All is right in the world

Derek Jeter has officially resigned with the Yankees. There's a press conference at 2:30 on ESPN. I'm stuck in class, but if anything important comes out of it, I'll post later.

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Breathing Room

The Yankees have risen to the challenge the past two nights, giving them a 2.5 game lead over the Rays in the AL East, and lowering the magic number for a playoff birth to 3 after the Red Sox loss tonight.

Hughes came out and pitched a strong 6.1 and then Javy and Joba worked well out of the bullpen. They also gave Mariano a night off, so that's a plus.

Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway) I feel much better about the State of the Yankees today than I did on Sunday night. But, this is a four-game series, so the Yanks need another win to take the series, and I for one am not going to say "No" to a sweep.

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New Poll Question: How'd AJ get the black eye?

If you saw the game last night, you probably saw that big bruise around AJ Burnett's right eye.( I apologize if you didn't, I couldn't find a decent picture of it online) After the game, he and Joe Girardi had no comment on how it happened. So that's just going to let me speculate on how it happened. Here's what I've come up with:

1) AJ pulled a David Wells, went out bar hopping the night before a start and got into a fight.
2) After doing something wrong, he got frustrated and somehow hit himself in the face.
3) Joe Girardi pulled him aside and told him that he needs to start pitching better...or else. And to drive the point home, he punched him in the face.

Let us know what you think in the poll in the top right hand corner of the page. The poll closes at 7:05 next Wednesday, the day of AJ's next start, assuming he doesn't receive any more mysterious injuries.

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Swish Stops Sweep

With one swing of the bat, Nick Swisher put a halt to the Yankees 3 game losing streak and prevented the lowly Baltimore Orioles from sweeping a series in the Bronx for the first time since 1986.

If the Yanks had gotten swept by the Orioles this late in the season, that would have been horrible. Losing 2 out of 3 to the O's this late in the season is still pretty pathetic, but obviously not as bad as getting swept.

As of 4:15 PM, the Yankees are 2 games in front of the Rays in the AL East. The Yankees have an off day tomorrow before heading to Texas to take on the Rangers. Just so you know Cliff Lee will start in Sunday's game against Dustin Moseley, as the Yankees are skipping over Phil Hughes in order to keep his innings under the limit.


SEE YA!

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7th Heaven

The Yanks won again today to extend their winning streak to 7 games. More importantly, they take a 2 game lead on the Rays, pending the outcome of their game against Baltimore.

The most amazing thing is that Yankees are playing good baseball despite all the maneuvering that's been going on with the team. A-Rod and Pettitte are still on the DL and Swisher's day-to-day. And don't forget the starting rotation is pretty much week-to-week.

Now it doesn't hurt that Mark Teixeira's been hitting .529 with 2 homers and 7 RBI's and Jorge Posada has a .412 average over the past week, but I'm still not completely sold on this team right now. I'll see how things go over the next 10 days leading up to the 4 game set in the Bronx between the Yanks and Rays before I set my confidence level.

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Hey Yankees, WAKE UP!

On the morning of August 1st, the Yankees were 66-37, and 2 games up and the Rays. Since then, the Yanks have gone 6-9, and are now tied with the Rays for first in the AL East.

Someone may have forgotten to tell the Yanks, but teams in the playoff hunt are supposed to play better in August and September. They haven't won a series since taking 3 of 4 against Cleveland at the end of July. They lost a 3-game series to the Rays before splitting series against the Red Sox and Rangers.

If the Yankees are going to make the playoffs, and repeat as World Series Champions, they're going to need to turn this slump around, and fast.

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To the Bronx...

I just realized I haven't posted since July 26th. I've been pretty much drowning in french fries and burgers since then so it's nice to enjoy a day off at the Stadium.

John and I will doing the reverse Benny trip tonight to see AJ Burnett take on Josh Beckett in what is sure to be a four and a half hour game. With Bad AJ showing up most of the time, and Beckett with his 5 plus ERA, this has all the makings of a 10-9 decision.

This is Yankees-Red Sox, so it still has a certain buzz about it. But the team I'm worried about is the Rays. Remember waaaaaaay back at the beginning of the season when I picked the Orioles to finish ahead of the Rays? Yeah, I should have put money on that; it would have been like buying BP stock on April 19. The Yanks are 27 games over .500, have a .624 winning percentage, and the best record in baseball, but are still only 1.5 games up in the standings. That means one bad series and the Yanks are looking up at the Rays. So the sooner the Yanks can get there bullpen going and Andy Pettitte back on the mound, the better.

I know I'll be doing some tweeting during the game, and John might be as well. So follow @jgeant and @jphealy. We'll see how many Boston "fans" get thrown out of the bleachers tonight.


SEE YA!

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This is the Curtis Granderson we traded for

Since Curtis Granderson's name is in the headline, that should make it fairly obvious that A-Rod didn't hit #600. So A-Rod Watch will go in to Day 6.

But Curtis is finally starting to pick it up. He's had a pretty crappy season so far, while missing most of May. But he's in the middle of a 6 game hitting streak and has 3 homers in the past 2 days. If Granderson and Teixeira can hit to their ability in the second half of the season, the Yankees can put a little breathing room between them and the Rays.

Speaking of the Rays, Matt Garza threw the first no-hitter in franchise history against the Tigers. That's the 5th no-no of the season (6th if you count the 28-batter perfect game by Armando Gallaraga). It also means the Mets and the Padres are the only teams with 0 no-hitters in team history. There was one point when I was about 14 that my dad grew his beard out and said he wasn't going to shave it off until the Mets threw a no-hitter. I think that was the year Tom Glavine had one going with 2 outs in the 8th before giving up a hit. Luckily the old man decided not to follow through on that, or I'd be living with Zach Galifianakis.



The Trading Deadline is also coming up at the end of the week, so we'll obviously have news on that if CashMoney pulls the trigger on any deals.

SEE YA!

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A-Rod on #599

Alex Rodriguez moved another step closer to baseball history with his 599th homer. If he had hit number 600 tonight, I would have been SO angry. I went to a Texas Rangers vs. Chicago Cubs game on June 19, 2007. I was sitting in the right field seats about 10 feet left of the foul pole. It was about a million degrees (which is a cool day in Texas) but I stuck it out for the entire game to hopefully see Sosa hit #600. (A little context here: I lived 45 minutes outside of Chicago from 1997-2000, so I was a big Sosa fan, as well as wanting to see baseball history.) When I turned ESPN on the next day, I saw on the bottom line that he had hit number 600. Then I saw the replay. Sosa hits one right down the right field line in the aisle next to the section I was sitting in. Right place, wrong time. There are currently only 6 hitters in MLB history to slug 600 homers, and I don't think I could handle it if I missed seeing 2 of them in person by one day.

A-Rod hit homers number 1 and 500 against the Royals, too. He's got three more chances to hit 600 against them at Yankee Stadium. John will be in the stands on Sunday to see his last chance.

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Granderson to DL

Curtis Granderson was placed on the 15-day disabled list with a Grade 2 strain of his left hamstring.

This puts a hamper on a good start of the season by Granderson, who was batting .225 with 2 homers, and 7 RBI's. The Yankees called up righty reliever Mark Melancon to help a bullpen that had to pitch 5 innings today after another poor start by Javy Vazquez.

Brett Gardner, who has put up some very impressive numbers so far, will slide over to center, and Randy Winn and Marcus Thames will split time in left.

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Game 23: Yankees vs White Sox

YANKEES (15-7)
Jeter SS
Swisher RF
Teixeira 1B
Rodriguez 3B
Cano 2B
Posada C
Thames DH
Granderson CF
Gardner LF

RHP Javier Vazquez (1-3, 9.00)

WHITE SOX (9-14)
Vizquel SS
Beckham 3B
Jones CF
Konerko 1B
Teahan 3B
Quentin DH
Pierzynski C
Kotsay RF
Pierre LF

LHP John Danks (3-0, 1.55)


Just win, baby: Javy Vazquez hasn't gotten off to the good start he would have liked in his second stint with the Yanks, but he can take a step forward with a win today against one of his former teams.

MVP?: It's only the first day of May, but Robinson Cano is making a lot of noise around the league. Cano is leads the league with a .400 batting average, is 2nd to Paul Konerko in homers with 8, and 2nd in the league in runs, hits, and slugging percentage. I don't care what month it is, but I will be at the Stadium tomorrow, and will be starting the M-V-P! chants.

Absolutely Jeterian: We didn't get a post-game post up, but El Capitan had 4 RBI's to lead the Yanks to a victory. Pettitte struggled a little bit for the first time this season, but Alfredo Aceves picked up the win in relief.

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Yanks hated less than the Red Sox

A story in the Wall Street Journal this morning discussed a Nielsen report that uses some crazy math that I will never understand to figure out who the most hated team in baseball is. It measures positive and negative reaction on the internet. Here's the top 10 most hated teams.

1. Cleveland Indians
2. Boston Red Sox
3. Cincinnati Reds
4. Houston Astros
5. New York Yankees
6. Washington Nationals
7. Chicago White Sox
8. Baltimore Orioles
9. New York Mets
10. Los Angeles Dodgers

Now most of these teams have not been doing well lately, so their own fans are probably the ones bringing them down in these ranking. But the Red Sox and Yankees are the teams that you either love or hate.

I could look at this two ways. The first is that I could say that, since people hate the Red Sox more, this "Red Sox Nation" stuff is crap. But, I personally would have liked the "most-hated" title, because the reason people hate the Yankees is because they are so good. I'm conflicted, but the stats are what they are.

What do you think? Leave us a comment or send us an email (michaelkayssuccessors@yahoo.com).

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Perfect Pettitte

Yankees 7 14 0

Image via Wikipedia

Angels 1 7 0

WP: Pettitte (3-0)
LP: Pineiro (2-2)

Player of the Game: Andy Pettitte was brilliant on the mound today. One run and six hits over eight innings will stop any team in any division.

Play/Turning Point of the Game: Francisco Cervelli continues to come up with key hits including today's 2-run single to give Pettitte a 3-0 lead.

• Today's win prevents the Yankees first back-to-back losses of the season, and keeps the hopes of winning a sixth straight series alive.
• After today's win, Pettitte leads the team in wins and ERA. Not bad for a 37-year old who considered retirement in the offseason.
  

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Code Breaker

During the game last night, Alex Rodriguez apparently crossed the pitcher's mound on his way back to first after a foul ball. A's pitcher Dallas Braden took offense to A-Rod breaking one of the unwritten rules of baseball, and let the slugger know about it when it happened. After Cano

Image via Wikipedia

grounded into the double play to end the inning, Braden flipped out and started kicking and screaming. A-Rod just waved him off as Braden went to knock stuff over in the A's dugout.

Sure, A-Rod broke the "code" of baseball and I get why Braden would be like, "Hey! Get off my mound!" At least the first time, but I don't really understand the temper tantrum he threw after the inning. I could see Braden doing something like that if A-Rod was stealing signs, but this was a little over the top for something like this. And especially a guy with, as Rodriguez says, "a handful of wins."

On the A-Rod side, people really need to start writing stuff down for him because he's not very good with the "unwritten rule" thing. He slapped the ball from Bronson Arroyo's glove in 2004, did steroids before the official testing, called off the Blue Jays infielder while running the bases in Toronto, and now this. I can see why other people in baseball don't like the guy.

Some other quick things:

• The Yanks turned their first triple play since 1968 in 5-4-3 fashion during the 6th inning of yesterday's game. If you take a look at the video they have on Yankees.com, they have all the different radio and TV calls of the play. I'm not sure if there was editing, but the fact that John Sterling automatically knew it was the first triple play in 40 years was impressive.
• With the team's trip to visit President Barrack Obama at the White House next week, the Yankees released a schedule of events in and around Washington, D.C.
  
• In Fantasy Baseball, my team, A Deuce for the Cuse, is in 6th place out of 12 teams, 137.33 points out of first place. John's team, SwishHawk, is in last place, 196 points behind me. John, however, has channeled his inner Brian Cashman and pulled off 3 trades this week to acquire 7 new players, including Grady Sizemore, John Lackey, Rajai Davis, and Lance Berkman. My team is being powered by Matt Kemp, currently the position player with the most points, and Roy Halladay, currently the pitcher with the most points. Paul Konerko continues to rack up the points and was an absolute steal in the 20th round. Shane Victorino and Chirs Carpenter are holding down the fort for John right now. We should have put a wager on who finishes higher, but I think I'm going to have a tough time talking John into that now.
  

Game vs. Angels starts at 10:05 PM EST with AJ Burnett facing Ervin Santana. Check back for the lineups then.

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Hitler upset the Twins resign Mauer

For any of you who had hopes that the Yankees were going to sign Joe Mauer when he hit free

Image via Wikipedia

agency only to have them crushed when it was announced he signed an 8 year deal during spring training can relate to this baseball version of the Downfall/Hitler video meme. (I especially liked the part when Hitler says he will call in to Mike Francesa and call for Cashman's job.)

Also in the video meme category, you may have seen the little kid doing the speech from the movie Miracle. I didn't know this had happened until yesterday, but the Red Sox brought him out before the first game of the season to do a baseball version before the game on Opening Night.



A few observations:

• Thank God/Yahweh/Allah YouTube wasn't around when I was a kid, because I couldn't handle all the stupid stuff I did back then ending up on the internet.
• That first point leads me to my second. This kid's parents have now stuck this kid with the
  "Herb Brooks Speech kid" label for life. Not only does the YouTube video have almost 3 million hits, but he's been on talk shows and now in front of baseball stadiums and he's only 5. But you know, got to get your 15 minutes, right?
• What is Hideki Okajima laughing at? Does Okajima even speak English? How does he know what's going on?
• This isn't even one of the better internet memes out there. I personally think the Leeroy Jenkins and Numa Numa kid are funny, if for no other reason than that it proves that there are people out there who waste more time on the internet than I do.
  

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Really Joe West?

So, as John told you earlier, Cowboy Joe West called the Yankees and Red Sox games a "disgrace to baseball" because of how long they take. I just wanted to give you my take.

Image by Keith Allison via Flickr

Really Joe West? Are you kidding me?

So games between baseball's biggest rivals is a disgrace to the game? Well there's a couple million people who disagree with you, since that's how many people watched the game on Sunday night. So the Commissioner wants to speed up the games? Okay, I buy that. But, to go so far as call it a disgrace to baseball is ridiculous. A four-hour game between the Nationals and Pirates is a disgrace to baseball. (Actually, any game between the Nationals and Pirates could be considered a disgrace to baseball.)

Yesterday, the Yankees and Sawks play 10 innings, with the Yanks pulling out a 3-1 win. The game lasted an unmanageable (as Michael Kay used to say) three hours and 21 minutes. You know what I call that? A GREAT BASEBALL GAME!

Now, I am a huge baseball fan, so I could sit there and watch a five-hour game and be satisfied, so I'm not your average fan. Even if you agree with what he said, it was extremely hypocritical. How do you think Joe West would react if say Derek Jeter called the umpires embarrassing and pathetic? First of all, Jeter wouldn't do that, because he has class. But West, and the rest of the umpires, would go ballistic. The umpires would probably hold it against Jeter for the rest of his career. But West gets a free pass because he has all the power during a game. But he should be fined by Major League Baseball or who ever is in charge of fining umpires for saying stupid things.

Sorry I ranted a little bit. You can tell I don't like umpires too much, right? You're talking to a kid who almost got thrown out of a Little League game for arguing with an umpire.

Just a few more links on an off-day

• David Wright doing some GTL with The Situation for a Vitamin Water commercial.
• The Yankees Organization is worth $1.6 billion, according to Forbes. $1.6 BILLION! That's twice as much as the second-highest team, the Red Sox, and about the same as the Mets and the Red Sox combined. Those guys in the Front Office obviously know what they're doing.
  

That might be it for today, but the Yanks head to Tampa to take on David Price and the Rays tomorrow night.

SEE YA!

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Bullpen Bounces Back

Yankees 6 9 3

Image via Wikipedia

Red Sox 4 9 1

W: Aceves (1-0)
L: Okajima (1-1)
S: Rivera (1)

Player of the Game: The Bullpen. After a poor outing from the relievers on Sunday, the 'pen held the Sox to 2 hits, 0 walks, and 0 runs over 4 innings. Aceves picked up the win out of relief, Joba looked like the Joba of old, and Mo just did what he always does.

Play of the Game: Robinson Cano's home run to put the Yanks up 6-4 in the 9th inning.

Turning point of the Game: Nick Johnson's bases-loaded, go-ahead walk in the top of the 8th. Johnson doesn't have a hit yet this season, but has a .500 OBP.

• Joe Girardi might be over-managing again. He started the 8th inning with Robertson, and then decided to mix and match by bringing in Marte to face Ortiz.
• Cano was my 2nd choice for player of the game, but I wanted to give props to the bullpen after Sunday's debacle. Cano went 2-3 with a homer and 2 RBI. He's gonna have a good season in the five hole.
  
• It's the first win of the season, so there's a little bit to celebrate, but there's still work to be done. And now the Red Sox will be relatively quiet for a little while.
  

Tomorrow:
Yankees at Red Sox
Pettitte vs Lackey

SEE YA!

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It's finally here...

People are going to church, praising the Lord, visiting family and friends, and celebrating this joyous day. What day is that, you ask?

Opening Day

It's been 6 months since we've had the opportunity to watch live, competitive baseball that actually mattered, but that all changes tonight.

I'll post the lineups later tonight before the game but I wanted to get some stuff out of the way first.

First off, you may have noticed the layout's changed. We just wanted to make it look a little fresh as we head into a new season. We are working on a banner with a nice picture, but we haven't quite got it perfect yet, but it will be up soon.

This is just your periodic reminder to become a fan of us on Facebook. If you're on Twitter, you can follow the blog @KaysSuccessors to get a link to new posts. We also both have our own personal pages @jphealy and @jgeant. We'll be Tweeting during the game tonight, but we have discovered a way for our Tweets to show up on the blog, so stay tuned for that.

I have a few things to do before the game tonight, so I'll be back with the lineups as soon as I can.

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Who Will Be the Best in 2010?

We are a day away from the Yankees and Red Sox squaring off at Fenway Park to open the 2010 season. Throughout the week we have been giving you our projections of the Yankees lineup and predictions of teams throughout the league, including our playoff predictions. Today we will conclude our season preview with our award predictions. We've made some bold predictions, some safe predictions, and some biased predictions (hey, what do you expect?). Here are our regular season award predictions:


AL MVP
Mark Teixeira NYY

NL MVP
Albert Pujols STL(it's his to lose)

AL CY Young

Felix Hernandez SEA

NL CY Young

Roy Halladay PHI

AL Rookie of the Year

Austin Jackson DET

NL Rookie of the Year

Jason Heyward ATL

AL Manager of the Year

Don Wakamatsu SEA

NL Manager of the Year

Bruce Bochy SFG


If I get just one of these predictions right I'll be happy. The 2010 season is now upon us, hopefully it ends the same way as 2009...enjoy.

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Yanks in 2010? World Series or SEE YA!

So we've gone through our predictions for the individual Yankees in 2010. Now we're going to take a look at how the standings will look at the end of the season.


National League
East:
Phillies 97-65
Braves 89-73
Mets 80-82
Marlins 79-83
Nationals 69-93

Central:
Cardinals 94-68
Cubs 87-75
Brewers 84-78
Astros 80-82
Pirates 66-96

West:
Dodgers 95-67
Giants (WILD CARD) 91-71
Rockies 90-72
Diamondbacks 81-81
Padres 70-92

AMERICAN LEAGUE
EAST:
Yankees 101-61
Red Sox(Wild Card) 95-67
Orioles 86-76
Rays 85-77
Blue Jays 69-93

CENTRAL:
Twins 93-89
Tigers 91-71
White Sox 85-77
Indians 76-86
Royals 67-95

WEST:
Mariners 94-88
Rangers 88-74
Angels 82-80
A's 74-88

PLAYOFFS:
FIRST ROUND
Yankees over Twins (I'm thinking they sweep and clinch it on the frozen tundra of Target Field)
Red Sox over Mariners (Unless Papelbon blows it, again)
Phillies over Giants (Though Lincecum and Cain in a short series will be tough)
Dodgers over Cards (Setting up a rematch in the NLCS)

LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
Yankess over Red Sox (In 7 games, thus taking another 10 years off my life)
Dodgers over Phillies (In 6, because if it goes 7, I think Roy Halladay wills the Phillies to victory)

WORLD SERIES
Yankees over Dodgers
The Yanks will take home their 28th World Series title in 6 games, and Alex Rodriguez will take home MVP honors after channeling his inner Reggie Jackson and bombing 3 home runs in the clinching game. You heard it here first.

What do you think? Leave a comment and vote in the poll on the right.

(Props to @brmeyer for inspiring the headline)

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