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Offense: After dropping eight runs on Shawn Marcum in the first five innings of the opener, the Yankees scored just six more runs in the final 22 frames of the series.

Studs:

Jorge Posada 3 for 7, 2B, HR, RBI, 4 R, 2 BB
Johnny Damon 4 for 12, HR, 3 RBI, 2 R, 2 BB, HBP, SB
Jason Giambi 1 for 5, Grand Slam, 2 R, BB, HBP, 3 K
Jose Molina 1 for 3, 2B

Duds:

Melky Cabrera 1 for 13, 2B, 3 K, GIDP
Derek Jeter 1 for 10, 2 BB, HBP, 3 K
Robinson Cano 2 for 12, 2 RBI, R, BB, K
Alex Rodriguez 3 for 11, 0 RBI, 2 R, 2 BB, 4 K
Wilson Betemit 0 for 3, 3 K

Doug Mientkiewicz went 0 for 2 as a defensive replacement in all three games. Alberto Gonzalez appeared as a defensive replacement in the opener, but didn’t come to bat.

Ouchies: Shelley Duncan’s MRI revealed a bone bruise on his pelvis and a small inguinal hernia. He has rejoined the team, is taking anti-inflammatories, and is listed as day-to-day.

Rotation: Outstanding. Rookies Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, and Mike Mussina, making his first start in more than two weeks, combined to allow just three runs (two earned) in 18 2/3 innings while allowing just 9 hits. Mussina didn’t allow a run in his return to the rotation, falling one out short of a quality start despite throwing only 87 pitches. Kennedy was the star of the series, however, holding the Blue Jays to one hit over seven innings and needing just 93 pitches to do it.

Bullpen: Sure, Chris Britton lost the finale by giving up hits to the only two batters he faced, but that was the only earned run the pen allowed in the series, posting this line:

7 1/3 IP, 6 H, 2 R (1 ER), 2 BB, 11 K

The Good:

In the finale, Luis Vizcaino returned from arm and back pain to pitch a dominant 1-2-3 inning, striking out two and throwing just nine pitches, seven strikes. Ross Ohlendorf pitched a perfect in his major league debut in the opener. Edwar Ramirez allowed three base runners in 2 1/3 scoreless innings, but struck out five. Mariano Rivera pitched around a single for a four-out save in the middle game.

The Bad:

Britton.

Joba Chamberlain allowed his first major league run, but still has a career ERA of 0.00 after 16 innings because the run scored on a throwing error by Alex Rodriguez with two outs. Russ Adams, who scored the run, led off the eighth with a double of Chamberlain, just the second extra base hit Joba’s allowed in the majors. The first was also a double by a young AL East infielder: Boston’s Dustin Pedroia.

Conclusion: With a little more offense they would have had an easy sweep, all credit due to the pitching, which allowed just three extra base hits all series, one double in each game.

As I detailed in my catchup post yesterday afternoon, the Yankees are giving Mike Mussina a chance to prove that he’s still got something left to offer tonight primarily because having Moose start tonight pushes Andy Pettitte back for the Red Sox series and sets up Phil Hughes as a possible alternate to Roger Clemens on Sunday. It also gives them a low-risk look at Moose before they have to make any hard decisions about Clemens’ elbow or taking rookies in to the postseason. With all of that in mind, this should be an interesting game. Mussina, if you need reminding, has been dreadful over his last four appearances, putting up this line:

13 1/3 IP, 32 H, 22 R (21 ER), 1 HR, 5 BB, 4 K, 2.79 WHIP, 14.18 ERA, 0-3

Moose’s 3 2/3 innings in relief of Roger Clemens a week ago Monday was his second longest outing in that stretch and far and away his best, despite the seven hits and two runs he allowed. The low walk and homer rates in the line above are somewhat encouraging, but that dreadful WHIP comprised almost entirely of hits is all you need to see to know how much trouble he’s had getting hitters out. That, more than anything else, has been his problem, though it is worth noting that 12 of those 32 hits have been doubles, so it’s not as though they’re all dinks that can be blamed on bad luck and the defense.

Moose, of course, is still thinking about his four starts previous to those in which he did this:

25 1/3 IP, 29 H, 8 R, 2 HR, 2 BB, 19 K, 1.22 WHIP, 2.84 ERA, 4-0

Opposing Mussina is Dustin McGowan. McGowan is 2-0 against the Yanks this season having held them to two runs on nine hits and four walks in 14 innings across two starts. Inclusive of that last start against the Yanks in mid-July, McGowan has a 2.62 ERA with a 1.03 WHIP and a 7.47 K/9 over his last ten starts.

Combine Mussina and McGowan and tonight’s game is one of those that you have to chalk up as a loss going in, setting up an exciting rubber-game duel between A.J. Burnett and rookie Ian Kennedy tomorrow night.

The lineup is unchanged tonight save for Matsui and Damon switching positions. So Moose gets Matsui and Giambi in the field. Off to a great start . . .

Phil Hughes looked awful in the first two innings of last night’s 9-2 win in Toronto. He was missing Jorge Posada’s target by several feet and needed some big plays in the field to escape some serious damage early on. With the bases loaded and two-outs in the first, Aaron Hill laced a grounder up the middle but Hughes managed to swat it down and get the out at first to escape the jam unscathed. With men on first and second and none out in the second, Hughes benefited from an unusual 8-5 fielder’s choice courtesy of Melky Cabrera’s arm on a flare to center that forced the runners to hold up, and a spectacular diving catch by Johnny Damon on a ball laced into the left field gap. Those plays prevented the Jays from advancing and delivered Hughes two crucial outs. A subsequent single by Russ Adams and a two-base error by Cabrera throwing behind the runner at second (his throw skipped past the bag and rolled into the Yankee dugout) plated both runners, but Hughes got Alex Rios to ground out and shut the door from there, allowing only one base runner on an error by Alex Rodriguez (a bobble) over his final four innings to turn in his second straight six-inning, two-run quality start. Hughes still wasn’t all the great even in those later innings, however. He was still frequently missing Posada’s target. He only struck out one man all night, that being Vernon Wells leading off the first, and of those last 12 outs, only three of them came on the ground.

It was enough, however, as the Yanks touched up Shawn Marcum for eight runs in 4 1/3 innings, the big shot being an opposite field grand slam by Jason Giambi in the fifth, his first homer in 35 plate appearances. Edwar Ramirez pitched around a pair of singles for a pair of scoreless innings in relief of Hughes, striking out five of the eight men he faced. Ross Ohlendorf then made his major league debut with a 1-2-3 inning that started with a strikeout of Lyle Overbay and concluded with a pair of grounders to fellow member of the Randy Johnson package Alberto Gonzalez. Ohlendorf, who did not pitch well in the minors this year prompting a move into the bullpen, threw 11 pitches, seven of them strikes, and hit 95 on the radar gun with excellent control and great movement on his fastball. For those who might have missed it, that means the Yanks held the Blue Jays to two runs (one earned) on five hits (four of them singles) by using nothing but rookie pitchers. The performances from Ramirez and Ohlendorf are particularly encouraging given the fact that Luis Vizcaino has added a stiff lower back to the shoulder problem that has shut him down over the past week.

Elsewhere, Shelley Duncan was sent back to New York after complaining of abdominal pain that could prove to be a hernia, and the Tigers split a double-header with the Rangers, giving the Yankees an even four-game lead in the Wild Card and a five-game lead in the loss column.

Finally, an update on Roger Clemens courtesy of Pete Abe who reports that Clemens “said he is ready to face Boston on Sunday. He threw for about 15 minutes at 80 percent today and will get after it a little more on Thursday. He had two cortisone shots in his elbow last Wednesday in Houston. He also revealed that there was some ligament damage.”

The Yankees have played the Blue Jays six times since the All-Star break and won five of those contests. Their one loss came in Toronto in the last of those six games when Chien-Ming Wang had the worst start of his career. Since then, the Yankee have survived the tough part of their second half schedule and embarked on a current 9-3 pace which has launched them into a comfortable lead in the Wild Card race (now four games with the Tigers loss earlier today). The Blue Jays, meanwhile, have continued to be the .500 baseball team they’ve been all year, going 15-15 since the Yanks last left Canada. They come into tonight off a seven-game road trip on which they dropped series to the AL-best Red Sox and AL-worst Devil Rays as well as a make-up game against the Tigers last night.

One variable in this series is Troy Glaus, not because of the recent steroid allegations, but because he left yesterday’s game after feeling something pop in his left foot. Glaus has had foot problems all year and has been battling plantar fasciitis, the same injury that put Jason Giambi on the shelf for more than two months (perhaps not coincidentally after a four game series on the turf in Toronto). Glaus has been tearing things up recently, hitting .372/.517/.721 since August 25. If he’s hindered or unable to play at all (remember Toronto’s DH slot is filled by the immovable Frank Thomas, though Glaus’s bat has been much hotter of late), it will be a big break for the Yanks.

As for the Yanks, Derek Jeter is indeed in the starting lineup against Shaun Marcum tonight, as are all of the other usual suspects, with Giambi at first base, Damon in left, and Matsui at DH (though all three are struggling so much that I had hoped to see Wilson Betemit get the starts at first base against the all-righty Toronto rotation).

Marcum has gone 11-3 with a 3.45 ERA since entering the Toronto rotation in mid-May. Among his 22 starts this year are two quality outings against the Yanks in which he’s posted this combined line: 12 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 5 BB, 7 K, but has only a loss and a no-decision to show for it (the Jays did win that first game). Marcum posted a 2.02 ERA in his first ten starts and has a 4.76 ERA in his last twelve, but his peripherals don’t show a considerable change in effectiveness. If anything, he was a bit hit-lucky in those first ten outings, something which has ceased in the last 12, but his WHIP in those last dozen outings remains a solid 1.29, and, for what it’s worth, his record has been 8-3 over those last 12 starts.

Opposing Marcum will be Phil Hughes who came up huge in the finale against the Mariners last week to pull out of a string of three poor outings. The key to that start for Hughes was a surge in his ground ball rate. Here’s hoping that trend continues tonight as he faces the Blue Jays for the first time since his major league debut back in April, when he got the Blue Jays’ bad hitter out, but got stung by their good hitters. The Jays are the first major league team to get a second look at Hughes.

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Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been away for the last ten days. I was in California for the wedding of two very close friends followed by an early first anniversary trip of my own. Since I’ve not been around to wrap up the last three series (the let-down against the Devil Rays, the crucial win against the Mariners, and the back-to-business sweep of the Royals), I thought I’d combine all three into a series wrap post here both to make up for those missing posts and to help me get back in the swing of things prior to the resumption of play tonight in Toronto. And so . .

Offense: The Yankees scored just 13 runs in the first four games while I was away, and averaged just four runs against the dreadful Devil Ray pitching staff, starting with Andy Sonnanstine having, by his own admission, the game of his life. They then flipped the switch and scored 42 runs over the last five games, putting up double-digit totals in three of the five.

Studs:

Alex Rodriguez .515/.579/1.273, 2B, 8 HR, 16 RBI, 10 R, 3 BB, 2 HBP, 2 SB, CS
Jorge Posada .440/.548/.840, 2B, 3 HR, 6 RBI, 7 R, 6 BB
Bobby Abreu .294/.368/.618, 6 2B, 3B, HR, 6 RBI, 7 R, 4 BB, 7 K, SB
Wilson Betemit .313/.389/.563, 2B, HR, 5 RBI, 3 R, 2 BB, 3 K, SacB
Jose Molina 3 for 7, HR, 2 RBI, 2 R, 3 K

Duds:

Hideki Matsui .074/.242/.074, 5 BB, 4 K, CS, 0 RBI, 3 R
Jason Giambi .056/.190/.111, 2B, 3 BB, 2 K, 1 RBI, 0 R
Derek Jeter .200/.294/.233, 2B, 2 BB, 2 HBP, 6 K, SB
Johnny Damon .194/.265/.323, 2B, HR, 3 BB, 6 K, 3 SB, SacB
Melky Cabrera .263/.300/.316, 6 K, 2 SB
Shelley Duncan 1 for 10, 2 RBI, 2 R, 3 K, GIDP, SacB

Ouchies:

Andy Phillips broke his wrist in the finale against the D-Rays and is out for the season (he’s been placed on the 60-day disabled list). He went 2 for 3 with a pair of walks in that series before the injury and his final line on the season is .292/.338/.373. Jason Giambi has started four games at first since then to Wilson Betemit’s two. Doug Mientkiewicz was activated from the 60-day DL when rosters expanded, but has only appeared as an in-game replacement, going 1 for 3 with a single, a strikeout and a sac bunt in five games. Derek Jeter left Saturday’s game with a knee problem that’s been described as irritation of the patella tendon in his right knee. He did not play on Sunday, with Betemit getting the start at short, but is expected to return to the lineup tonight. As per the stats above, Alex Rodriguez’s mild sprained ankle looks to be about as big of a problem as the hamstring injury he suffered earlier in the year. He’s hit seven home runs in the last five games, homering in each of those five contests.

Call-ups:

Alberto Gonzalez, who hit .266/.319/.379 between double- and triple-A this season, with the bulk of his playing time coming in Scranton, but the bulk of his hitting having been done in Trenton (though he did hit ten triples in for Scranton), has seen some playing time as a defensive replacement. He made his major league debut on Sept. 1 with an inning at shortstop against the Devil Rays. He ground out as a pinch-hitter for Alex Rodriguez to end a seven-run seventh inning against the Mariners in his first major league at-bat on Sept. 4. He’s still looking for his first major league hit and is 0 for 4 across five games. Bronson Sardinha was just called up on Sunday and is also making his first appearance on a major league roster.

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The Boston Red Sox are the best team in baseball, and the Yankees just swept them in a series in which the Sox threw their three best starting pitchers. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are the worst team in baseball and the Yankees took six of eight from them after the All-Star break. This weekend the Yankees will once again miss not only Scott Kazmir, but James Shields as as well. Can you say extended winning streak?

The catch, of course, is that the Yankees will have Ian Kennedy making his major league debut on Saturday. Kennedy’s tremendously talented, but so is Phil Hughes, and he’s been experiencing some growing pains thus far this season despite the fact that, as a man in his third full professional season and with seven major league starts under his belt, he’s a veteran compared to first-year pro Kennedy. Hughes, who starts tonight, has just two quality starts in those seven major league outings and is coming off a pair of similarly frustrating outings in which he allowed just eight hits in 12 1/3 innings and struck out ten, but also allowed ten runs due to five walks in the first game and three homers in the latter.

Opposing Hughes will be Andrew Sonnanstine, who, as a fourth-year pro with 16 major league starts under his belt, is of similar vintage to Hughes (though, as a Kent State product, he’s three years older). Sonnanstine’s only career start against the Yankees was his first following the All-Star break. He allowed five runs on a walk and nine hits, including homers by Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui, in 6 1/3 innings in that game and hasn’t been much better since, posting a 7.28 second-half ERA despite allowing just three more homers in his last eight starts and posting a solid 2.49 BB/9. The Yankees swept the Red Sox on the strength of their pitching. There’s no reason they can’t sweep the Devil Rays by preying on their pitching, just as they did the last time the Rays came to town and the Yankees scored 45 runs in the process of winning the final three games of that four-game set (the loser in game one, incidentally, was Mike Mussina).

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Offense: The Yankees only scored 4.67 runs per game, but that’s actually excellent considering the fact that the Sox have allowed just 3.63 runs per game since the All-Star break. Not only that, they did it against the Sox’s three best starters, beating Matsuzaka and Beckett, and tagging one of the league’s best relievers in Hideki Okajima in the finale.

Studs:

Derek Jeter 7 for 11, 2B, HR, RBI, 2 R, BB
Melky Cabrera 4 for 8, RBI, R, BB, SacB, CS
Robinson Cano 3 for 10, 3B, 2 HR, 2 RBI, 3 R, BB
Johnny Damon 3 for 13, HR, 4 RBI, 2 R

Duds:

Bobby Abreu 2 for 11, 2B, RBI, 2 R, BB, 2 K
Jason Giambi 1 for 6, K
Andy Phillips 1 for 5, K

Wilson Betemit went 0 for 1 with a K and a run scored as a pinch-runner after entering the opener in the seventh inning. Jose Molina and Shelley Duncan did not play in the series.

Rotation: Outstanding. Pettitte came up huge with seven strong innings in the opener, limiting the Sox to six leadoff hits (though two were homers and a third was a triple, which also scored) and a pair of walks while striking out six. Clemens then no-hit the Sox for 5 1/3 innings before allowing his only run (and one of only two hits) in six innings on a David Ortiz homer. Chien-Ming Wang then no-hit the Sox for six innings and shut them out for seven on a single hit while striking out five. Sure, Clemens and Wang walked a combined nine men in 13 innings, but I’ll take nine walks and three hits in 13 innings any time. The last time the Yankee starter earned the win in three consecutive games? Pettitte, Clemens, and Wang against the Tigers two weekends ago. On both occasions the Yankees allowed just six runs total across the three games.

Bullpen: Well, Kyle Farnsworth turned back into Farmaduke, but otherwise, excellent, which is how it tends to go when the starters are strong and the lesser arms in the pen aren’t required. Remember in my series preview when I said, “If Torre needs Britton tonight, something’s likely gone wrong?” Well nothing went wrong. Though here’s hoping Britton and Brian Bruney get some work in against the D-Rays this weekend, but not because things have gone wrong. The good news on Bruney, by the way, is with rosters expanding tomorrow, he’s here to stay. I just hope Torre gives him the opportunity to succeed or fail legitimately.

The Good:

Mo pitched 2 1/3 perfect innings and struck out two to pick up saves in the first two games. His four-out save in a one-run game in game two was huge, even if he did face the turnaround of the Boston order. Those four outs took him 14 pitches, 11 of which were strikes. Joba Chamberlain actually allowed four baserunners and struck out just two in his 2 1/3 innings, but one of those baserunners was the walk of Youkilis after he got tossed in the finale, and he still hasn’t allowed a run in 11 1/3 major league innings. Edwar Ramirez threw that ball four to Youkilis as well as a pair of wild pitches, but struck out the hot-hitting Mike Lowell and stranded Youkilis at third to wrap up the shutout in the finale. Luis Vizcaino walked one and struck out one in a scoreless inning in the middle game to the delight of Roger Clemens.

The Bad:

Farmaduke faced five batters in relief of Vizcaino, one struck out, one walked, one singled, one homered. Fortunately the walk came after the homer. Still, he nearly blew the middle game and didn’t even finish his inning, necessitating that four-out save from Mo.

Conclusion: The Yankees quite simply played great baseball over the last three games and swept the best team in the majors as a result. I don’t know what more there is to say. As a special bonus, they are now a game up in the Wild Card race and tied in the loss column with the Mariners, who were swept by the Angels and have lost six straight.

Roger Clemens was the Red Sox’s young fireballing ace. Josh Beckett is the Red Sox’s young fireballing ace. The two face off tonight at the Stadium in a series that got a heckuva lot more exciting after the Yankees decided to show up last night and make things interesting.

If you were to plot this series out, you could see a focused Yankee team winning behind Pettitte and Wang on the days Joba’s available to nail down the setup innings and against two pitchers the Yankees have fared well against thus far this year in Matsuzaka and Schilling. That would chalk tonight’s game up as the loss, as Beckett has finally put it all together at age 27, while Clemens has just two quality starts in his last five tries at age 45. As great a player as Hanley Ramirez has become/is becoming, if Beckett and Mike Lowell can lead the Sox to another World Championship this year, it’ll be hard to call that trade a mistake.

One positive for the Yankees tonight is that Manny Ramirez’s back is tense. Manny left last night’s game with back spasms, isn’t in the lineup tonight, and is likely unavailable. Erik Hinske gets the start in left. Jason Giambi starts at first base for the Yankees. The other positive is that, if the Yankees do manage to win tonight, they’ll be in great position for a very unlikely sweep.

Everything that went wrong for the Yankees in Detroit went right in the Bronx last night. Andy Pettitte came up big once again, and the Yankee offense kept picking up the runs they needed to make it count.

The Yanks got out ahead in the first thanks to some of Daisuke Matsuzaka’s bonus baserunners. Johnny Damon got things started with a single and moved to second on a Derek Jeter groundout. Matsuzaka then walked Bobby Abreu and nailed Alex Rodriguez in the back with his next pitch to load the bases for Hideki Matsui. Matsui hit a double play grounder, but didn’t hit it hard enough and, with Alex Rodriguez sliding hard, Julio Lugo’s throw pulled Kevin Youkilis off first as Damon scored the first run of the game. Jorge Posada then twisted the knife a bit with an RBI double before Coco Crisp ran down a deep Robinson Cano drive to center to end the inning.

Then a curious thing happened. The Red Sox led off each of the next six innings against Andy Pettitte with a hit, but those were the only six hits they managed off Pettitte all night. Unfortunately for the Yankees, the first of those leadoff hits was an opposite field Manny Ramirez homer in the third, and the second was a Julio Lugo triple in the third, the latter of which was plated by a David Ortiz sac fly to tie the game.

Matsuzaka, meanwhile, settled down after that rocky first, allowing just a walk to Alex Rodriguez over the next three innings. In the fifth, however, Derek Jeter, who was in an 0-for-14 slump at that point, delivered a go-ahead solo homer to the Armitron sign in right center that made it 3-2 Yanks.

Andy Pettitte entered the seventh inning having thrown 103 pitches, Luis Vizcaino warming in the bullpen, and Joba Chamberlain stretching to pitch the eighth. Four pitches later the Red Sox had tied the game yet again on a front-row Jason Varitek homer to left, but for the fourth consecutive inning Pettitte retired the side in order after allowing a leadoff hit, and the Yankees retook the lead in the bottom of the seventh when Johnny Damon snuck a two-run home run around the base of the foul pole in right, plating a leadoff single by Andy Phillips.

With that, Joba and Mo took over. Chamberlain appeared to be overthrowing a bit at first, issuing a leadoff walk to Kevin Youkilis (Boston’s seventh straight leadoff baserunner), but despite that walk and later a single by Mike Lowell, Chamberlain survived his first taste of "The Rivalry"TM pitching a scoreless inning and striking out two. Mo did the same without the baserunners to seal the 5-3 win.

It was a big night for the Yankees. Not only did they win a game that was crucial to the emotional state of the team, but the Wild Card-leading Mariners blew a 5-0 lead over the Angels to lose 10-6, so the Yankees are now just one game behind Seattle in the Wild Card race, and just two back in the loss column. (And, don’t look now, but the Mariners are on a four-game losing streak.)

But that’s not the big news. The big news is that despite my assumptions about Ian Kennedy’s innings pitched limits (which were apparently picked up by Rob Neyer over on his ESPN.com blog), the Yankees are going to promote him to take Mike Mussina’s start on Saturday after all. As that start falls on the first day of expanded rosters, the Yankees will not need Mussina to work out of the bullpen to justify his roster spot. Thus Moose will work on the side, but not out of the pen, with the hope of reclaiming his spot in the rotation next week. I’m still concerned about Kennedy’s innings (he threw just 104 1/3 innings last year between USC and the New York-Penn League and has already thrown 146 1/3 innings across three minor league levels this year), but, given that the team that has implemented the Joba Rules is likely being mindful of such things, I’m delighted to see him get Saturday’s start. Incidentally, here’s a scouting report on Kennedy from Rich Lederer via a post of Alex’s in the wake of last year’s draft.

Here’s the skinny on Kennedy, who will be the sixth man to make his major league debut by starting a game for the 2007 New York Yankees. Kennedy was the Yankees’ top draft pick last year, taken ahead of Joba Chamberlain, both players coming via the compensation picks the Yankees received when Tom Gordon signed with the Phillies. Kennedy has often been referred to as a young Mike Mussina (which, lest you forget, is a very, very good thing) as he is a slender, 6-foot-tall righty who throws a low-90s fastball along with a very effective curve/slider/change repertoire, all of which he can throw for strikes. Just as Chamberlain fell to the Yankees in the draft due to concerns about his conditioning (which has obviously improved) and a forearm injury which put a damper on his senior year at Nebraska (which was last year, by the way, and may be why Joba has Rules and Kennedy does not), Kennedy fell to the Yankees at the 21st pick because of signability concerns linked to his being represented by Scott Boras. Both Chamberlain and Edwar Ramirez have raved about Kennedy to the press, and he’s posted a 1.91 ERA along with a 10.03 K/9, 0.96 WHIP, and a 12-3 record in 26 games (25 starts) between single-, double-, and triple-A this year.

The best part about this move is that, if Kennedy has any sort of success at all, it increases the chances of the Yankees opening the 2008 season with Kennedy, Chamberlain, and Phil Hughes in the major league rotation behind Chien-Ming Wang and Andy Pettitte.

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The Yankees and Red Sox last met in Boston in early June. To illustrate how long ago that was, Jason Giambi had just hit the DL and Roger Clemens had yet to throw a major league pitch this season. Entering that series, the Yankees were seven games below .500 and in fourth place in the AL East, 13.5 games behind the Red Sox. It was then that I became convinced that the Yankees only hope for the postseason was the Wild Card.

A lot has changed since then. The Yankees took two of three in Boston that weekend and have gone 50-30 (.625) over the last three months to pull their record 13 games above .500. They’ve passed six teams in the Wild Card race and shaved five games off their deficit there, while moving comfortably into second place in the East and decreasing their deficit there by 5.5 games. However, they’re still eight games behind Boston, which has gone 44-35 (.557) over the last three months and is coming off a four-game sweep of the White Sox. A lot has changed, but with just six head-to-head games left against the Red Sox, the Yankees still only have one route to the postseason, and that’s the Wild Card.

That doesn’t mean these three games against the Sox are meaningless or pointless. Every game counts, and the Yankees need a strong performance to bounce back from their 2-5 road trip. Prior to the Yankees’ home series against the Tigers two weeks ago, I looked ahead at the “very tough stretch of fourteen games that begins tonight against the Tigers, continues on a road trip through Anaheim and Detroit, and concludes with three against the Red Sox back home. If the Yankees can’t at the very least split those 14 games, all the good work they’ve done since the calendar turned to July might have been for naught.” Thus far the Yankees are 5-6. They would have to take two of three from the Red Sox in order to have split those 14 games. Looking at it now, I won’t say that a 6-8 record in those 14 games would be the death knell of the Yankee season, but the three games by which they trail the Wild Card-leading Mariners in the loss column loom large, as do the three games they will play against Seattle at the Stadium beginning a week from today. It would be hard to have much optimism regarding either should the Yanks lose their third-straight series to a contender.

As for the Sox themselves, they not only have the best record in baseball and the biggest lead of any team currently holding a playoff spot, but they just beat the everloving snot out of the White Sox, taking four games in Chicago by a combined score of 46-7. They’re also coming off a day of rest while the Yankees took a night-game beating at the hands of the Tigers, then had to fly home on the red eye. If ever there was a test of the Bombers’ resolve, this has to be it.

Fortunately, the Yankees send their stopper to the mound tonight. Since the All-Star break, Andy Pettitte has gone 7-1 with a 2.67 ERA in nine starts, averaging 6 2/3 innings per start, and striking out 7.71 men per nine innings. The Yankees have gone 8-1 in those nine games, rallying to win Pettitte’s one no-decision by a score of 3-2, and failing to do so in Pettitte’s lone loss, a 4-2 defeat in Baltimore. Pettitte is 1-1 with a 5.01 ERA in four starts against the Red Sox this year, but, again, a lot has changed since then, and his last start against the Sox at the stadium was a seven-inning, one-run gem.

On the hill for the Red Sox will be Daisuke Matsuzaka. Matsuzaka hasn’t dominated in his first major league season, but, if not for Josh Beckett making the leap, he’d be the Red Sox’s best starter. As it is, his hit and strikeout rates have been outstanding (he is one of just four qualifying starters in the American League to have a K/9 rate over 9.00), and his 3.76 ERA works out to an impressive 120 ERA+ given that he pitches his home games in hitter-friendly Fenway. Matsuzaka has turned in quality starts in 17 of his 26 games including five of his last six.

If anything, Matsuzaka’s biggest problem has been putting runners on base via walks and hit-batsmen. On its own, Matsuzaka’s walk rate isn’t particularly troubling, but when you factor in his eleven hit-batsmen (the fourth-highest total in the league), you get 3.92 men reaching base without a hit per nine innings, which is a bit much, especially facing a team like the Yankees that’s third in the majors in walks and fifth in the majors in being hit by pitches. Matsuzaka has faced the Yankees twice this year, doing so in back-to-back starts in late April. He walked five and hit two in those 13 innings (4.85 BB+HBP/9), posting a 6.92 ERA, but striking out 14 and winning both games, the first of which was the game in which Chase Wright allowed four consecutive home runs, the latter of which came against a poor Pettitte outing in the Bronx.

On a final housekeeping note, as expected, Sean Henn is on his way to Scranton, and Chris Britton is, at long last, back in the Yankee pen. If Torre needs Britton tonight, however, something’s likely gone wrong.

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Offense: They may have scored 5.67 runs per game, but I consider that a poor performance against a team that had allowed 6.4 runs per game over their previous 34 contests. What’s more, the Yankees lost two of the four games because they couldn’t scratch out an extra run, losing in extra innings in the opener, then falling 5-4 in the penultimate match.

Studs:

Hideki Matsui 5 for 13, 2B, 3 RBI, 3 R, 4 BB
Bobby Abreu 4 for 12, 2 R, 3 BB, 4 SB

Duds:

Derek Jeter 0 for 11, 2 R, 2 BB, 2 K
Jorge Posada 1 for 11, 2B, 2 RBI, R, BB, 2 K
Wilson Betemit 0 for 8, R, BB, 2 K
Robinson Cano 3 for 16, HR, 3 RBI, 2 R, K, 2 GIDP
Melky Cabrera 4 for 17, 3B, 3 RBI, R, SB, CS, GIDP
Andy Phillips 1 for 5, RBI, SacB, K
Shelley Duncan 1 for 4
Jose Molina 1 for 4

Rotation: If you want to find out how the Yankees could drop three of four to a team that was playing .324 ball over it’s last 34 games, look no further than the starting rotation. Outside of Chien-Ming Wang’s outstanding return to form in game two (8 IP, 1 ER, 6 K, 4.00 GB/FB), no starter allowed fewer than five runs or pitched more than six innings, both marks set by Phil Hughes. Mike Mussina was awful, of course, but so was Roger Clemens, who allowed six runs in five innings in the opener. Fittingly, the Yankees won Wang’s game, but lost the other two.

Bullpen: Taking Sean Henn out of the picture, the pen was outstanding, allowing just a solo homer off Edwar Ramirez in 10 1/3 innings. Henn, however, allowed 12 runs in 3 1/3 innings to push his total on the trip to 18 runs in 6 2/3 for a 21.60 ERA. Kyle Farnsworth dominated in his two innings, striking out three of the six batters he faced. Joba pitched just once, striking out one and retiring the side in order on ten pitches (seven strikes). In 2 1/3 innings, Brian Bruney allowed a single and a double, but no runs and no walks (though also no Ks, and that double did plate a runner he inherited from Henn). Mariano Rivera allowed a leadoff double to Magglio Ordoñez in the tenth inning of the opener and needed a spectacular stab of a line drive by Andy Phillips to keep the run from scoring, but he did escape, and Joe Torre deserves credit for twice using Rivera in a tie game on the road on this trip, even if they lost both games because the offense couldn’t score before Torre ran out of quality relievers. In addition to the solo homer by Placido Polanco, Ramirez walked two and struck out two in two innings, but allowed no other hits. Luiz Vizcaino allowed three baserunners in his two scoreless innings of work.

Conclusion: Henn should be on his way to Scranton before game time tonight, so that solves that problem, but the Yankees have had consistently disappointing performances from their starting rotation of late, with Andy Pettitte being the only consistent exception. Hopefully Wang’s performance on Saturday marks a permanent return to form for him, but even having both Pettitte and Wang pitching in top form won’t be enough to get this team into the playoffs. Clemens and Hughes need to step it up, and Torre and Guidry need to find a solution to the Mike Mussina problem. This is paramount as the offense is cooling off a bit, which was to be expected. This is a very talented team, and one that deserves a playoff spot, but it will only go as far as it’s starting rotation can take it.

Mike Mussina only lasted three innings last night. If not for a tremendous Willie Mays-style catch by Melky Cabrera with the bases loaded and a questionable out call at home on a great throw by Robinson Cano, Mussina might not have made it out of the first. As it was, his final line was 3 IP, 9 H, 6 R, 1 BB, 0 K, 0 HR.

After the game, Mussina compared his performance to his previous two stinkers:

The first two games I was trying to pick corners, throw a lot of offspeed pitches, pitch backwards all the time. Today I thought I was going right after people. I threw a lot more fastballs today. I got ahead in counts today. I had a lot of two-strike counts. [Moose threw 68 percent of his pitches for strikes last night compared to 64 and 56 percent in his last two starts.] And when they put the ball in play, they just put it in play someplace where we weren’t playing defense.

Moose would later return to that excuse, saying that the Tigers only hit three balls hard off him and curiously asserting that his velocity isn’t down from when he was pitching well (it is). While it’s true that some of those nine hits were seeing-eye ground balls, flares, and flies that dropped just out of the reach of Melky Cabrera and Bobby Abreu, there were still nine of them in three innings, and, again, Moose was saved by his defense in the first inning.

Despite that excuse, Mussina wasn’t defiant. If anything, he sounded lost while reflecting on his last three starts:

I really don’t feel like I can do much of anything right . . . Probably the last nine innings are the worst nine innings I’ve pitched in my whole career, in a row. It’s tough to take. I don’t even know how to describe it because I’ve never had to deal with it before. . . Right now I let go of [the ball] and I don’t feel like anything good is going to happen. It’s tough to pitch that way. You can’t play the game that way. You feel like you have no control over anything, and that’s how I feel right now. Even the sixty feet six inches [from the mound to the plate] doesn’t seem like I have a grasp of, and two weeks ago I felt like I could do anything I wanted. And that’s how this game is, it’ll slap you in the face when you think you’ve got it. And I felt good about it, and now I don’t feel good at all.

And so the question becomes, will Mike Mussina take his next turn against Tampa Bay on Saturday. Peter Abraham thinks it’s “unlikely” citing Mussina’s 7.59 ERA in two starts against the Rays this season (Moose had one quality start and one disaster in consecutive starts against the Rays in mid-June, the former in Tampa, the latter in the Bronx, but he allowed 13 baserunners and strike out none in six innings in the “quality” start). Mussina had this to say:

If Joe thinks that somebody else can give us a lift or do the job better, then that’s up to him. I’m certainly not hoping that somebody else is taking my spot. I want to keep going out there and figure out what’s going on, because I can’t believe in three starts that I forgot how to pitch after seventeen years. So I hope he has confidence enough in me to keep sending me out there and let me figure this out, but at the same time we’ve got to win ballgames, and I’ll understand if he thinks that we need to do something else.

For his part, Torre said that he and Ron Guidry would talk to Mussina today to determine his status for his next start and that he should have some answers on Mussina’s status soon, but did not offer any immediately following the game last night. Torre suggested that what Mussina has to say would greatly influence the decision. Looking at the above quote from Mussina, I could see it going either way. Moose obviously wants to keep going out there, but that he even acknowledged the fact that a change might be best for the ballclub is a huge admission and could signal to Torre and Guidry that a change may indeed be necessary.

As for how that change might be implemented, Mussina’s not hurt, so it would take considerable trickery to put him on the DL, which means the Yankees would have to play a man short in the pen in order to add a replacement starter to the roster in the short term. rosters expand on Saturday, so the only difficulty the Yankees might have in adding an extra pitcher is if they want to bring up someone who’s not currently on the 40-man. As to who that starter might be, Ian Kennedy has been fantastic since being promoted to triple-A along with Joba Chamberlain, but, like Joba, Kennedy is a first-year pro on a strict innings limit. Joba’s supposedly being held to 130 total innings (he’s at 97 1/3 right now). Kennedy has already thrown 146 1/3 across three minor league levels. He’s also not on the 40-man. I’d be very surprised to see the Yankees push him into the major league rotation at this point in the season, despite his minor league dominance.

Kei Igawa has pitched better for Scranton than he did for the big club, but he hasn’t been great (2-2, 4.21 ERA in six starts since his last demotion). Steven White has posted a 3.75 ERA and a 2-2 record in his last six starts for Scranton, but has never pitched in the majors. The last two men in the Scranton rotation are Matt DeSalvo and Jeff Karstens, neither of whom I want to see in the Bronx again this year. To my mind it’s between Igawa and White. Igawa would be closer to regular rest on Saturday having last started on Sunday, while White last started on Friday. Also, of the four pitchers I just mentioned, White is the only one who is not on the 40-man roster. So, really, that’s the question Torre and Guidry will be asking themselves today: With the season running down and every game crucial to the Yankees’ postseason hopes, are they better off hoping that Mike Mussina can find those five miles per hour on his fastball and the break on his curveball that have gone missing in his last three starts, or are they better off hoping that the third time’s the charm for Igawa, who went 0-2 with a 5.97 ERA, a 1.71 WHIP, and seven homers in six starts after his last recall from the minors (though the Yankees went 4-2 in those six games)?

As for the rest of last night’s game, Justin Verlander was in top form, holding the Yankees to three hits and a pair of walks over seven scoreless innings, and Zach Miner mopped up with a pair of perfect innings. The only Yankee to reach second base was Bobby Abreu with two outs in the first, and the closest the Yankees got to a run all night was a drive by Hideki Matsui that was caught at the top of the right field wall by Ryan Raburn in the seventh.

Meanwhile, Edwar Ramirez allowed a solo home run to Placido Polanco in his lone inning of work, and Sean Henn continued his impression of Oscar the death-dealing cat by appearing in four of the Yankees’ five losses on the road trip, topping this one off by allowing nine runs in 2 2/3 innings to set the final score at 16-0. Henn’s last six outings have all come in Yankee losses. He posted a 21.60 ERA on the road trip, taking the loss in both extra inning games, and giving up 18 runs in 6 2/3 innings while mopping up in Mussina’s two starts. Expect Henn to get farmed out before tonight’s game. The only question is whether or not the Yankees finally bring back Chris Britton, or if they’ll instead feel the need to replace Henn with either a lefty or a long man, in which case Kei Igawa could make a very different return to the majors than anticipated above.

Mike Mussina’s been mind-bottlingly awful in his last two starts. Justin Verlander was pretty awful himself last week against Cleveland (4 IP, 7 R). The weekend prior to that, Verlander worked 5 1/3 inefficient innings in the Bronx (119 pitches), but managed to pull out the win as he allowed only three runs and the pitcher he was facing was none other than Mike Mussina (5 IP, 7 R). The Yankees are hoping the rematch will tilt the other way, as they need this last game of the series to salvage a split and some dignity from this road trip before heading home to play three games against the suddenly out-of-reach Red Sox. Mussina, meanwhile, could very well be pitching for his job.

Damon in left, Matsui DH, Giambi at first for the second day in a row. Putting G’Bombi in the field scares me, as supposedly that’s how he hurt his foot in the first place, but this is undoubtedly the Yankees’ best offensive alignment.

For the second straight start, Phil Hughes allowed five runs in six innings despite allowing only four hits. In Anaheim last week it was because he walked five and Luis Vizcaino allowed both of Hughes’ bequeathed runners to score. In Detroit yesterday, Hughes walked only one, but allowed three home runs which plated all five baserunners.

Only two of those homers were really Hughes’ mistake, however, as Curtis Granderson led off the game by slicing a pitch down the line in left where Hideki Matsui made a vain attempt to make a running catch, allowing the ball to skip by him and ricochet into the roomy depths of Comerica Park’s left field as Granderson came all the way around with an inside-the-park home run. The two-run homers by Carlos Guillen later that inning and Marcus Thames in the third, however, were simply a case of Hughes throwing a couple of fat fastballs right over the plate. Hughes, who allowed just six home runs in 275 career minor league innings, has now allowed five in 38 2/3 major league innings. Of course, Granderson’s homer was a fluke, but those homers have called attention to the fact that the ground-ball tendencies Hughes showed in the minors (2.35 groundouts per flyout in his eight minor league starts this season) have decreased in the majors (0.84 GB/FB).

That last stat is a bit misleading, as Hughes has really been all over the map, showing strong groundball tendencies in his first two starts before his hamstring injury (2.14 GB/FB) as well as in his last start in Anaheim (3:1), but occasionally extreme fly ball tendencies in his other four big league starts, topping out with his 1:11 GB/FB ratio yesterday. It could be that Hughes has been a bit tentative since coming off the DL and isn’t getting on top enough on his pitches to get them low enough in the zone (his splits before and after his DL stint are rather telling, with him posting a 0.61 GB/FB ratio since and the above 2.14 ratio before). Or, given his strong groundball rate in Anaheim, there could be something else going on. Either way, it bares watching as Hughes’ dominance is tied to the fact that he keeps the ball in front of his outfielders.

As for the game, despite the fact that Detroit’s rookie starter Jair Jurrjens (whose name, it turns out, is pronounced exactly like it’s spelled) had to leave due to a sharp pain in his shoulder after giving up a solo home run to Jason Giambi with one out in the second inning, the Yankees couldn’t overcome those five runs allowed by Hughes. Robinson Cano added a three-run dinger off emergency reliever Chad Durbin in the fourth, but over the last 4 2/3 innings Bobby Seay, Joel Zumaya, and Todd Jones held the Yanks to just an opposite-field Giambi single in the ninth.

And so the Yankees lost 5-4 and have to somehow win tonight’s matchup between Mike Mussina and Justin Verlander to leave Detroit with a split.

Picking up what I wrote about the Tigers in my quickie look at the AL contenders over on SI.com today, Detroit is playing terrible baseball right now, their best pitchers have been horrible since the break, and they just lost Gary Sheffield for this weekend’s series. Picking up part of what I wrote about the Tigers when they came to the Stadium last week, Detroit has faired much better on the road than at home this year, though of late they’ve been equally awful no matter where they play. Seeing as the Yankees took three of four from the Tigers in the Bronx last weekend, they have not excuse not to do at least as well in Motown this weekend.

Other than losing Sheffield, which has bounced Sean Casey up to the three spot in the batting order, the big changes for the Tigers are the return of flame-throwing setup man Joel Zumaya, who took the loss in yesterday’s rubber game against the Indians, and tonight’s starter Andrew Miller. The left-handed Miller was the sixth overall pick in last year’s draft and made his major league debut against the Yankees last year in a brief relief appearance mandated by his contract (he pitched a scoreless inning marred only by his plunking Craig Wilson). This year, he joined the Tiger rotation in June after pitching six scoreless innings in a spot start in mid-May. He’s only turned in a quality start in three of his ten appearances since then–one of those coming by the slightest margin (three earned runs, but four total in six innings in Philadelphia)–and spent the last three weeks on the DL with a hamstring strain. In his last three starts before landing on the DL, Miller posted a 8.56 ERA, a 2.34 WHIP, and opposing hitters hit .367/.465/.550 against him. Miller is, of course, a much better pitcher than that, and in his brief major league career has held his fellow lefties to a .169/.324/.237 line, having never allowed a homer to a major league southpaw. Indeed, Shelley Duncan will start in place of Bobby Abreu in right field tonight and Andy Phillips will start at first base, though Johnny Damon does get the start at DH.

In other roster news, the Yankees have called up Brian Bruney and Pete Abe suspects it’s Ron Villone who’s been designated for assignment to make room for him. Bruney had made just four appearances since being demoted. Here’s his line from those outings: 6 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 1 HR, 2 BB, 5 K, 1.17 WHIP, 6.00 ERA, 2-0, SV. Meanwhile, Chris Britton’s line since coming off the DL at the beginning of the month: 11 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 9 K, 0.64 WHIP, 0.82 ERA, 1-1. Amazingly, even Bruney’s 6.00 ERA is a significant improvement over the 7.59 mark Villone has posted in August, and that doesn’t even include the inherited runners he’s allowed to score.

Opposing Miller tonight will be Roger Clemens, who struck out eight Tigers and walked none while holding them to two runs over six innings in his last start. Clemens did spend a fair portion of that game in trouble, however, as he allowed ten hits, including the first hit and later the first home run of Cameron Maybin’s major league career. Clemens has been everything the Yankees had hoped for since his stinker against the White Sox two starts ago, holding the Tigers and Blue Jays to three runs on 12 hits and a walk and striking out 14 in his last 12 innings. Clemens had similar success in his last visit to Comerica Park with the Astros last June, but suffered a hard luck loss as the ‘Stros failed to score a single run for him. Here’s hoping he avenges that loss tonight.

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Offense: Twenty-three runs in three games against the third-stingiest staff in the league? Yeah, that’ll do.

Studs:

Alex Rodriguez 5 for 12, 3 HR, 6 RBI, 6 R, 3 BB, SB
Hideki Matsui 6 for 14, 2B, 3B, RBI, 2 R, BB
Derek Jeter 5 for 12, 2B, RBI, 2 R, BB
Jorge Posada 4 for 8, 2 2B, HR, 5 RBI, 3 R, 2 BB
Bobby Abreu 4 for 13, 2B, HR, 3 RBI, 4 R, 5 K
Jose Molina 1 for 2, 2 R, 2 BB

Duds:

Robinson Cano 3 for 11, 2 RBI, R, BB, K, 2 GIDP
Wilson Betemit 1 for 6, HR, 3 RBI, R, BB, 2 K
Jason Giambi 0 for 6, 3 K
Andy Phillips 2 for 7, K, CS
Shelley Duncan 0 for 2

Rotation: If not for Mike Mussina’s stinker in the middle game it would have been easier to see the bright side of Phil Hughes start in the opener. Hughes turned in a quality start through six innings, slamming the door on the Angels after a three-run double in the second inning, but having thrown just 81 pitches he went back out for the seventh, put two of the three batters he faced on base, and then watched as Luis Vizcaino let them score. The bright side there being that he made in-game adjustments to keep his team in the game against a contender despite not having his best stuff. Of course, Andy Pettitte came up huge in the finale.

Bullpen: Fourteen runs in 11 1/3 innings? To be fair, 11 of them came in 5 1/3 innings in Tuesday’s disaster. Still, three runs in 6 frames ain’t so hot neither.

The Good:

Just Joba, but sooooo goood! He struck out the side around a single in the eighth inning of the finale, finishing up with a three-pitch K of Vlad Guerrero.

The Bad:

Everyone else. Sean Henn had the roughest week, taking the loss in extra innings in the opener after facing three batters, one he retired, one who scored the winning run, and the other who drove it in. He then took the hit in Tuesday’s blowout, allowing five runs in three innings. Actually, he allowed those five runs in one inning, allowing just a walk in the two frames that sandwiched it. Ron Villone was supposed to take the bullet in that game, but he allowed four of the five batters he faced to reach, walking in a run in the process. Edwar Ramirez allowed the rest of Villone’s runners to score as well as one of his own on a sac fly and a three-run homer, then added another run in the following inning, though he did strike out four in the process. Luis Vizcaino allowed the two runners he inherited from Hughes in the opener to score, then plated one of his own. The next night he allowed two more baserunners in a scoreless inning. Kyle Farnsworth nearly blew the opener before Henn had a chance, but was saved by a great play by Wilson Betemit and a questionable check swing call after getting the first out of the inning on a sac bunt. Mariano Rivera didn’t do any harm, but he allowed five baserunners and one run in his two innings of work.

Conclusion: Lotsa runs. Too many runs, really. This team needs to start winning some low-scoring games. They sort of did that in the finale as most of those runs were tacked on to a pitchers’ duel after the Angel pen came into the picture. Still, all those runs both hide faults in the pitching staff and lead to some poor performances being written off as flukes, such as Henn’s and Ramirez’s in the middle game, whether or not they really were.

Having dropped the first two games in Anaheim, the Yankees needed Andy Pettitte to come up big in the finale, and that’s exactly what he did. Pettitte held the Angels scoreless through five innings (though a blown call at first base by Dan Iassogna on an inning-ending double play in the fourth helped). The Yankees, meanwhile, scratched out a run in the fourth off John Lackey, bringing around a one-out walk to Alex Rodriguez to give Pettitte a 1-0 lead.

Pettitte made his only mistake of the night in the sixth, doubling up on curveballs to Orlando Cabrera, who knocked the second one over the fence in left just beyond Johnny Damon’s reach to tie the game. The 1-1 tie didn’t last long, however, as the Yankees rallied to take the lead against Lackey in the seventh. Jorge Posada, who was 3 for 4 with a pair of doubles on the night, led off with a walk and moved to third on a single up the middle by Robinson Cano. Wilson Betemit, who had struck out in his first two at-bats, followed by yanking a line drive to right, but right at Vladimir Guerrero, whose strong arm held Posada at third. Melky Cabrera then followed with an RBI single past Howie Kendrick at second, and, after a quick fly out by Damon, Derek Jeter delivered a two-out single to plate Cano.

Curiously, both run-scoring innings by the Yankees to that point ended with outs on the bases. In the fourth, Jorge Posada got caught in a run down between third and home as he tried to score on John Lackey’s wild throw to first on Cano’s infield single which had plated Rodriguez. In the seventh, Jeter was thrown out trying to advance to second on Guerrero’s throw home.

Fortunately, the Yankees didn’t need any extra runs as Pettitte stranded a leadoff single by Kendrick (that was aided by a Robinson Cano bobble) in the seventh, and the Yankees piled on in the eighth. A leadoff homer to dead center by Bobby Abreu bounced Lackey, after which the Bombers added two against the struggling Scot Shields and plated a third run charged to Shields with Chris Bootcheck on the hill. With a 7-1 lead, Joba Chamberlain came on to strike out the side, all on that nasty corkscrewing slider, around a Reggie Willits single in the eighth. The highlight of Chamberlain’s inning was his three-pitch strikeout of Vladimir Guerrero. Vlad fouled back a 100-mile-per-hour fastball on 0-1 only to come up empty on that slider for strike three.

The Yanks and Angels each added a run in the ninth, the Angels on three dinky singles against Mariano Rivera, to set the final score at 8-2.

With the Red Sox and Mariners both losing, the Yankees gain a game in both the Wild Card and the division with the win, which also moved Joe Torre past Casey Stengel and into second place on the Yankees’ all-time managerial list. The Yankees are just 4-5 in their last nine games, but they’re 7-3 against the contenders they’ve faced over the last two weeks and will have today to rest up before starting a seven-game stretch against Detroit and Boston.

Hide this one from the kids.

The Yankees scored five runs in the first three innings last night against Kelvim Escobar, but it didn’t much matter. Mike Mussina, who was throwing 86-mile-per-hour fastballs and an assortment of hanging curveballs, didn’t make it out of the second inning, and Ron Villone, who replaced him, only managed to record one out.

Mussina put the Yanks in a 7-1 hole after two. The Yanks rallied to make it 7-5 heading into the bottom of the third, but Villone, who got the final out of the second in relief of Mussina, loaded the bases with none out then walked in the eighth Angel run. Looking to keep his team in the game on the heels of their rally, Joe Torre called on Edwar Ramirez to minimize the damage. It was a gutsy move, and it almost paid off. Hideki Matsui ran down an Orlando Cabrera drive tailing toward the left field corner to turn a would be extra-base hit into a sac fly for the first out. Ramirez struck out Vlad Guerrero for the second out, but then he fell in love with his changeup against Garrett Anderson. Anderson took the first three changeups to get ahead 2-1, swung over the fourth, then parked the fifth in the left field seats for a three-run homer that made it 12-5 and put the game back out of reach.

Ramirez allowed another run in the fourth, though he did strike out four men in his two innings of work, including Guerrero twice. Sean Henn then came on to take one for the team, allowing five more runs in the sixth, the capper being a Garret Anderson grand slam that gave Anderson a franchise record ten RBIs on the night. The Yankees got four consolation runs off rookie reliever Marcus Gwyn in the top of the ninth on homers by Wilson Betemit, a three-run shot, and Alex Rodriguez, his second solo shot of the game and third tater of the series, to put the final score at 18-9.

Mussina’s start (1 2/3 IP, 7 R) was his worst in his seven years with the Yankees and one of just four starts in his 17-year major league career in which he failed to complete two innings. Mussina is now 0-6 in seven starts following Yankee losses this season. The most impressive part of Mussina’s night was that he faced the media after the game and offered no excuses.

And so the Yankees are four games behind the Wild Card-leading Mariners in the loss column. The good news? They’ve got their ace, Andy Pettitte, going tonight followed by a day off.

Why do Yankee fans loathe the Angels so? There’s the simple fact that no other team, not even the Red Sox, has a winning record against the Yankees since Joe Torre’s arrival in the Bronx in 1996. Derek Jeter is fond of saying that boos on the road are the same as cheers at home. Yankee fans hate the Angels because the Angels have tortured them over the past decade. Indeed, with last night’s win, the Angels won the season series from the Yankees for the fourth year in a row. Here’s another simple fact: Since the end of World War II, only two teams have defeated the Yankees more than once in the postseason. The first is the Dodgers, against whom the Yankees hold a 7-3 advantage in postseason play (all World Series, of course, the most recent coming in 1981). The other is the Angels, who are 2-0 against the Yankees in the postseason, knocking them out in the first round twice in the last five years.

Quick note on last night’s game: Phil Hughes said after the game that he knew from the get-go that he didn’t have his stuff. Given that, it’s pretty impressive that he was able to hold the Angels down after giving up that bases-clearing double to Jeff Mathis on a hanging curve in the second (though Hughes was charged with five runs in total, Luis Vizcaino had as much to do with the last two as Hughes did). Hughes was also really bothered by the five walks he issued. He said he wasn’t sure he’d ever given up five walks total in back-to-back starts before, let alone in a single start. Looking over his minor league record without the benefit of game logs, he could very well be right. Hughes walked just 66 men in 54 minor league appearances (53 of them starts).

As for tonight, here’s hoping Mike Mussina has his stuff (or his scuff). He sure as heck didn’t in his last start in the opener against the Tigers. Moose had four strong start before that however and, unlike Hughes, has walked just four men over his last five starts, that disaster included. Mussina last faced the Halos in late May, turning in a strong outing (6 1/3 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 6 K, 0 HR), only to have the Yankee offense struggle and Scott Proctor blow the Yankees’ slim lead. Sometimes it seems that could describe every game the Yankees have played against the Angels over the past four years.

The Yanks really have their work cut out for them tonight as they face one of the hottest pitchers in the league. Kelvim Escobar is second in the AL with a 2.68 ERA, but he’s been far better than that over the last two months. In his last start in June, Escobar allowed seven runs in 4 1/3 innings to the Orioles. Since then he’s posted a 1.56 ERA, averaged 7 1/3 innings per starts, and allowed one, count it, one home run in eight starts (congratulations, Travis Buck). Escobar has allowed more than one earned run in just two of those eight starts and in his last outing he struck out nine Blue Jays in seven innings and walked none. The Yankees last faced Escobar the day before Mussina’s start in late May and saw more of the same: 7 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 8 K, 0 HR. Yes, Escobar is pitching over his head, but only slightly. His BABIP is a favorable, but not fluky, .289, and he’s been succeeding beyond his usual level by suppressing hits and homers. He has not, however shown the increase in groundball rate that might explain those decreased rates.

There are some positives the Yankees can latch on to. First, 15 of the 17 men who have tried to steal against Escobar this season have been successful, that’s a tremendous 88 percent success rate (on his career, baserunners have stolen at an 80 percent clip). Second, though Escobar has dominated his last eight starts, the Angels have only won five of them due to poor run support. Over that stretch, the Halos have scored just 3.5 runs per game on Escobar’s behalf. Of course they just dropped seven on the Yanks last night, but you gotta have something to cling to, right?

With Jorge Posada having caught five games in a row including ten innings last night, Jose Molina starts behind the plate against his old team tonight. The hot-hitting Andy Phillips is at first. Jason Giambi will DH.

In case you had forgotten, the Yankees kicked off their current hot streak by taking three of four from the Twins and then two of three from the Angels at Yankee Stadium in the final two series before the All-Star break. Since then, the Angels have gone a modest 19-16 in the second half. Along the way they’ve lost series to the D-Rays, Twins, A’s (twice), M’s, Blue Jays, and most recently split four games with the Red Sox. The bad news is that the Halos have maintained their considerable home-road splits over that stretch, going 8-12 on the road and 11-4 at home, the latter including a series win against the Red Sox and sweeps of the Twins and Tigers. Indeed, the Angels have a losing record on the road for the year, but have played .702 ball at Angel Stadium. Meanwhile the Yankees are still a game below .500 on the road.

The good news is that the Yanks, who have played .717 ball dating back to that Twins series, have also gone 12-5 on the road since their disastrous swing through the NL West in late June. That sets up the three-game series in Anaheim that kicks off tonight as a real battle of the titans. Indeed, the Angels are just 2.5 games ahead of the Yankees in the overall American League standings and are one of just three teams in baseball that has won more games than the Bombers (Boston and upstart Arizona being the other two). Of course, every stat about the Yankees recent success comes with the caveat of the quality of their second-half competition, but now that the Yankees have taken six of seven from the Indians and Tigers, with three of those coming on the road, one needn’t sound that warning quite so loudly.

As for the Angels, rookie sensation Reggie Willits has crashed back to earth in the second half, returning the left field job to Garret Anderson, who had a hot July, but has been awful in August. With Anderson in the field, Mike Scioscia has been using the DH spot to give rotating rest to his three outfielders, with Willits picking up most of those spot starts and some extra time at DH himself. Elsewhere, the team’s young catcher Mike Napoli just can’t seem to stay healthy. That’s why Jose Molina was starting for the Angels earlier in the year and that’s why backup Jeff Mathis is doing so now. Mathis, who started five games over the season’s first four months,has started 19 games since Molina was traded and has hit .237/.299/.373 over that span, which is actually a fair upgrade from what Molina had done as the Angel starter. Fortunately, Molina, who should get a start against his old team as Posada has now started four straight, has stepped up his game since coming to New York.

Tonight, the Yankees send Phil Hughes, who has been excellent in his two major league road starts, to the hill to face fellow rookie Dustin Moseley. Though a starter by trade, Moseley has spent most of the year in the Angel bullpen after opening the year with two solid starts in place of the injured Jered Weaver. Moseley returned to the rotation in late July after the Angels optioned the disappointing Ervin Santana to triple-A and Bartolo Colon hit the DL with elbow trouble once again. Moseley’s made four starts since then, but failed to make it out of the sixth inning in any of them alternating stinkers against Detroit and Boston at home with solid, but short outings against the A’s and Jays on the road. Moseley’s back home facing another good offense and due for one of those stinkers. Here’s hoping his trend continues. Either way, with Santana having made a triumphant return in Boston on Friday, it appears Moseley will be heading back to the pen after tonight.

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