Larry Brown Sports

AJ Burnett is such a bad-ass. Even if the Pittsburgh Pirates don’t improve upon their recent misfortunes in 2013, their fans are lucky that Burnett is still anchoring the team’s staff. In order to remind the fans of how fortunate they are to have acquired Burnett, the Pirates are giving away the incredible t-shirts you see above before Friday’s game against the Cincinnati Reds.

Can you think of a better giveaway than that? Prizes like this team-branded waffle iron and this Coco Crisp bobblehead doll come close, but nothing beats a T-shirt that features Burnett rocking sunglasses and throwing up a BAMF hand signal. The dude has it all, and if you don’t believe me just check out this GIF that Getting Blanked passed along:

Are we done here? Game, set, match.

Fist pound to Big League Stew

Pittsburgh Pirates ace A.J. Burnett had a pretty rough first game of the season on Monday. His pitching performance was actually quite solid — he Burnett threw 5.2 innings and allowed three earned runs on six hits. He also managed to strike out 10 Chicago Cubs, but the Pirates were unable to give him any run support and went on to lose 3-1. Oh, and then there was the whole exploding rosin bag thing.

Burnett was simply trying to dry his hands off like any other hurler when he fell victim to either a rosin bag malfunction or a brilliant April Fools prank. I’m going to pretend it was the latter and that his teammates were snickering in the dugout waiting for him to pick the thing up. Could something like that frustrate Burnett and throw off his rhythm? Perhaps, but it’s the first game of a 162-game season. And they’re the Pirates. Sorry — it’s a little too early for low blows.

Watch the video below to see the full thing:

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Hanley Ramirez and A.J. Burnett got into it during Thursday’s Dodgers-Pirates game after Burnett felt Ramirez showed him up following a home run.

Ramirez hit a two-run homer (the 150th of his career) off Burnett in the bottom of the fourth to give the Dodgers a 4-3 lead. As he was rounding second base, he appeared to put his hands to his eyes in the shape of glasses, upsetting Burnett. The gesture seems to be a ripoff of the “lo viste” gesture developed by the Marlins, for whom Ramirez played before being traded to the Dodgers. “Lo viste” is the players’ way of saying “did you see that?” in Spanish, though it’s unclear exactly what Ramirez intends his new gesture to mean. Regardless, Burnett felt Ramirez was showing him up.

Later in the game after the Pirates had reclaimed the lead, Burnett struck Ramirez out and stared him down. He also clearly yelled, “Sit down!”

“If you’re going to hit a homer, act like you’ve hit one before,” Burnett told reporters after the game according to the Associated Press. “The first batter, (James) Loney, hit one, was very professional about it. Ran hard the whole way. I just thought he did a little something at second base. I could be wrong. It was the heat of the moment.”

As for the “sit down” comment, Burnett said he was just excited to get a hitter out that sent one a long way off of him the last time up. Obviously, there was more to it than that. It’s hard to not side with Burnett on this one. Hanley clearly made the gesture in his direction, which is a classless move. Moments like those are the reason many of Ramirez’s former teammates weren’t sad to see him leave Miami.

A.J. Burnett probably wants to leave most of his Yankees memories behind in New York, but he’ll be sticking with the same jersey number. As is the case when any new player comes to town, Burnett had to strike a deal with a current member of the Pirates in order to keep his No. 34 jersey. Daniel McCutchen, the 29-year-old reliever who wore No. 34 in Pittsburgh last season, is planning for the future. That’s why he has agreed to give his number to Burnett if A.J. sets up a college fund for his unborn daughter, who is due in May.

“When a veteran comes in and takes a number, some of the guys usually get something,” McCutchen said according to the Post-Gazette. “I know he has kids. He asked me what I wanted, I brought that up. Eighteen years from now, we’ll see what the market is.”

Anyone can ask for cash or something materialistic in exchange for a jersey, but it’s nice to see McCutchen turning his situation into a long-term investment. Hopefully Burnett doesn’t become a bust with the Pirates and only fulfill part of the agreement like a certain quarterback in Minnesota seems to have done.

The amount is unknown at the moment, as the College America 529 plan’s true value won’t be determined until McCutchen’s daughter heads to college. Regardless of how much money he has to invest now and how much it costs him in the long run, it’s a deal Burnett should feel good about agreeing to.

H/T Hardball Talk

The idea during the offseason is to address your biggest needs, and the Yankees have done just that. By trading A.J. Burnett, the Yankees unloaded a pitcher that was clearly a bad signing and couldn’t cut it in New York. The departure of Burnett also left a huge hole within the organization, however. As you may know, A.J. was in charge of smashing his teammates in the face with a shaving cream pie after walk-off hits last season. Fortunately, Nick Swisher is ready to step up and fill that void.

“You know, A.J. was a good buddy of mine, and he was a good buddy of all the guys in here,” Swisher said in an interview with MLB.com. “I’m sad to see him go, and wish him the best of luck. We’re going to have to keep something going, man, because people in New York want pie! You know, let’s just keep it going.”

The one issue that could arise is that Swisher is a position player, meaning he could be the one delivering the walk-off hit. He says he won’t be pieing himself if that happens and that someone else will step up. Thank goodness for that.

It certainly sounds like the Yankees are ready to go. Their pie-in-the-face plan is in order. Oh yeah, and they happened to add Michael Pineda and Hiroki Kuroda which should solidify their starting rotation. All is well in New York.

H/T Hardball Talk

A.J. Burnett turned out to be a terrible signing for Brian Cashman and the Yankees. Some players can’t handle the spotlight of playing in New York, and Burnett seemed to fit that description perfectly. When things got tough for A.J., he became completely unraveled. After an extremely rough 2011 season, the Yankees decided to unload the right-hander. Once a trade with the Pirates became official, the Yankees also chose to kick Burnett on his way out the door by highlighting his wild pitches in a press release announcing the trade.

In his three seasons with the club he went 34-35 with a 4.79 ERA (584.0IP, 311ER) in 99 games (98 starts). His 58 wild pitches recorded during his three-year stint with the Yankees (2009-11) were the most for any Major League pitcher over a three-season span since Tony Cloninger threw 62 wild pitches from 1964 through 1966, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. He posted an 11-11 record with a 5.15 ERA (190.1IP, 109ER) in 33 appearances (32GS) with the Yankees in 2011, setting career-highs in home runs allowed (31) and tying a career-high in earned runs allowed, while ranking first with a franchise-record 25 wild pitches – the most by any Major League pitcher in a single season since the start of the 2000s and the fifth most since 1900.

We get it. You had several reasons for getting rid of him. Perhaps the Yankees felt the need to justify the fact that they were eating more than half of Burnett’s remaining salary, but getting into that much detail about his wild pitch numbers seems unnecessary. I doubt anyone would have questioned the trade. It makes little sense that New York chose to pile a bunch of insults on after shipping a bad signing out of town.

H/T The Big Lead

An influential high school freshmen baseball coach once told me, “Baseball is a game of redemption.” It was his favorite phrase and one that he used almost four or five times each game. He knew it wasn’t the most original phrase anyone has ever thought up, but it was certainly the truth.

A center fielder can go 0-for-4 with four strikeouts and still rob a game-winning home run in the 9th to preserve a win for his team. A first basemen can go hitless through the first six games of a playoff series and hit a game-winning homer in the seventh and he becomes everyone’s hero. Heck, even A.J. Burnett can go 11-11 with a 5.15 ERA in the regular season and be given an opportunity to salvage his team’s season with one performance.

We knew when the Yankees signed him that Burnett would be a huge mistake for Brian Cashman.  Over the past two seasons, the $82.5 million “front-line” starter has been atrocious.  He has been in danger of permanently losing his spot in the rotation several times, but it’s hard to justify benching someone who makes $16 million a year.  One thing appeared certain as the right-hander struggled through his 2011 campaign: there would be no spot for Burnett in the postseason rotation.

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