Somebody Get Ian O'Conner A Paddle...

(Sweet shirt, bro.  Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing)

... Because he's fixin' to dish out a written spanking to Alex Rodriguez.  We've been having some fun with the early MSM outcry in response to the latest A-Rod PED story on the AB4AR Facebook Page today, and for my money Ian O'Conner's piece from yesterday takes the cake.  It's a horrifically brilliant combination of moral grandstanding, lazy logic, self-disagreement and contradiction, and regurgitated attempts to state what is already known.  In short, it's a typical "write it as quickly as possible and get it posted so we can get pageviews" ESPN NY Yankee post.

Lowlights after the jump...

Projecting Andy Pettitte

(What can Andy-Wan do in 2013?)

Andy Pettitte's decision to come back for the 2013 season wasn't nearly as dramatic or surprising as his return last season.  He already sounded like he was leaning towards coming back when he said he was going to take some time to think it over, and the Yankees re-signed him to another 1-year deal with little trouble in late November.  Now that it's officially been determined that he won't be participating in the World Baseball Classic, we can start to look forward to what Andy's going to do on the mound for the Yanks in 2013 and for how long he's going to do it.  Pettitte is an important part of the Yankee rotation as the middle link between the rock solid 1-2 starters and the iffy back end, but his age and related injury concerns make him a bit more of a question mark than your average #3 starter.

Along with it being prospect season and still the late part of hot stove season, it's also projection season.  There isn't a whole lot out there on Andy yet, but it's still worth taking a peek to see what kind of production Andy is projected to put up this coming season.