Chad Jennings has the skinny on the tentative 2013 schedule.

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

If DJ can stand tonight, he’ll play tonight.

Meanwhile, over at River Ave Blues, Mike Axisa maps out the starting rotation for the rest of the year.

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

As Jon mentioned in the previous thread:

Yanks record by month:
13-9
14-14
20-7
13-13
15-13
4-5

Apart from the 20-7 run, this is a mediocre team. Yes, they’ve been hurt by injuries but right now they are a group of underachievers.

[Image Via: Photo Blur]

Word is Mark Teixeira will be out 10-14 days.

A lot of attention has been paid to the Bronx Bombers nose dive in the A.L. East, and with good reason. By allowing a 10-game advantage to disappear, the 2012 Yankees became only the second team in franchise history to fritter away a double-digit lead. However, as they enter a crucial four-game series in Baltimore, the pinstripes remain front runners. Considering all the hysteria, it’s easy to over look the fact that the team remains in first place, but, even amid a collapse, that’s exactly where the Yankees have resided for most of the season.

Yankee fans, and the organization itself, are a little spoiled. Since its inception in 1901, the franchise has spent over 6,200 days in first place, or nearly 36% of all game dates. That figure jumps up to 42% going back to 1923, when the team migrated to theBronx. So, if the Yankee Universe treats having a lead as a birthright, well, who can blame them?

Distribution of Yankees’ Standings Position, 1901-Present

Note: Based on position at the end of game dates only (i.e., off days excluded). Includes five last place finishes. 1981 finish is based on total record from both season halves.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

The Yankees are guaranteed to spend at least one more day atop the division, which would give the team a longer stint in that position than nine other seasons that ended with a first place finish (excluding 1994). Of course, unless the Yankees hold the top spot on the final day of the season, the longevity of their lead won’t matter. Once again, however, history is on the side of the Bronx Bombers, as only two other teams in franchise history spent more days in first place (1924 and 2010) without sealing the deal.

Days Spent in First Place, Per Season Since 1901

Note: Based on position at the end of game dates only (i.e., off days excluded).Years with no days in first place omitted. Red bars indicate seasons in which the Yankees finished in first place.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

The Yankees have spent at least one day in first place in 93 of 112 seasons, and at least 100 days leading the division in 29 campaigns. Interestingly, despite occupying the top spot so often, the 1927 Yankees are the only team in franchise history to hold a lead from wire-to-wire. On the other end of the spectrum, the 1978 and 2005 Bronx Bombers were the only first place finishers to spend less than 20% of the year looking down at the competition. And, on each occasion, the Red Sox were the team the Yankees caught from behind.

After holding a double-digit lead, a one-game edge almost feels like being behind. However, the rest of the division is still chasing the Yankees, who have historically been at their best when leading the pack. With only 26 games remaining, the marathon has now become a sprint. Will the 2012 Yankees be able to maintain their position as front runners, or suffer the fate of a pacemaker? Let the pennant race begin.

I got people coming out the woodwork calling, e-mailing, and texting me, busting my goddamn balls about the Yankees. Pat Jordan’s on the horn three times a day, cackling like the true sadist that he is.

Hank Waddles called last night too, but to commiserate. He likened watching the Yankees to having a fight with your spouse. One of those bad fights where you try to remember back to when you weren’t fighting and things were easy and happy but can’t. Like when you’ve got the flu and can’t recall being well.

The Wife says to me, “Are you going to be like this all month?”

I say, “Every time they lose.”

What am I going to do with you? That’s what she’s thinking and she’s right.

There is good news, though, and it is this: The Yankees are in first place today.

The Yanks host the Orioles this weekend at the Stadium. Next week, they go to Tampa for three and then to Baltimore for a four-game series.

So, here it is, the Yanks have been mincing around for a month and now they’ve got their toughest ten-game stretch of the season.

I wonder if they’ll rise to the occasion. I can’t call it.

[Photo Credit: Matthew Pugliese]

Nice piece on Eric Chavez in the Wall Street Journal today by Daniel Barbarisi.

Over at SI.com, Joe Sheehan offers this appreciation of Derek Jeter. And while you are there check out Cliff’s 10 worst contracts in baseball history.

Joshua Prager, author of The Echoing Green, has a feature on Derek Jeter and Pete Rose’s all-time hit record today in the New York Times:

“The toughest thing about baseball is you don’t know why you’re doing — or not doing — this or that,” the player, Ichiro Suzuki, said.

Suzuki, a Yankees outfielder, had at that point amassed a combined 3,830 hits in Japan and the United States, a remarkable if unofficial total. But his annual hit total was set to decline for the third straight season. Was age to blame?

“It’s not that your physical body gains weight, but that your thinking gains weight,” said Suzuki, 38. He tightened a belt about a waist that had been 31 inches all his career and explained that expectation was a burden that only grew. The outside world always let you know when a milestone was in reach.

I also like this appreciation:

“I don’t think very many people understand how unique he is, as a hitter,” Bill James, the father of advanced baseball statistics, wrote in an e-mail. “At-bat after at-bat, he is able to hit the ball to right field NOT by swinging late, but by just clipping the inside of the baseball, hitting the ball off-center so that it flares off his bat to right field. Other people do it once in a while by accident, but I’ve never seen anybody other than Jeter do it constantly.”

I don’t think Jeter will catch Rose. Don’t think he’s that single(s)-minded. But it’s fun to consider, isn’t it?

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where the teams come from and what their lousy records are, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

I’ll tell you what bores the hell out of me, when a team has all of these good players on the roster, but then trots out a lineup made up of all the bad ones. Every team’s got bad players on it, I’m not saying they don’t. It’s just that when a team is really stacked, I mean when they’ve got hot-shots at just about every position, it’s really boring when those players just take a seat on the bench all afternoon. And the bad ones that play, you’d think they’d seize the opportunity and really show what they’ve got, but more often than not they just go out there and remind you of why they are on the bench in the first place.

Take Andruw Jones, the hot-shot in left field. He couldn’t catch the ball at all today, though I heard he used catch it like a madman. There used to be nobody better at catching the old pop-fly. I admit it. But not anymore. Now he’s the type of outfielder that looks up in the sky on a bright afternoon, gets confused and falls down. Goddamn house-money lineup. It always ends up making you blue as hell.

And that lineup’s not too gorgeous for this pitcher the Yankees have, a pitcher named Ivan Nova. He’s good and all, I’m not saying he’s bad. I’m really not.  But the thing about Nova is that he’s not good all the time. In fact, when you get right down to it, he’s only been very good a few times, but for some reason everybody thinks that’s the norm. If you ask me, I’d say he’s much more the mediocre type, not necessarily bad, but not as good as the phonies tend to give him credit for. All I know is he was lousy today, so mediocre would have been a substantial improvement. It really would.

Old Nova started things off with a bang. He really did. The Rangers had two runs on the board and the ice cubes in my drink hadn’t even started to melt yet. And I hate it when ice cubes melt too quickly. It’s quite a problem during day games. You’ve got this perfectly good drink in front of you, and then you look away for a second, just a quick look at the scoreboard, and sure enough the ice cubes are sweating. It doesn’t totally ruin the drink, I’m not saying that. But it certainly doesn’t do it any good.

Derek Holland, the pitcher for the Texas Rangers, must have been thrilled to see all those Yankee hot-shots sitting on the bench. Old Holland is the type of pitcher that’s actually quite talented but you’d never know it because he sucks so much. He really does. He’s the kind of guy that wears a phony mustache to make you think he’s a sophisticated Ivy League gentleman but what it winds up doing, you see, is making him look like a goddamn pervert. But if you actually watch him pitch, if you sit down and take the time to really watch him sling the old ball at the dish, you’d see he throws it in there quite hard. I have to admit.

I see a guy like Old Holland with all the talent in the world and a five-something ERA and it depresses the hell out of me. I get so down in the dumps I bust out crying right there at the goddamn computer.  It makes me think of these boys I know from the Yankees named Philip Hughes and Joba Chamberlain. You never saw pitchers come up for the Yankees with talent like that, talent so obvious it was practically coming out of their socks. And it’s not like the Yankees never brought up any other pitchers. They did, all the time. But those pitchers, each one was the type of pitcher that’s always allowing first inning homers and then leaving you sitting in the can. What’s all that Yankee dough good for if you’re always bringing up pitchers that give up first-inning homers? Nothing, that’s what.

There he was, Old Holland, wearing that phony mustache in the middle of goddamn Yankee Stadium of all places and trying to sneak a fastball by Mark Teixeira in the sixth inning. And Mark Teixeira, mind you, he just wears Old Holland out like the back seat of a New York City taxi cab. He really does. Old Holland couldn’t get Teixeira out in a big spot if his life depended on him getting that out. But this time in the sixth inning, when Teixeira represented the tying run, what he did was he threw this slider in the dirt to a spot where Teixeira couldn’t get it – it damn near killed me when he threw it in that spot. It was actually quite tricky.

Old Holland must have been feeling pretty good about that slider in the dirt, maybe too good. Because you see what he did on the next pitch to that Andruw Jones, the hot-shot that fell down earlier, he laid one right down the middle. I mean right down goddamn Broadway. And Old Jones, you know he wasn’t feeling too good about falling down, so he must have been so relieved to just see this pitch coming right down the middle. He didn’t look confused on that pitch as he tied up the game at four. He really didn’t.

The goddamn game would have ended right there if it had any sense. But, of course it didn’t. It went on for three more innings. It went on long enough for all the bad feelings the Yankees erased in the sixth to become bad feelings again in the seventh. The worst part, the very worst part of the whole collapse is that pitcher I was telling you about before, Joba Chamberlain, came out with the game on the line and they needed him to be his old self, his old hot-shot self. The thing of it is, that guy is gone. This other guy that looks like the same guy but isn’t as good, he’s here to stay. And about the only way you can tell the difference is by looking at that scoreboard. That goddamn scoreboard just about kills me. It’s just depressing as hell.

See that’s what I don’t like about baseball. It’s depressing as hell. You’ve got a guy falling down in the outfield feeling down in the dumps about it. You’ve got the same guy tying the game with a homerun and feeling all warm and fuzzy. And then you’ve got the same guy coming up with a chance to re-take the lead and striking out and going down in the dumps again. Who wants to play a game that can rip you up like that? Nobody with any sense, that’s who.

A lot of people here, especially this one accountant, are asking me if the Yankees are going to win tomorrow when they start their series with the goddamn Red Sox. It’s such a stupid question. How are you supposed to know if they’re going to win a game before they play it? The answer is, you don’t.

Photo: AP

Ichiro Suzuki has been a Yankee for only nine games, but the future Hall of Famer is already approaching a franchise record. With a safety in every ballgame since joining the team, Suzuki is one series away from matching the longest hitting streak by a player beginning his pinstriped career.

Longest Hitting Streaks to Begin Yankee Career, Since 1918

Source: baseball-reference.com

OK, fine, not all hitting streaks are created equal. Even though Ichiro has matched Nick Swisher’s nine straight games, his OPS during that span has been but a fraction. Whereas Swisher pounded out 13 hits and four homers, while driving in 11 runs, by comparison, Ichiro has managed only one hit per game, including seven singles and no walks. As a result, the outfielder has posted a paltry OPS of .631, which is actually lower than his season rate of 0.641. Although hitting streaks tend to be noteworthy regardless of the underlying production, Ichiro’s string of nine straight games has disguised some of the early disappointment regarding his initial offensive contribution.

If Ichiro extends his “one-a-day” hitting streak to 10, he’ll not only inch closer to Don Slaught’s record of 12 straight games with a hit to begin a Yankee career, but also tie five others for the longest string of one-hit games in franchise history. The most recent player to accomplish the task was Steve Sax in 1990, but the most productive vitamin-style streak was turned in by Hall of Famer Joe Gordon, who made the most of his 10 hits by knocking in 11 runs to go along with an OPS of 1.075.

Longest One-A-Day Hitting Streaks in Yankees’ History, Since 1918

Source: baseball-reference.com

Should Ichiro surpass the quintet of Yankees’ one-hit masters, he can then set his sights on Ted Sizemore, who recorded exactly one safety in 16 straight games in June 1975 while playing for the St. Louis Cardinals. Over that span, the middle infielder compiled an OPS of 0.621, which although far from impressive, represented an improvement over the 0.597 rate that he posted for the entire season. As evidenced by the chart below, the list of players with the longest one-a-day hitting streaks doesn’t read like a “Who’s Who”, so, even if it means a hitless game, Ichiro might be better off not joining it.

Longest One-A-Day Hitting Streaks in MLB History, Since 1918

Source: baseball-reference.com

When the Yankees acquired Ichiro Suzuki, there was some hope that the 38-year old would be re-energized by the trade and turn back the clock for a month or two. Although history suggests that’s not likely, there’s still time for Ichiro to fulfill that expectation. However, in order to do so, he’ll need more than one hit per game. Then again, vitamins are often taken to restore youth, so maybe there’s a method to Ichiro’s one-a-day streak?

There’s one thing you should know about the Banter–we spare no expense in the pursuit of a story, and we are never truly on vacation.

So even as my family and I have been enjoying the tropical breezes, idyllic pace, and pristine beaches of Hawaii this week, I’ve kept my nose to the ground the entire time, searching for a story. I found one on Day One.

Directly outside our hotel on the Hilo side of the Big Island, stood an enormous banyan tree marked with a simple sign, “Geo. Herman “Babe” Ruth, Oct. 29, 1933″. After some serious reporting (a five-second conversation with the concierge), I procured a pamphlet which described the evolution of Banyan Drive. Back in 1933 someone decided it might be a fun idea to have celebrities and local luminaries plant banyan trees along a stretch of road that curved around an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. The Babe was on a barnstorming tour, so he was a natural pick, as was Cecil B. DeMille, who was in town filming a movie.

Banyan trees appear as if they’ve been imported directly the planet Dagobah. They begin as a tree with a single trunk, but as they mature, the branches drop long tendrils which twist downward until they find the ground and take root, eventually thickening to the point where it becomes difficult to identify the original trunk. Mature trees have hundreds of separate trunks encompassing hundreds of square feet.

I took my daughter Alison down to the tree on the morning we left to take a few pictures. Before we left I asked her to put her hand next to mine on the outermost root. It was rough and full of history.

“Can you feel it?” I asked. “Babe Ruth planted this tree. Babe Ruth.”

I went to pick up a package at Todd-AO studios on 54th Street once many years ago and the clerk told me it wasn’t ready, said “there must be some kind of misconfusion.”

Which is something like Brian Cashman said today about Mariano Rivera on Jim Duquette’s show. Via Hardball Talk.

[Photo Credit: N.J. com]

Here’s a piece by Connor Orr in the Star-Ledger on Sparky Lyle.

Of course there’s another side to this and it is understandable that not everyone is pleased with Ichiro in pinstripes.

Check this out from Oyl in Tokyo.

Chad Jennings has the notes from a misbegotten weekend in Oakland.

[Photo Credit: TS Flynn via It’s a Long Season]

Such a drag about Brett Gardner. Not a surprise but a bummer for sure.

Man, sure doesn’t feel like we’ll see Brett Gardner anytime soon.

Will the Yanks make a trade? Hmmm…

[Photo Credit: Newsday]

Our man William gives us more Donnie Baseball Goodness.

[Painting by Dave Pucciarelli]