When everything that isn’t turning out right cannot make me unhappy

I’ve got less than 2 weeks until I move back to Boston, which is a very scary thought. But the past few days have been pretty good, so I just need to take care of some business before I move back up to Boston and all should be well.

I added a few links over the past few weeks to my already huge list of links. They’re good ones though, so I can’t hold them back from the people.

I was working on the header image earlier, but Photoshop Elements crashed. And I hadn’t saved my progress. . Oh well, I’ll continue work on that in a little.

I’ll be at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino from August 27th through the 29th, since my dad wanted to take a small trip and get a chance to go somewhere with me. However, him prying me away from the poker tables should prove to be a job in and of itself. Maybe I can go around claiming TV show characters were based on me when I didn’t really even hold the job they are portrayed as having (Yes, I am looking at you, Mr. Jamie Gold).

Now as to why I’m so happy, well, there’s nothing like winning the first 4 games against the Boston Red Sox for a Yankees fan. Boy is that extra breathing room necessary, so that Torre will maybe use guys in the 6th and 7th that are not named Villone nor Proctor. Still, good to see the hitting showing up the way Cashman expected it to. And that lineup will be murder next year with Matsui healthy.

Finally, I’ll conclude with my much delayed Eric Duncan update. Of course, once I started hyping it, he decided it’d be time to cool down and move back to third. Still what he’s done is an improvement on his numbers before his demotion to AA Trenton. Courtesy of The Baseball Cube (I’m going to use numbers from leagues higher than the NY-Penn League):

• 2004
  • Battle Creek
    • .260/.351/.479 in 288 AB with a 84/38 K/BB ratio (that is slightly above .29 K/AB)
  • Tampa
    • .254/.366/.462 in 173 AB wth a 47/31 K/BB ratio (that is slightly above .27 K/AB, still a pretty high amount, though his BBs went up, showing an improving eye)
• 2005
  • Trenton
    • .235/.326/.408 in 451 AB with a 136/59 K/BB ratio (that is slight above .30 K/AB, and the walks went down a bit as well)

So coming into this season, the prospect status had worn off a bit from Eric Duncan, but he is still 22, so there’s time for improvement. His numbers in the Arizona Fall League, which I don’t have in front of me, showed some progress, though that league is a huge hitter’s league since not many big pitching prospects are sent. So those numbers to some effect had to be taken with a grain of salt. Yet, the Yankees organization felt a big need to prove their farm system is fine (what, Cano and Wang were not enough proof?), so they irrationally promoted him to AAA where he put up this line: .209/.279/.255 in 110 AB with a 24/9 K/BB ratio. Yes, the K’s were down, but so were the hits and walks, and it was obvious the guy was overmatched. After an injury, and Melky proving that there’s still some depth to the system, the Yankees demoted Duncan to AA Trenton on June the 8th. Since then Eric Duncan has put up the following line: .248/.355/.485 in 206 AB with a 38/32 K/BB ratio. The strikeouts are down to less than 20% of his at bats, which is a HUGE improvement on his past numbers. His BABIP is close to .300, so he hasn’t gotten unlucky. So obviously one of the keys in improving, for Eric Duncan, will be to further cut down on his strike outs. Also, his power, which has improved from last year (Homering in about 4.9% of ABs as opposed to 4.2% last year, both from his Trenton numbers, that is) will need to continue to develop, and his patient eye will need to maintain it’s ability to discern strike from ball. Still, it’s obvious that Duncan has finally started to develop some of his skills this year and with further development, he may be less than 2 years away from the Bronx.