Yankee Blogosphere Linkapalooza For The Week That Was (March 5-11)

After months of waiting, hot stoving, speculating, spring training, competing, and finalizing, we finally have baseball to talk about.  It was an exciting first week of the regular season in Yankeeland and the blogosphere kept up with all of the action.  Here's the rundown:

- Benjamin Kabak at River Ave. Blues talks about why this season will be the most important for Cash as GM as many of the decisions made with the lineup this year were based on moves made or not made over the last couple seasons.  Cash's faith in Cano, decision to not bring back Damon and Matsui, and the handling of Phil Hughes and Joba will all play out this year and show Cash's true talent or lack thereof in being a GM.

- Moshe Mandel at The Yankee U examines Alfredo Aceves' pitch breakdown and concludes that his use of all of his pitches at any time is what makes him so successful.  As somebody who can never quite recall every detail of a game after it ends, I enjoyed seeing the batter-by-batter breakdown of Ace's pitch selection and where he threw them in the zone in his outing on Tuesday.  He's sort of like a bullpen version of Andy Pettitte with his approach.

- Moshe at TYU also tries to talk everybody off the ledge about Joe's management of the bullpen over the first 2 games, and provides 4 reasons why Joe is doing what he's doing.  I can support points 1, 3, and 4, but I still disagree with point 2 about needing to set roles.  Most of that should have already been done.  But I do agree with Moshe that at the end of the year we will all look back and say Joe did a good job with the 'pen.

- Lenny Neslin at LenNY's Yankees puts up a sweet pictorial diary of his experiences at Fenway for Game 2 of the opening series on Tuesday.  After I got over my jealousy over the fact that he got to go and I didn't, I had to admit it was pretty cool.  Kudos to Lenny for throwing all the Yankee gear on too, especially the 2009 World Series hat.

-Benjamin Kabak makes another appearance by discussing the Joe West Incident from every conceivable angle, including West himself.  After reading that, I don't really think there is anything else I could or should say.  So I won't.

- Jay at Fack Youk talks about overvaluing relievers, using Mo as the prime example, and discusses the differences that individual perception versus WAR create in how relievers, even the best ones, are valued.  Obviously guys like Mo are never going to be up there in WAR or VORP or stats like that, but I'm still damn glad to have him at the back end of the 'pen.

- SJK at No Maas breaks down Teix's career splits by month to show just how bad he has been in April.  I still can't figure out why, I don't think anybody can.  But hopefully yesterday was the start of Teix breaking that career trend.

- Good stuff from Mark Feinsand at the Daily News about CC's no-hit bid yesterday and how his pitch count would have affected Joe's decision.  I said to my Dad and Uncle while I was watching that Sabathia was up to 111 pitches and probably wouldn't make it through the 9th anyway, but it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if he did get Shoppach out in the 8th.  Joe said he would have taken CC out, and looking at the big picture I can't really argue with that decision.

- Apparently Lenny can argue with it though.  And I see where he's coming from too.  It's CC; he's your horse, your ace, and chances for a no-hitter don't come along that often.  But all in all, I think Joe taking him out after the 8th would have been the right call to make, no matter how many people disagreed with it.

- Greg Fertel at Pending Pinstripes looks at Brett Gardner vs. Marcus Thames and concludes that they should NOT be platooned.  And how did he come to this conclusion, you ask?  Why by comparing their offensive AAAAAND defensive stats (GASP!) that show Gardner being worth 0.72 runs over Thames. 

Oh, and not for nothing, but Gardner is batting .385 so far with 4 runs scored and 3 driven in while not embarrassing himself in the field like Thames has.  Thank you, Greg.  Thank you for putting in the time and effort to statistically support what I've been saying all along.  Now if we could only get Joe to read this.

- And just to get everybody a little more psyched for the home opener on Tuesday, LoHud has everything you need to know about Opening Day at the Stadium.  I'll probably be sitting at my cubical on Tuesday reading this over and over sighing to myself while the activities are taking place.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Yankee fans.  Not a lot going on today outside of the Bombers in the afternoon.  Maybe catch a little hockey, do some chores.  Set your alarms to wake up in time for the new "Family Guy" tonight.