They have big problems getting clutch hits and it might be that there is no remedy to unleash a breakout and save this Yankee season. But I think the Yanks should at least try and one way to do that would be to send Melky Cabrera to the minors. He simply is not having competitive at-bats. The YES announcers made a big deal that the AL's leading hitter, Johnny Damon, wasn't playing on Monday night, but Justin Christian was. Forget Christian.Cabrera began the game with a .221 average against southpaws. However, whichever side Cabrera is hitting from, he hardly ever makes solid contact. He has three extra-base hits since the All-Star break, two RBIs and two walks. If I ran the Yanks, I would bring Brett Gardner back up and have a lefty-righty possibility in center with Christian. But I certainly would run the injury/defense risk by playing Johnny Damon more in center to get a better offensive lineup. And I would hope real soon that Hideki Matsui can play again, and you could have Matsui as the DH, Damon in left and Jason Giambi at first, and hope that jump starts the offense.
Melky has looked awful since early May and Sherman is right, there is no reason to continue running him out there.
And you never know, maybe a few weeks in the minors would be good for Melky. Maybe he needs a wakeup call.
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That double play last night ruined everything for me. John Sterling repeated the fact that the ONLY way the yankees couldnt score Cano from third after sexson walked and pudge popped out was if melky bounced into a dp, he said it THREE times before melky saw the first pitch. He didnt even finish saying it the third time when Melky swung at the first pitch to a tailor made DP and he laughed in dismay as soon as the ball was hit, speedily saying 'onto second onto first double play'.
If John Sterling shakes his head at you, youre fuckin up. Give him the boot, see you in september.
He's been horrible. 2 hr's and 11 rbi's since the end of May, some pitchers would do better than that.
off topic- Freddy Garcia is going to sign with the Tigers. ( SI.COM )
^^ Dan
That was my point last night regarding the media. Kay was being an idiot as usual and making a big deal about Damon and Giambi not playing.
Why wasn't he making a big deal out of Melky playing? Or, Jeter or Arod for that matter.
Simple the news media job is to sell newspapers not report the truth. They only tell one side of the story as usual.
That's all my point and sorry if I ruffled feathers.
Melky has been horrible for far longer than just since May. He's been basically a non-factor as an offensive player since he debuted 3 years ago. I can't believe that starting out as a mediocre hitter with no power, and declining ever since for three years hasn't yet been enough to show the Yankees that this guy is not the answer in CF.
Pinstripes,
Melky was hitting .291 with 6 HR and 17 RBI on May 4th. He was slugging .505 and his OPS was .864. Which is pretty damn good. Since then he's been invisible.
Oh, I know that - he was great the first month. The problem is just that - it was only one month. If you take any large stretch of Melky's short career, you find the same thing - a very, very low OPS. I'm not denying that he could get hot for a few weeks. Pretty much any player can do that, no matter how bad of a major leaguer they are (Shane Spencer, for example). But the point is that regardless of what he did for one month to start the season, he's shown over the course of 3 years that he's not capable of sustaining anything resembling an "average" hitter.
I know what you mean, I was just trying to explain why I said since early May.
I gotcha. Yeah, he even gave ME a glimmer of hope after his first month... and he's definitely been worse than he's ever been since then.
I was a big fan of Melky early this year. He seemed to cover a lot of ground in the outfield and had some timely hits that gave the whole team a boost. I haven't seen anything from him in a long time.
I've officially put him on my list of players I would like to see traded away.
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