Kent's Cooperstown Case

Chat-tastic

Pattern Recognition

Empire State of Mind, Baby!
Just before signing off early Thursday morning in the wake of the Yankees' World Series win, the YES network ran a montage set to Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind," the song which had become this team's anthem; the rapper performed it live prior to Game Two of the series, the one I attented. In my haste to record the montage, I changed the channel — I was a bit excitable — but was pleased to find it online today. Enjoy!Empire State Of MindUploaded by KMFIS

Start Spreading the News
After a night of revelry — I was a one-man dogpile — let's get straight to the opener of today's piece at Baseball Prospectus:Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter may be the Yankees for whom the spotlight shines the brightest, but it was Hideki Matsui who did the dirty work on Wednesday night. Setting a single-game World Series record with six RBI, Matsui collected big hits in his first three at-bats to help the Yankees pounce on Pedro Martinez and the Phillies early, building up a 7-1 lead by the end of the fifth inning. As the Yankees did two ni

Laying an Egg
You never know what you're going to get when it comes to A.J. Burnett, a sterling performance like he gave the Yankees in Game Two of the World Series, or an implosion like he gave them in last night's Game Five. Through his first four postseason starts this fall, he'd allowed just eight runs, four of them within his first 12 pitches in an ugly first-inning meltdown in Game Five of the ALCS. Last night's performance echoed that rough start. From today's piece at Baseball Prospectus: The Yankees begain the game in a hole because Burnett laid an egg, surrendering six runs in two-plus innings. Pitching on t

Chasing Away the Ghosts
Johnny Damon's mad ninth-inning dash from second to third once he realized no one was covering will go down in the annals of World Series lore, but it was Alex Rodriguez who was the real story last night. From my writeup at Baseball Prospectus:Last night, in the ninth inning of Game Four of the World Series, Alex Rodriguez put the lie to the seemingly endless string of complaints that have dogged him since 2004 regarding his ability to come through in the clutch. Neve

The Trouble With Lefties
The Yankees pulled ahead in the World Series on Saturday night, two games to one. Andy Pettitte survived an awful second inning, while Cole Hamels fell apart like a cheap watch after a dominating three innings, with Pettitte himself contributing to that via an RBI single amid a three-run fifth-inning rally that ultimately chased last year's World Series MVP.There's been a lot of talk about the root of Hamels' woes lately. As I wrote in my series preview, BP colleague Matt Swartz found that the difference between his 2008 and 2009 performances largely boiled down to