New York Yankees

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, I thought it would be a good idea to run a special series today. So every hour today we’re going to run a collection of pictures of Yankees’ wives and girlfriends.

There are 10 in total. Here is the schedule:

10:00 am: Derek Jeter’s girlfriend, Minka Kelly

11:00 am: AJ Burnett’s wife, Karen Burnett

12:00 pm: Andy Pettitte’s wife, Laura Pettitte

Brett Gardner had 284 plate appearances last year, and during approximately 284 of them I was screaming at my TV begging him to bunt.

Maybe 284 sacrifices is a bit much for one season, but when you have as much speed as the Yankees' outfielder does, it makes sense to lay one down once in a while to see if you can beat the throw to first.

This is why I was pleased to learn today that the 26-year-old has practiced more bunting this offseason. Because, after all, it's hard to steal bases if you're not on base.

According to George King of the NY Post , longtime Yankees trainer Gene Monahan will miss spring training and possibly the start of the season with what is termed as a “significant illness.”

As the New York Yankees prepared to face the Boston Red Sox on Jul. 20, 1965, the defending American League Champions found themselves ensconced in sixth place, 12.5 games behind the league-leading Minnesota Twins.

The Red Sox were in even worse shape. They were ninth in the 10-team league, 22 games out of first.

Trendy Game

Some games define trends, and this was one of them.

With the New York Yankees making the move to (re)acquire Javier Vasquez they now have a solid four-man rotation in C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Andy Pettitte, and Vasquez.  Wang won't be returning—which is a shame because he did have a budding career, but the injury-bug plagued and staked its claim in his system. 

The Yankees were able to make their way through the playoffs with the three-man weave, but if another series were to come up, they may have been toast.

Work has kept me away from Bleacher Report for a couple weeks now, and I do apologize for that. But I am back with another topic for the Yankee section to talk about and discuss.

It was reported recently that Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman was not going to talk contract extensions with Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Joe Girardi before the season starts in 2010.

Relax, this is nothing new from the team. If anything, it's a good thing.

As a starter coming up through the Yankees minor league system Phil Hughes was pretty much a two pitch pitcher—fastball/curveball. Sure, he had a slider, and even a changeup, but the two pitches were works in progress at best.

According to George King of the NY Post , the Yankees have set their sights on a Cuban defector, Adeinis Hechavarria , once he becomes eligible to be signed possibly as soon as next week.

As the 2010 postseason comes to an end we here at Bronx Baseball Daily have been running through the Yankees roster and previewing each player. We take a look at their 2009 season and what their 2010 expectations will be.

This is a very strong team that compares favorably to the 2009 World Champions so let’s take a look a bit closer. They certainly should be able to defend their title as long as they stay healthy.

We’ve covered 15 players so far:

Nick Johnson is the presumptive replacement for Johnny Damon in the two hole for the New York Yankees as Spring Training is about to open.

Johnson was signed as a free agent after Hideki Matsui was let go as the Yankees DH. So some will speak of Johnson replacing Godzilla.

But Johnson is not the kind of hitter that Matsui was and will not hit in the five or six spot in the order.

Johnny Damon has also departed. Damon hit in the two hole last season and Johnson will take that spot.