2 up

There were some doubts about Andy Pettitte coming into tonight. Mostly concerning him coming off the recent injury and just how deep he could go into the game. He answered all those questions without a doubt with 7 innings of 2 run ball. Lance Berkman came up big with a homer and a RBI double, and Mo was Mo.

Now the Yankees have a day off tomorrow before Hughes takes the mound for Game 3 in the Bronx. We'll get to have John being torn between wanting the Yankees to win and clinch the series, or lose so he can use his Game 4 tickets. It's situations like that where your moral fiber is really tested.

SEE YA!

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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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One Swing changes everything...

It's 3-1 Orioles in the top of the ninth, 2 strikes on Alex Rodriguez. If he strikes out, I'm sitting here yelling about how the Yankees season is collapsing around them. The sky is falling, our pitchers can't shut down opposing lineups, our hitters can't score more than one fun of Kevin freaking Millwood, and the Rays are gonna run away and hide in the AL East.

Luckily, however, A-Rod turns on one and sends an A-Bomb into the left field stands. Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. The Yankees win, the Rays lose, and the Bombers are back in first where they belong. The Yanks, as we all know, have an extremely tough schedule down the stretch, and they need to take advantage of these 3 games against the Orioles.

Enjoy your college football everybody! I'll be at the 'Cuse vs. Maine game at the Carrier Dome tonight. Let's Go Orange!

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Awesome

While the Yankees blew a 6-run lead and shouldn't have even been in extra innings, that's not what I'm taking away from this. What I'll remember from this game is my boy Kerry Wood pitching a solid 8th inning. That awesome catch that Curtis Granderson made is gonna be remembered for a long time. Jorge absolutely crushed that ball to center in the top of the 10th, and to top it all off Greg Golson.

I'm sitting here watching Golson make that catch, and I'm screaming at the TV as usual, "Just throw it to the cutoff man. Just hit the cutoff." I didn't think there was a snowball's chance in hell that Golson would throw out Crawford and was imagining him throwing it over everyone and Crawford tying the game. Then Golson just throws this absolute lazer to A-Rod to get Crawford to end the game. Not one person on the field (except maybe Golson) thought he was gonna throw Crawford out. After it happened, Jeter, A-Rod, Gardner, and Mo were all completely shocked.

But the important thing is that the Yanks are back in first. They've snapped their longest losing streak of the year, and they have a chance to win the series tomorrow and extend the lead to 1.5 games.

SEE YA!

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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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O's deny CC chance at 20th win; have chance for sweep tomorrow

So CC Sabathia still hasn't won 20 games in a season, because the Orioles offense came out and scored 3 runs before CC even got an out. So after winning 8 straight games, the Yanks have come out pretty flat against the O's these past couple days, and have now lost 3 in a row.

The Red Sox actually did the Yanks a favor last night by beating the Rays, but common decency can only last so long in Boston and they got crushed tonight. So Tampa Bay is now only 1 game behind the Bombers in the loss column with 23 games remaining.

This is how the Yankees schedule breaks down the rest of the way:

• 7 games vs. Tampa Bay
• 6 games vs. Boston
• 4 games vs. Baltimore
  
• 3 games vs. Texas
• 3 games vs. Toronto
  

The Yanks last series of the year is a 3-game set at Fenway Park, while the Rays play 4 in Kansas City against the Royals.

If the Yankees want to win the East, they obviously need to play well against the Rays, but if they keep playing like crap against bad teams, it's not going to help at all.

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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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Game 125: Yankees at Blue Jays

YANKEES (77-47)
Brett Gardner LF
Nick Swisher RF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Jorge Posada DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Ramiro Pena 3B
Francisco Cervelli C

RHP Ivan Nova (0-0, 0.00)

BLUE JAYS (64-59)
Fred Lewis LF
Yunel Escobar SS
Jose Bautista RF
Vernon Wells CF
Adam Lind DH
Aaron Hill 2B
Lyle Overbay 1B
Edwin Encarnacion 3B
Jose Molina C

RHP Brandon Morrow (9-6, 4.45)

Notes:

• Former Yankee (and Red Sox) was claimed off waivers by the Boston Red Sox today. The Tigers and Sox have 48 hours to work out a deal, and Damon also has a no-trade clause.
• Ivan Nova gets his first MLB start. He's pitched 3 scoreless innings out of the bullpen so far this year, but let's see what he's got against a good Blue Jays lineup.
• Let's hope things go better this time in Toronto.
  

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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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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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State of the Yankees

It's been a busy week in Yankee land, here's a rundown of what's going on.

• First of all, Phil Hughes picked up his 6th win of the season by holding the Indians to 2 runs on 5 hits while striking out 8 in 7 innings. Robinson Cano hit cleanup for the first time in his career and made the most of it by going 3-4 with a grand slam in an 8-2 win.
  
• Tonight also marked the return of Curtis Granderson to the lineup. He slid right into the 2-hole and went 1-3 with a walk and a run scored. Hopefully he can help solidify the lineup a little and get it going.
  
• In the corresponding move to bring Granderson back, Randy Winn was Designated for Assignment. (I'm sure John is extremely happy about this. I don't think he's hated a Yankee this much since... yeah I can't even come up with something to compare it to.) This means Kevin Russo is going to get the opportunity to play off the bench as an outfielder.
  
• Mark Teixeira is slowly starting to turn it around. He is 7 for his last 19, but hasn't had an RBI since May 17 and his last homer was May 15. Alex Rodriguez has been suffering from a power outage lately as well with no homers or RBI since May 19. Considering the 3-4 hitters only have a combined 13 homers and 62 RBI's through almost 50 games and the Yankees are still 9 games over .500 and only 3.5 games out of first place the division, I'd say the Yanks are sitting in a pretty good position right now.
  
• After a tough stretch of games against Boston (x2) Detroit, Minnesota (x2), and Tampa Bay, the Yanks get a little bit of break with 15 upcoming games against the Indians, Orioles, Blue Jays, and Astros.
  
• A quick injury update, as Jorge Posada is out of his boot and is starting to resume baseball activities. At some point, he'll go down to the Minors for a rehab assignment. I'm sure I'm not the only one hoping that he goes to Trenton so I could possibly make my way over there.
  

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Game 38: Yankees vs. Red Sox

Yankees (24-13)

Derek Jeter SS
Brett Gardner CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Francisco Cervelli C
Marcus Thames RF
Randy Winn LF
Ramiro Pena 3B

RHP Phil Hughes

Red Sox (19-19)
Marco Scutaro SS
Dustin Pedroia 2B
J.D. Drew RF
Kevin Youkilis 1B
Victor Martinez C
David Ortiz DH
Adrian Beltre 3B
Jeremy Hermida LF
Darnell McDonald CF
RHP Daisuke Matsuzaka

Ace on the Mound: Phil Hughes takes the mound tonight with a 5-0 record. The last person his age to start a season 5-0 for the Yankees was some guy Whitey Ford. If I remember correctly, that guy had a pretty solid career.

Tough Week: The Yankees welcome the Red Sox to the Stadium for two games, before having to face the Rays for two more. But at least then they get a break by getting to play the Mets. Take the survey to the right to voice your opinion about which series you're most pumped about.

We'll be on our Twitters: @jgeant and @jphealy.

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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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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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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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