Lance Berkman doesn’t mind being an ex-Yankee, however, since he is currently with the St. Louis Cardinals who are playing the Texas Rangers in the World Series.

Lance Berkman-wiki

The Cards know a little something about winning, as well, chalking up 10 World Series titles in their rich history, second only to the Pinstripes 27 crowns.

Berkman basically had time for a cup of coffee and perhaps a bagel during his brief New York stay in 2010, hitting .255 with just a homer and nine RBI in 106 at-bats. Berkman made his mark with the Yanks in the ALDS when the self-nicknamed “Big Puma” homered during the Bombers series win over the Twins.

With 358 career homers and over 1,110 runs scored and RBI in his career, the long-time Houston Astros star is a big hitter, earning six trips to the All Star Game. Despite being squeezed out of a roster spot by the Yanks by first first baseman Mark Teixeira and DH Jorge Posada, you could say Berkman fit in pretty well in St. Loo.

With 31 homers, 94 RBI and a .301 batting average during the regular season the numbers don’t lie. Berkman hasn’t been great in the postseason but he knocked in four runs and crossed home plate eight times over the first two playoff series.

And one of the game’s good guys is in baseball’s biggest showcase. “Big Puma” will take it, for sure.

Not to be outdone, his good friend Andy (Can I) Pettitte was great on the mound as he went seven innings and gave up two runs on five hits with four strikeouts with one walk. He settled down after a shaky start and dominated the Minnesota lineup; he threw 36 pitches over the first two innings and 14 the next two. He finished with 88 pitches and 58 strikes. In his last nine starts against the Twins coming in (including postseason), Pettitte was 8-0 with a 2.54 ERA and .238 BAA. He moved to 19-9 overall in the postseason.

Perhaps the highlight of the evening for Yankees fans was when the lineup roughed Carl Pavano up for four runs on 10 hits in six-plus innings of work.

Now I’m not one to complain about umpiring after a win, but look at Pettitte’s strike zone compared to Pavano’s. That’s ridiculous. ROBOT UMPS FTW.

The Yanks have now beaten the Twins eight straight times in the playoffs…The only Twins pitcher to beat the Yankees in ALDS history is Johan Santana.

Prior to Thursday, Mo’s postseason ERA was 0.735 with a .772 WHIP in 134 2/3 innings. He pitched an inning of one-hit relief in Game 2 to get his 41st career postseason save.

I hate to bring you down with this stat, but the last time Mo collected postseason saves on back-to-back days was in Games 1 and 2 of the 2004 ALCS.

The Yanks will send Philthy to the mound on Saturday in Game 3 at home against Brian Duensing to try and close things out.

LET’S GO YANKS!!!!

CC and Price combined to throw 16 innings of five-hit, 13-strikeout, four-walk, shutout ball. CC, who is still searching for his 20th win, moved into 90th place on the all-time strikeout list with his 1,767th punchout. He passed John Burkett and now trails Ron Guidry (1,778).

I’m not one for second guessing (editor’s note: that’s a bald faced lie) but what the hell was with Girardi’s bullpen management on Monday? He said that D-Rob and Joba were not available, and that he was saving Mo for a save situation. D-Rob I can see because he had a long outing on Saturday, but Joba has thrown four innings in September and hasn’t pitched since Friday. Does he really need more rest? Plus, why would you not use The Greatest Ever if you can pitch Him? This further fuels my hatred of the almighty save.

What’s more baffling is that if you know there’s a limited amount of arms in the ‘pen why would you use Kerry Wood (who is awesome BTW) for only 11 pitches and pull Boone Logan after one batter? It just doesn’t add up.

In other gaffes from this setback, Gardner pinch-ran for Lance Berkman in the 10th inning and stole second before getting caught stealing third base. He apparently apologized to his teammates for what he called an “unnecessary steal.” It was indeed unnecessary because it might have just cost the team the game, I mean he was already in scoring position. WTF?

Fun Facts: (more…)

The Yanks got to Oakland early with a bizarre first inning in which the team scored three runs on two hits with a walk, a hit by pitch, a GIDP with the bases loaded, two steals, an error and a triple by Posada. Yes, you read that correctly A TRIPLE BY JORGE POSADA, his first since April of 2008. On the play, Georgie passed Bob Meusel for sole possession of 11th place on the club’s all-time RBI list with number 1,014.

Swish Dog went 1-for-4 with a two-run dingy and moved to 21-for-54 (.389) with six homers against his former teams (OAK, CHI) this year.

Teixeira went 2-for-3 with a three-run homer and scored twice (scoring his AL-leading 100th run). In doing so he recorded his seventh straight season of at least 30 homers and became the sixth Yankee ever to hit 30 homers in each of his first two seasons with the club (Ruth, Maris, Giambi, A-Rod and Shef).

Jeter went 0-for-3 and is now 2 for his last 30…

Lance Berkman is expected to be activated from the DL on Wednesday. “I’m going to play the game tonight, and if nothing unforeseen happens I’ll be back tomorrow.” In addition, the Yanks plan on calling up Albaladejo, Moeller and Golson when the rosters expand. Also, after the SWB season is over there will be more players joining the Yanks. A-Rod is set to make his return on Sunday.

According to Jon Heyman, the Yanks won the claim to Ted Lilly before he was pulled back by the Dodgers on Tuesday.

The Yanks will send AJ to the mound on Wednesday to face Brett Anderson in the third game of this series. It’s ironic because the Yanks are riding a four-game winning streak and the last time they lost was AJ’s last start. Let’s pray that we get Good AJ.

LET’S GO YANKS!!!!!

AJ settled down after a shaky first and went eight innings and gave up the one run on four hits with six strikeouts to three walks. Remember this game the next time he goes six innings and gives up five or six runs and gets the win. Pitcher wins/losses are the fucking dumbest stat ever.

Fun fact: over AJ’s last two starts, opponents are 8-for-23 with runners on base.

Girardi on AJ:

I feel he’s going to give us a good start every time he goes out.

Bryan Bullington earned his first major league win as he shut the Yanks down to the tune of two hits over eight innings with five punch outs to one walk. “Cy”an Bullington faced one more batter than the minimum and failed to let a Yankee into scoring position. Fuck. Me.

To (literally) add injury to insult, Lance Berkman is now day-to-day with a jammed right ankle after stepping on Bullington’s foot in a play at first base.

In other news: I’ve said this before recently and I’ll say it again, Francisco Cervelli has got to go. I’ve been the biggest fan of his ever since I attended that game last year when he had the walk off single against the Blue Jays (the one on September 17 right after the brawl with Posada), but he owns a .468 OPS since May 25th. That’s not cool. In addition, he did a half-assed job of covering first base today and then botched the throw to second to allow the runner to go to third (though he was stranded there). The time has come to call up Jesus Montero, I know he’s young but he can’t do much worse than Frankie. It’s time to see what he has.

How do you split a four-game set with the Royals?

Ugh, what a shitty afternoon. The less said about this game the better.

Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all. The Yanks will head home for a four-game set with the Tigers starting on Monday. In other words: Johnny Damon’s first trip to the Bronx since leaving for “more money.” Javy will be going against Max Scherzer in the opener.

Here are some postgame quotes from Girardi: (more…)

Shit I did like: (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…)

To me, it seems like quite a steal to get those household names (and Kearns) for so cheap. But the total age of the three new Yankees is 97 while the two players lost were a 25-year-old RHP and a 22-year-old middle infielder. So, was this another one of Cashman’s heists or is it a case of the Yankees reverting to their old ways and trading future talent for aging superstars?

“Fat Elvis” is hitting .242/.366/.428/.794 this year, which is a far cry from his career line of .296/.409/.548/.958. Plus his OPS+ of 114 in 2010 is a ways from his career 145 mark. By his standards, his numbers have been lacking for the past few seasons (with the exception of 2008) and, as stated above, he’s not getting any younger. However, I’ll give Cashmoney the benefit of the doubt on this one because Lance is coming off knee surgery and has improved his numbers every month this year. Furthermore, Pettitte gets to have one of his best friends in MLB join him on the team.

Austin Kearns has put up a line of .271/.352/.416/.768 this year, which is right around his career .257/.353/.426/.779 avg. His 104 OPS+ leaves a lot to be desired but he does get on base a lot. It sucks he is replacing New CC (optioned to Triple-A) for many reasons: first, he was a great story and fun to root for with the whole beating-cancer-at-age-15 thing; second, he put up OK numbers for a first-year guy; third, I was at the game where he homered in a mid-at-bat pinch hit; and finally, every time I hear his name it reminds me of Chad Curtis. But Colin is still with the organization and will no doubt get another shot with the Yanks (he’s only 25). Getting back to my original point, I’m not sold on Kearns just yet but I think he can be a valuable guy off the bench.

And finally we come to Kerry Wood. After a shitbox 2009 (10.3 K/9; 4.6 BB/9; 2.25 K/BB; 1.1 HR/9; 4.25 ERA; 99 ERA+) the Yanks are hoping he can return to 2008 form (11.4 K/9; 2.4 BB/9; 4.67 K/BB; .4 HR/9; 3.26 ERA; 142 ERA+) and be the pitcher we hoped CHoP was going to be heading into 2010. The reasons I like this move already go two fold: A) he looked solid in his debut on Sunday B) his presence alone called for CHoP to be DFA’d. Kerry could be a total cocksucker and fail in every way on the mound…and I’ll still like him better than CHoP.

Melancon’s numbers over his 20 1/3 innings in the Bronx aren’t eye-popping and Jimmy Paredes hasn’t been setting the world on fire in Single-A.

Final verdict: heist.

Loyal reader(s), let me know what you think:

The Yanks, who were shut out for the fifth time this season, mustered just five hits and struck out 11 times against “Panty Shields” (my new nickname for him). In the team’s brief history, only three Rays have fanned 10 Yankees in a game: Scott Kazmir 9/27/2007, Joe Kennedy 5/9/2002 and Shields on Sunday.

Girardi:

He got us to chase a lot of changeups today. He threw a lot of them the first two times through the order. He kept us off the base and didn’t give us many chances.

Swish Dog:

I think the biggest thing about it is that they weren’t really for strikes, we were chasing them. Next time we get him in a situation like that we’ll make sure they’re strikes.

CC was denied his bid for win #150 and was 11-0 with a 1.92 ERA over his previous 13 August starts coming in. In fact, he lost his first game in the month of August since 2007.

CC: (more…)

The two two-baggers gave Cano 30 for the season, which ties him with Thurman Munson (229) on the franchise list. During his five-game hitting streak, Cano is 9-for-21 (.429) with seven extra-base hits but just three homers with three RBI.

Swish Dog (20) and Tex both went yard as well, and Cano is now tied with Marky Mark for the team lead in dingies (21). It’s the sixth straight season of 20 homers for Swish. The Yanks hit three homers in a game for the 10th time in 2010, tying a season high, and are 9-1 when doing so. The Yanks had six hits, none of them were singles.

Alex Rodriguez is still stuck at 599 home runs — it’s been 37 at-bats — but he did draw a walk and score on Saturday. A-Rod:

With the way I’m swinging now, it’s going to be a while. So everyone get comfortable.

Javy didn’t get the win but had a decent outing, going 6 1/3 innings while surrendering four runs on eight hits with three strikeouts to one walk. The bullpen held it down from there, as Boom Boom Boone retired the final two batters in the seventh, D-Rob (2-3) worked a perfect eighth with two strikeouts and Mo did his thing in the ninth for his 22nd save of the year. Fun facts: Mo has given up four non-inherited runs all season and three of them came in the span of five days. Outside of those five days, he has a 0.25 ERA and a 0.509 WHIP. His ERA+ is 428. Did I mention he’s 40 years old?

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In addition to Berkman (who went 0-for-4 with a strikeout in his debut) and Kearns, the Yanks also got reliever Kerry Wood before the trade deadline. He didn’t make it to the game and might not make it in time for Sunday’s tilt, but he will definitely be ready for Monday’s showdown with the Blue Jays.

It’s CC vs. Shields in the rubber match on Sunday at 1:40.

LET’S GO YANKS!!!!!!!