KRAD's Inaccurate Guide to Life

This past weekend, there was a pregame ceremony celebrating the city of Boston after a day of lockdown while the hunt was on for the two brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon -- a shitty end to a shitty week in Beantown, but once it was over, baseball resumed (Friday's game was cancelled) and as part of the ceremony David Ortiz -- long the leader of the Red Sox -- gave a little speech:



Yes, he dropped the f-bomb on live television. Fucking A. :) As a Yankee fan, I dis the Sawx all the time, because that's what we do, just as Red Sox fans dis the Evil Empire. This past weekend, though, the Red Sox helped a city heal. Bravo, guys.

I discuss how poorly Ivan Nova has been pitching, not just this year, but since the All-Star Break last year, and it's not pretty.

An excerpt:

Right now the Yankees are defying expectations, sporting a 10-7 record, and have three starters going very strong, so they can afford to give Nova another shot or two at righting the ship, but only that. If the team starts playing down to their talent level, or if Kevin Youkilis or Travis Hafner suddenly remember that they're old and fragile and break, the team's going to rely on their pitching and defense to keep things going unless and until the Bronx M*A*S*H unit finally releases Mark Teixeira, Curtis Granderson, Derek Jeter, and Alex Rodriguez. David Phelps and Adam Warren are right here on the roster, though Phelps hasn't exactly been covering himself in glory, and Warren has mostly been sitting on his ass as the poster boy for the inanity of carrying 12 pitchers. (Seriously, why have a twelfth pitcher if he's only going to appear twice in 17 games? A pinch-hitter would be way more useful occupying that roster spot...) Vidal Nuno and Graham Stoneburner have both pitched well at Scranton (as has Chris Bootcheck) in an admittedly small sample (and also each have really cool names), and in an even smaller one (one game), Chien-Ming Wang looked very 2005-ish. Knowing the Yanks, they'll sooner try veterans Wang or Bootcheck if Nova continues to falter, forgetting that Wang had a career because they gave him a chance as a minor-leaguer when the big team struggled—for that matter, that's why Nova's here. Wang's unlikely to have anything left, whereas Nuno or Stoneburner or Warren might actually turn into the next Wang ca. 2005 or the next Nova ca. 2011.