Friggin’ Mets. I wish they’d decide what they are. They finished April with an eight-game winning streak that lifted them into first place, but by the time the Yankees made their way over to Queens on May 21, the Muts had fallen all the way down to last place in the National League East, a full seven games behind the Phillies. The Mets took two of three from the Yankees that weekend and, including those two wins, they have gone 18-5 since, vaulting past the slumping Phils and climbing within a half game of the similarly surging first-place Braves.

What gives? Well, a seven-game winning streak built on series sweeps of the Orioles and Indians has played a part, but the Yankees can’t talk trash about that having just beat up on those two teams to slip into a first-place tie themselves.

Replacing John Maine and Oliver Perez in the rotation with 23-year-old Jonathon Niese (who had been on the disabled list with a hamstring strain) and journeyman knuckleballer R.A. Dickey (who had been in the bullpen) has also been key. Maine and Perez both hit the DL with ERAs over 6.00, while Niese and Dickey, in eight combined starts since mid-May, have gone 7-0 with a 2.28 ERA. Hisanori Takahashi, another repurposed reliever, has also been a solid addition to the rotation having turned in three quality starts in five tries, going 2-1 with a 3.81 ERA. Add in a Cy Young-contending season from Mike Pelfrey and his new split-finger fastball and incumbent ace Johan Santana, and the Mets rotation, which seemed in ruins a month ago, is suddenly a strength.

Then there’s David Wright. On May 7, he was hitting .287/.416/.568 with seven homers, earning an honorable mention in my debut Awards Watch column on the MVP races soon after. Then, from May 8 to May 29, he hit just .187/.256/.320 with one home run and 31 strikeouts in 20 games, a rate of one K every 2.8 plate appearances. Since then, over a period of just less than three weeks, he’s hit .431/.477/.724 with four home runs and just 12 Ks (5.4 PA/K). It’s oversimplification to say as goes Wright, so go the Mets, but the parallels are certainly indicative of his importance to the team. Of course, Wright needs someone to drive in, and on that count, Jose Reyes’ resurgence has been perfectly timed. Over that 18-5 stretch, Reyes has hit .371/.419/.577 with eight steals in nine attempts.

Those performances from Reyes and Wright have been especially important because Jason Bay, since tripling his season home run total by going deep twice off CC Sabathia, has hit just one more dinger in his last 19 games, going .234/.306/.351 over that span. Similarly, rookie Ike Davis, who was driving the offense when the Yankees were in Queens, has hit just .235/.278/.425 since, though he’s been hot the last few games, getting two hits in each game of the Cleveland series, three of them for extra bases.

The pitching matchups for this weekend’s Subway Series finale are identical to the previous series in Queens four weeks ago. In that series, Javier Vazquez and Takahashi dueled to a draw in a 2-1 Yankee win Friday night. Then Pelfrey and Santana shut the Yankees down the next two nights as Phil Hughes and CC Sabathia struggled. Hughes and Sabathia have been better of late, but they have their work cut out for them rematching against the Mets top two starters.

Tonight, the Yankees look to rouse their bats from their recent two-game slumber as they take on 35-year-old Japanese “rookie” lefty Takahashi. There’s been a general impression lately that the Yankees are struggling against left-handed starters. There’s something to that as the team has hit just .252/.337/.426 in games started by a lefty versus .290/.374/.451 in games started by a righty and is just 12-11 in games started by opposing lefties, but I’m not sold. Overall, the Yankees have hit .277/.363/.460 against left-handed pitching and .277/.361/.434 against righties. I think the issue is rather the quality of the lefties they’ve been facing rather than the handedness of those pitchers. Nine of those losses were started by Johan Santana, Jon Lester, David Price, Rickey Romero, Brett Cecil, Jon Danks, Jamie Moyer, Scott Kazmir, and Dallas Braden. The other two were games were lost by the Yankee bullpen and had little to do with the either starting pitcher (one was Sergio Mitre vs. Detroit spot-starter Brad Thomas, who pitched just three innings, the other was the game in which David Huff got hit in the head by an Alex Rodriguez line drive in the third inning).

Takahashi’s first major league start came against the Yankees. His second came against the Phillies. In those two games he allowed no runs in 12 innings and struck out 11 against one walk. In his next two starts, against the weak-hitting Padres and Marlins, he gave up 11 runs in 9 1/3 innings while striking out six against four walks and yielding three home runs. His last time out, he allowed just one run in seven frames to the Orioles, but struck out only two. As for Vazquez, as I reported on Monday, he is 4-2 with a 2.94 ERA over his last six starts, including six scoreless innings against the Mets, and has won each of his last three starts, posting a 2.57 ERA while striking out 22 in 21 innings against just five walks and 11 hits (albeit with four of those hits leaving the park).

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The good news out of Wednesday night’s game is that, through the first seven innings, every Yankee hit was a homer, Alex Rodriguez returned to the lineup and contributed and RBI double, and the bullpen was dominant, pitching in 5 2/3 scoreless innings allowing only a walk and striking out six.

If 5 2/3 innings from the bullpen sounds suspicious, you’re beginning to figure out the bad news. Here’s another clue for you all: the relievers were Boone Logan and Chad Gaudin, the last two men on the Yankee bullpen depth chart.

Yup, A.J. Burnett got lit up and bounced after just 3 1/3 innings, burning through 87 pitches (just 55 percent of them strikes) and leaving the Yankees in a 6-1 hole half-way through the fourth inning. Burnett simply had no command of his pitches, particularly his fastball, as he walked four men, hit a fifth, and uncorked a wild pitch in his short stint. When he got the ball over the plate, he gave up a bases-clearing bases-loaded triple to Shane Victorino to blow the game open in the second, and back-to-back solo homers by Ryan Howard and Jayson Werth to start the third.

The first run Burnett allowed came after 38-year-old Raul Ibañez walked on five pitches then stole his first base of the year, giving Burnett the most stolen bases allowed by any pitcher in the majors thus far this year. Burnet allowed 23 steals in all of 2009, but has already allowed 19 this year, the 19th coming in the fourth inning after Victorino led off with a five-pitch walked then stole second.

Placido Polanco followed Victorino with a fly out, then Chase Utley hit a hard shot down the first-base line that Mark Teixeira smothered only to discover that Burnett broke late for first base and wasn’t there to take the throw. Certainly Burnett couldn’t have anticipated Teixeira’s fine play, but it seems like more than a coincidence that Joe Girardi chose that moment to take Burnett out of the game to heavy booing from the Yankee Stadium crowd.

Logan stranded Victorino and Utley, but the story of the game was Jamie Moyer, who was flat out dominant. Other than solo homers by Robinson Cano in the second and Jorge Posada in the fifth, Moyer didn’t allow a baserunner until the seventh, when Alex Rodrguez drew a one-out walk and was promptly erased by an inning-ending double play. With two outs in the eighth, Kevin Russo reached on an infield single that scooted under Polanco’s glove at third and was fielded too deep in the hole by Wilson Valdez for Valdez to record the out. Brett Gardener then flied out to end the inning.

That was it. That was all the Yankees managed in eight innings against Moyer, who at 47 years and 211 days became the oldest pitcher ever to record a win against the Yankees, trumping Phil Niekro, who picked up a win against his former mates in a rare relief appearance in the second game of a double header back on August 1, 1986. Ron Guidry took the loss for the Yankees in that one and Pat Tabler scored the winning run for the Indians on Julio Franco’s double. Three days earlier, Jamie Moyer pitched a gem for the Cubs to beat the Mets at Shea, the first game he ever pitched in New York. Yankee manager Joe Girardi (who, like YES announcers Paul O’Neill and Al Leiter and four of Girardi’s coaches, is younger than Moyer) was in his first year of pro ball at low-A Peoria at the time. Most impressively, Moyer’s performance was only his second best of the season, just outranking his complete game against the Padres on June 5.

Moyer threw 106 pitches in those eight innings and, despite a four-run lead, Phillies manager Charlie Manuel used the opportunity to give his closer, Brad Lidge some work. Facing the top of the order, Lidge got two quick outs (one on a high called strike three to Derek Jeter that was well within the rulebook strike zone but above where umpires typically call strikes, much to the chagrin of pitchers and myself), but Mark Teixeira drew a two-out walk, launching a rally that got Jorge Posada to the plate as the tying run only to strike out on one of the 900 sliders Lidge threw in the inning. Game over, Phillies win 6-2. Rubber game tomorrow. Andy Pettitte on the hill, I like the Yankees’ chances.

The Yankees look for a quick series victory over the Phillies tonight as A.J. Burnett takes on 47-year-old Jamie Moyer.  Moyer has been all over the place this season. On May 7, he became the oldest pitcher in major league history to throw a shutout, blanking the now-first-place Braves on two hits and no walks. In his last start, he gave up nine runs to the Red Sox before recording an out in the second inning, getting the hook four batters into the second. In between those two extremes, he posted a 3.51 ERA with three quality starts and one complete game in five tries but went just 2-3 due to the slumping Phily offense. Moyer has struck out just four men in his last four starts while inducing just one double-play.

As for Burnett, as I wrote in my “Howzit Goin’?” on Monday, despite the feeling that Burnett has been struggling (he allowed ten runs over 12 2/3 innings in his last two starts), on the season, he’s actually performing right in line with his career numbers (2010 ERA: 3.86; career: 3.84). His strikeouts are down, but so are his walks and wild pitches. This is A.J. Burnett: erratic, but generally effective. Just look at how he fared against the Phillies in the World Series last year:

Game 2: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 9 K
Game 4: 2 IP, 4 H, 6 R, 4 BB, 2 K, 1 HR, 1 HBP

I’m mostly impressed that he’s managed to avoid the DL in nearly a year and a half with the Yankees.

As Alex reported earlier, Alex Rodriguez returns to the lineup, but only as the DH as Joe Girardi didn’t like what he saw from Alex’s lateral movement during drills on Tuesday. Kevin Russo finally gets a start at third base against a righty, just his second start at third this season. With Rodriguez at DH, Jorge Posada moves behind the plate as Russo effectively replaces Francisco Cervelli as the eighth-place hitter. Nick Swisher returns to the two hole. The full lineup can be seen in Alex’s post below.

So much for that pitchers’ duel.

In 13 starts this season prior to Tuesday night, Roy Halladay had allowed more than two earned runs in just two of them and allowed a total of three home runs on the entire season. Tuesday night, he matched his season worst six earned runs allowed with four of those runs scoring in a trio of Yankee homers that doubled his season total.

I’d like to know who saw that coming.

Halladay cruised through the first on ten pitches, eight of them strikes, then got Robinson Cano to ground out on an 0-1 count to start the third, but Nick Swisher followed with a single and everything went to pot for the Phillies’ ace after that.

Jorge Posada drew a four pitch walk and Brett Gardner tattooed a hanging slider into the right-center-field gap for a two-RBI triple (aided slightly by Shane Victorino bobbling the ball at the wall). In the third, Curtis Granderson led off with a solo homer, and after Mark Teixeira flew out, Robinson Cano doubled to right-center on the first pitch he saw. That brought Swisher back around and on a 2-0 count, he cracked a two-run homer to give the Yankees a shocking 5-0 lead over Halladay with one out in the bottom of the third.

Halladay settled down a bit with a 1-2-3 fourth, but with one out in the fifth, Teixeira snuck a 1-2 pitch just inside the foul pole down the right-field line, hitting a ducking YES cameraman in the back with a solo home run of his own. The Yankees made some noise against Halladay in the sixth as well, loading the bases with two outs but failing to push across another run.

CC Sabathia, meanwhile, didn’t allow a hit until the fourth inning, though things got dicey at that point. Utley led off the fourth with a bouncer that Sabathia stabbed at with both hands, deflecting the ball enough to give Utley a hit. Placido Polanco followed with another single and on a 1-2 count, Sabathia hit Ryan Howard to load the bases. Jayson Werth and Raul Ibañez followed with RBI singles.

With the bases still loaded, two runs in, and no one out, Ben Francisco hit a would-be double play ball to a far-ranging Mark Teixeira in the second-base hole. Teixeira could have come home with his throw to try to get the slow-footed Howard on what still might have been a close play, but he opted instead to start a 3-6-1 double play, trading Howard’s run for a pair of outs. Only Sabathia never broke for first base and the Yankees had to settle for a single out as Howard scored to cut the Yankee lead to 5-3.

Sabathia picked himself up by getting the next two men out, but then got into more trouble in the fifth when with one out, Utley singled, was replaced by a Polanco fielder’s choice, Ryan Howard drew a five-pitch walk, and both runners move up on a wild pitch. That last might have been a blessing as it allowed Sabathia to turn a 2-0 count on Werth into an intentional walk, after which he got Ibañez to ground out to leave the bases loaded.

That was the end of the excitement. Sabathia retired the last seven men he faced and David Robertson and Chan Ho Park each tossed a scoreless inning, a Robertson walk to Ibañez being the only blip, as the Yankees padded their lead against the Philadelphia bullpen by plating a pair of hit-batsmen on a two-out Francisco Cervelli single in the seventh.

Yankees win 8-3 as the Phillies drop the one game in this series they had to have. With the pitching matchups favoring the Bombers the next two nights, suddenly a sweep is not out of the question. Then again, as Halladay proved on Tuesday night, anything can happen.

Three weeks ago the idea of the Yankees coming out of the soft part of their schedule and running right into the two-time defending National League champion Phillies was downright frightening, but as luck would have it, the Yankees might be catching the Phillies at exactly the right time. Though they’ve split four of them, the Phillies haven’t won a series since mid May and are 6-14 in their last 20 games having fallen to third place in the NL East behind the Mets (the Mets!).

Shockingly, the Phillies big problem has been scoring runs. Over an 11 game span from May 22 to June 2, they scored just 14 runs while going 2-9 over that span. Since then they’ve perked up a bit, but only a bit. Take out their one ten-run outburst against the Marlins a week ago and the Phillies have scored just three runs per game in eight of their last nine contests while going 3-5 in those games.

How did the team that led the NL in runs in each of the last four seasons suddenly lost the ability to score? Start with a calf injury that has limited 2007 MVP and leadoff hitter Jimmy Rollins to 12 games. Chase Utley missed two games with the flu in mid-May, has hit just .175/.295/.263 in 95 plate appearances since, and hasn’t homered since May 20. Ryan Howard, always a slow starter (.260/.342/.525 career in the first half vs. .303/.407/.633 in the second half) is sticking to that pattern with a .286/.342/.461 line thus far. That’s the core of the Phillies’ offense right there, and the team’s inability to replace Rollins with even a replacement level bat (per VORP, Wilson Valdez and Juan Castro have combined to cost the Phillies a half a win relative to replacement level already this season) has made his absence hurt even more than it should.

But that’s not all. Raul Ibañez, who was a stud last year before a groin injury interrupted his flow, is looking every one of his 38 years this year, putting up his worst performance since he became a full-timer a decade ago, hitting .247/.335/.394. There’s so much slumping going on in the Phillies’ lineup that it seems to have become contagious. Jayson Werth, who should be one of the top free agents to hit the market this winter, was hitting .327/.403/.641 on May 25, but has hit just .137/.241/.235 in 58 PAs since.

I bet Roy Halladay thought he had left his complete-game losses behind him in Toronto, but he suffered a complete game loss on May 18 to the Pirates of all teams, losing 2-1, and in his last start, he allowed just one run in eight innings but took another loss as the Phillies failed to score against Josh Johnson and lost 2-0 (though I suppose that latter was fair play as Johnson was the losing pitcher in Halladay’s perfect game despite not allowing an earned run in that start).

Halladay has a 1.96 ERA on the season and has complied this line in his last three starts: 24 IP, 16 H, 3 R, 0 HR, 2 BB, 26 K. He faces CC Sabathia tonight, who according to Yahoo! Sports, “is 6-3 this season, but four of those wins have come against the Orioles, who began play Monday with by far the worst record in baseball (17-46). Sabathia’s ERA in his other nine starts this season is 4.69.” Indeed, Sabathia has been sharp in his last two starts, but both came against the O’s, and in the two before that he gave up 11 runs (ten earned) in just 11 innings in losses to the Mets and the lowly Indians.

Facing a slumping Phillies team that typically relies on big lefty bats Howard and Utley could help CC continue his recent success, but even if he pitches well, one will still have to wonder if it was CC or his slumping opposition that was the key factor. Either way, he’ll have his work cut out for him facing Halladay.

The next two pitching matchups are far more favorable to the Yankees. On Wednesday, A.J. Burnett takes on Kyle Kendrick, who is filling in for injured lefty J.A. Happ, and on Thursday the seniors tour comes to town as 47-year-old Jamie Moyer takes on the red-hot Andy Pettitte, who, at 38, is still nine years Moyer’s junior.

Alex Rodriguez remains out of the lineup tonight due to his hip flexor tendonitis, but said the swelling has gone down and that he could start at third base tomorrow. Rodriguez was supposed to DH tonight and is available to pinch-hit. Ramiro Peña bats ninth and plays third base and with the DH spot opened back up, Jorge Posada, who was originally in the lineup at catcher, will DH and hit sixth behind Nick Swisher with Robinson Cano cleaning up. The bottom three in the lineup are Brett Gardner (LF), Francisco Cervelli (C), and Peña.

In other injury news, Sergio Mitre, who hadn’t pitched since the first day of the Toronto series, was placed on the 15-day disabled list with an oblique injury that occurred during batting practice on Sunday (the Yankees play six games in NL parks next week, though I can’t imagine Mitre would have gotten an at-bat or been expected to deliver had he had one). He is being replaced by lousy lefty Boone Logan. If the Yankees retroactively date Mitre’s DL stay, he would be eligible to be activated on Saturday, though I’m sure he wouldn’t be ready to return that quickly.

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Two years ago, Emma wrote about Dandy, the Yankees’ short-lived mascot. Today in the Wall Street Journal, Scott Cacciola has a piece on the biggest bust in team history:

In 1979, the Yankees appeared eager to replicate the success of the Phillie Phanatic, the green, pot-bellied mascot that Mr. Harrison and Ms. Erickson created in 1978. In his first two years of existence, according to Mr. Harrison, Phanatic-related products generated $2 million in revenue—and his popularity has not waned.

He made more than 550 public appearances last year, has his own merchandise store in Philadelphia and is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Dandy, on the other hand, got thrown in a dumpster.

He was designed by Ms. Erickson, who had worked on “The Muppet Show” and created Miss Piggy, among other characters. Dandy was marketed as a “dyed-in-the-wool” Yankees fan.

He was blessed with a pear-shaped physique that was almost Ruth-ian. He had a hat that spun, a cartoon-size baseball bat and a big, bushy mustache that evoked Thurman Munson, the team’s star catcher—which was no coincidence.

Above all, Dandy was a New Yorker.

“He was supposed to be sassy,” Mr. Harrison said. “He was supposed to have that Yankee swagger.”

Nah, no mascots. No cheerleaders, no mascots. We’ve got enough nuts and clowns in the Bronx as it is.

[Photo Credit: Wayde Harrison]

The Yanks have the night off. Here’s an open thread for whatever should come to mind…

[Picture by Bags]

Things weren’t going so well the last time I checked in with this feature, but since then the Yankees have gone 14-5, kicking things off with a series win against the NL Central-leading Twins in the new ballpark in Minneapolis, then taking a big bite out of the soft part of their schedule by going 11-2 against the Indians, Orioles (twice), and Astros with only a series loss on the road to the upstart Blue Jays in the middle of that run to sour the mood.

That soft part of the schedule has been particularly beneficial to Javier Vazquez, who over his last six starts is 4-2 with a 2.94 ERA and has won each of his last three starts, posting a 2.57 ERA while striking out 22 in 21 innings against just five walks and 11 hits (albeit with four of those hits leaving the park). Vazquez was, however, responsible for the one loss against the Twins, as he gave up 5 runs in 5 2/3 innings, though the offense’s inability to get to Nick Blackburn was equally problematic.

The Yankees’ one loss in the seven games that followed was entirely the fault of the pitching as the offense staked CC Sabathia to a 9-3 lead against the Indians after four innings, but CC and the bullpen couldn’t hold it. Joba Chamberlain was the goat in that one, giving up four runs while getting just one out, blowing the save and taking the loss. That was the last of a bad stretch for Joba in which he gave up a total of 11 runs in three ugly outings, all Yankee losses, over a span of five appearances. Since then, he has allowed just one run in his last seven outings and hasn’t walked a batter.

The Yankees’ one loss in their last seven games was largely the result of the offense being stifled by Orioles pitching prospect Jake Arrieta in his major league debut. A.J. Burnett took the loss in that game, but pitched well enough to win (6 2/3 IP, 4 R). The Yankees also lost Burnett’s previous start, which was equally the fault of Burnett (6 IP, 6 R against his old team in Toronto) and the offense’s inability to do anything against young lefty stud Brett Cecil (8 IP, 1 R).

Cecil is now 7-2 with a 3.22 ERA on the season, and Arrieta is a highly regarded prospect for the O’s, so I can’t get on the offense too much for those two games. As for Burnett, he still has a 3.86 ERA on the season, which is better than his 2009 mark (4.04) and almost a dead match for his career ERA (3.84). His strikeouts are way down, but his walks and wild pitches are down with them. There’s not much to complain about. That he’s being outpitched by the rest of the rotation says more about the rest of the rotation than it does about him.

The only other Yankee loss over this recent stretch was a 3-2 loss in 14 innings to the Blue Jays in Toronto. You can again blame the offense for that one, but again Ricky Romero has a 3.29 ERA on the season and worked the first eight innings of that one, so again, tip your hat to a good young pitcher from the division who could continue to make life hard on the home nine for years to come. Also tip your hat to the Yankee bullpen’s performance in that one as Chamberlain, Damaso Marte, David Robertson and Chan Ho Park kept the 2-2 tie in tact for five innings in relief of Andy Pettitte before Chad Gaudin finally came in and lost it. Gaudin has allowed runs in four of his six outings since returning to the Yankees.

The end result of the Yankees’ recent feast on the soft, supple flesh of the leagues’ weakest teams is that they’ve pulled into a first-place tie with the Rays in the division and for the best record in the majors. Tomorrow they open a three-game set at home against a slumping Phillies team, then continue with interleague against the Mets, Diamondbacks, and the surging Dodgers before finding another soft landing with ten of 13 against the weaker teams in the AL West (including seven against lowly Seattle) before a mid-July showdown with the Rays in the Bronx.

Looking over the remainder of the schedule, the Yankees face the Rays and Red Sox for seven of ten games in early August followed by two against the Rangers, but otherwise they have plenty of landing spots until they hit a season-ending gauntlet that has them play 16 of their last 22 against the Rangers, Rays, and Red Sox, and 13 of their last 19 (or, if you prefer, 10 of their last 13) against the Rays and Sox. All the more reason for the Yankees to fatten up while they can, which is exactly what they’ve been doing.

Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Let’s do this backwards.  The Yankees beat the Astros 9-3 on Saturday afternoon.  Saturday was a busy day, what with my daughter’s volleyball game in the morning and a museum trip in the afternoon, so I had to TiVo the game for later, as I often do.  I always try to avoid the score, which isn’t usually difficult considering that I’m in California, not New York City, but it didn’t work today.

Someone put the TV on when we got back from volleyball, and even though I was in the kitchen, I still heard Michael Kay talking about a 6-2 Yankee lead.  And when we stopped for lunch after the museum, our table was facing a giant television tuned to ESPNews, which cycled through the highlights of the win twice during our meal.  No biggie.

As it turns out, it’s incredibly relaxing to sit down and watch a game when you know good things are going to happen.  So while you were all worrying about Javier Vazquez, I sat down at about 10:oo PM California time with supreme confidence in him, and he didn’t disappoint.  Sure, he gave up 852 feet of home runs (to Hunter Pence in the 2nd and Carlos Lee in the 6th), but aside from that Vazquez was good enough — and has been good enough — that A.J. Burnett is starting to look an awful lot like a long reliever come October.

Let’s look at some numbers.  Since being skipped in the rotation back in early May, Vazquez has started six times and produced this stat line: 39.2 IP, 25 H, 13 R, 37 K, 12 BB, 2.95 ERA, 0.93 WHIP.  (This doesn’t include his relief appearance against Boston.)  I know what you’re thinking — he’s been doing this against patsies, and his one bad outing came against the best team he faced last month, the Minnesota Twins.  You’re free to think that.  All I know is that I trust him an awful lot more than Burnett at this point.

But back to the game.  Derek Jeter led off the game with a big home run to left (his 24th lead-off home run, tying Rickey Henderson atop the Yankee list), and after the Astros took the lead back with single runs in the second and third, the Bombers answered back with five runs in the third, highlighted by Jorge Posada’s opposite field grand slam into the bleachers in right.  Much has been made of Posada’s dislike of his current DH role, and some have cited it as a possible reason for his recent struggles, but he looked comfortable enough on Saturday.

Posada’s home run was a milestone of sorts, the 250th of his career, which prompted the obligatory graphic listing the top totals in Yankee history.  Posada sits tied with Graig Nettles at #7, soon to be passed by Alex Rodríguez, who’s four behind in the ninth spot.  What’s surprizing about the list, though, is that Jeter is in tenth place.  He hit his second home run of the game in the sixth, a three-run shot to right, bringing his career total to a respectable 232.  Also of note, Jeter now has 3,001 career base hits — but only if you count the 175 he’s gotten in the postseason.  With 2,826 hits, the Captain is bearing down on hallowed ground.

Finally, a quick look at the team in general.  When I wrote my recap of the pork chop game back in late May, I pointed out that the Yankees were about to start a sixteen-game stretch against a group of mediocre teams.  In my head (but not in print), I was hoping for twelve wins out of those sixteen.  As it stands now, with only Sunday’s game remaining from those sixteen, the Yanks have won eleven of fifteen and sliced their deficit in the East from 4.5 games to only one.  Wouldn’t it be cool if they got that extra win on Sunday and pulled into a tie for the lead?  We can only hope…

It is overcast in the Bronx as the Yanks look to inch closer to first place.

Just made flapjacks for the Mrs. We’re at home, chillin’. Hope all am well mit you unt yours.

Go git ‘im, fellas. (And for those who will be watching the World Cup, feel free to chat in the thread below.)

[Picture by Bags]

Andy Pettitte won his 200th game as a Yankee Friday night, and it came in the midst of what just might be the finest season in the 38-year-old’s 16-year career. After allowing just two earned runs on four hits and a walk in 7 1/3 innings, Pettitte improved to 8-1 on the season with a 2.46 ERA, keeping him right behind the Rays David Price in the Cy Young hunt. Pettitte has posted an ERA below 3.00 just twice in his career. In 1997, as a 25-year-old, he went 18-7 with a 2.88 ERA, and in 2005 as part of the pennant-winning Astros impressive rotation along with Roger Clemens and Roy Oswalt, he went 17-9 with a 2.39. If Pettitte keeps up his current pace, he’ll go 21-3, that 21st win being the 250th of his career.

It’s difficult to believe that Pettitte will get through the entire season without some sort of lull, but it’s nearly mid-June and Pettitte historically pitches better in the second half of the season than in the first. After 12 starts this season, Pettitte has had just one dud, that coming at home on May 20 against the Rays, when he gave up seven runs (six earned) in five innings thanks in part to three home runs. He has allowed a total of just four home runs in his other 11 starts, none of them coming Friday night.

Pettitte has had just two other non-quality starts. One of them missed by a single run (six innings, four runs against the White Sox on April 30), the other missed by a single inning (five innings, one run against the Orioles his next time out). Those were the two starts during which he reported discomfort in his elbow. His next turn was skipped. He then held the Twins scoreless for six innings on May 15 before suffering that one dud against the Rays his next time out. In his four starts since then, he has pitched a minimum of seven innings and allowed a maximum of two earned runs each time out producing this combined line:

30 IP, 21 H, 8 R, 7 ER, 3 HR, 4 BB, 23 K, 3-0, 2.10 ERA, 0.83 WHIP, 5.75 K/BB

To put it another way, in 12 starts, Pettitte has allowed more than two earned runs just twice, lasted fewer than six innings just once (that on account of his elbow, not his performance), and the Yankees have lost just two of games that he started, one of them by a 3-2 score in extra innings.

As for Friday night’s game, Pettitte locked horns in a pitching duel with former Phillies righty Brett Myers. Both had a bad inning early, then settled down and pitched through the seventh in a swift game that took a season-low two hours and 19 minutes.

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Toward the end of the 2007 season, it seemed obvious that the Astros, on their way to a 73-89 record just two years removed from the franchises’ only World Series appearance, were going to have to start rebuilding. Instead, the team hired former Phillies general manager Ed Wade and decided to take an out-of-left-field shot at winning their weak division, which had been won by an 85-win Cubs team in ’07.

Wade traded closer Brad Lidge to the Phillies in November, but made no effort to trade any of his other valuable veterans and instead traded seven players to the Orioles and Diamondbacks in December for shortstop Miguel Tejada and closer Jose Valverde, respectively. Thanks to a monster season from Lance Berkman, it almost worked. The Astros won 86 games in 2008 and were just two games behind the Wild Card lead on September 14, but a five-game losing streak at that point ended their postseason hopes and they finished 11 games behind the 97-win Cubs in the division and 3.5 games behind the second-place Brewers for the Wild Card.

Despite that disappointment and winning just 74 games in 2009, the Astros still have not rebuilt, though now that they’re on pace for a sub-70 win season this year, it seems the time has finally come as Berkman, who has a $15 million option for 2011, ace Roy Oswalt, who is owed $16 million next year with an option for the same amount in 2012, and left fielder Carlos Lee, who is owed $37 million over the next two seasons and thus could prove unmovable, are all expected to be on the block for this year’s trading deadline.

I’m actually impressed that the Astros are doing as well as they are this season. Coming into the season, I really thought Houston would be the worst team in the majors this year, but right now, five teams in baseball have worse records, and the Royals have an identical one. Still, only the Orioles and Pirates have worse run differentials and Baseball Prospectus’s Third-Order Wins drop the ‘Stros below the O’s as well.

Yeah, they’re that bad.

The Astros biggest problem is they can’t score. Again, only the O’s and Bucs have scored fewer than the Astros average of 3.34 runs per game. The Astros’ team on base percentage is .291, which I needn’t tell you is the worst in the majors, and their .340 slugging is also dead last among the 30 teams. Their team OPS+ it 69.  It’s stunning how bad the Astros offense is. Berkman is slugging just .418. Carlos Lee has done little outside of his nine home runs (.227/.264/.396). The second-best hitter on the team to this point has been 30-year-old infield castoff Jeff Keppinger, who is hitting a very batting-average-dependent .300/.352/.399 with all but one of his extra-base hits being doubles. Busted catching prospect J.R. Towles again failed to hold onto the job, leaving it in the hands of catch-and-throw veteran Humberto Quintero (.252/.282/.353). Second baseman Kaz Matsui was so bad he got released. The new left side of the infield, free agent third baseman Pedro Feliz and rookie shortstop Tommy Manzella, is hitting a combined .222/.259/.288 with three homers and 15 unintentional walks in 382 plate appearances. It’s bad, people, real bad.

The pitching is better, in part because it has to be, and in part because Wade took a gamble on one of his former Phillies players and it paid off. Brett Myers, who starts tonight against Andy Pettitte, is leading the Astros in ERA (3.01) and wins (4). Roy Oswalt, who the Yanks will miss, has pitched better, but with less luck (2.66 runs of support per game and a 3-8 record) and has struggled in his last two starts, inflating his ERA by close to a run. Twenty-six-year-old Felipe Paulino, whom the Yankees will also miss, has been coming on strong of late, but with little to show for it (3.00 runs of support and a 1-7 record).

The performances of the other two starting pitchers the Yankees will face this weekend, 31-year-old lefty Wandy Rodriguez and 38-year-old veteran Brian Moehler, have been less encouraging. Rodriguez, who will face the rejuvenated Javier Vazquez on Saturday, showed some nice improvement in his late 20s and seemed to have a break-out season last year, winning 14 games for a bad team with a 3.02 ERA, 193 strikeouts, and a 3.06 K/BB, but this year his strikeouts are down, his walks are up, he posted a 6.75 ERA in May, and he is getting killed by righties (.324/.391/.459). Moehler, who will face Phil Hughes, a pitcher 15 years his junior, on Sunday, is a replacement for injured 25-year-old Bud Norris, who wasn’t pitching well either. Moehler has made three starts in place of Norris, one awful, one solid, one quality, but this is a pitcher who has posted a 5.16 ERA over the last six seasons and has struck out just 3.6 men per nine innings this season.

Frankly, the Yankees should sweep this series. There are no Jake Arrieta’s on the way to the Bronx to replace Moehler. If there’s any concern here, it’s that the Yankees’ interleague history against the Astros comes with some bad mojo. First there was the six-pitcher no-hitter seven years ago tonight (thanks for the reminder, Will), then there was Chein-Ming Wang’s career-altering broken foot in 2008. The upside is that the Yankees are 5-0 against the Astros in games in which they’ve gotten a hit. Here’s hoping they keep that streak intact this weekend.

With Brett Gardner still out with pain in his thumb and Alex Rodriguez diagnosed with tendonitis in his hip flexor (apparently unrelated to his hip labrum issue from last year), the Yankee lineup is a bit short tonight. Robinson Cano hits cleanup and Nick Swisher backs him up in the five spot, that leaves the two hole to Curtis Granderson, brings Francisco Cervelli up to seventh, Granderson’s usual spot, and the last two spots are the replacement players: Ramiro Peña at third and Kevin Russo in left. Gardner is going to take batting practice and the doctors say Rodriguez could pinch hit (both are day-to-day), but for all intents and purposes, the Yankee bench is Marcus Thames and Chad Moeller.

Good thing they’re playing the Astros and have four days to get healthy before they have to face the Phillies. To that end, Jorge Posada has tested himself behind the plate and says he’s ready to catch. I still prefer him in the DH spot, but I don’t think Posada starting at DH necessitates Moehler being on the roster if Posada can catch. Moeller can always be called back up for the next day’s game if there’s an injury to Cervelli, so at most you’d lose the DH for a few innings without Moehler there. What’s more detrimental to the team: a couple of at-bats going to a pitcher or Chad Moeller taking up a roster spot every single day?

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A butta mid-’90s Hip Hop joint…

[Picture by Bags]

The first two games of the series at Camden Yards — the last series the Yankees will play against American League competition for a few weeks — did little to hold the interest of even the Yankees, it seemed. The Yankees believe they will win every game, while the Orioles, a once proud franchise, have become a team that is only “Major League” in name, to paraphrase Vin Scully. As WFAN’s Steve Sommers put it on the Wednesday Schmooze, “You know who’s going to win, it’s just a matter of what the final score will be.”

Yet amid an air of seemingly unfailing predictability, there’s AJ Burnett. In his last two starts he plowed through the Indians’ lineup and then ran into the Blue Jays’ home run machine. The O’s should have been the perfect elixir to get him back on track. Except that with Burnett, in a season and a half of watching him closely, we’re unable to discern that there is a track.

In the first inning, Burnett’s numbers read as follows:

2 R, 2 H, 2 HBP, 2 K, 2.00 WHIP.

Great poker hand, terrible pitching line.

But these were the Orioles, so there was still a sense that the Yankees would come back and win this game without issue. Either that, or the Orioles would find a way to botch things and hand the game in the Yankees’ favor as they did Wednesday night.

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Yes, I just used a Counting Crows lyric for the post title. It was the ’90s, I was very young, and this is like the 149th time the Yankees have played the Orioles this year — sue me.

C.C. Sabathia started out a little shaky, throwing too many balls in the early going and allowing too many hits by a team whose best hitter to this point is, probably, Ty Wigginton. This would be no big deal, except that C.C. Sabathia has been shaky a bit more than usual this year… but it hasn’t stopped him from beating the Orioles three times already in 2010, and it didn’t stop him from doing so again tonight. He eventually found his happy place, got a bit of support from his offense, and pitched 7 solid innings for a 4-2 win over Baltimore. I feel I’ve called the O’s”hapless” too often already since April, so tonight instead I will describe them as unpromising, unhappy and ill-starred.

By the end of the third inning, Baltimore had taken a two-run lead, on RBI singles from Garrett Atkins and Adam Jones; they’d hold it for five innings, the longest they’ve held any sort of lead since May 25, which, yikes. In the fourth inning Robinson Cano singled (this was his third straight game with three hits, bringing his average back up to .376 — and over .500 against the Orioles), then advanced on a throwing error and groundout and scored on Curtis Granderson’s sac fly. Two innings later, his bouncing single knocked in Mark Teixeira and tied the game at 2-2. In what was not exactly a powerful offensive explosion, Alex Rodriguez then scored on a Jorge Posada force out, but the Yanks had the lead and, by that time, C.C. Sabathia was in his mental cave communing with his Power Animal. After several strong innings he got into a tough spot in the seventh – bases loaded thanks to two singles and walk, with two out – and extricated himself by striking out Luke Scott. His final line: 7 IP, 9 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 8 K.

New York’s one extra run came in the 8th, when Gardner pinch ran for Posada, stole second even though everyone in the building knew he was about to try and steal second, and scored on a sharp single by Francisco Cervelli. Joba Chamberlain had a relatively non-terrifying eighth inning (let’s get that ERA below 5!) and Mariano Rivera notched his 14th save with a perfect ninth, just because.

The Yankees will play the Orioles again on Thursday, and also, I assume, the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that, and every single day Michael Kay will discuss the declining attendance at Camden Yards, every day, oh god it will never end, never, not ever!

[Sob]

Ahem… deep breaths… A.J. Burnett starts next time out for the Yanks. I’m fine. I SAID I’M FINE.

Here’s a couple of cool shots by Bags, the Banter’s own picture-making whiz. Bags tools around town in his free time and takes photographs with a variety of cameras–just not digital cameras. His work has been gracing this space for the past month and will continue to be featured here for as long as he wants.

We’re lucky to have him.

Flipping Reality The Bird

I probably shouldn’t admit this given that I consider myself relatively well versed in classic cinema, but I’ve seen alarmingly few Burt Lancaster films. In fact, out of the 86 titles listed on his IMDb page, I’ve seen exactly two, and one of them is Field of Dreams. Not that Lancaster’s performance in that flick was unworthy, his Moonlight Graham was the most fully realized character in that film, but by that point Lancaster was 76 and in his final theatrical release.

The other Lancaster film I’ve seen came after my wife and I visited a friend in San Francisco and hit the usual tourist traps including the dormant island prison of Alcatraz. When we got back home, we watched Clint Eastwood’s Escape from Alcatraz (which is exactly what it sounds like, was filmed on location, and matched the description of the real-life events we were given while touring the prison) and Lancaster’s Birdman of Alcatraz, which was shot on stage sets and could more accurately be said to have been “inspired by” rather than “based on” the life of the titular character.

The actual Birdman of Alcatraz was Robert Stroud, a teenage runaway who became a pimp in Alaska and, ten days shy of his 18th birthday in 1909, shot another pimp during a scuffle and was convicted of manslaughter. Various incidents during Stroud’s incarceration, including the murder of a guard, increased his sentence, ultimately to death, but in 1920, his mother appealed to President Woodrow Wilson for a stay of execution and was given one. Stroud instead spent the next 23 years in solitary confinement at Leavenworth Federal Penitentary before being moved to Alcatraz. While at Leavenworth, Stroud took an interest in some injured birds in the courtyard and, over the years, turned himself into one of the leading ornithological minds in the world and the author of the classic text, Stroud’s Digest on the Diseases of Birds, among other titles.

The film, released in 1962, a year before Stroud’s death, is a fictionalization of Stroud’s story with Lancaster playing a stoic, heroic version of the brilliant psychopath who wasn’t actually allowed to keep birds after being transferred to Alcatraz in 1943. As biography, it’s bunk. As a tale of rehabilitation and self-motivation, it’s inspirational, thanks largely to the quiet dignity of Lancaster’s performance.

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Boitday, that is. Join me in raising a mug to our own Diane Firstman. Then smash that mug on the floor and rock out to this:

I never do this, but last night I didn’t watch the Yankee game despite the fact that I knew I’d have to write it up in this space. You know why. I was watching Stephen Strasburg strike out 14 men in a major league debut that did the impossible by living up to all of the hype that preceded it. I clearly made the right choice, not because the Yankees lost (they didn’t), but because the opening game of their three-game set in Baltimore was yet another of those ugly, high-scoring affairs that made up in aggravation what it lacked in suspense.

The game was almost over before it begun as Derek Jeter led off by drawing a five-pitch walk and Nick Swisher sent Kevin Millwood’s sixth pitch over the center-field wall for a two-run homer. With two out in the third, Curtis Granderson inflated the Yankee lead to 6-0 with the second grand slam of his career. Phil Hughes let the O’s cut that in half with two runs in the fourth and one in the fifth, but though he allowed nine hits and struck out just four in his six innings of work, all of the hits were singles and he walked no one.

With Hughes likely out of the game after 102 pitches, the Yankees put the game away with a six-run top of the seventh against relievers Matt Hendrickson and Matt Albers, the key hit being a bases-clearing, bases-loaded double by first-inning hero Nick Swisher off Albers which was immediately followed by a solo homer by Mark Teixeira, just his second tater since May 15.

The aggravating part came in the final two frames as, after a solid inning from David Robertson, Chad Gaudin, in to mop up with a 12-3 lead, coughed up two runs in the eighth on a walk and an Adam Jones homer, and two more in the ninth to the first three batters he faced to bring the Orioles within 12-7. Gaudin managed to finish things off before Joe Girardi had to go to the big guns, but the O’s hadn’t scored more than five runs since May 20 (when they also lost, 13-7), and there was no reason to let them break in their hitting shoes in a route.

Still, it was a successful night of baseball. Strasburg dominated. The Yankees won, and I didn’t miss anything by opting to watch the former.

In other news, Josh Paul is up to serve as the bullpen coach with Mike Harkey subbing for Dave Eiland who is taking a leave of absence from the team for personal reasons. Paul is the manager of the short-season Staten Island Yankees, who have yet to begin play this year, and is best remembered as  the catcher on the controversial “dropped third strike” call on A.J. Pierzynski in the 2005 ALCS. Paul is also three years younger than Chad Moeller and owns a comparable major league batting line (Paul: .244/.303/.341 in 797 plate appearances, Moeller: .226/.287/.352 in 1,533 PA). Is it a bad sign when your bullpen coach is as qualified to be your backup catcher as your backup catcher is?

In other catching news, Jorge Posada has started working behind the plate, though there remains no timetable for him to return to catching in games.

The Yankees are 8-1 against the Orioles this year, and the O’s have scored an average of just 2.2 runs in those nine games. The Yankees swept the O’s last week in the Bronx, part of a ten-game Orioles’ losing streak during which the O’s scored an average of 1.6 runs per game against their opponent’s 6.6. That streak was snapped on Sunday as the O’s pulled out a 4-3, 11-inning victory over the Red Sox.

The only change the O’s have made since leaving the Bronx is that they finally fired manager Dave Trembley, replacing him with third-base coach Juan Samuel on an interim basis. I always thought the knock on Trembley’s predecessor Sam Perlozzo was that his team would lie down on him late in the season, but that trend continued under Trembley. This year they never stood up despite being expected to finally show some signs of life. It’s wasn’t Trembley’s fault that the only members of the lineup who are hitting are 32-year-olds Ty Wigginton and Luke Scott or that Brian Roberts got hurt, but then there’s nothing to credit Trembley with either. Trembley’s winning percentage had dropped in each of his three seasons despite the perception that the team was improving its talent level. It was time to make a change, but don’t expect the team to rally around Samuel, who had been coaching third-base for the O’s since 2006.

When the Yankees began their current stretch of patsy opponents, commenter OldYanksFan suggested that the Yankees should really aim to win 12 of their 16 games against the Indians, Orioles, Blue Jays, and Astros. Thus far they are 7-3, but I think it’s entirely within reason to expect them to take five of their next six against Baltimore and Houston and not out of the question to expect them to sweep their way through the weekend, particularly given that they won’t be facing Roy Oswalt when the Astros come to town. That work begins tonight as Phil Hughes, who aced his last two starts, the last coming against the O’s, looks to keep hard-luck Kevin Millwood winless on the season.

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