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The Yankees made the most of their recent ten-game homestand, going 9-1 against the Tigers, Orioles, and A’s. That’s good, because now things get tough. The first seven games of this nine-game road trip are against the Rays and White Sox, both contending teams. Then, after a two-game stop in Toronto, they come home to play four against the Red Sox. That’s 11 of 13 games against contending teams.

The Rays are 6.5 games behind the first-place Yankees in the AL East, but the Pythagorean standings look like this:

BOS 56-41  –
NYY 56-42  .5
TBR 56-43  1

The Rays still aren’t getting much from B.J. Upton or Pat Burrell, and their catching duo of former Yankee farmhands Dioner Navarro and Michel Hernandez is almost single-handedly keeping them out of the Wild Card race. Jason Bartlett has cooled a bit since returning from the DL, but is still contributing a solid .296/.354/.417 from shorststop and fellow flukester Ben Zobrist is hot as ever, hitting .379/.463/.500 since July 7.

In the rotation, Scott Kazmir is back from the DL and with pitch Tuesday night, but he’s not been that much more effective since his return, going 0-2 with a 5.08 ERA and just one quality start in five tries. Wednesday night starter Matt Garza, however, has been his usual inconsistent, but often dominant self. Tonight the Rays throw James Shields, who is turning in a season that looks a lot like the one he had last year plus a few extra hits.

The Yankees counter with A.J. Burnett, who is looking for his eighth-straight quality start. A.J. already has two quality starts against the Rays in as many tries this season, including an eight-inning, three-hit, nine-strikeout effort a the Trop back on April 14.

One other thing about the Rays: they’ve made lefty reliever J.P Howell their closer. Since June 1, Howell has posted a 1.14 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, and 11.03 K/9. His only two blown saves during that stretch came in the eighth inning against the Yankees the last time they were in Tampa. In neither case did he allow a run, and in one he didn’t even allow a hit (though he did walk in a run).

The Yankees are sticking with the extra reliever for now rather than calling up a replacement for Brett Gardner. Everyone’s in his usual spot in tonight’s lineup.

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Over at SI.com, I follow up my look at the five biggest offensive holes on contending teams with a look at the five contenders most in need of pitching help. When I started writing the piece, I had no idea that number five would be the New York Yankees. As a fan, I’m optimistic, encouraged by the team’s 9-1 start to the second half, Joba Chamberlain’s “rejobanation,” Andy Pettitte’s two strong home starts, CC Sabathia’s ability to battle, even A.J. Burnett’s string of quality starts and Sergio Mitre’s ability to keep his team in the game. As an analyst, however, I see this:

Joba Chamberlain is quickly approaching his innings limit for the season (assumed to be 150, he’s already over 100 and has been pitching deeper into games since the break). If the fragile A.J. Burnett or the 37-year-old Pettitte (currently sporting a career-worst 4.67 ERA) should break down, the Yankee rotation could fold like a cheap card table under the weight of CC Sabathia. Hughes lurks in the bullpen, but he’s been so good there (he has an active streak of 23 1/3 scoreless innings in which he’s struck out 28 batters), the Yankees seem reluctant to restore him to the rotation, particularly given the chance that they won’t get much more than the production listed above. For now, their fifth starter is Sergio Mitre, another Tommy John reclamation case who hadn’t started in the majors since 2007 (and in his case didn’t start much in the majors before 2007 either). Prospect Ian Kennedy is out for the year following surgery. Alfredo Aceves is an uninspiring alternative. Like the Angels, the Yankees are riding high (9-1 since the break), but their rotation may not make it all the way to the finish line as currently assembled.

Meanwhile, the top story on SI.com’s baseball page has John Heyman speculating about the Yankees chasing after Jarrod Washburn yet again. The only trouble with all of this is, what exactly would you be willing to give up to get another starter? I could have parted with Melky before Brett Gardner got hurt, but that’s out the window now. I wouldn’t trade any of the team’s top young’uns (Hughes, Chamberlain, Jackson, Montero, though I’d be most willing to part with Jackson). What else do the Yankees have to offer? Low-minors catchers? A struggling Andrew Brackman? The deadline is Friday. Stay tuned . . .

Heading into Sunday’s finale against the A’s, Yankee manager Joe Girardi figured he had a well-rested bullpen (Phil Hughes last pitched on Thursday night, Mariano Rivera hadn’t pitched since Wednesday) and his fifth starter on the mound making just his second major league start since 2007, so he devised a plan that required his starter to go no more than six innings.

As it turned out, Sergio Mitre only needed 72 pitches to get through the first five frames. Still, nursing a one-run lead heading into the sixth, Girardi had lefty Phil Coke warm and waiting. Kurt Suzuki led off with a single off Mitre, and with four of five hitters behind Suzuki being left-handed, Girardi put his plan into effect right there and then.

Since Girardi didn’t appraise me of his plan before the game, I had no idea what the hell he was doing. Mitre had given up three runs on nine hits, but he hadn’t walked anybody and was getting a ton of ground balls. After a rough first in which he allowed two runs on a double and three singles, two of the latter well-placed bouncers up the middle, Mitre had pitched effectively and economically. After pitching around a two-out single for a scoreless second, Mitre worked a four-pitch third, hitting Scott Hairston with a curveball with his first pitch, then getting a 1-6-3 double play from Jack Cust on his next offering and getting Suzuki to groundout on an 0-1 pitch. A pair of singles set up a Mark Ells sac fly in the fourth, but Mitre survived his own throwing error on a would-be double play by getting a successful 6-4-3 DP on the next pitch thanks to some great glovework by Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano (Jeter ranged into the hole, turned and fired a strike to Cano without making a leap; Cano caught the ball with his back to first then spun and made one of his signature all-wrist throws, hard and on the money to Mark Teixeira to beat Adam Kennedy at first). In the fifth, Mitre again induced a 6-4-3, then struck out Cust on four pitches.

Mitre had thrown 91 pitches in his last start, so there was no good reason to take Mitre out. It smacked of overmanaging, particularly after Coke gave up a two-out, two-run homer to righty-swinging Mark Ellis that gave the A’s a 5-4 lead.

Fortunately, the Yankee offense was having none of that. After Mitre gave up two runs in the top of the first, the Yankees answered back with four in the bottom of the first, the key hit being a three-run bases-loaded double by Robinson Cano (who went to third on the throw home, but overslid the bag and was tagged out for the third out). After Ellis’s two-run jack gave the A’s their second lead of the game, the Yankees stormed right back with three in the bottom of the sixth when Melky Cabrera drew a one-out walk, Cody Ransom doubled him to third, Derek Jeter singled them both home, then Damon doubled and scored on a Mark Teixeira single. (Jeter didn’t score in that sequence because he was picked off first by A’s starter Dallas Braden, who has a sick move. Jeter was roughly two steps off the bag when Braden quickly stepped off the rubber and fired the ball right at Jeter’s bellybutton. The ball got there almost before Jeter could react and all first baseman Daric Barton had to do was put his glove on Jeter’s stomach and catch the ball.)

With Phil Coke thus having successfully vultured the win, Girardi went to Phil Hughes, who worked a 1-2-3 seventh striking out Hairston and Cust and then Suzuki to start the eighth. Hughes then lost a eight-pitch battle with Ryan Sweeney, walking him, and gave up a double to Daric Barton to put runners on the corners and put his scoreless streak in jeopardy. Girardi promptly brought in Brian Bruney, who struck out Mark Ellis on four pitches, then brought in Mariano Rivera for the four-pitch save. A pair of groundouts and a pair of strikeouts later, the Yankees had taken the series with a 7-5 win, wrapping up their second-half-opening home stand with a 9-1 record.

I love it when a plan comes together.

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The Yanks are hoping to avoid a split with the lowly A’s today as they send Sergio Mitre back to the mound. Mitre lasted 5 2/3 innings in his first Yankee start, allowing four runs (one of them unearned) on eight hits and a walk while striking out four. The lone walk was encouraging, as was the fact that Mitre got nine groundouts against just four fly outs. Still, with Chien-Ming Wang’s prognosis looking bleak, Mitre will have to do still better tonight to continue to quell the calls for Phil Hughes to be converted back to starting. Alex Rodriguez gets the day off today. Cody Ransom’s at third. Jorge Posada is hitting cleanup. Despite Brett Gardner’s big RBI triple yesterday, Melky Cabrera’s back in center.

It’s fitting that the Yankees and A’s are playing today as Rickey Henderson, who spent four and a half of his prime years as a New York Yankee, enters the Hall of Fame wearing an A’s cap. Having come of age as a fan during Rickey’s Yankee heyday, Rickey holds a special place in my baseball heart, and seeing the green and gold flash against those midnight blue pinstripes will keep those memories flooding back.

The Yankees and A’s have a long history of sharing great players, dating back to Hall of Famer Frank “Home Run” Baker, who hit exactly half of his career homers with each team. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Kansas City Athletics often appeared to be little more than a farm team for the great Yankee teams of that era, with Roger Maris being the cream of the Kansas City crop to flower in the Bronx. Then, of course, there was Catfish and Reggie, two of the three Hall of Famers from the early ’70s Oakland dynasty, who were also key players on the back-to-back Yankee Championship teams in the latter half of the decade.

When Rickey set the all-time single season stolen base record in 1982, it was at the urging and ever-present green light of A’s manager Billy Martin, who himself had been banished to the old KC A’s following the infamous Copacabana incident in 1957 and would be back managing the Yankees in 1983. Billy managed Rickey on the Yankees to one of Rickey’s greatest seasons in 1985. More recently, Jason Giambi, who won an AL MVP with Oakland, placed his name among the Yankee franchise leaders in home runs (tenth), slugging* (seventh), and on-base percentage* (fifth).

With Giambi on the DL after having returned to the A’s this year, the top cross-team names in today’s game are Yankee right fielder Nick Swisher, who was part of Billy Beane’s famous Moneyball draft, Oakland manger Bob Geren, a former Yankee catcher from the dark days of the early ’90s, and A’s reliever Russ Springer, who made his major league debut as a Yankee the year after Geren was waived and is old enough to have been traded with J.T. Snow for Jim Abbott.

And since that stream of consciousness took us a considerable distance from the Hall of Fame, here’s a top-10 list of Hall of Fame classes that I assembled for SI.com. Yankees and A’s abound there as well.

*minimum 1,000 plate appearances

The first-half meme on Joba Chamberlain was “he’s hiding an injury.” Though he wasn’t getting rocked, his velocity was down, as was his energy, and he was pitching tentatively, bearing little resemblance to the cocksure fireballer with the wicked slider we’d all come to know and love since his arrival in late 2007. Now, after his second dominant start in as many turns since the All-Star break, the new meme is “he went home to Nebraska and got his head on straight.”

I like the image; Joba in his Smallville version of the Fortress of Solitude using the green crystal to rediscover his purpose. I like the results too. Friday night, that meant seven-innings of two-hit ball on just 100 pitches with mid-90s velocity throughout.

The A’s got a run off Joba in the first on a one-out double by Orlando Cabrera, a stolen base, and a sac fly, but that was it. He retired nine in a row in the middle of the game before suddenly losing the strike zone and walking two with one out in the fifth and moving the runners up on a wild pitch. Uh oh? Oh no. Joba got both Mark Ellis and Eric Patterson swinging on vintage Chamberlain sliders and delivered a raucus fist pump in celebration of stranding the runners with what was then a slim 2-1 lead. He then came back out and retired the next six men he faced.

Despite the 8-1 final, the game was actually a pitchers duel for most of its length. The A’s rookie lefty Brett Anderson struck out the side in the first and retired the first six men he faced before Robinson Cano reached on an infield single in the third. A Melky Cabrera double, Derek Jeter single, and an RBI fielders choice by Johnny Damon gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead in that inning. That last came when Damon hit a dribbler that A’s first baseman Daric Barton nearly turned into a 3-6-1 double play, but Anderson is astonishingly slow when it comes to covering first. Because Barton had to come so far in to field the ball, no one was at first base to recieve Orlando Cabrera’s pivot throw, which wound up hitting Damon in the wallet as he crossed the bag, preventing an error.

The Yanks added another run in the fifth on a leadoff walk to Nick Swisher, an infield single by Cabrera and a pair of productive fielders  choices, and another in the sixth on a leadoff double by Alex Rodriguez and a pair of productive groundouts.

Mariano Rivera was warming up with the Yankees leading 4-1 in the bottom of the eighth, but the Yankees dropped a four-spot on Yalie lefty Craig Breslow and Dominican righty Santiago Casilla, giving David Robertson a rare chance to both pitch (his last appearance came on July 11 in Anaheim) and pitch with a lead (just six of his previous 24 relief appearances saw him enter a game with a lead). Unfortunately for Robertson, he coughed up a couple of runs on a Scott Hairston single, a Kurt Suzuki double, a throwing error by Melky that allowed Suzuki to reach third, and a wild pitch.

No matter, Yanks win 8-3 and are 8-0 since the break.

Meanwhile, here’s Joba’s line in his two second-half starts:

13 2/3 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 6 BB, 14 K; 2-0, 1.32 ERA, 0.80 WHIP

After the game, Joba said he was “just going back to having fun and just doing what got you here.” Amen, brother.

The remaining three games in the Yankees series against the A’s just got easier as the A’s have traded their best hitter, Matt Holliday, to the Cardinals for a trio of prospects including third baseman Brett “The Walrus” Wallace. This just hours before SI.com posted my Trade Talk post about the biggest offensive holes on contending teams heading into the trading deadline. The Cardinals’ left-field situation was originally fifth on my list:

5) Cardinals, LF
Production to date: .211/.293/.333 (64 sOPS+)
League average LF: .262/.338/.427
The Guilty (VORP): Chris Duncan (-1.5), Rick Ankiel (-7.3), Nelson Stavinoha (-3.2)
The Targets: Matt Holliday (25.9), Magglio Ordoñez (-0.3)

The Cardinals have already traded for sometime left fielder Mark DeRosa, but he was supposed to fill their hole at third base (.219/.291/.355, 72) and is currently on the DL. They also just acquired Julio Lugo from the Red Sox, for Duncan no less. If the plan is for Lugo to play shortstop with Joe Thurston and Brendan Ryan platooning at second, thereby allowing Skip Schumaker, whom I listed as the worst defensive second baseman in baseball earlier this week, to return to the outfield, then they might be done. If not, they could pull the same trick with even better results by acquiring a second baseman from the Twins’ target list above. Putting Schumaker back in the outfield is likely a better solution than overpaying for Holliday or hoping that Ordoñez or Austin Kearns (-4.6) would benefit from a change of scenery and a return to full-time play.

The pressure is now on the Cards not only to win the NL Central, but to resign Holliday this winter given that they traded a potential long-term solution to their hole at third base.

Taking the Cardinals’ place on the list are the Rays, whose current catcher situation, staffed by former Yankee farmhands Dioner Navarro and Michel Hernandez, is what’s keeping them out of the AL East race.

The O’s could hit a little, but not pitch. The Yankees swept them. The A’s, who have a nearly identical record, can pitch a little, but not hit. The Yankees welcome them to the Bronx tonight for a four-game set that has the Bomber faithful salivating at the thought of their team extending their perfect 6-0 second-half record and building on their two-game lead over the Red Sox in the AL East and game-and-a-half lead over the red-hot Angles for the best record in the league.

The A’s arrive with the third weakest offense in the American League, and one which just lost ex-Yank Jason Giambi to the disabled list via a strained hamstring. Not that Giambi was hitting (.193/.332/.364 on the season), but he was tied for second on the team in homers with 11 and would have had fun trying to lift balls into that jet stream to right field (you just know J-Bombs is miserable over missing these games). Matt Holliday is doing what everyone expected he’d do, hit like his career road split, which is still good enough to make him the A’s best bat. His closest rival is replacement third baseman Adam Kennedy, who was released by the Cardinals in February, dumped on the A’s by the Rays after spring training, and spent April in the minors.

As for the A’s pitching, it’s typically park influenced. The A’s staff has a 3.83 ERA at home, but a 4.75 mark on the road. Accordingly, the A’s are a .391 team outside of Oakland. The A’s rotation currently consists of three lefties and four rookies, but the most effective left-handed rookie starter they’ve had this season, stirrup socked fashion plate Josh Outman, has been lost to Tommy John surgery.

The Yankees will face Brett Anderson, the most heralded of the rookie lefties, tomorrow. Anderson gave up five runs in 5 1/3 innings in the Yankees 16-inning win over the A’s in April, but has turned it on of late and enters tomorrow’s contest with an active streak of 21 scoreless innings and a 0.34 ERA and 0.68 WHIP over his last four starts. Saturday brings rookie lefty Gio Gonzalez, part of Oakland’s return for Nick Swisher. Gonzalez is Outman’s replacment and his four major league starts this season have been evenly split between decent and disaster, his last seeing him cough up 11 runs on on ten hits, including four homers, in just 2 2/3 innings against the Twins. Sunday brings non-rookie lefty Dallas Braden, who is the ripe-old age of 25. Braden has been the A’s most consistent pitcher having delivered quality starts in 14 of his 20 starts and maintaining his 3.40 ERA both at home and on the road. He’ll face Sergio Mitre.

Tonight, the Yankees will face one of the A’s two rookie right-handers in 22-year-old Vin Mazzaro, a Hackensack, New Jersey native and graduate of Rutherford High School who relies on a hard, heavy, mid-90s sinker. Mazzaro joined the rotation in June and got off to a fine start with four quality starts, but things have gone downhill from there, bottoming out with the eight runs he allowed in three innnings against the Angels his last time out. The A’s have lost Mazzaro’s last seven starts, with Vinnie taking the loss in six of them. In fact, the A’s haven’t won a game in which Mazzaro has given up a run all year (Mazzaro’s first two starts, both wins, saw him pitch 13 2/3 scoreless innings).

Maz has his work cut out for him tonight as he’s facing not just the major league’s best offense in a hitting-friendly environment, but CC Sabathia coming off seven shutout innings against the AL Central-leading Tigers his last time out. CC wasn’t as good as his numbers in that last start, however, as he walked three, hit a batter, threw 51 pitches in the first two innings, and had just two 1-2-3 innings. CC who started against Anderson in that 16-inning monster back in April and had one of his worst starts of the year, allowing seven runs in 6 2/3 innings while walking five. He’s come a long way since those early struggles, however, and will be looking to build some second-half momentum tonight.

Tonight’s lineup includes Hinske in right, Gardner in center, and Matsui at DH.

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The Yankees  scored four runs in the first inning against Baltimore starter Jason Berken Wednesday afternoon, A.J. Burnett held the O’s scoreless through the first six innings, and that was about that. Jorge Posada added a solo home run in the third and an RBI double in the eighth. The O’s scratched out a pair of runs against Burnett in the top of the seventh and got two more on back-to back homers by Adam Jones and Nick Markakis off Brian Bruney with two outs in the top of the ninth. Mariano Rivera came in to get the last out and nail down the 6-4 win, and with that the Yankees completed a three-game sweep of the Orioles and ran their second-half record to 6-0.

For Burnett, it was his seventh-straight quality start and his ninth out of his last ten starts. The Yankees are 8-2 in those ten games, the two loses coming against the Red Sox and the Marlins’ Josh Johnson, the later by a score of 2-1. As for Bruney, he struck out Robert Andino and Brian Roberts before giving up the two homers and both he and Joe Girardi said they though he was throwing the ball particularly well. Said Bruney, “two outs in the the ninth, four-run lead, of course I’m gonna throw a heater.” To his credit, the homers were hit by the Orioles two best hitters. Baseball men always say it’s better to challenge a hitter in that situation than to walk him and Bruney didn’t allow the first homer to force him to start nibbling to Jones. Still, I’m a long way from convinced that Bruney’s back to being a viable late-inning reliever.

Given the fact that the Yankees salted the game early, the highlight of the game came in the top of the third. Brian Roberts led off by lifting a fly to deep right. Nick Swisher trotted over, lifted his glove, and just flat missed the ball, putting Roberts on second. It was a flat gaffe, and a humiliating one at that. Adam Jones followed with a single, pushing Roberts to third, but Burnett got Markakis to foul out to shallow left and struck out Aubrey Huff to put him on the verge of getting out of the Swisher-created jam. Ty Wigginton then worked the count full and laced a pitch to Swisher’s left in deep right. It looked like an easy two-RBI double that would cut the Yankee lead in half, but Swisher raced over and made a fine, inning-ending leaping catch, allowing his momentum to carry him up the right-field wall in celebration. A.J. dropped this one on him in response:

I wonder if A.J. realized how well he and Swisher fit those roles.

I had some fun over at SI.com yesterday taking a look at the 2008 Gold Glove winners through the lense of UZR and The Fielding Bible. Along the way I name the best and worst defender at every position on the diamond according to those metrics and point out some surprises. Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Damon, Jose Molina, and Mike Mussina all make appearances. Derek Jeter comes up too, but only in passing.

There’s been a lot of eye rolling and hand wringing about the fact that Sergio Mitre has been chosen to take the injured Chien-Ming Wang’s start against the Orioles tonight. I’ve seen Sidney Ponson’s name tossed about as a comparison, a short-cut for the sort of proven major league failure the Yankees  should no longer need to resort to given the depth of pitching in their system and the presence of two quality starting pitchers in their bullpen in Phil Hughes and Alfredo Aceves. I would, of course, much prefer to see the Yankees stretch Hughes back out should Wang’s current DL stay project to be a long one, but with regards to Ponson, I’m here to say that Mitre is not that.

Sidney Ponson had posted a below average ERA in 235 major league starts before joining the Yankees for the first time in 2006 and arrived in the Bronx in July 2006 having just posted a 5.24 ERA in 13 starts for the Cardinals during the first half of the season. Mitre, by comparison, has made just 52 major league starts and just once made more than nine in a single season. He has not thrown a major league pitch since 2007 due to Tommy John surgery and was just 26 in that, his only full season as a major league starter. Mitre’s career line in the majors is certainly unimpressive (5.36 ERA, 1.54 WHIP, 5.4 K/9), but he was rushed to the majors in just his third professional season at age 22, jerked between the majors, minors, rotation, and bullpen in each of his three seasons with the Cubs, and came down with shoulder problems in May of his first season with the Marlins in 2006. Given all of that, I’m tempted to just toss out those first four partial major league seasons in which Mitre went 5-15 with a 6.01 ERA in 25 starts and 26 relief appearances.

Instead, I look at what Mitre did with a healthy arm and a rotation spot in the first half of the 2007 season under manager Joe Girardi. In 16 starts (not counting one aborted start in which he tore a blister during the first inning), Mitre posted a 2.82 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, and a 3.1 K/9. Ten of those outings were quality starts and two others were scoreless but cut short by a tight hamstring. Mitre’s season fell apart in late July due to the elbow problems that led to his Tommy John surgery and wiped out his 2008 season.

As you can see, Mitre’s problems have had far more to do with health than effectiveness. That’s a red flag when a team throws $80-million, five-year contracts at a pitcher, but when the pitcher in question comes in on a make-good minor league deal, health concerns don’t concern me as there’s nothing there but upside. Mitre will make a pro-rated portion of a $1.25 million salary while in the majors this year, well worth the gamble that he can recapture the effectiveness he had in the first half of 2007.

Like the pitcher he replaces, Mitre is a groundballer, which makes him well-suited to the Yankees’ homer-happy new ballpark. In his minor league rehab work this year, Mitre has induced roughly three groundouts for every fly out, a rate comparable to Wang’s at his peak. Mitre has also shown tremendous control, walking just seven men in nine starts or 1.16 per nine innings, a rate that recalls another ex-Cub Tommy John rehab project that worked out well for the Yankees, Jon Lieber. In those first 16 starts in 2007, Mitre’s walk rate was 1.76, compared to 3.7 in his first four partial major league seasons, another indication that the Mitre we see tonight is more likely to be the early 2007 model. Six of Mitre’s seven starts for Triple-A Scranton have been quality starts, and his work for Scranton has yielded a 2.40 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, and 7.00 K/BB.

It’s entirely possible that Mitre will pull a Kei Igawa upon returning to the major leagues, but given that Triple-A performance and his decided lack of a meaningfully poor major league history, I think he deserves at least this one chance to prove he won’t. Unlike with Ponson, the Yankees won’t know what they have in Mitre unless they give him a chance to show them.

That said, if the pain Wang felt in his shoulder during his throwing session yesterday does indeed indicate a longer-than-anticipated DL stay and Mitre is anything less than excellent tonight, the Yankees should immediately begin stretching Hughes back out as a long-term solution to the hole in their rotation.

Mitre’s opposition tonight will be another ex-Cub, lefty Rich Hill. Hill had an excellent season in the Cubs’ rotation in 2007, but lost the strikezone last year, pitching his way off the team and out of the organization. Picked up by the Orioles in February, Hill has been wildly erratic for Baltimore this season, swinging from seven shutout innings with seven strikeouts against the Mariners on June 1 to three runs on a hit, four walks, and a hit batter and a first-inning hook his next time out. Anything within that range is possible tonight.

Play a patsy.

To be fair, the Baltimore Orioles aren’t a complete pushover. There seven teams in the major leagues with worse records and the free-falling Mets are just two games better. In fact, for the first time perhaps since I started blogging, I’m actually looking forward to the Yankees matchups with the Orioles. That’s because of the exciting young talent the Orioles have in their lineup.

Nick Markakis is in his fourth season as the O’s right fielder, but he’s still just 25, and though his production has dipped down to his rookie-year level, he’s been a strong second-half performer in his young career, hitting .316/.388/.529 after the All-Star break. Adam Jones, who had the game-winning RBI in the All-Star Game, is having a big breakout season at age 23, though he’s slumped since the beginning of June, hitting .253/.307/.333. Those two have been joined by 25-year-old Nolan Reimold in left field. Reimold was called up in mid-May and made an immediate impact, hitting .296/.375/.533 with nine homers through the end of June. He’s scuffled thus far in July (.191/.269/.234, no homers), so it will be interesting to see if he can make the necessary adjustments to stay in the league.

Perhaps overshadowing those three is rookie backstop Matt Wieters, not because of his performance, but because of his blue-chip status. Wieters was supposed to be this year’s Evan Longoria, but with the Orioles out of contention they were able to wait a bit longer to bring Wieters up, thereby protecting his arbitration status. The fifth-overall pick in the 2007 draft, the 6-foot-5 Wieters hit .343/.438/.576 while burning through the Orioles’ minor league system in a little more than a year. Called up in late May, soon after his 23rd birthday, Wieters has yet to really settle in as a major leaguer. Even tossing out his rough first week in the bigs, he’s hit just .270/.330/.416 since June 9. Still, the potential is there for a huge breakout, and Wieters has the potential to develop into one of the best hitters in the league at any position.

Add to those four Brian Roberts, having a slightly down year at age 31, but still leading the majors in doubles, and a strong showing from fellow-31-year-old Luke Scott (.298/.380/.579 and hitting lefties even better than righties), and the Orioles have an offense worth watching.

What makes them a patsy is their pitching staff. The names have changed from when I wrote something very similar prior to the Yankees’ season-opening series in Baltimore. Adam Eaton has been released, Koji Uehara and Alfredo Simon are on the DL, and Mark Hendrickson has been banished to the bullpen, but the Orioles rotation is still awful. Would-be ace Jeremy Guthrie, whom the Yankees will miss, has a 5.12 ERA. The rest of their rotation made a combined five starts above double-A in 2008, all of them by Cubs castoff Rich Hill. Hill, who starts against Sergio Mitre tomorrow, has a 7.22 ERA thus far this year. Rookie Jason Berken, who will face A.J. Burnett on Wednesday night, is 1-7 with a 6.44 ERA.

The Orioles have had more encouraging results from 23-year-old rookie groundballer Brad Bergesen, though he won’t pitch in this series either. Bergesen has been solid (6-4, 3.51 ERA and a 2.41 ERA over his last ten starts), but his low strikeout rate remains a concern. The fifth spot in the rotation is being filled tonight by 24-year-old rookie David Hernandez. Hernandez. Hernandez has struck out 10.4 men per nine innings in his five-year minor league career, but save for his lone major league relief outing (2 2/3 IP, 0 R, 4 K), has yet to find the same success in the majors after five starts. Despite his middling major league strikeout rate, Hernandez turned in quality starts against the Mariners and Angels his last two times out and fell just one out shy of a quality start in two of his other three outings. The catch is that he’s a fly-ball pitcher coming to the new Yankee Stadium with a reputation for grooving pitches when behind in the count.

Facing Hernandez will be Andy Pettitte. Pettitte had always been a strong second-half performer prior to his second-half collapse last year. Even with last year factored in, he sports a second-half ERA of 3.64 and winning percentage of .687 compared to 4.17 and .578 in the first half. In 2007, Pettitte helped pitch the Yankees into the playoffs, coming out of the All-Star break to go 8-1 witha 2.61 ERA in his first nine starts of the second half. Pettitte claimed his poor second half last year was due to poor off-season conditioning, which he blamed on his desire to keep a low profile after his name surfaced in the Mitchell Report. Assuming Andy got back to his normal routine this past winter, it’s time for it to start paying off, particularly given his disappointing first-half performance.

Eric Hinske starts over Nick Swisher in right tonight against the righty Hernandez. Melky Cabrera starts in center. That’s four post-break starts for Melky to one by Brett Gardner. I don’t like that trend. Melky had a six-game hitting streak going, but it was snapped yesterday. He’s hitting .256/.319/.372 in July and was 2-for-10 with no walks or extra base hits against the Tigers over the weekend. Then again, Gardner is hitting .219/.265/.281 with just two walks and one extra-base hit on the month. Both players have taken advantage of slumps by the other this season. There’s no telling who will step up now, but Gardner needs to play to have a chance.

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Saturday was a great day for a baseball game. It was a gorgeous, sunny, breezy, summer day and the Yankees and Tigers each had their ace on the hill. CC Sabathia and Justin Verlander delivered on the matchup’s promise, each holding their opponent scoreless for six innings.

Verlander actually out-pitched Sabathia for those first six frames, but CC continually fought his way out of jams. He needed 51 pitches to get through the first two innings, but stranded a pair of runners in each, then got inning-ending double plays in the third and fourth before finally working a 1-2-3 fifth inning. The Tigers got two men in scoring position in the sixth when Marcus Thames beat out an infield single to the shortstop hole and Magglio Ordoñez doubled him to third, but Sabathia got Ryan Rayburn to fly out to shallow left, holding Thames, and got Brandon Inge to pop out to strand both runners. He then worked a 1-2-3 seventh, finishing his day after 114 pitches.

The Yankees managed just two singles and walk off Verlander over the first five innings. In the sixth, Johnny Damon doubled off the base of the right-field wall with two outs, but was stranded when Verlander got a favorable high strike call on a fastball to get Mark Teixeira looking for his sixth strikeout of the game. Alex Rodriguez led off the bottom of the seventh, took ball one, fouled off strike one, then lifted Verlander’s 92nd pitch to the first row in right field for a stalemate-breaking homer that gave the Yankees a 1-0 lead. With two outs in the inning, Robinson Cano singled up the middle, moved to second on a Nick Swisher double to left, and scored when Melky Cabrera beat out a grounder to deep short.

That extra run proved crucial when Thames connected for a two-out homer off Alfredo Aceves in the eighth. In to protect the slim 2-1 lead, Mariano Rivera worked a perfect ninth to give the Yankees the game, series, and season series over the Tigers. It was a crisp, two-hour 39-minute game on a crisp, beautiful afternoon. Nice.

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Friday night’s win was a thoroughly rewarding one for the Yankees. Mark Teixeira came through with a big three-run homer to cap a comeback. Phil Hughes helped nail it down by striking out the side in two scoreless innings of relief. Mariano Rivera got the save, and everyone in the Bronx went home happy.

The win also clinched a tie in the season series with leaders of the AL Central, and most importantly, gave the Yankees the game they needed to have with the Tigers two All-Stars, Justin Verlander and Edwin Jackson, scheduled to pitch the final two games of the series. Verlander goes today in a rematch with CC Sabathia. Those two last faced off in Detroit on April 27, the first game of the season series. Entering that game, Verlander was 0-2 with a 9.00 ERA. That night, he shut the Yankees out for seven innings, striking out nine and walking none as the Tigers prevailed 4-2. Dating back to that start, Verlander has gone 10-2 with a 2.22 ERA, 124 strikeouts in 101 1/3 innings, a 0.99 WHIP, and a 4.26 K/BB. He’s been a bit more human of late, however, posting a 4.25 ERA over his last six starts with a 1.42 WHIP.

CC Sabathia pitched well in that April game as well, striking out seven in eight innings, but a three-run sixth inning, keyed by a two run home run by Magglio Ordoñez, cost him and the Yankees the game. After a mediocre April, CC was great in May, but has been a bit erratic since then, going 3-3 with a 4.47 ERA. In his last start, he coughed up five runs in 6 2/3 innings in Anaheim and two starts before that he allowed six runs in 5 2/3 against the weak-hitting Mariners. Like the Yankees other big-ticket free agent, Mark Teixeira, CC has a history of strong second-halves. Tex got off on the right foot last night. It’s CC turn today.

Since their sweep at the hands of the Angels to close the first half, a lot has been made of the Yankees’ struggles this year against potential playoff teams (0-8 vs. Boston, 2-4 vs. Angels, 1-2 vs. Phillies). The exception to that trend is the Detroit Tigers, who dropped two of three to the Yankees in Detroit back in late April. The Tigers have been atop the AL Central since May 10, but, tellingly, can be stung by the same criticism given their 2-7 record against the Red Sox, Yankees, and NL Central leading Cardinals.

The Tigers are a good team, but they’re not a great one. Their offense has been average, their bullpen unexceptional, and their rotation top heavy. That last is the primary reason they’ve lorded over the Central thus far this season. Despite a rough start, 26-year-old Justin Verlander is having his finest major league season having gone 10-2 with a 2.22 ERA dating back to his confrontation with the Yankees and CC Sabathia in late April. Behind him, 25-year-old Edwin Jackson is finally delivering on his prospect promise in his seventh (!) major league season, dropping his walk rate to 2.6 BB/9 and going 8-4 with a 2.26 ERA and 11 quality starts in 12 turns since May 9. Twenty-year-old rookie and Morristown, New Jersey native Rick Porcello has been solid behind those two, but Venezuelan sophomore Armando Galarraga has been inconsistent, and the fifth spot remains unclaimed.

Coming out of the break, the Yankees have the ill fortune to catch both Verlander, who will rematch with CC Sabathia tomorrow, and Jackson, who will face Joba Chamberlain on Sunday. That makes tonight’s game against 23-year-old rookie lefty Lucas French, who is making just his third big-league start, the key to the series for the Yankees. An eighth-round draft pick out of high school in 2004, French seemed to make a leap upon reaching Triple-A this year, posting his best ERA, strikeout, and walk rates since rookie ball. French made two scoreless relief appearances for the big club in mid-May and was recalled at the beginning of July to take over the fifth spot in the rotation. After a short, but solid start against the Twins, he beat Zack Greinke and the Royals his last time out by limiting Kansas City a solo homer and five other harmless hits in six innings. That was impressive, but facing the Yankees in the new Yankee Stadium will be a much better test.

The offense behind French has a slightly different look than it had when the Yankees were in Detroit in April. Most notably, a .260/.330/.343 performance has cost 2007 batting champion Magglio Ordoñez the bulk of his playing time. He’s now the short side of a right-field platoon with 25-year-old sophomore Clete Thomas (.265/.339/.500 against major league righties this year). Similarly, Josh Anderson’s glove has proven unable to sustain his bat in left field, resulting in increased playing time for backup Ryan Raburn (.269/.346/.496 on the season). The eternally fragile Carlos Guillen is back on the DL and has yielded his DH spot to power-hitting ex-Yankee Marcus Thames, who hit .344 with four homers in his last eight games before the break. Meanwhile, three pillars of the offense this year have been Miguel Cabrera (of course), Curtis Granderson (still struggling against lefties at .194/.282/.291, but plenty dangerous against righties), and, much to my amazement, Brandon Inge, who has never posted an OPS over .780 before but is having a career year at age 32, hitting .268/.360/.515 with 21 homers and 58 RBIs (against career highs of 27 and 83, both from 2006).

A.J. Burnett will reopen the second half against the dangerous version of Granderson tonight hoping to keep his pre-break hot streak alive. A.J. has posted a 1.34 ERA over his last five starts, all of which lasted at least 19 outs. The Yankee offense behind him has Hideki Matsui batting fifth followed by Jorge Posada, Robinson Cano, Nick Swisher, and center fielder Melky Cabrera.

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In grading the Yankees first-half performances this morning, I was struck by the fact that every question mark the Yankees had on offense coming into the season has been answered positively. Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui, Nick Swisher, and Melky Cabrera have all returned to their pre-2008 levels of production. Posada’s shoulder, Matsui’s knees, and Alex Rodriguez’s hip have all held up to regular play. Age hasn’t been much of an issue for the 35-year-old Captain, and has been only a minor hindrance to Posada, Matsui, and Johnny Damon. Brett Gardner has translated his minor league production to the majors, and Mark Teixeira has hit like Mark Teixeira.

Lest we take any of that for granted, consider how things have turned the opposite way for the Chicago Cubs. I take a look at the Cubs disappointing first half and offensive collapse over at SI.com. It looks a lot like what the Yankees went through last year with injuries and poor performance combining to sabatoge a would-be playoff team. The key question now is whether the respective good and bad luck of these two teams continue in the second half. Only time will tell.

I left two grades out of my post from this morning. Here they are:

Joe Girardi, Manager

Girardi has impressed me in a number of ways this season. Starting with instantly rewarding Nick Swisher’s hot start with more playing time, Girardi has done an excellent job of rewarding performance with playing time throughout his roster. When Brett Gardner stumbled and Melky Cabrera got hot, Girardi didn’t hesitate to invert the roles of his two center fielders. Angel Berroa may have been on the roster for far too long, but Girardi barely used him, quickly recognizing Ramiro Peña’s superior skill set and rewarding the rookie with opportunities commensurate to his performance. Similarly, when catchers Kevin Cash and Francisco Cervelli were called up within three days of each other following injuries to Jorge Posada and Jose Molina, Girardi didn’t simply default to Cash as the starter because of his major league experience (which includes a .186/.248/.287 career batting line). Rather, he again favored talent over experience, making Cervelli the starter, and was rewarded for it. Girardi excelled at this in his bullpen usage last year, and has done it again this year, letting Phil Coke, Alfredo Aceves, and now Phil Hughes pitch their way to high-leverage duty while casting aside more experienced arms in Jose Veras and Edwar Ramirez.

Of course, managers manage people and not just teams, so there have been a couple of cases in which Girardi has persisted with a player in a role beyond the point at which the media and fans thought was appropriate. Specifically, Girardi put Brian Bruney right back into his eighth-inning role after Bruney was activated from the DL for the second time and stuck with Robinson Cano batting fifth behind Alex Rodriguez through a considerable slump with runners in scoring position. In both cases, Girardi was showing some necessary faith in those players, but not so much that he didn’t eventually move Bruney into the middle innings and Cano down in the order.

Girardi also deserves credit for lightening up this season after receiving poor marks for his militaristic approach to last year’s team. Starting with a spring training team field trip to a pool hall conceived by the skipper, this year’s Yankees team has been one of the loosest and most colorful in recent memory, from Nick Swisher’s iPod, to A.J. Burnett’s cream pies, to the post-game championship belt (donated by Jerry Lawler), to the Mariano Rivera-judged kangaroo court.

Still, Girardi continues to have a blind spot when it comes to the fragility of his players. Though he seems to have discontinued his practice of lying to the media about his players’ health, he initially failed to follow the doctor’s orders to give Alex Rodriguez proper rest following the third baseman’s return from hip surgery, and has too often overextended CC Sabathia beyond the big man’s effectiveness. Fortunately, CC’s pitch counts haven’t been dangerous (he has reached 120 pitches just twice, tellingly both times in Yankee losses), and Rodriguez has responded incredibly to having some regular rest of late. Still, taking those kind of chances with the team’s top assets early in the season is more than just obstinate, it’s potentially disastrous for the organization. Given Girardi’s injury blind spot, I wonder to what degree his approach is to blame for the fact that both Cody Ransom and Brian Bruney tried to cover up injuries to the detriment of the team.

B+

Yankee Stadium 2.0

Prior to Opening Day, my objections to the new Yankee Stadium were sentimental, political, financial, historical, and aesthetic. Then the thing opened and turned out to be a giant Homermobile. Worse, it had a significant, detrimental effect on the game being played on the field. Though it feels cavernous to fans, it plays like a bandbox and has been host to many game-changing pop-fly home runs. Just look at the pitching staff’s splits:

Home: 4.80 ERA, 1.45 HR/9, 3.86 BB/9
Road: 4.32 ERA, 1.11 HR/9, 3.57 BB/9

Compare that to last year’s splits:

Home: 4.11 ERA, 0.83 HR/9, 3.10 BB/9
Road: 4.46 ERA, 0.96 HR/9, 3.01 BB/9

That is by far the most significant aspect of the new park, but beyond the way it plays, all of my preseason objections still hold. The best seats in the house have been half empty or worse because of their exorbitant price. The massive new scoreboards are poorly organized, making it unnecessarily difficult to catch any pertinent information with a quick glance away from the action. It’s gaudy, cacophonous, somehow looks cheap despite its billion-dollar price tag, caters primarily to luxury clients, has compromised the quality of the games being played on its field, and was utterly unnecessary in the first place.

D-

With the Yankees getting the extra off-day today, I thought I’d take a quick spin through the roster and assign some haphazard and utterly meaningless grades for the first-half. I’m sure the commenters will have a ball with this one . . .

Mark Teixeira, 1B
.275/.378/.535, 21 HR, 63 RBI; -1.8 UZR

Tex is a career .288/.378/.540 hitter, so that line is right on target, and he’s a career .303/.390/.574 hitter in the second half, so he’s actually ahead of his usual pace. I’m suspicious of that poor UZR rating; Tex had a 10.4 UZR last year. I expect his fielding stats will even out in the second half.
A

Robinson Cano, 2B
.308/.341/.490, 24 2B, 13 HR, 17 BB; 0.1 UZR

How has Cano’s comeback season gone? In 2007 he hit .306/.353/.488 with a career-high 41 doubles, and 19 homers. He’s right on target to match or surpass those figures this year. His defense hasn’t rebounded all the way to his +11.3 performance in ’07, but it’s come up to average after dropping to -8.0 last year. As devastating as Cano’s collapse was to last year’s club, his rebound has been that important to this year’s Yankees.
A

Derek Jeter, SS
.321/.396/.461, 56 R, 10 HR, 17 SB (85%); 0.5 UZR

Age appeared to be sapping the Captain’s power and speed in 2008, but his performance in the first half this year has made his ’08 season seem more like a fluke than a trend. His 17 steals are already his most since 2006. His ten homers put him on pace for his highest total since 2005. Of course, the new stadium is largely responsible for the latter (Jeter’s hit just two taters and slugged .415 on the road), but the rest of his game has been as good on the road as at home, if not better. At age 35, he’s third among major league shortstops in VORP, behind only 25-year-old superstar Hanley Ramirez and Jason Bartlett’s fluky first half.
A

Alex Rodriguez, 3B
.256/.411/.548, 17 HR, 50 RBI; -4.3 UZR

Rodriguez missed the first month of the season due to hip surgery. Then his manager failed to obey his doctor’s orders and give him the requisite days off, prompting a wicked slump (.159/.312/.286 over 19 games). And still Rodriguez’s numbers are right back where they belong. Ignore that average, it’s coming up, and look at the on-base percentage, which is a whopping 155 points higher and consider that Alex has walked ten more times than he’s struck out thus far this season after having never walked more than he’s struckout before in his major league career. Rodriguez’s hip has hindered his speed (just three steals, though in only three attempts), but his defense is coming around. All things considered, it’s been another strong season.
B+

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How did the individual All-Stars do in last night’s 4-3 American League victory? SI.com asked me to grade the players. I gave Derek Jeter a B-, Mark Teixeira a C-, and Mariano Rivera part of the AL bullpen’s collective A+. See the rest here.

Remember Friday night’s game? Saturday afternoon’s was the same, but worse. The Yankees built an early lead, thanks in part to an Alex Rodriguez homer, but Angels chipped away and took the lead in the fifth, bouncing the Yankees’ starter in the process, then just kept adding on against the bullpen, keeping the game out of reach of the offense’s modest attempts to come back. Déjà vu all over again.

The Yankees actually hit five home runs in the game. Alex Rodriguez caught, then passed Rafael Palmeiro to move into the all-time top ten with a two run shot in the first and a solo shot in the eighth. Eric Hinske, making just his second start as a Yankee, went deep twice as well, with a solo shot in the third off Angels starter Jered Weaver and a two-run jack in the seventh off lefty Darren Oliver.

Just as they led 5-1 heading into the bottom of the fifth on Friday night, the Yankees led 4-1 heading into the bottom of the fifth on Saturday, but just like Joba Chamberlain before him, Andy Pettitte only managed to get one out in the frame. Five of the six batters Pettitte faced in the fifth got hits, starting with a single by Yankee-killer Howie Kendrick and a home run by Brandon Wood, who just returned from Triple-A Friday night.

David Robertson replaced Pettitte with one out and men on the corners and proceeded to allow four more runs to score, putting the Yankees in an 8-4 hole. With Joe Girardi apparently refusing to use his better relievers either that early or, ultimately, facing a large deficit, Robertson returned in the sixth and struck out the first three men, but one reached on a wild pitch on strike three and came around to score on a two-out triple. It was that kind of game.

Johnny Damon was playing in on Erick Aybar, who hit that triple to left field. Retreating after Aybar’s hit, Damon got to the wall just after Brett Gardner scooped up the ball. With nothing else to do, Damon simply sat back on the lip of the padding under the Plexiglas window, visibly expressing his frustration. That about summed it up.

Hinske’s two run homer made it 9-6, but Mike Napoli homered off Brett Tomko in the bottom of the seventh to make it 10-6. Alex Rodriguez and Hideki Matsui went back-to-back in the eighth off Jason Bulger to get it within 10-8, but when Girardi finally felt the game was in reach and went to Phil Coke, Coke gave up four more runs in an inning that included a wild pickoff throw and another wild strike three that allowed a batter to reach on a strikeout. That ran the final to 14-8. Together, Robertson, Tomko, and Coke allowed eight runs in 3 2/3 innings and threw 91 pitches. Mix in Pettitte’s work in the fifth and the Yankees allowed 13 runs in the last four innings and threw 112 pitches in those four frames.

Ugly.

Jered Weaver has been the Angels’ best starter this year but inconsistent of late. He was 7-2 with a 2.08 ERA on June 14, but in his four starts since then, he’s posted a 7.23 ERA with the Angels dropping two of those games. He’d not allowed a home run in his previus six starts, but has allowed five taters in those last four. On the season, Weaver’s home ERA has been more than a two and a half runs lower than his road mark, but he’s been succeptable to lefty bats, allowing them to slug .484.

That’s one reason that Eric Hinske is getting the start in right field this afternoon and Brett Gardner is starting in center, though both are replacing switch-hitters. The rest of the Yankee lineup behind Andy Pettitte is the usual suspects, with Hideki Matsui batting fifth followed by Jorge Posada.

Andy Pettitte starts for the Yankees. Andy’s been alternating good and bad starts since May and is due for a good one after walking five and giving up six runs in six innings to the Blue Jays in his last outing. Pettitte’s road ERA is three runs better than his home mark, which is another reason to feel good about his chances this afternoon.

Pettitte and Weaver faced off in the Bronx on May Day. Neither was sharp as they combined to walk seven men and strike out four. Weaver was slightly better, but the Yankees came out on top by scoring six runs in the final two innings for yet another walk-off win. Of the three Angel relievers who gave up those six runs, only closer Brian Fuentes is still on the Halos’ 25-man roster.