FanHouse AJBurnett

SAN FRANCISCO -- Even though Randy Johnson was the one who was pitching, catcher Dave Valle still woke up the next day with a sore left shoulder.

Valle, the Mariners' primary catcher in the early '90s, was the man who had to handle Johnson when he was more Wild Thing than Big Unit.

"The fastball would soar up and away (to righties) and if you'd catch it at the wrong angle, it would feel like your arm is going to be pulled out of the socket," Valle told FanHouse. "Then he'd throw that slider down at the back foot. So that was a lot of territory to cover for a catcher ...

"He was a rough day at the office for a catcher. He was throwing 100 mph and didn't have a real good idea where it was going."

BALTIMORE -- Good news was not in short supply for the scuffling New York Yankees Friday night. Alex Rodriguez got the oohs and aahs, the adulation and the jeers, at Camden Yards, homering on the first pitch he saw from Jeremy Guthrie to give his team a lead it wouldn't relinquish in a 4-0 win over the Orioles.

It was CC Sabathia who made that edge stand up, though. A-Rod or not, that might be the best news of all for the Yankees.

"He wants to be the guy who's the stopper," manager Joe Girardi said of Sabathia. "That's exactly what he was."

Need I remind you that a dreaded Boston Red Sox jersey, bearing the name and number of David Ortiz, was buried in concrete inside the new Yankee Stadium? And that construction workers last spring had to use jackhammers to remove it, lest the poison linger like salmonella in a service corridor at one of the ballpark's many chi-chi restaurants?

I can't help but think a curse was effectively planted. Because since the Yankees moved into their $1.5-billion pinstriped palace, they've been haunted by non-stop reminders of their greed, arrogance, bad karma and spending foolishness.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

Matt Garza is one of those talented pitchers that novice owners probably lost patience with quickly. And if they did, they were watching Thursday's spectacular performance kicking themselves. Garza, who had struggled with his command through his first four starts, took a perfect game bid into the seventh inning against the Red Sox and finished with a line worthy of adulation: 7 2/3 innings, 10 strikeouts, 1 hit, 1 walk, no runs. Has he turned the corner that quickly?

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

After a terrible first week, Texas first baseman Chris Davis was one of the hot topics of concern in fantasy baseball circles. My colleague Matt Snyder recently tried to put those fears to rest in Slump or Suck, and right on cue, Davis went ahead and smashed them with his bat.

From the Windup is FanHouse's extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

While there is still time left in the Hot Stove season, and there are a few high quality players left on the market -- Ben Sheets, anyone? -- the Yankees have been the team who has made the biggest splash in all of baseball thus far. That splash was seemingly a reaction to missing the playoffs for the first time since the strike-shortened 1994.

Mark Teixeira and Scott Boras have been controlling the free agent market for some time now, as they decide on where the superstar will end up playing in 2009. It was basically narrowed down to the Nationals, the Angels, the Red Sox and maybe the Yankees, even though they had already spent $40 billion on pitching.

Or so we thought; Jon Heyman is reporting that the Yankees (the f__king Yankees, man!) are close to signing Tex to an eight-year, $180 million deal.

Teixeira, who hit .308 with 33 home runs and 121 RBIs in 2008, will receive an eight-year, $180 million deal from the Yankees with a full no-trade provision.

If this happens -- and there are a lot of major news sites reporting it -- then it is a HUGE coup for the Yankees. Not only have they picked up CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett to shore up their rotation, but suddenly they've added one of the premiere power hitters in baseball to their lineup.

Now, of course, this would all but kill off the Manny Ramirez to the Yankees rumors. At least we can hope -- Armageddon doesn't sound that fun. On the bright side, at least "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is suddenly relevant again.

I'm getting sick of this. The sports media world has their own Elite Liberal contingent and they're dead-set on running the name of the New York Yankees through the mud. Everywhere you click it's "the Yankees spend too much money" on this, and "the Yankees spent too much money" for that, and "Sabathia has enough money to float in the river and declare himself a sovereign nation."

Somebody on this site needs to make a stand. The Yankees are a baseball team like everybody else. Just because YOUR team can't do what they do doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to do it. Hey Royals fans, if you woke up tomorrow morning and the Royals had given 200 million to Mark Teixeira and 200 million to Manny Ramirez and signed five pitchers and got ready to destroy the AL Central next year, wouldn't you be the happiest people on Earth? Of course you would.

This morning's Dugout sets things straight and explains it all, after the jump.

Once upon a time, it would've been silly to question Ben Sheets' durability: he averaged 34 starts and 224 innings for three straight years beginning in 2002. Unfortunately that's when the wheels fell off, as he averaged 21 starts and 134 innings from 2005-07.

He seemed to turn the corner in 2008 with 31 starts and 198 innings, but a torn muscle in his pitching elbow sidelined him late in the year and in the playoffs. As a free agent this winter for the first time in his life, his timing couldn't have been worse. Just when it looked like he was able to rebuild his image as a reliable workhorse, he reminded everybody just how fragile he's been the last several years.

For a while it looked like the Yankees might roll the dice by giving him a two-year deal, but after committing nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, that door has apparently been closed. From Joel Sherman of the New York Post:

Keep hearing from multiple sources that the Yankees will have nothing to do with Ben Sheets. They have real concerns about his health, especially they fret about the righty's history with back ailments. The Yankee theory is they already have taken their health gamble by investing in A.J. Burnett for five years.