So, are the Yankees no longer above the fray of talk radio?  Are the concerns of Louie in the Bronx finally getting to them?  There have been questions raised about just how big a collapse it would be if the Yankees not only don’t win the division, but if they also fell out of the Wild Card.  But, up until now, you’d never have known that the Yanks were worried about it.  Now, they officially are.  Granted, the Yankees don’t owe anything to Moseley – 8 starts for the Bombers is probably 8 more than he ever could have dreamed of as a kid growing up in Arkansas.  But, regardless of what it means to Moseley, it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck for the Yankees.   And now I can’t look forward to all the “Midnight Run” jokes from the beat writers on Twitter.

Where would a collapse of this magnitude rank?  Would it compare to the Mets 7 games with 17 to play in ’07?  We may never know.  But, if the Yanks scramble to avoid just such a fate, and it still happens, I say it winds up MUCH worse than the Mets collapse.  I doubt it’ll send the Yanks into a 3-season tailspin like the Mets fail did, but it would still be horrendous.

Will Phil deliver for the Yankees and make all this pre-game hysteria a thing of the past?  We’ll see tonight.

All is not well in Yankeeland, though. Pettitte looked like shit on Friday, giving up seven runs (six earned) on 10 hits in 3 1/3 innings of work. The pitching has been shaky the last few games, as the Yanks have dropped three in a row, five of 10, 12 of their last 18 and are 26-24 over their last 50 games. Not a good way to head into the playoffs. But things could be worse: they could be the Pirates, who lost their 100th game of the season on Friday night.

Also, Girardi announced a few rotation changes over the final week-plus of the season — mainly Dustin Moseley will start in lieu of Philthy on Sunday against Dice-K. Hughes will instead start on Wednesday (his last of the regular season) in Toronto. The Yanks will send Ivan Nova to the bump against Jon Lester on Saturday, so it could be a loooong weekend.

The bats showed up Friday, as the team clubbed a season-high six homers (A-Rod 2, Tex 2, Swish Dog, Grandy) but still lost. It was the third time since 1920 the Yanks lost after hitting six dingers. Ironically, the last time the Yanks hit six homers and lost was in a game Pettitte started (7/10/99 vs. Mets).

Fun facts: (more…)

I wasn’t really expecting the team to come out with a victory, as Cliff Lee was on the mound going against Dustin Moseley while A-Rod, Swish Dog (leg) and Gardner (wrist) were all on the bench. The first two games were heart breakers, no doubt, but you could see this one coming from a mile away. The silver lining here is that if these two teams meet in the playoffs the Yanks will have CC and (hopefully) Pettitte back in the rotation. So this outcome wasn’t really indicative of a postseason preview.

A couple of interesting facts:

• Of the 109 pitches Cliff Lee threw on Sunday, 27 of them (24.8 percent) went to Derek Jeter.
• Lee threw a season-high three walks. The last time he walked three batters in a game was on 9/15/09.
• Moseley was decent, he threw five scoreless innings and walked the leadoff batter in the sixth and seventh innings. Both of those runners scored along with two more. The last three runs all came with two outs.

The Yanks will now head to Tampa for a three-game set with the Rays. It goes without saying but that series is going to be HUGE; playoff imps everywhere. Probable starters for Monday are CC and David Price; Tuesday it should be SuperNova against Matt Garza; and on Wednesday it’s shaping up to be Hughes against Panty Shields.

LET’S GO YANKS!!!

In doing so, the Yanks’ 3-4-5 hitters (Tex, Cano and Swish Dog) went 9-for-11 with two homers, three doubles, seven RBI and seven runs scored. The team duffed Buster Olney’s Cy Young pick, Trevor Cahill, up for a season-high eight runs on nine hits in four-plus innings of work.

Fun facts:

• Trevor Cahill’s ERA against the Yankees this year: 12.60. Trevor Cahill’s ERA against all other opponents this year: 2.17.
• Starter Dustin Moseley went 4 1/3 innings and gave up four runs on five hits with four walks and strikeouts. Banished-to-the-bullpen Javy went 4 2/3 innings in relief and gave up a run on two hits with six punchouts to one walk. I’ve got a feeling that Javy will be making his next start on Saturday against the Blue Jays, just a hunch.
• Cano recorded his career-high 26th home run of the season, has homered in five of his past seven home games and is seven RBI shy of a career high.
• Swish Dog established a career-high 142 hits on the year, and he still has a month to go. Remember, WILSON BETEMIT.
• Ramiro Pena is 5 for his last 10.
• Marcus Thames is hitting .400/.464/1.160 over his last seven games (six starts) and has homered in five straight starts. Hitman, of course, holds the record with homers in eight straight starts.
• Derek Jeter who, along with Grandy, was the only starter to not get a hit, is mired in a 2-for-27 slump and is hitting .268 on the year. To make matters worse, look at his home/away splits. Yikes. That’s not going to bode well in contract negotiations this coming offseason.
• One day after throwing a bullpen session, Pettitte said he felt “A tiny bit of soreness but I haven’t been on the mound in a long time. I just think that’s pretty normal. I feel really good.”
• Lance Berkman was 2-for-5 with a run scored in his first rehab start in Trenton (AA).
• Ace allowed one run on two hits through 1 1/3 inning in Scranton (AAA). He threw 33 pitches, 21 for strikes, which was a step up from his prior two outings.

Postgame quotes: (more…)

Not only was Jerry Meals’ strike zone all over the place, but Mark Wegner’s botched call at first base on Yunel Escobar’s “single” pretty much cost the Yanks the game. The replays clearly showed Tex had his foot on the bag after catching the ball. Bautista followed with a home run and the Yanks lost by a run. The human element strikes again.

Shit I liked:

• Ivan Nova’s first big league start. It was a good one, he went 5 1/3 innings and gave up two runs on six hits with three strikeouts to one walk. He also retired nine straight batters before a Vernon Wells single in the sixth. Not bad against the MLB leaders in home runs.
• Nova throwing at Bautista’s head in the sixth inning. I don’t think it was intentional, I think the ball just got away from him because who would do that in their first ML start? However, what I liked was Nova not backing down when Bautista had a few words for him. The benches and bullpens emptied but no punches were thrown, though words were exchanged.
• Brett Gardner’s 10th outfield assist of the season. On a would-be Vernon Wells sac fly, with the bases loaded and no outs in the first, Gardy rocketed the ball home to get Fred Lewis at the plate and keep it scoreless. It’s been said that “You don’t run on Brett Gardner, Brett Gardner runs on you.”
• Cano recorded his 35th double, giving him his fifth straight season with at least 35 doubles. That’s the second most consecutive seasons with at least 35 doubles by a second baseman in MLB history.
• Boone Logan retiring 32 of the last 38 batters he’s faced.

Shit I did not care for: (more…)

Romero retired 15 Yanks in a row at one point and 25 of the final 26 batters he saw. Toronto’s third baseman (Encarnacion), left fielder (Snider) and right fielder (Bautista) didn’t field a ball all night as the Yanks made all of their outs up the middle.

The Bombers tied a season high with their third straight loss and are 1-4 over their last five with a .169 average (27-for-160), .105 (2-for-19) with RISP and 15 runs.

In other words: it’s been a shitty past few games.

On the bright side, Dustin Moseley pitched very well. He gave up five runs on nine hits in 7 1/3 innings but was much better than his line indicates. He kept the team in it for a while but the offense couldn’t muster shit of Romero.

Fun fact: all five of Kerry Wood’s outs recorded with the Yanks have been of the strikeout variety.

Things look pretty bleak for the Yanks right now but just remember this: last August 3rd the team was a half-game up with a .600 winning percentage and +71 run differential, whereas this year on August 3rd they are a game back with a .623 winning percentage and +130 run differential. So it’s not the end of the world.

Post game quotes: (more…)

Shit I did like:

• AJ’s eight-pitch first inning.
• Jeet moving into sole possession of 41st place on the all-time hits list with his 2,868th base knock.
• Swish Dog’s two homers. He now has four over his last four games.
• The ninth-inning outfield consisting of Kearns in left, Swish Dog in center and Thames in right. Wow, thank God no balls were hit out there.
• The bullpen. Mitre, D-Rob, Boom Boom Boone and Joba combined to throw 4 1/3 innings of two-hit relief. They combined for three walks but no runs and five strikeouts.
• The offense was clicking as a whole; granted they failed on a ninth-inning rally but if not for that AJ bed-shit in the fifth it would have been a different game.
• Lance Berkman hitting seventh to “take some pressure off” and driving in his first RBI with the Yanks.

Shit I didn’t like: (more…)

It’s been great, we’ve been playing good baseball. When I hit (600th home run) nothing’s going to change; we’re in the middle of a pennant race and we’re just trying to play good baseball…I feel good about the way I’m swinging the bat.

The big story of the night though was Dustin F’ing Moseley, who pitched like a champ in place of an injured Pettitte. After a shaky first inning — in which he threw 31 pitches and gave up a run but got out of a big jam — he settled like a bastard and used just 11 pitches in the second, nine in the third, 12 in the fourth, eight in the fifth and 14 in the sixth. I’ve got a feeling he’s going to get another shot to start — a well deserved chance to start.

I just relaxed a little bit. I felt like I made some decent pitches in the first inning, then I just relaxed, attacked the zone a little bit more and just go right after them. I was pressing a little bit early, maybe trying to do too much, then I got to sit on the bench a little bit and just kind of go throught the process. I went back out in those next innings and attacked the zone. I was excited, I felt strong at the end.

Fun Facts: (more…)

In four appearances this season he’s had two clunkers to go with two pretty good outings, the latest being the Royals game last Saturday when he threw 4 2/3 innings in relief of an ineffective Sergio Mitre. On that hot July day, he gave up just one hit with a walk and a strikeout while throwing 53 pitches — 35 for strikes. Not too shabby.

I’m not expecting much from him tonight, but I think he can get the job done. If I was a gambling man, I would bet on around seven innings (90-95 pitches), nine hits, four earned runs and three strikeouts to five walks…Yanks prevail 8-6.

Moseley:

Man, Imma go out there and attack the zone, keep the ball down and see where it leads me. It’s tough to put expectations…I just gotta go out there and make pitches; I can’t look past that…I just see (the start) as an opportunity to help this team in different ways. I said all along, I’m happy to do whatever they call upon me to do. But I think if I go out there and do what I’m capable of doing I can (be an innings eater). I think I’ve got the endurance to eat up a  lot of innings.

Dusty will be going against Mitch Talbot.

LET’S GO YANKS!!!!