wins!

Player Profile: Cesar Cabral

With the recent release of Hideki Okajima, Cesar Cabral's chances of sticking with the Yankees have improved quite a bit. He would (at east initially) fill the role of second lefty in the bullpen behind Boone Logan. Aiding his cause is he must stay on the 25-man roster or be offered back to the Boston Red Sox.

The Kansas City royals drafted Cabral in the Rule V Draft and sold his rights to the New York Yankees for $100,000. The Tampa Bay Rays drafted him in last year's Rule V Draft but could not keep him on the active roster and had to offer him back to the Red Sox. That the Rays picked him is almost an endorsement in itself. They are that good at scouting and evaluating pitchers.

Here is the SoxProspects.com Scouting Report:

Lefty with a solid frame and a smooth delivery. Pitches exclusively from the stretch. Fastball sits between 88-92 mph and tops out at 95 mph. Secondary pitches include an excellent 81-83 mph circle changeup, a mid-70s slurvey curveball, and a sharp 79-82 mph slider. Gets a lot of swings and misses with his changeup, which has nice downward movement. Excellent command and control, attacks hitters. Cabral was selected in the Major League phase of the 2010 Rule 5 Draft by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but was returned to the Red Sox at the end of spring training.

He has strong strikeout rate, strong groundball rates, and control that isn't ideal but far from disastrous. He has now played well through double-A and seems ready for a real shot at a major league job. I expect he will do well.

Kuroda Joins Yanks

Hiroki Kuroda - Brooks Baseball Player Card

Hiroki Kuroda will be a huge part of the New York Yankees rotation this season. He discussed some of his reasoning for making the move from Los Angeles to the Bronx.

Kuroda said he received offers from five or six major-league clubs. With the Dodgers out of the picture, he said, he narrowed his choices to two: the Yankees and the Hiroshima Carp of Japan, for whom he pitched for 11 seasons.

Kuroda said he had better financial offers than the one from the Yankees. Kuroda will earn $2 million less than he did last season with the Dodgers.

“They have an incredible tradition,” Kuroda said of the Yankees. “They contend for the championship every year. I wanted to play for a team like that. When you get to my age, you don’t know how much longer you can pitch and I wanted to experience that before my career ended.”

Lots of Pitching Down on the Farm

This week's Ask BA features a question on the New York Yankees farm system.

The Yankees have a bunch of minor league pitchers having good years who didn't make BA's Yankees Top 10 Prospects list: Shaeffer Hall, Hector Noesi, David Phelps, Graham Stoneburner and Adam Warren, to name a few. Can you size these guys up in terms of potential and address whether they might make the next Top 10 list?

Dick Mullaney
Glastonbury, Conn.

It has been a good year for pitchers in the Yankees system. Seven-figure bonus babies Andrew Brackman and Dellin Betances are showing signs of life, and the pitchers whom Dick mentions have taken impressive steps forward. Of that latter group, Stoneburner is the best prospect and has the best chance of cracking our offseason Top 10.

A 14th-rounder out of Clemson a year ago, Stoneburner signed for $675,000. His 92-95 mph fastball has been no surprise because he always has shown arm strength, but he has done a nice job of tightening his slider and repeating his delivery.

The other pitchers are prospects but probably not Top 10 guys. Noesi is having a tremendous year, going 11-3, 2.21 with a 104-17 K-BB ratio in 102 innings between high Class A and Double-A, but his numbers are better than his pure stuff. He doesn't have a true plus pitch, though he mixes four offerings and commands them well.

Hall, who's all finesse, and Phelps, who relies mainly on a 92-95 mph fastball, project as relievers in the major leagues. With better stuff than Hall and a deeper repertoire than Phelps, Warren has a more realistic chance to become a big league starter, but I think he'll wind up as a middle reliever.

Damon Oppenheimer Up for Diamondbacks GM?

via @FrankiePiliere: Hearing the Yankees' scouting director, Damon Oppenheimer, will get serious consideration for DBacks GM job

Let's hope he doesn't want the job. He has done an excellent job for the Yankees and it would seriously hurt to lose him. Less critical to Yankees management, it has also been rumored that Kevin Towers could leave to take this job. This is all the result of the Diamondbacks making a somewhat hasty decision. I'll let Bob Nightengale explain:

The Arizona Diamondbacks, believing the team has grossly underachieved, fired general manager Josh Byrnes and manager A.J. Hinch on Thursday night.

They promoted bench coach Kirk Gibson to be the interim manager. Jerry DiPoto, the vice president of player personnel, will be the interim GM.

Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick and President Derrick Hall have made no secret of their dissatisfaction with the baseball operations department. Yet it was unclear whether the Diamondbacks would be willing to eat their large contracts. Byrnes had a contract through 2015 and Hinch, who was hired on May 7, 2009, without any managerial experience, had one through 2012.

"I appreciate the commitment and dedication that Josh and A.J. demonstrated during their tenures,'' Kendrick said in a statement. "Their dismissal is a significant decision, but one that we find necessary in order to achieve a direction of winning consistently on the field again. We have a number of talented players, but obviously, see great room for improvement. We look forward to bringing permanence to these two baseball leadership roles.''

A.J. Hinch was saddled with not just the worst bullpen in baseball but one of the worst in years. He was inexperienced but he was also in a leadership position on several major league teams. He was Byrnes' guy and if he wanted to stick with him that should have been the prerogative of a GM doing an excellent job in most respects.

Touching Base with the Yankees Farm System

Just to get things started I'm going to post a few links to some cool interviews with the Yankees brass.

Nardi! Again!
Mike Ashmore recently spoke to Pitching Coordinator Nardi Contreras. Contreras was in Trenton with much of the front office for Andrew Brackman's most recent start. Mike was able to get his impressions on several of the Thunder's promising prospects.

One-On-One With Mark Newman
Mike also spoke with the New York Yankees Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations, Mark Newman. They spoke about the state of the farm as a whole and which prospects should be arriving in Trenton soon. This nicely enough happened just a couple weeks after Sensei John Kreese of NoMaas.org spoke to Newman about his role with the Yankees and mechanics of running a farm system.