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Despite their recent rash of injuries, things have been going fairly well for the Yankees since they opened the season by dropping four of their first five games on a West Coast swing. Since returning to the Bronx for their home opener, the Yanks have lost just two of eleven series (their lone game in Fenway not counting as a series) and have only lost back-to back games twice. The problem is that they did this against the Royals, Orioles, Devil Rays, Twins (who were one of those series losses), Rangers, and a crippled A’s team. True, the did take three of five from the Blue Jays, who currently trail them by just a half game in the standings, but they also dropped three of four to the Red Sox, who lead them by the same distance.

Starting tonight, the Yankees will play six games against their two closest rivals, who also happen to be two of the three teams in baseball (the Blue Jays being the third) with the most similar records to the Bombers. Following that, they’ll alternate series against patsies (Royals, O’s) and the first place Tigers and Red Sox (yes, again). In total, 14 of the Yankees next 20 games will come against teams that currently sport better records than the Yanks’.

This isn’t the best time for this sort of thing. Hideki Matsui’s out until August at the very earliest. Gary Sheffield is nursing a mysteriously slow-healing wrist injury. Carl Pavano’s return has been dashed. Octavio Dotel isn’t here yet. Shawn Chacon’s shin will indeed force him to yield Sunday’s start to Aaron Small. And now Bubba Crosby has hit the DL with a hamstring injury, yielding his roster spot to Mitch Jones.

Jones has a strong throwing arm and a ton of pop in his bat, but will make Melky Cabrera look like Willie Mays in the outfield and Andy Phillips look like Rod Carew at the plate. Jones struck out 174 times in 128 games with Columbus last year and had 41 Ks in 39 games before being called up. Jones is a career .247 hitter in the minors, and was hitting .239 in Columbus this year. Yes, players such as Adam Dunn can be tremendously valuable despite high K-rates and low averages due to exaggerated power and patience, but Jones is unlikely to pull off such a feat making his major league debut at age 28. Unlike Andy Phillips, who’s major league debut would have come much earlier if not for an injury and the Yankees’ refusal to reward his triple-A performance appropriately, Jones has never appeared to be a major league-ready player, and to my mind, still doesn’t. Not that Jones will see much action. As a righty OF/1B, he’ll slot in behind Andy Phillips on the depth chart. That’s a frightening place to be.

The good news is that Jason Giambi’s tweaked neck didn’t cause him to miss more than one game. He returned to DH duty two days ago and played in the field yesterday, collecting two walks and a double in seven trips to the plate. He’ll be the starting first baseman throughout the weekend’s DH-less series at Shea Stadium. The Yankee outfield will be Melky Cabrera, Johnny Damon (who’s nursing a foot injury that has been alternately described as bone chips and a stress fracture), and Bernie Williams. Jones, Phillips and Kevin Reese will be limited to pinch-hitting duty, though I must say, I’d rather have the righty Phillips and the lefty Reese pinch-hitting than Miguel Cairo and Bubba Crosby. Kevin Thompson, meanwhile, remains in Columbus as the Yankees want him to continue to start down there rather than ride pine in the majors.

As for this weekend’s opponent. The Mets season has thus far has been an exaggerated mirror image of the Yankees’. They built up what was briefly the majors best record against awful teams (7-1 against the Nats and Fish to start the season), and built upon it by splitting against middle-rung opponents (5-4 vs. Atlanta, splits with the Brewers and Padres, a 2-1 series win against the Giants) and adding a 3-1 stretch against the Pirates and Nationals.

The worm has turned, however, as the Mets have gone 3-6 against the Phillies, Brewers and Cardinals over the last nine games as injuries have reduced their rotation to employing the likes of tonight’s starter Jeremi Gonzalez and, yes, Jose Lima. Injuries have bit both teams hard. While the Yankees are losing outfielders on what feels like a daily basis, the Mets have a small Tommy John epidemic on their hands as three of their pitchers, ex-Yankee Juan Padilla, and both pitchers from the Scott Kazmir trade, Victor Zambrano and Bartolomo Fortunato, have had the surgery in the last two months.

Indeed, just as the Yankees are paying the price for their failure to sign a strong fourth outfielder, the Mets are paying dearly for Omar Minaya’s string of dreadful starting pitching transactions. Beyond the Kazmir trade–which has Bagwell-Anderson, Ryan-Fregosi, Brock-Broglio written all over it–Minaya flipped Jay Seo for Duaner Sanchez and Steve Schmoll this past offseason and dealt Kris Benson for the abysmal Jorge Julio and also injured John Maine. True both Sanchez and Julio have pitched reasonably well thus far this year (Sanchez has a pretty ERA but unimpressive peripherals, Julio has an ugly ERA but, much to my surprise, better peripherals), but apparently neither inspires enough confidence in Willie Randolph to convince him to move Aaron Heilman, who has been nails as a setup man, into the rotation. The Mets handling of Heilman is yet another item on an increasingly long list of mistakes Minaya and Randolph have made with their rotation. The end result is that they’ve managed to turn Scott Kazmir into Jose Lima. Good work, guys.

Randy Johnson faces Jeremi Gonzalez tonight. That used to be a mismatch. Until Johnson proves otherwise, it looks a lot like a shootout right now.

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Tuesday night’s epic triple-comeback classic lasted three hours and 49 minutes and saw six Yankee pitchers throw a total of 165 pitches. Last night, Chien-Ming Wang and Mariano Rivera set the Rangers down with a mere 95 tosses in a mere two hours and 34 minutes. If not for a two bad pitches by Chien-Ming Wang in the eighth and a trio of errors by the right side of the Yankee infield earlier in the game, the 4-3 win would have been about as tidy a game as one could ask for after Tuesday night’s glorious mess.

The Yanks took an early lead in the bottom of the first when Derek Jeter reached on an infield single, was pushed to second by an eight-pitch walk to DH Jason Giambi, moved to third on an Alex Rodriguez fly out to right and was plated by Tuesday night’s hero, Jorge Posada.

Working with alarming efficiency, Wang managed to get into and out of a third inning jam on nine pitches (single, single, line-out, double play), but ran into trouble in the fourth when Robinson Cano botched a play at second base for the first of his two errors on the night. After Mark Teixeira grounded out to Cano to start the inning, Phil Nevin drew a five-pitch walk. Hank Blalock then hit a sharp grounder to Alex Rodriguez’s left that the Yankee third baseman managed to stab and shovel to second to force out Nevin. Cano, thinking of turning another inning-ending double play, took the throw coming across the bag, but dropped the ball while making the transfer to his throwing hand. Not only that, but in his haste to turn the DP, came too far across the bag to get the neighborhood call, a situation likely exacerbated by his flubbing the transfer. Nevin was called safe and Kevin Mench followed with an RBI single on the next pitch before Wang struck out Brad Wilkerson on three more throws.

Cano literally booted another ball in the top of the fifth, but another DP grounder erased his baserunner and Wang pounced on a Gary Matthews Jr. bunt to get out of the inning on just seven pitches. The Yanks then sprung into action with two outs in the fifth when another eight-pitch Giambi at-bat ended in a flared double to left center. Alex Rodriguez followed with his second infield single of the game, this one ticking off the end of Hank Blalock’s glove in the shortstop hole (the first was a Baltimore chop Alex beat out). That brought up Posada, who again delivered an RBI single. Cano and Bernie Williams followed with RBI singles past Mark DeRosa into right before Andy Phillips threw his bat at a 2-2 pitch to ground into an inning-ending fielder’s choice.

Wang continued to cruise from there, needing eight pitches in the sixth–with Cano narrowly avoiding another error on the first out (as in the fifth, he didn’t stay down on a grounder right to him), before turning yet another inning-ending double play–and eight more in the seventh, thanks to a terrific spin play by Jeter ranging behind second. Incidentally, Andy Phillips, who committed the first error of the game in the first, made difficult picks at first on both the sixth-inning double play and Jeter’s spin-throw in the seventh.

In the eighth, Wang got DeRosa to ground out on his second pitch, but then gave up a double to Gerald Laird and a two-run homer to Matthews on his next two offerings to bring the Rangers within a run. He then needed just seven more pitches to get Michael Young and Teixeira to ground out to end the inning, ending his night having thrown 68 percent of a mere 81 pitches for strikes across eight innings of work. Mariano Rivera, pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to wrap things up.

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Had last night’s historic comeback come in the penultimate game of a playoff series, tonight’s affair would be a foregone conclusion. It seems everytime a team is on its way to winning a series only to be interrupted by a dramatic comeback that forces a double-elimination game, the team that was mere innings from a series win is unable to recover and staggers, zombie-like to defeat. Some quick examples: The Cubs in the 2003 NLCS, the Giants in the 2001 World Series, the Red Sox in the 1986 World Series, on a larger scale the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS and the Angels in the 1986 ALCS (two notable exceptions being the Diamondbacks and Reds in the 2001 and 1975 World Series respectively).

That sort of thing is far less likely to occur in the third game of a four-game series in May, but if ever there was a loss that could put a team off its game the following day, it was the one the Rangers suffered last night. Looking to prevent such an occurence will be Kameron Loe, whom the Yankees handled capably in Texas, touching him up for five runs on five hits and three walks in five innings, four of those runs coming on a pair of homers by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi. No word yet as to whether or not Giambi will be back in the line-up tonight, so in lieu of that useful information I’ll just mention that Loe looks like he could be Scott Brosius’s son, though he’s only 15 years younger than the one-time World Series MVP.

Loe will be opposed by Chien-Ming Wang, who handled the Rangers capably in Texas, limiting them to three runs on seven hits and no walks over six innings. In his one start since then, Wang twirled an eight-inning, three-hit gem against the A’s B-squad. Wang is on a streak of four-straight solid starts in which he’s posted the following line:

26 IP, 19 H, 8 R, 0 HR, 9 BB, 5 K, 1.08 WHIP, 2.77 ERA, 2-0

The issue, of course, is that nasty 5:9 K/BB. In 49 innings this season, Wang has struck out 18 (3.31 K/9) and walked 16 (2.94 BB/9). Before Wang’s first start of the season I wrote about the importance of Wang increasing his strikeout rate:

In his rookie season, Wang struck out just 3.64 men per nine innings, a severe drop from his career minor league rate of 7.06 K/9. In 74 1/3 career triple-A innings between 2004 and 2005, Wang struck out 6.78 men per nine and in 15 1/3 innings this spring he struck out 5.87 men per nine innings. Given that history, it seems fair to expect Wang to increase his strikeout rate to something in the mid-fives this year. As dominating as Chien-Ming can be in terms of keeping his opponents from getting the ball in the air, he’ll need to help himself more often this year if he expects to improve on his freshman campaign.

That hasn’t happened and indeed, Wang hasn’t improved on his 2005 performance. He has managed to repeat it almost exactly, however. For the time being, that will do.

Just when the Yankee offense appeared to have hit a low point, scoring a mere dozen runs in its last five games, with Matsui and Sheffield on the DL and Damon and Giambi slumping, things have gotten worse. Giambi, who left yesterday’s game after tweaking his neck while making a nice diving play, will get the day off tonight, resulting in a line-up that looks like this:

L – Johnny Damon (CF)
R – Derek Jeter (SS)
R – Alex Rodriguez (3B)
S – Jorge Posada (C)
L – Robinson Cano (2B)
S – Bernie Williams (RF)
R – Andy Phillips (DH)
R – Miguel Cairo (1B)
S – Melky Cabrera (LF)

Yeouch! That just may be the weekest line-up the Yankees will field all season prior to the eastern division and wild card being decided. If it’s not, this team is in a whole hill of trouble.

Complicating things further, having just praised Andy Phillips defense at first over the weekend and having lost a game on a dropped ball by Miguel Cairo last week, Joe Torre has opted to put Cairo back in the field with Phillips mired at DH. Maybe having Cairo as your DH is embarassing, but the Yankees lost to the A’s on Sunday while Oakland had Antonio Perez, who was 0 for 2006 entering that game, at DH. That’s not to say that sort of thing is to be emulated, but if there’s no one else available (Ken Macha was dealing with a similar laundry list of aches and pains), a manager should at least try to field his best possible defense.

Speaking of which Bubba is riding pine because the Yanks will be facing the left-handed John Koronka, which also means we get the old-school version of Bernie Williams tonight, making the above line-up a tad less pathetic. Koronka has indeed been absolute murder on lefties thus far this year (they’re hitting .154/.244/.231 against him), and solid overall (4-1, 3.65 ERA, 5.08 K/9, 2.44 BB/9, 0.81 HR/9). The Yankees avoided him in Texas last week.

Shawn Chacon goes for the Yanks following a brief, walk-addled start against the Red Sox last week (5 BB, 1 K in 4 2/3 IP). Save for his ugly walk rate, Chacon’s numbers are very similar to Koronka’s (4-1, 3.68, 5.89 K/9, 4.66 BB/9, 0.74 HR/9).

There’s not much to say about the Texas Rangers that I didn’t say a week or so ago. Despite getting swept at home by the Bombers, they remain in first place in the AL West (thanks to the Yanks’ just completed 2-1 series win over the second-place A’s), and they’ve made just one roster move, demoting spot-starter Robinson Tejeda in favor of righty reliever Scott Feldman last Monday.

Due to consecutive rainouts in Boston, the Rangers have played just four games since hosting the Yanks, dropping two of three to the visiting Twins before taking the rain-shortened opener in Fenway behind five scoreless innings by Kameron Loe. Adding in a scheduled off day this past Thursday and the Rangers have played just six innings in the last four days.

So, with nothing doing on the other side of the leger, I thought I’d take this opportunity to take a better look at the home town team, as they could use some lookin’ at given the events of the past week.

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I don’t believe there is such a thing as a must-win game in May, but if ever the Yankees needed to post a W, it was last night. Earlier in the day, Hideki Matsui underwent successful surgery to repair was we now know is a fractured radius (the larger forearm bone on the thumb side of the arm). Matsui had two pins inserted and is expected to miss a minimum of three months, which would mean mid-August at the earliest. The Yankees are operating under the mindset that getting Matsui back this season would be a bonus, rather than a sure thing. With Gary Sheffield still on the DL, the Yankees played Melky Cabrera and Bernie Williams at the corners last night, with Bernie batting fifth and Andy Phillips at first base and batting eighth against the left-handed Barry Zito.

With the A’s similarly, if not more banged up, Zito and Chien-Ming Wang took a scoreless game into the sixth. The only runner to reach third through the first five and a half innings was Phillips, who yanked a one-out single past Bobby Crosby in the fifth, was bunted to second by Cabrera, and pushed to third by walks to Johnny Damon and Derek Jeter. He was stranded when Jason Giambi hit a ball 390 feet to dead center that settled into the glove of Mark Kotsay for the final out of the inning.

Alex Rodriguez broke the tie in the bottom of the sixth with a home run into the Yankee bullpen, his second tie-breaking home run in the last three games. With former Yankee Randy Keisler, who had just replaced Matt Roney on the A’s roster before the game, in for Zito in the eighth, Bernie Williams doubled the Yankee lead with his second homer of the year, both of which have come off lefty pitching.

Thanks in part to some outstanding defense by Robinson Cano and Andy Phillips and a whopping four double plays, Wang had not allowed a runner past first in the first eight innings of the game, holding the A’s scoreless on three hits and a walk and needing just 85 pitches to do it. Still, Joe Torre decided to have Mariano Rivera, who has the flu and had pitched in each of the previous two games and with a four-run lead on Wednesday, close out the game. Three batters into the ninth inning, Rivera had men on first and third with one out, but the Yankees’ fifth double play of the game, a 3-6-3 DP started by Phillips, shut the door, giving the Yanks a much needed 2-0 win.

Today the Yanks send fifth-starter Jaret Wright to the mound to face former Big Red Blog paper . . . er, posterboy Brad Halsey. Wright will be making just his third start of the season, his last coming a week and a half ago in Tampa Bay. Wright has allowed just two runs in his last ten innings pitched and allowed just three hits over six innings to the Devil Rays. That said, there’s nothing to indicate that he has anything other than luck to thank for that run.

Carl Pavano left his rehab start in Trenton last night after throwing just 63 pitches due to tightness in his right bicep, but pitched well, getting through six innings on those 63 tosses, holding the opposition to one run on three hits and no walks while striking out six. Still, Pavano was supposed to throw 90 pitches. He’s scheduled to make his next rehab start on schedule, but one imagines the speed of Pavano’s rehab will be in some way affected by the performance of Wright this afternoon.

As for Halsey, he’ll be making his third start of the year after having spent most of 2005 in the Diamondbacks’ rotation. The Admiral had a 1.42 ERA as the second lefty in the A’s bullpen prior to being forced into the rotation by the injury to his former Yankee teammate Esteban Loaiza. In his two starts since then, he’s looked a lot like he did in pinstripes, lasting into the sixth inning both times, but not cracking the seventh in either, and holding the opposition to three runs on both occasions.

Curiously, the lefty Halsey, who I once thought might have been the answer to the Yankees LOOGY problems and who was murder on lefties in his first two big-league season, has something of a reverse split thus far this year. Still, Torre is sticking with Phillips at first and Bernie (who is hitting .364/.400/.576 against lefties this year) batting fifth. Kelly Stinnett gets the day game after night game start behind the plate, batting eighth behind Phillips and ahead of the left fielder, Melky Cabrera. For the A’s, Eric Chavez and Jason Kendall are back in the line-up, though Chavez will be DHing with Scutaro staying at third.

The A’s are the perfect team for the Yankees to be playing right now. As Ken Arneson wrote earlier today:

Players are dropping like flies, and if you can somehow manage to stand on two feet at all, you’re in the lineup. Kendall is tossed out, Eric Chavez has a bacterial infection, Frank Thomas pulled a quad, Justin Duchscherer has a bad elbow, Joe Kennedy has an muscle strain in his arm, and none of those guys are among the three A’s players currently on the DL.

There are actually four A’s on the DL, though I can understand why Ken might have ignored ex-Yankee Jay Witasick. The other three are Rich Harden–who is quickly earning a reputation as the Mark Prior of the AL, and that ain’t a good thing–the similarly injury-prone Milton Bradley, and former Yankee Esteban Loaiza. And Ken didn’t even mention the fact that closer Huston Street missed a week and a half in late April with a strained right pectoral muscle and currently sports a 6.30 ERA.

As a result, the A’s have Kirk Saarloos and a third ex-Yank, Brad Halsey in their rotation, and–due to Chavez’s illness, Thomas’s injury and Kendall’s suspension–will be limited tonight to a two-man bench of Marco Scutaro and Jeremy Brown and a line-up that looks something like this:

L – Mark Kotsay (CF)
S – Nick Swisher (LF)
R – Bobby Crosby (SS)
L – Dan Johnson (1B)
R – Jay Payton (RF)
S – Bobby Kielty (DH)
S – Adam Melhuse (C)
R – Mark Ellis (2B)
R – Antonio Perez (3B)

Kendall will return to action tomorrow, though whether or not the Yankees will see Chavez or Thomas this weekend is unknown.

Nonetheless, it’s not hard to figure out why A’s are underperforming the expectations that I and many others had for them entering the season, though the fact that they’re at .500 and just a half-game out of first despite all of these interruptions in playing time bodes well for their ability to turn on the jets after returning to health.

Indeed, the Yankees are facing the A’s at exactly the right time. Not only are the A’s a team that’s even more beat up than the Yankees are, but they’re a team that at full strength could very well be the best in the league. Sometimes timing is everything.

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Never mind last night’s loss to the Red Sox. The Yankees have far more pressing issues that a one-game deficit in the standings on May 12. What the Yankees need right now is an outfield as Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui are both on the DL with injuries to their left wrists and Johnny Damon is literally banged up, his achy left shoulder and sprained right foot having been aggravated by another collision with the outfield wall last night.

Damon will continue to play through his pains, but a few days at DH would be advisable as the last thing the Yankees can afford right now is to have either of Damon’s ouchies turn into a chronic injury that might effect his offense or availability. That means a Yankee outfield of Melky Cabrera, Bubba Crosby and Bernie Williams might become a common sight over the next couple of series. Gulp. One thing’s for sure, with Matsui and Sheff on the DL and Kevin Reese having been called up to take Matsui’s spot on the roster, those three along with Damon will see the bulk of the playing time in the outfield and at DH.

I’m tempted to say that the time has come for Torre to make Andy Phillips his primary DH, sitting him only to give Damon an occasional break from the field. Certainly a line-up with Phillips at DH, Damon in center, Melky in one corner and a Bernie/Bubba righty/lefty platoon in the other inspires more confidence than what we’re more likely to see, which is Bernie at DH and an outfield of Bubba, Damon and Melky from left to right. But I think I’ve finally given up hoping that Phillips will get his shot. That said, the Yankees will face lefty starters tonight and tomorrow, so there’s a ray of hope.

Barring Joe seeing the light on Andy, here’s what the Yankee line-up will look like for the next week or two:

L – Johnny Damon (CF/DH)
R – Derek Jeter (SS)
L – Jason Giambi (1B)
R – Alex Rodriguez (3B)
S – Jorge Posada (C)
L – Robinson Cano (2B)
S – Bernie Williams (DH/RF)
L – Bubba Crosby (LF/CF)
S – Melky Cabrera (RF/LF)

You can kiss 1,000 runs goodbye.

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Well sorta. Tonight’s rubber game will determine the winner of the current-three game series between the Yanks and Red Sox, and will give the winner a one-game lead in the AL East, but if the Yankees win the two teams will be tied overall this season and will even up their head-to-head record since 2002 at 92-92.

The last two nights were opposites in just about every way. Tuesday night was characterized by sloppy play and awful pitching, at least by the home team. Last night was a crisply played and well-pitched game, eight of the ten runs coming on homers, one bad pitch at a time rather than the persistent inability to get hitters out.

Tonight could go either way, though a repeat of last night seems more likely. After a rough start, a pair of ugly relief appearances, and despite a skipped start due to a rainout last week, Shawn Chacon appears to have found his way back to his late 2005 form. In his last three starts he’s done this:

19 2/3 IP, 13 H, 3 R, 0 HR, 9 BB, 12 K, .216 BABIP, 1.12 WHIP, 1.37 ERA, 3-0

The only ugly number there is his walk total and there’s been some recent discussion that Chacon’s walks, which have always been high, are actually part of his pitching strategy. He pitches around dangerous hitters and gets the next man out. That he’s walked more than four men per nine innings but managed to keep his WHIP down supports that theory, which of course requires Shawn to work more of his BABIP magic.

Those three starts have brought Chacon’s season ERA down to 3.94 and pushed his record to 4-1. Indeed, add Chacon to Mussina, the bullpen, and the quest for 1000 runs on the list of reasons why the Yankees are in first place right now despite the complete disintegration of Randy Johnson’s delivery.

Tim Wakefield, meanwhile, has had some hard luck thus far this season, posting a Chacon-like 3.97 ERA and making quality starts in five of his seven turns, but getting just 3.71 runs worth of support per start, resulting in a 2-4 record. Take out his last two starts and that run support drops to just 2.00 runs per game. In his penultimate start, Wake beat the Yanks by holding them to three runs on four hits and three walks over seven innings while Joe Torre’s Jeff Weaver Syndrome handed the Sox the win.

Two of those three hits and two of the three Yankee RBIs in that game came off the bat of Robinson Cano, who is now 5 for 15 in his brief career off the knuckleballer with two doubles, a homer and four RBIs. The only other Yankee hitter with a career OPS above .800 in more than ten at-bats against Wakefield is Gary Sheffield, who is on the 15-day DL. Yes, those 15 at-bats are a ridiculously small sample size, but after years of watching Robbie’s veteran teammates wave at Wake’s knuckler like they’re swinging at houseflies with a rolled up magazine, it’s striking how confident and locked in Cano seems against Timmy’s tumbler.

There’s not much that needs to be said about tonight’s game that can’t be summed up by this chart:

Schilling and Mussina have just one non-quality start between them this year in 14 tries, that being Schilling’s fifth start of the year in which the Indians touched him up for five runs on nine hits and two walks in 6 2/3 innings despite striking out eight times in that span. The Indians, incidentally, currently lead the majors in runs per game, edging the Yankees by less than six one-thousandths of a run.

Baseball Prospectus’s Jim Baker provides a brief history of the three prior head-to-head matchups between these two borderline Hall of Famers, both of whom are improving their chances of enshrinement weekly. He also reminds us that both were both minor leaguers with the Orioles in 1990, Mussina cracking triple-A for the first time that year and Schilling splitting time between starting in triple-A (prior to Mussina’s mid-season promotion) and relieving in the majors in his second of three stops before finding a home with the Phillies.

I wonder if Glenn Davis will be watching tonight.

Here’s what I wrote in anticipation of last night’s game:

Given their performances over the past few weeks, tonight’s match-up of fireballers Randy Johnson and Josh Beckett could be the wildest game of them all. In his last three starts, Beckett has posted this combined line:

16 IP, 16 H, 18 R, 17 ER, 6 HR, 10 BB, 11 K, 9.56 ERA

Meanwhile, in three of his last four starts, Johnson has done this:

15 IP, 22 H, 18 R, 18 ER, 2 HR, 8 BB, 8 K, 10.80 ERA

That’s ugly enough in and of itself, but consider that, despite all of those crooked numbers, the two have combined to go 2-2 in those six games thanks to their offenses, which have scored 15 runs for Beckett and a whopping 32 for Johnson in those three games. That would seem to place the over-under on total runs scored tonight somewhere around 15.

The Yanks and Red Sox combined for 17 runs last night. What I didn’t expect was that the Red Sox scored 14 of them, posting a pair of touchdowns to the Yankees lone field goal.

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Last week’s two-game series in Fenway Park was disappointing as scheduled and became even more so after the second game was rained out. The three-game series that kicks off tonight in the Bronx, however, should make up for it and then some, thanks in large part to some fantastic pitching match-ups. Both teams are skipping a starter due to yesterday’s off day (Wright for the Yankees, Clement for the Red Sox), and the Red Sox fifth starter/place holder Lenny DiNardo started on Sunday, leaving us with the three best starters on each team for this week’s series, the highlight of which, at least on paper, should be tomorrow’s pairing of rejuvenated aces Curt Schilling (5-1, 3.02 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, 45 K, 7 BB, 6 quality starts in 7 games) and Mike Mussina (5-1, 2.35 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 42 K, 8 BB, quality starts in all 7 games).

Coming into the season one would have thought that Thursday’s matchup of soft-tossers Shawn Chacon and Tim Wakefield would be the most likely of these three games to be a high-scoring shootout, but given their performances over the past few weeks, tonight’s match-up of fireballers Randy Johnson and Josh Beckett could be the wildest game of them all. In his last three starts, Beckett has posted this combined line:

16 IP, 16 H, 18 R, 17 ER, 6 HR, 10 BB, 11 K, 9.56 ERA

Meanwhile, in three of his last four starts, Johnson has done this:

15 IP, 22 H, 18 R, 18 ER, 2 HR, 8 BB, 8 K, 10.80 ERA

That’s ugly enough in and of itself, but consider that, despite all of those crooked numbers, the two have combined to go 2-2 in those six games thanks to their offenses, which have scored 15 runs for Beckett and a whopping 32 for Johnson in those three games. That would seem to place the over-under on total runs scored tonight somewhere around 15.

Incidentally, the Yanks and Sox are still tied for first in the AL East, with the Yanks still ahead by percentage points and a game in the loss column due to having played two fewer games. Both teams have won five of their last six. The Sox have won their last four, the Yanks their last five and seven of their last eight.

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The Yankees hope to clinch the first of their two series in Texas this year with a far less eventful game tonight than last night’s. The pitching matchup will see Shawn Chacon take on the lone holdover in the Rangers’ rotation, Kameron Loe (though Loe pitched primarily in relief last year, he did do it in a Texas uniform). Chacon’s last start got washed out by rain in Boston. As a result he’ll take the mound tonight on eight day’s rest. Here’s what I wrote in anticipation of Tuesday night’s game in Boston:

After a couple of rough outings and an ugly stint in the bullpen, Chacon has come around in his last two starts working his low BABIP magic to hold the Orioles and Devil Rays to a combined .190 BABIP over 13 1/3 innings that saw just two runs cross the plate. That sort of thing won’t continue, of course, and the Red Sox, even with their diminished offense, are exactly the sort of team in exactly the sort of park in which such a stat is likely to correct itself.

The same could be said of the Rangers and their ballpark, though the Texas hitters are in general a less patient sort, which gives Chacon a little more leeway.

Loe, meanwhile, has alternated good and bad starts over his first five turns. His last start saw him hold the A’s to three runs over six innings. If the pattern holds, the Yanks will do some damange tonight.

Perhaps the hardest part of any manager’s job is managing his bullpen. Some relievers need to pitch regularly to stay sharp. Others need proper rest to avoid fatigue and injury. And there’s often a very fine line between one and the other. But in a pen such as the Yankees’ that has a clear hierarchy of talent, there is one overriding principle. There are high-leverage relievers (Rivera, Farnsworth, Myers against lefties) and low-leverage relievers (Sturtze, Proctor, Villone, Small). The high-leverage guys need to pitch in high-leverage situations (leads of three runs or less, tie games at home or on the road, and, depending on the relative strengths of your offense and the opposing pitching staff, trailing by one or two). The low-leverage guys, meanwhile, are there to eat low-leverage innings, allowing the manager to save the high-leverage guys for when they’re most needed.

Of course, it’s impossible to stick to this formula exactly. Going deep into extra innings will require the use of a low-leverage pitcher in a high-leverage situation, as might playing many tight games in a row. Conversely, participating in a number of blowouts in a row might force a manager to use one of his high-leverage guys in a low-leverage situation just to keep him fresh. Last night was not one of those situations.

Mike Mussina entered the eighth inning with an 8-1 lead having held the Rangers to a run on three hits over seven innings, striking out five, walking none, and needing just 85 pitches, 72 percent of which were strikes, to do it. After Kevin Mench lined Moose’s first pitch of the eight into center for a lead-off single, Joe Torre popped out of the dugout and signaled for Aaron Small.

Fair enough. Sure, Mussina was cruising and a first-pitch single with a seven-run lead hardly amounted to a sign of struggle, but Small had pitched just once since coming off the disabled list on Monday and here was an extreme low-leverage situation in which to get him a couple of innings of work, both for his own good, and so Torre and his staff could have a better idea what Small has to offer now that his surprising 10-0 run is a thing of the past.

Brad Wilkerson hit a sharp grounder through the second base hole into center on Small’s second pitch to put runners on the corners. Rod Barajas then a punched a 1-1 pitch past Derek Jeter to score Mench and push Wilkerson to third. Mark DeRosa followed by grounding into a fielder’s choice to score Wilkerson, and Gary Matthews followed that by singling under the dive of a drawn-in Alex Rodriguez to put runners on first and second for the Rangers who still trailed by five runs.

That brought Torre back out to the mound, but he didn’t call for Sturtze, Villone or Proctor. No, he went straight to Kyle Farnsworth. The very same Kyle Farnsworth who sat and watched as the Yankees lost a tie game on the road in Oakland in the season’s second game. The same Kyle Farnsworth who didn’t get into the next night’s game until after Jaret Wright had allowed the A’s to break another tie in the eighth inning. The very same Kyle Farnsworth who got the night off in Boston on Monday while Small and Tanyon Sturtze allowed the arch rival Red Sox to break another eighth-inning tie. True, Farnsworth was rested, having not pitched on Thursday, but he was not in need of work, having gone an inning and a third in a high-leverage win on Wednesday.

What happened next was not Joe Torre’s fault, but it exacerbated the damage done by going to his high-leverage pitchers in a low-leverage situation.

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If the Yankees caught the Devil Rays at exactly the right time over the past week and a half, getting off to a 3-1 start in the season series against their nemesis of a year ago while Aubrey Huff, Julio Lugo, and Jorge Cantu languished on the DL, the opposite is true about the six games they’ll play against the Texas Rangers over the next two weeks. As of this afternoon, the Rangers had a half-game lead on the Yankees for the second-best record in the American League, they’re sixth in the AL in runs scored, but just five runs behind the second place Yankees (the Indians lead by a bunch), and fifth in the AL in ERA with a 4.21.

It’s that team ERA that is the big news here. The Rangers pitching has been awful for years, and the primary reason their crop of young hitters has been unable to take the team into the playoffs. In 2001 and 2003 the Rangers were dead last in the AL in team ERA and they were in the bottom three in 2002. In 2004 they lept into the top half of the league on the strength of a fluke season by their bullpen, which posted the third best pen ERA in the majors, but their starters still struggled, posting a 5.16 mark, leaving few leads to be protected. Last year, their pen crashed back to earth and the Rangers once again finished among the worst three teams in the majors in team ERA.

This year, the Rangers rotation features just one pitcher who was with the team last year, and he, 24-year-old Kameron Loe, pitched primarily in relief in 2005. Loe’s 4.15 ERA stands as the worst of the five men currently in the Texas rotation. While big trade acquisition Adam Eaton languishes on the 60-day DL following surgery on the middle finger in his pitching hand (he’s due back in August), Loe, late-March acquisition John Koronka (25) and veteran free agents and former Phillies Vincente Padilla and Kevin Millwood have combined to record 14 quality starts in 24 tries. Meanwhile, Robinson Tejeda, who is younger than Loe (having just turned 24), and a more recent Phillie than Padilla, and more recent acquisition than Koronka, held the Devil Rays to three hits over five innings in his first start of the year on Tuesday. Other spot starters and new acquisitions Rick Bauer and John Rheinecker have also turned in solid, if abbreviated starts, with only famiar face R.A. Dickey, since dropped from the 40-man roster, stinking up the joint.

Things have been only slightly less encouraging in the bullpen, where Francisco Cordero has lost the closer job he’s held for the past several seasons, but Akinori Otsuka, who came over in the Eaton trade, has picked up the slack, posting a 1.98 ERA and a 0.95 WHIP in 13 2/3 innings. No one else has been quite that dominant, but only another member of last year’s staff, lefty C.J. Wilson, has been truly bad.

Back on the other side of the ball, the few Rangers hitters who didn’t get off to hot starts have heated up in past weeks including Brad Wilkerson, the key player in the Alfonso Soriano deal, and Kevin Mench, who–as the Yankee broadcasters are sure to tell you far too many times over the next three days–discovered his shoes were a size to small and has been hitting the cover off the ball ever since he fixed his footwear. Most notably, Mench fell one game shy of Don Mattingly’s shared record for most consecutive games with a homer (the record is eight, shared with Griffey Jr. and Dale Long, Mench hit homers in seven straight).

The good news is that the Yankees have Mike Mussina on the mound tonight and Gary Sheffield back in the lineup to get things off on the right, properly outfitted foot. Moose’s opponent will be Vincente Padilla, a borderline All-Star for the Phillies in 2002 who posted similar numbers in 2003 before a pair of disappointing and injury-shortened seasons in 2004 and 2006. Still just 28, Padilla looks to be reestablishing himself as a solid mid-rotation starter, having failed to record an out in the sixth inning just once in six starts, and lasting through five in that exception. Padilla had one dominant outing against the Mariners two turns ago (7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 HR, 3 BB, 7 K), which was immediatley preceeded by that stinker in Oakland (5 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 4 HR). His other four starts have fallen in between those two extremes, though curiously he hasn’t given up any other home runs in those four other starts.

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With Joe Torre having finally figured out that he needs to go to his big guns in tie games on the road, the Yankees are set up for a quick two-game sweep of the Devil Rays with Randy Johnson taking on Doug Waechter tonight. The only question is which Unit will show up tonight, the one that has done this in two games against the Blue Jays:

8 1/3 IP, 15 H, 13 R, 2 HR, 6 BB, 4 K

Or the one that has done this in four starts against everyone else:

28 IP, 19 H, 6 R, 2 HR, 1 BB, 21 K

I know one thing for sure. He’s happy that Eduardo Perez has moved to the central division.

For his part, Waechter has made just four starts thus far, failing to make it through four innings in two of them. Does anyone still remember when a 22-year-old Waechter shut out the last good Mariners team in his first major league start in 2003, pitched five solid innings to beat the Yankees in Tampa two starts later, and then lost a tough 2-1 game in the Bronx in his next turn? He seemed like the next big thing back then, the Tampa rotation’s answer to Aubrey Huff, who had what remains his best season that year. Waechter’s still just 25, but that exciting start seems like a lifetime ago. I still root for him to make good, but it seems increasingly unlikely. Here’s hoping if he ever does break through he won’t start tonight.

Following last night’s rain out and in anticipation of the start of the Yankees’ two-game series in Tampa, here’s a quick status report on the team:

• Joe Torre has declined the opportunity presented by last night’s rainout to skip Jaret Wright’s start tonight. His reasoning is that Wright had already flown ahead to Tampa before yesterday’s game whereas Shawn Chacon, who will now be pushed back to Saturday (an odd decision that puts him one day short of his originally scheduled next start on Sunday while giving Chien-Ming Wang an extra day of rest), had to be dressed and ready to pitch in Boston until the game was officially cancelled around 8:00 last night. Torre also wants to see if Wright can build on the four scoreless innings that concluded his last start against the Blue Jays. What I took away from that start was not the fact that Wright appeared to settle down after a rough first inning, but that he pitched five innings without striking out a single batter, walked four while throwing just 52 percent of his pitches for strikes, and benefited from three double plays in those four scoreless innings. One could blame the balls and walks on rust, and the ground balls just might be a good sign, but the lack of strikeouts for a pitcher who throws in the mid-90s and has supposedly discovered a nasty new curveball is alarming. Wright’s next turn falls on Monday’s off day and is followed by a three-game series with the Red Sox. I imagine he’ll be skipped then and, depending on his performance tonight as well as how well Aaron Small (who replaced Matt Smith on the roster on Monday, for those who missed it) does out of the bullpen in the interim, could find himself out of the rotation when that spot comes due again a week from Saturday against Oakland.
• Speaking of rotation rumblings, Carl Pavano is expected to make his first rehab start with single-A Tampa on Sunday. If nothing else, that starts his rehab clock, which means that he will have 30 days before the Yankees will have to activate him, shut him back down, or otherwise dispose of him. Pavano pitched well in an extended spring training game yesterday needing just 59 pitches to get through five innings, allowing one run on five hits and striking out three (no word on his walk total, though walks have never been Pavano’s problem).
• The Yankees other rehabing pitcher, Octavio Dotel, who’s progress was recently derailed by tendinitis in his surgically repaired elbow, threw 35 pitches in a bullpen session yesterday. He’s expected to throw another bullpen later in the week and could get back into extended spring training games next week if he can avoid further complications.
• Speaking of injuries, Gary Sheffield has yet to swing a bat due to his swollen wrist. Until he can take some swings, he won’t see any game action. The Yanks are hoping they won’t need to disable him, but for the moment he’s not a consideration, and the Yankees are operating with a three-man bench.
• With Sheffield on the mend, last night’s line-up was to include Bubba Crosby in right field and Bernie Williams at DH. Ouch. Hopefully Andy Phillips, who hit a game-tying home run in his last start on Sunday, will take Bernie’s spot tonight against the left-handed Casey Fossum. Fossum, for his part, has a dreadful season line due largely to a pair of awful outings in Toronto and Texas in which he gave up a total of six home runs in 8 2/3 innings. He’s allowed just one dinger in his other three starts, one against the O’s and two against the Red Sox, posting this combined line: 19 1/3 IP, 13 H, 5 R, 1 HR, 11 BB, 6 K. Looks great until you get to those walks and strikeouts. The Cherry Hill, NJ native was surprisingly successful against the Yanks last year, posting a 2.66 ERA in four games (three starts). Makes you wonder if tonight will be a repeat of the Yankees’ odds-defying 14-walk, 2-run performance against Seth McClung and company from last week.
• Finally, I’ve been ranting at anyone who will listen about Hideki Matsui’s current slump. Every year, Matsui’s swing falls apart as he starts opening up too early and pulling off the ball. In his first year with the Yankees, Jorge Posada noticed it and told him to keep his hands back as a reminder, setting Godzila off on a tear when interleague play began in June. Last year, Matsui was doing the same thing when he hurt his right ankle playing right field in St. Louis on June 12. The injury forced him to keep his weight back in the batters box and again he went off on a tear. It’s the same thing every year, he starts with a flourish, starts pulling off the ball and falls into a slump, and then hits the cover off the ball once he corrects his swing. One would think that he’d be conscious of it now, but he’s been doing the same thing this season. Fortunately, his manager and hitting coach have been paying attention. From Tyler Kepner:
  

  The hitting coach Don Mattingly has shown Matsui video of his at-bats this year and last, and Matsui agreed with Joe Torre that he was opening his front shoulder too soon.

  “He’s probably right,” Matsui said through an interpreter. “Usually when I get into bad slumps, the bad habit that comes specifically is that I come off the ball and open up a little bit. It’s something you go through during a season.”

  Matsui’s a month ahead of schedule in recognizing the problem. If he fixes it as easily as he has in the past, he could be well on his way to replicating his outstanding 2004 season, which was easily his best in pinstripes. Indeed, Matsui’s swing could be one of the more compelling aspects of what promises to be an ugly game at the Trop tonight.

Update: A monster headache wiped out my afternoon and, having just come to, I just realized that I forgot to rest the D-Rays roster for you all. There’s not much different. The only actual roster move they’ve made since putting Jorge Cantu on the DL and calling up Greg Norton during last week’s Yankee series was trading non-roster minor league reliever Carlos Hines to the Giants for righty set-up man Tyler Walker and designating Scott Dunn for assignment to make room for Walker. They have, however, shuffled their line-up, moving the surprising Ty Wigginton to second in Cantu’s absence and giving Sean Burroughs the third base job for the time being (bouncing Russell Braynan from right field, to third base to the bench). They’ve also moved Joey Gathright from ninth to lead off and promoted Toby Hall, resulting in something that looks like this:

L – Joey Gathright (L)
L – Carl Crawford (L)
R – Jonny Gomes (R)
R – Ty Wigginton (R)
R – Toby Hall (R)
R – Damon Holins (R)
L – Travis Lee (L)
L – Sean Burroughs (L)
S – Tomas Perez (S)

Update: Indeed, tonight’s game has been rained out. It will be made up on Friday August 18 at 1:05 as part of a day/night double header that will open what will now be a five-game series in Fenway.

If the rain allows, the Yankees will get a chance to counter the Red Sox victory in the first game of their season series and depart Boston where they came in, tied for first with the Sox.

If the rain allows, the Yanks will send Shawn Chacon to the hill to get the job done. After a couple of rough outings and an ugly stint in the bullpen, Chacon has come around in his last two starts working his low BABIP magic to hold the Orioles and Devil Rays to a combined .190 BABIP over 13 1/3 innings that saw just two runs cross the plate. That sort of thing won’t continue, of course, and the Red Sox, even with their diminished offense, are exactly the sort of team in exactly the sort of park in which such a stat is likely to correct itself. Indeed, Chacon was lit up by the Sox in his one start against
them last year, a very forgettable three-inning outing in the Bronx on the Saturday Game of the Week.

Chacon’s mound opponent, Josh Beckett, meanwhile, has been heading in the other direction. After three strong starts to start the season, Beckett has gone from bad to worse in his last two outings against the Blue Jays and Indians, failing to make it out of the fourth inning in his last outing against the Tribe. As a result the two pitchers have very similar season stats: both are 3-1 with an ERA very close to 4.50, K/9 close to 5.90, and K/BB close to 1.70 (startlingly, Chacon’s K/9 and K/BB are both better than Beckett’s thus far), while Beckett’s .272 BABIP is actually more likely to regress than Chacon’s overal .303. Hmmm. Could be an interesting night. If the rain allows.

a) Speeding Bullets
b) Locomotives
c) Tall Buildings
d) Kryptonite

Last night was a cold, wind-whipped night in Boston that would end bitter for Yankee fans for reasons other than the cold. Tim Wakefield started things off by setting the Yankees down in order in the top of the first, thanks in part to that wind which kept a Jason Giambi bomb from reaching the centerfield corner of the Red Sox bullpen, just as it would stop several shots off the Red Sox’s bats short of the Green Monster throughout the game. That same wind would later cause Derek Jeter to do something he rarely does, look absolutely foolish on a pop up in the seventh inning, though the botched play wouldn’t hurt the Yankees.

Chien-Ming Wang followed in the bottom of the first by walking Kevin Youkilis on four pitches. Youkilis then moved to second on a Mark Loretta groundout and was singled home by David Ortiz, who served a low outside pitch through the shortstop hole vacated by the shift. Wang then walked Manny Ramirez and Trot Nixon to load the bases for Mike Lowell, but got Lowell to ground into a fielder’s choice in which Miguel Cairo, starting at first base because of a solid history against Wakefield, threw home to force out Ortiz. With the bases still loaded and two outs, Wily Mo Pena got ahead of Wang 3-1 and drove a ball to shallow right but Bubba Crosby, starting for the injured Gary Sheffield, made what for the next six innings would look like a game-saving catch to end the inning.

Wang worked a quick, clean 1-2-3 second, but got into trouble again in the third when a one-out walk to Ortiz was followed by a Manny Ramirez single. Trot Nixon followed Ramirez with a hot shot just to the right of second base, but Robinson Cano made a running stab on the ball and flipped it over his shoulder to Derek Jeter, who turned a double play to end the inning. It was the start of a terrific night for Cano, who went 2 for 3 against Wakefield and made another great play up the middle in the seventh to stab a Mark Loretta line-drive (which essentially evened out with Jeter’s botched pop up later that inning).

Having dodged that bullet, the Yankees fired one of their own, following a Derek Jeter lead-off walk in the fourth with walks by Jason Giambi and Alex Rodriguez. A Matsui groundout tied the game and, after a second groundout by Jorge Posada, Robinson Cano singled up the middle to plate the two walks and give the Yankees a 3-1 lead.

Wang followed that with a seven-pitch 1-2-3 fourth, but once again got into trouble when the top of the order came back around in the fifth. The trouble started when ninth-place hitter Alex Cora beat out a well-placed bunt to the third base side. Youkilis followed with a single to push Cora to second, but an attempted sacrifice by Loretta backfired when Wang forced Cora at third. David Ortiz followed with another single to left, loading the bases. Manny Ramirez followed with a broken bat single that looped just over Miguel Cairo’s leap to plate Youkilis, and a Nixon groundout tied the game.

All of those small nicks in the fifth required just 14 pitches, leaving Wang at 77 at the end of five, but Joe Torre decided to start the sixth with Aaron Small, who had just been activated from the DL earlier in the day. Small, a pitcher who had yet to throw a major league pitch this season and was quite obviously performing over his head during his stint with the club last year, was a dubious choice at best, but made Torre look smart by pitching a scoreless sixth and getting Pena to fly out with the bases loaded and two outs in the seventh to maintain the tie.

Then it all went wrong. After the Yankees failed to do any damage against Mike Timlin in the top of the eighth, Joe Torre once again fell victim to Jeff Weaver Syndrome. Tell me if this sounds familiar:

We’ve seen this before, most famously in Game 4 of the 2003 World Series. On the road in a tie game, when the time comes to use Rivera, Torre thinks to himself, “I have no idea how long this is going to go. I’m not going to burn Mo here. I’m going to save him to get those last three outs once we get a lead. In the meantime, I’ll use my long man because he can pitch all night while we wait for the offense to score.” Usually that long man only gets an inning or two of work in because, with no room for error in a game that will end the second the home team scores, that’s exactly what happens. The home team scores off the sixth best man in the pen and the game ends without Rivera throwing a pitch. We saw it with Jeff Weaver in the 2003 Series and we saw it again last night.

The situation was a tad different last night in that Small, quite literally the last man in the pen by virtue of his being activated that afternoon, was already in the game and the eighth inning was not yet a sudden death situation, but results were the same. Torre stuck with Small to start the eighth rather than turning to Rivera or Kyle Farnsworth. Small started okay by getting even newer arrival Doug Mirabelli to ground out to start the inning, but followed that by walking Alex Cora on four pitches. Cora was Small’s third walk in six batters, but perhaps consumed by his desire to avoid making a pitching change prior to bringing in Mike Myers to pitch to third-place hitter David Ortiz, Torre left Small in to pitch to lead-off man Kevin Youkilis. Small’s first pitch hit Youkilis in the elbow, pushing the go-ahead run to second and forcing Torre to make a change.

So who did he bring in? Not Rivera. Not even Farnsworth. No, he brought in Tanyon Sturtze, who has the worst ERA of any man in his pen. Sturtze gave up a bouncing-ball single to Mark Loretta that went right through his legs to plate the go-ahead run. Torre then went to Myers as planned, only to have Myers fall behind Ortiz 2-0 and 3-1 before running the count full. Hoping to avoid walking his only batter, Myers then left a fastball over the plate, which Big Papi launched into the Red Sox bullpen for a three-run home run which landed poetically in the glove of Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon, who was warming for the ninth. Papelbon, who has yet to give up a run this year, set the Yankees down in order in the ninth, and that was that. 7-3 Red Sox.

I can’t blame Torre for using Myers the way he did, and I credit him for Small’s unexpectedly strong performance (though things did get rocky for him in his second inning of work and he did wind up with the loss) as well as with starting Crosby over Bernie in right and Cairo over Giambi at first, as both saved key runs with their defense, but once Torre got to the eighth inning with the game still tied, there was no excuse for not going to his big guns. True, both Farnsworth and Rivera had thrown more than an inning on Sunday, but neither pitched in either of the two games before that, and Rivera needed just 12 pitches to get through his 1 1/3 innings on Sunday. Once that go-ahead run got into scoring position it officially became Rivera time. Because Torre failed to recognize that, his team lost a full game in the standings, a full game that will count just as much on October 1 as it does this morning.

A: d)

Since the 2002 season, the Yankees and Red Sox have played a whopping 90 times (postseason included) and have split those 90 games right down the middle, 45-45, with each team winning a seven-game ALCS. That’s scary, especially when one considers the fact that there are just five Red Sox left from the 2002 team (Manny, Tek, Trot, tonight’s starter Tim Wakefield, and his newly reaquired personal catcher Doug Mirabelli) and just six Yankees (the fab four of Jeter, Jorge, Bernie and Mo, Mussina and Giambi). Despite all that turnover these two teams remain deadlocked, which suggests that it’s not just the men on the field who are of equal ability, but the men who run the team as well. Indeed, 2002 was John Henry’s first full season as Red Sox owner and, after his team went 9-10 against the Yankees that year, he hired Bill James, Theo Epstein et al. the following winter.

Red Sox fans might argue that Epstein and company are smarter than their Yankee counterparts but their intellectual advantage is negated by the fact that the Yankees spend more money, but I don’t buy it. John Henry is wealthier than George Steinbrenner. If he wanted to outspend George, he could. His decision not to is part of how he runs his business, just as hiring Epstein and James was. Yankee fans might counter by saying that Brian Cashman’s hands were tied by George and the Tampa contingent until this past winter, and that going forward, the Yankees just might have the advantage. That doesn’t quite work either. Equally disruptive office politics pushed Epstein out for part of this past winter, and he didn’t join the team until November 2002.

Anyone looking for a reason that this rivalry has climbed to a, pardon the phrase, fever pitch over the past four seasons need look no further than the fact that this tie simply refuses to be broken. It’s fitting, then, that the Yankees and Red Sox enter this quickie two-game series in Fenway tied for first place (the Yankees lead by percentage points and one game in the loss-column due to having played two fewer games) and very easily could emerge in the same position.

I, for one, find it exhausting, and not always in a good way. That said, I think the high rate of turnover has helped. I doubt there would have been 22 James Bond films if Dr. No was the baddie in every one of them. Variety is the spice of life and the Red Sox have did a lot to spice up this rivalry over the winter, turning over a full half of their roster. Out go old warhorses Kevin Millar, Bill Mueller, Bronson Arroyo and a couple of current Yankees (Johnny Damon and Mike Myers). Ended are failed experiments Edgar Renteria, Wade Miller and Matt Mantei. Gone are roster-fillers Tony Graffanino, Gabe Kapler, John Olerud, Chad Bradford, John Halama and Jeremi Gonzalez. In come ex-Marlins Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell and Alex Gonzalez. Given are expanded rolls to Kevin Youkilis, Jonathan Papelbon, and Lenny DiNardo. Filling things out are Coco Crisp (currently on the DL in favor of Willie Harris), Wily Mo Pena, J.T. Snow, Dustin Mohr, El Loco Julian Tavarez, Rudy Seanez and David Riske (also on the DL in favor of rookie Manny Delcarmen) and you’ve got a whole new ballclub, and that doesn’t even count the rejuvinated Curt Schilling or the at least healthy again Keith Foulke.

Exactly what the result of all of this turnover will be for the Red Sox is hard to say at the moment. Their offense is scuffling (ninth in the AL in runs scored, 17th in the majors), but Crisp has been on the DL with a broken finger for most of the season and Manny got off to a slow start. That said, Varitek and Loretta have yet to hit and there’s reason to believe they might not come around.

The pitching, meanwhile, has been no better (in fact it also ranks about mid-pack both in the league and the majors). In the bullpen, Papelbon has been nearly perfect as the closer (he has yet to give up a run), but Foulke and Timlin have been just good enough (Timlin’s excellent ERA masks poor peripherals) and the imports have all been disappointing thus far. In the rotation, Matt Clement and DiNardo (filling in for the injured David Wells) have been terrible. Josh Beckett, has been no better than average. If not for the strong return of Schilling, this team would be in a very bad way on the hill.

Which brings us to tonight’s starter, Tim Wakefield. Take out an ugly first start against the Rangers in Texas and Wakefield has a 2.20 ERA over his past four starts. The only problem has been that the Red Sox have scored a total of two runs in the last three. As the dean of the Red Sox, Wakefield has quite a bit of history with several of the Yankee hitters and has been successful against just about all of them, Matsui (who’s in one of his annual lunging-at-the-ball slumps) and Giambi especially. Wakefield went 1-4 against the Yanks last year, but still held them to a .184 average. With Sheffield likely out of the line-up due to swelling in his wrist after his collision with Shea Hillenbrand on Saturday, the Yanks might be hard pressed to get much going against Wake tonight.

Chien-Ming Wang, meanwhile, will be making just his second career start against the Red Sox, having lost a well-pitched game to start the season’s final series last year when his defense and then his control abandoned him. One wonders if Wang’s control problems in that game were related to the problems pitching from the stretch that he demonstrated against the Orioles in his penultimate start. The Yankees have been working on that since and Wang looked in control in his last start, echoing his pre-Orioles outing by allowing just two runs in seven innings. Could be Chien-Ming is rounding into shape this season. Let’s just hope the hard Fenway infield doesn’t give his opponents the extra bounces they need to win.

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