Game One of this ALDS couldn’t have gone much better for the Yankees. CC Sabathia was sharp, every starter but Mark Teixeira and Robinson Cano got a hit, including Alex Rodriguez who had a pair of RBI singles, the key end-game relievers (Phil Coke, Phil Hughes, Mariano Rivera, and the re-purposed Joba Chamberlain) got their postseason spikes dirty with a big lead and a day off to follow, and, most importantly, the Bombers extended their regular season dominance of Minnesota with a 7-2 victory. Yesterday, however, gave the exhausted Twins, who in the 25 hours before the first pitch of Game One had played 12 innings to save their season then flown half way across the country, a much-needed day of rest, and Game Two brings another Yankee starting pitcher with a lot to prove.

I was an outspoken opponent of the five-year, $82.5 million contract the Yankees signed A.J. Burnett to in December. With one of those five regular seasons in the books, Burnett has exceeded my expectations in just one way: he stayed healthy and took every one of his turns throughout the season. That’s no small thing, but the net result of Burnett’s 33 starts wasn’t quite what you’d expect from a $16.5 million pitcher, and there are still four more years in which Burnett could well validate my concerns about his injury history.

The contract doesn’t matter tonight. All that matters is how well Burnett pitches in his first postseason start, which is why Joe Girardi has opted to start Jose Molina behind the plate despite the huge drop in production he represents at the plate compared to Jorge Posada. Opposing batters have hit just .221/.307/.352 against Burnett with Molina behind the plate compared to .270/.353/.421 with Posada receiving him. Supposedly the difference is due in part to Burnett’s lack of confidence in Posada’s ability to block his sharp curve in the dirt, which results in Burnett failing to break the pitch off properly when throwing to Posada. Burnett led the league in wild pitches, and one would assumes a certain percentage of those were pitches Burnett thought Posada should have blocked.

Burnett’s breaking point seemed to come in his August 12 start, when, with Posada catching, he uncorked three wild pitches then refused to talk about the issue after the game, saying bruskly, “I’d rather not talk about the wild pitches.” Up to that game, Posada caught 13 of Burnett’s starts while Molina, Francisco Cervelli, and Kevin Cash caught the other ten, five of them coming when Posada was on the disabled list. After that August 12 start, Posada caught just three more of Burnett’s starts, while Molina caught seven. Burnett didn’t thrown another wild pitch after August 12, but two of the three times he pitched to Posada he was rocked, giving up nine runs in five innings to the Red Sox on August 22, and six runs in 5 1/3 innings to the lowly Orioles on September 1. Those were the last two Burnett starts caught by Posada.

That’s why Joe Girardi is sitting a .285/.363/.522 hitter in a playoff game in favor of a man who has hit .217/.273/.298 in 406 at-bats over the last two seasons. I believe Posada himself said it best when he said, in reaction to the news that Molina would be starting, “I just hope we win that game.” Burnett’s need for Molina behind the plate only adds to the pressure he’ll be feeling tonight in his first career postseason start (he was out following Tommy John surgery when his Marlins beat the Yankees in the 2003 World Series). The contract may not matter tonight, but Burnett will by trying to live up to it.

As for how he did in the regular season, Burnett’s aggregate line was actually no better than the no-name Twins sophomore he’ll face tonight:

A.J. Burnett: 4.04 ERA, 1.40 WHIP, 2.01 K/BB, 33 GS, 21 QS
Nick Blackburn: 4.03 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, 2.39 K/BB, 33 GS, 19 QS

Those lines are damn similar, with Blackburn holding the edge in the three key rate stats, which just goes to show how overrated Burnett really is. As for the 27-year-old Blackburn, his final 2009 line is almost an exact match for his 2008 rookie campaign, which means the Twins can now expect this sort of production from him. Blackburn’s WHIP is high because he led the league in hits allowed. Burnett’s is high because he led the league in walks with a career-high 97. That is also why A.J.’s K/BB is so low (because of all those walks, Burnett’s WHIP and K/BB this year were his worst since 2003, when he made just four starts).

Of course, Burnett and Blackburn are far from similar pitchers, as their strikeout and walk rates reveal:

Burnett: 8.5 K/9, 4.2 BB/9
Blackburn: 4.3 K/9, 1.8 BB/9

Better all those walks and strikeouts than all those hits, but you’d rather see a pitcher keep his opponents off the bases altogether.

Both pitchers finished the regular seaosn strong. In his last four starts (all with Molina catching), Burnett posted a 1.88 ERA, struck out 28 men in 24 innings, and allowed just one home run. In his last four starts, Blackburn posted a 1.65 ERA and walked just one man in 27 1/3 innings.

Blackburn last faced the Yankees on May 16. He took a 4-3 lead into the eighth inning of that game only to let the Yankees tie it up in that inning (and ultimately win it in extras). Burnett faced the Twins twice this year, both times allowing just two runs in six-plus innings, but walking ten in those 13 frames.

The Twins have made one tweak to their lineup tonight. Jason Kubel is DHing, Denard Span is in right, and Carlos Gomez is in centerfield and batting in place of the team’s no-name DH platoon. Alex suggests this is because the Twins want to run on Burnett, but while A.J. allowed 23 steals on the year, he and his catchers caught 34 percent of attempting basestealers, that compared to a 25 percent league average and Jose Molina and Jorge Posada’s matching (yes, matching) 28 percent throw-out rates.

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Though the games are meaningless, it seems appropriate that the Yankees are finishing the 2009 season against the Rays. Tampa Bay was supposed to be in the thick of the AL East race and are the defending American League Champions. The Yankees, having replaced the Rays atop the division, hope to succeed them as pennant winners as well.

The Rays mediocre finish, nearly 20 games behind the Yankees in third place, feels like a disappointment, but it’s important to remember that this is a franchise that had won as many as 70 games just once prior to 2008. This has been the second-best season in Rays history by a dozen games. Entering the final series of the season, they Rays are just one game behind the Twins, who remain alive in the AL Central race.

The 2009 Rays suffered through brutal seasons from Dioner Navarro (.219/.259/.317), B.J. Upton (.238/.308/.362), and Pat Burrell (.226/.321/.376), and got just 67 games from second baseman Akinori Iwamura due to a knee injury, but benefited from what were likely flukey late-20s spikes from Ben Zobrist (.290/.399/.531) and Jason Bartlett (.319/.385/.492).

Carl Crawford bounced back from his disappointing 2008 campaign, but remains a good player rather than a great one. Nonetheless, the trade that sent Scott Kazmir and the $20 million left on his contract over the next two years to Anaheim suggests that the Rays will pick up Crawford’s $10-million option for 2010.

Kazmir was made expendable by the strong performance of 26-year-old rookie Jeff Niemann, a thick, 6-foot-9 righty, as well as the late-season arrival of 23-year-old righty Wade Davis, who has been dominant in three of his five September starts (though two of those came against the lowly Orioles) and good in the fourth. Niemann and Davis will start the final two games of the season against Andy Pettitte and A.J. Burnett.

Fellow rookie David Price will start tonight against fellow lefty CC Sabathia. Price was supposed to be the rookie sensation in the Rays’ rotation, but after spending April and most of May in the minors to suppress his innings total, he struggled with his control and the longball upon returning the majors. In his first 11 starts, he gave up 11 homers and walked 33 in 53 innings, which translates to 1.87 HR/9 and 5.6 BB/9.  As a result, he was averaging less than five innings per start and sported a 5.60 ERA.

In his 11 starts since then, however, Price has allowed just six more homers and walked just 19 in 68 1/3 innings (0.8 HR/9, 2.5 BB/9, almost 6 1/3 innings per start). The result has been a solid 3.82 ERA and a 6-3 record over that span. That’s the kind of progress the Yankees had hoped to see from Joba Chamberlain this year.

The rotation of Matt Garza, James Shields, Price, Niemann, and Davis is the primary reason the Rays will remain contenders in 2010, and the Yankees will get a preview of that in this final series. That seems like a good thing to me. Though Joe Girardi will continue to rotate days off through his lineup, facing good young pitchers will keep the Yankee hitters from falling into any bad habits in the process of playing out the string. Similarly, playoff starters Sabathia, Pettitte, and Burnett will be facing a solid lineup (fourth best in the AL on the year), rather than the glorified Triple-A squad run out by the Royals.

Meanwhile, the pesky Twins are forcing the Tigers to sweat out their Central Division title, and could force them to start Justin Verlander on Sunday, thus bumping him from what would otherwise be his Game 1 start in the ALDS. I’ll, of course, have an in-depth preview of that series next week. In the meantime here are some individual stats that are within reach for the Yankees this weekend:

CC Sabathia: a win tonight would be his 20th, a new career high. Six strikeouts would get him to 200.

A.J. Burnett: needs 8 Ks for 200.

Mark Teixeira: needs 1 homer for 40

Nick Swisher: needs 1 homer for 30

Derek Jeter: needs 2 homers for 20

Robinson Cano: needs 2 doubles for 50

Alex Rodriguez: needs 7 RBIs for 100 and two homers to tie Mark McGwire for 8th place all-time.

Derek Jeter: needs 4 RBIs for 70 (Jeter has reached 70 RBIs in all but two of his full seasons and missed by one last year. Leading off has cost him RBI opportunities this year in what has been one the best seasons of his career.) The Captain also needs four hits to tie Hall-0f-Fame shortstop Luke Appling for 48th all-time.

Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui rest today as Jerry Hairston plays left (and tests his wrist) and Jose Molina DHs. That gives Molina some at-bats before the postseason and allows Sabathia to work with Posada. Swisher bats fifth. Melky starts in center against the lefty Price.

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The Yankees have already accomplished all of their goals for the 2009 regular season. By sweeping the Red Sox over the weekend, they clinched both the AL East title and the best record in the American League, the latter of which gives them home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. Their clinching win was also their 100th of the season; Joe Torre’s Dodgers rank second in the majors with 93 wins.

Even before Sunday’s clincher, the Yankees had shifted their attention from a singular focus on winning each game they played to longer-range considerations regarding postseason readiness. One could even argue that their focus began to shift when they began skipping Joba Chamberlain’s starts in August.

This week’s final regular season home series against the last-place Royals is thus a curiosity at best for those interested in the Yankees’ post-season roster construction and two teams’ marginal bench players and relievers (the Yankees’ lineup tonight omits Jeter, Teixeira, Rodriguez, Swisher, and Matsui in favor of Ramiro Peña, Juan Miranda, Eric Hinske at the hot corner, and Francisco Cervelli). At worst it’s a complete and utter waste of time that serves no purpose other than to expose the Yankees to a potentially disastrous injury.

Due to some curious scheduling, the Yankees last faced the Royals in the second series of the season way back on April 10-12 (Yankees took 2 of 3 in K.C.), and now face them for the second and final time this season in the season’s penultimate series. In between the Yankees have emerged as the major league’s best team while the Royals primary accomplishment has been avoiding being the worst.

The Royals had made steady improvements under new general manager Dayton Moore over the last three seasons, but 2009 has seen them stagnate then regress. Zack Greinke and Billy Butler have had long-awaited break-out seasons at ages 25 and 23, respectively, Greinke being the obvious choice for AL Cy Young and Butler ranking among the league leaders in extra-base hits, but that is the sum total of the positives. In my Royals preview in April I listed the team’s assets as:

. . . two front-of-the-rotation starters in 25-year-old Zack Greinke and Gil Meche, 30; one of the best closers in baseball in Joakim Soria, who will turn 25 next month; two top hitting prospects who are already in the major league lineup in 25-year-old third baseman Alex Gordon and soon-to-be-23-year-old DH Billy Butler; and two of the game’s top minor league prospects in first baseman Eric Hosmer and third baseman Mike Moustakas, ranked numbers 18 and 21, respectively, by Baseball Prospectus’s Kevin Goldstein.

Beyond Greinke and Butler, Meche had a brutal season (6-10, 5.09 ERA, and all of his peripherals heading in the wrong direction) and was shut down after 23 starts with shoulder inflammation, Gordon hit the DL in mid-April with a torn hip labrum, missed three months, and was so bad after returning that the team demoted him just two weeks before rosters expanded (since returning he’s slugged just .392). Moustakas hit .250/.297/.431 in High-A ball. Hosmer hit .241/.334/.361 in a season split between A-ball and High-A. Soria, a closer on a team that never wins, had a typically strong season save for the month he spent on the DL with a rotator cuff injury. The light at the end of the Royals’ tunnel is dimming.

The Yankees missed Greinke in April and will miss him again this week, instead catching Luke Hochevar, former Brave Anthony Lerew, and former Ranger Robinson Tejada. Shying away from the likely contract demands of the superior players available, the Royals made Hochevar the top overall pick in the 2006 draft. At age 25, has a 5.75 ERA in 46 major league starts, though he did turn in a quality start against the Yankees last June. Hochevar also made his major league debut against the Yankees in September 2007.

Hochevar will face Chad Gaudin, who could sew up his spot as the long-man on the Yankees’ postseason roster with a good outing tonight against a terrible offense (4.24 R/G, second-worst in the AL).

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The Yankees went 2-12 against the Angels and Red Sox in the first half of this season. Since then, they’ve gone 9-2 against those same two teams. Tonight, they return home from Anaheim having taken two of three from the Halos despite spending most of that series auditioning borderline candidates for the postseason roster, which they’ll do again tonight with Joba Chamberlain making the start. So much for the absurd meme that the Yankees couldn’t beat the “big boys.”

The Yankees clinched a playoff berth in Anaheim and enter this weekend’s series against the Red Sox leading Boston by five-games in the loss column with just just nine games left on the schedule. That puts their magic number at 5 and sets the Yanks up to clinch the division with a weekend sweep. Not that I expect that to happen. Still, just one win in this series would reduce the magic number to 3 and a series win would drop it to 1. Meanwhile, even if the Red Sox sweep the series, the Yankees could clinch by simply splitting their remaining games if the Sox lose just twice in their remaining seven games against the admittedly weak Blue Jays and Indians.

So, once again, the Yankees’ goals in this series are to keep everyone healthy and sort out the final few spots on the postseason roster. Speaking of which, the Red Sox’s current roster is at the end of this post, but below the jump I’ll take a stab at projecting their likely postseason roster.

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The Yankees arrive in Anaheim needing just one win (or a Rangers loss) to clinch their first postseason berth under manager Joe Girardi. That’s a big deal, but it’s also an inevitability. Yankee fans tuning in this week to see a preview of a potential playoff matchup might be disappointed to see their team playing out the string, but that’s what the Yankees are and should be doing right now.

That clinching win will come. In the meantime, the Yankees have to make sure that, when they get to the postseason, their important players are healthy and rested. Getting A.J. Burnett and Joba Chamberlain straightened out are priorities that met with differing results in Seattle. Tonight Andy Pettitte, whose last start was skipped due to some soreness in his pitching shoulder, takes the ball. Getting him and David Robertson healthy and effective again are also priorities.

Brett Gardner seems to have gotten his swing back, but he’ll sit tonight against the left-handed Joe Saunders. The Yankees will get a look at possible Joba-replacement Chad Guadin tomorrow and Burnett again on Wednesday against newest Angel Scott Kazmir. Somewhere along they way, they’ll clinch a playoff berth.

The Angels’ roster is the same as it was last time these teams met. The Yankees are 3-1 against the Angels in the Bronx this year, but 0-3 in Anaheim, but whether or not that latter mark is corrected or reinforced this week will have little bearing on how the Yanks are likely to perform in Disneyland in October.

The Yankees’ magic number for clinching a playoff berth is three. That means they could do it this weekend in Seattle, though it might require a little help from, ironically, the Angels, who are in Arlington facing the Rangers, the team whose inability to catch the Yankees would thus guarantee New York a return to the postseason. The most likely scenario would have the Yankees and Angels both taking two of three from their lesser opponents, putting the Yankees in the odd position of arriving in Anaheim on Monday with warm feelings about the Halos.

Looking at the pitching matchups in Seattle, the Yankees would seem to have the middle game, which pits CC Sabathia against the unfortunately named Doug Fister, in hand. Joba Chamberlain seems to finally be rounding back into shape after posting this combined line in his last two Rules-shortened starts: 7 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 2 HR, 1 BB, 5 K. That gives the Yankees more than a good chance against reclamation project Ian Snell on Sunday. One has to assume the Angels will at the very least avoid a sweep in Arlington. That’s three games. Of course, if the Yankees want to do it in style, they’ll start with an surprisingly unlikely win tonight.

A.J. Burnett has exceeded my expectations this year in exactly one way: he has made every single one of his starts. Tonight he’ll make his 30th start for just the third time in his 11-year career. That is worthy of a certain level of praise (Carl Pavano made four fewer major league starts in his four years as a Yankee combined), but the quality of those starts of late has been anything but praiseworthy. Just two of Burnett’s last five starts have been quality starts and over his last nine he’s gone 1-5 with a 6.14 ERA. Worse yet, he’s trending in the wrong direction. Four of his six starts in August were quality, but only one of his three in September has been and in those last five he’s posted a 7.67 ERA in part due to the eight home runs he has allowed in those outings.

Burnett hasn’t seen the Mariners yet this year, but shouldn’t find them much of a challenge given that they’re the second-worst offense in baseball and the only team in the junior circuit to have scored less than four runs per game on the season. What will be challenging is his mound opponent, Felix Hernandez.

Still just 23, King Felix seems to have finally become a pitcher worthy of his nickname. Despite the punchless M’s offense, Hernandez has already set a career high with 15 wins (against just five losses). More importantly, he has decreased his homer rate for the third year in a row, corrected the spike his walk rate experienced last year, and is striking out batters at a tick about his previous top rate (he’ll surpass 200 strikeouts for the first time in his career with seven more Ks). He has also benefited from the M’s improved defense, posting a BABIP below .300 for the first time since his rookie half season in 2005 and leading the league in fewest hits per nine innings. That last is a product of both his own effectiveness and the gloves behind him.

The Yankees have added first baseman Juan Miranda to the major league roster. With Jorge Posada serving a three-game suspension that finishes on Saturday, Jose Molina catches and bats ninth tonight behind the usual suspects. Melky Cabrera is in center despite Brett Gardner’s recent resurgence (six for his last 11 with two doubles).

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The Yankees have gone 24-10 (.706) against the two non-contenders in their division, the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays, but with this brief, two-game, mid-week series against the Jays in the Bronx, that gravy train is finally pulling into the station.

The Jays and Yankees split a four-game set in Toronto, two weekends ago. Given that Sergio Mitre is taking on Roy Halladay in tonight’s game, the Yankees would probably be happy with a split here as well. Though they beat him in their previous meeting, Halladay dominated the Yankees the last time he faced them, throwing a one-hit shutout against them while striking out nine. In his four starts against the Bombers on the season, Halladay has three complete games and lasted seven full in the exception. In those 34 innings he has compiled a 2.65 ERA and 0.91 WHIP.

Mitre’s last start, also against Toronto, was a disaster. He gave up 11 runs in 4 1/3 innings, though he wasn’t helped by his defense in what was one of the sloppiest games the Yankees have played all year. The Yankees run out their standard lineup behind Mitre tonight save for Brett Gardner starting in center over Melky Cabrera.

The Yankees will start Chad Gaudin against Brian Tallet in Wednesday’s finale, skipping Andy Pettitte until Monday due to a bit of late-season shoulder fatigue. Pettitte said he threw a light bullpen Monday night and “felt great,” so it seems the team is just being cautious in anticipation of the playoffs. Still, there will be some lingering concern given that it was a shoulder problem that undermined Pettitte’s performance in the second half last year.

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I hate to break it to you, but the American League races are pretty much over. With roughly 20 games left (less for the Yankees and Twins), the closest race remains the Wild Card, where the Red Sox hold a four-game lead over the Rangers. The Yankees lead the Angels by five games for home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. The Tigers lead the Twins by 5.5 in the Central. The Angels lead the Rangers by six in the West, and the Yankees’ lead over Boston in the East is a comfortable seven games.

Unless something wild happens (and I’m not saying it won’t), the Yankees will host the Tigers in the ALDS, and the Angels will host the Red Sox. If the Yankees advance, they’ll then have homefield advantage over their ALCS opponent, which given the recent playoff history between the two teams (the Angels have won just one game in three ALDS series against Boston since 2004), is more likely to be the Red Sox than the Angels. It’s thus very possible that tonight’s make-up game, and the three games the Yankees will play in Anaheim next week, are in fact a preview of nothing, and could have no significance for the postseason at all as the Yankees would automatically have home field advantage against the Wild Card Red Sox.

Still, an ALCS matchup with the Angels remains a distinct possibility, and the Angels team that arrives in the Bronx tonight is a much better one than the one that swept the Yankees in the final series before the All-Star break. In that last series, Vlad Guerrero and Torii Hunter were on the DL and Scott Kazmir was a Tampa Bay Ray. All three of those players are on the Angels active roster now, and while the Yankees will face Jered Weaver, not Kazmir tonight, they make the Angels a far more dangerous team. The Angels have been winning at a .661 clip since the break, just four-games behind the Yankees’ remarkable pace.

The Yankees would do well to remember that they took two of three from the Angels in the Bronx in May, and that they’ve had some modest success against Weaver this year, scoring eight runs against him in 12 innings and connecting for three home runs (by Jorge Posada, Alex Rodriguez, and Eric Hinske).

Joba Chamberlain takes the hill for the Yankees tonight. After a rough beginning to his last outing, Chamberlain settled down and retired the last eight men he faced in order. He’ll move up to four innings tonight, hoping to build off that performance.

Yankees added journeyman minor league utility man Freddy Guzman to the 40-man roster. Guzman is on his fourth organization this year and will serve as a pinch-runner, defensive replacement, then vanish back into the ether from whence he came. Standard lineup tonight against the Halos.

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The Yankees are 12-3 against the Orioles this year and 12-1 against them since the third day of the season. Last week, the Yanks swept the O’s in a three-game series in Baltimore, outscoring them 24-9. The Yankees now welcome the Orioles to the Bronx having just swept the third-place Rays in four games amid one of the most dominant second-half runs in major league history. The O’s are 12-25 (.324) since the trading deadline and have won just two of their last eight stretching back through that last series against the Yankees.

What makes this series different, other than its location, is that the Yankees get their first look at the O’s two young starting prospects, Chris Tillman and Brian Matusz, who start tonight and tomorrow. Tillman is a tall, skinny, 21-year-old righty who came over in the Erik Bedard trade. Matusz is an equally tall (though not as skinny), 22-year-old lefty who was drafted out of college with the fourth overall pick last year. Neither has had much success in the majors thus far, but they, along with catcher Matt Wieters and outfielders Nick Markakis, Adam Jones (currently on the DL with a bad back), and to a lesser degree Nolan Riemold, should be thorns in the Yankees’ side for years to come. Thus far, Matusz, the polished college product has had more success, though per my man Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus, Tillman remains the better prospect and a potential ace.

Taking on Tillman tonight (weather permitting, and it don’t look good) is Andy Pettitte, who has been ace-like himself in the second half, going 5-1 with a 2.88 ERA while the Yankees have won his last seven starts. Johnny Damon sits out the bad weather with a stiff back. Melky’s in left with Gardner in center, those two hits 8th and 9th. Swisher hits 2nd.

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The Rays arrive in the Bronx today for a Labor Day doubleheader and resultant four-game series trailing the Red Sox by seven games in the Wild Card standings. The Yankees, meanwhile, hold a 7.5-game lead over Boston in the division. It’s thus fair to say that, as secure as the Yankees’ division lead feels, that’s how unlikely it is that the Rays are going to return to the post season.

Put more simply: the Rays are out of the race.

That doesn’t make the remaining seven games between the two teams meaningless (though the three in Tampa in October most likely will be by then), and it doesn’t make the Rays any less competitive. It does, however, deflate the excitement most had expected this September series between division rivals to bring.

Make no mistake, the Rays are rivals. They won the division last year and the two teams are roughly split in their season series to this point, the Yankees taking 6 of 11,but the Rays having scored one more run (60 to 59). Home field hasn’t been much advantage thus far, as the two teams have split six games in Tampa with the Yanks taking three of five in the Bronx. That said, the series has slowly tilted the Yankees way as the season has progressed, with the Rays taking three of the first five and the Yankees four of the last six.

Some accused the Rays of giving up on the season when the traded Scott Kazmir. I’m not entirely sure that’s the case, but the trade was clearly a hedge; Andrew Friedman didn’t want to get stuck without a playoff berth and the remainder of Kazmir’s contract ($20 million the next two years plus an option with a $2.5 million buyout) given the arrival of young, talented, team-controlled arms such as Jeff Niemann (12-5, 3.67 in his first full season), and 23-year-olds David Price and Wade Davis (7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 9 K in his major league debut last night).

The Rays proved they were going for it when they benched Dioner Navarro and his .221/.252/.331 line and replace him via trade with Gregg Zaun, who has since hit .311/.333/.508. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. Look at the lineup at the end of this post for a clue as to why.

The last time the Yankees saw the Rays, B.J. Upton was leading off and Evan Longoria was hitting third. Now they’re hitting sixth (Longoria) and ninth (Upton). Save for a hot June, Upton has been punchless all year, and has hit just .225/.276/.335 with 2 homers and 12 walks since July 1. Longoria, meanwhile, got out to a big start, then did very little in June, July, and August, though he has turned it on of late, hitting .441 and slugging .853 during an active eight-game hitting streak.

All-Star Ben Zobrist replaces Longoria in the three-hole, but he seems to have run out of pixie dust. Since snapping a 12-game hitting streak on July 23, he’s hit a very ordinary .243/.357/.407, and with Akinori Iwamura back from an ACL injury, Zobrist is now a corner outfielder again, making that production all the less useful (though it’s a smidge more than the Rays were getting from Gabe Gross). New leadoff man Jason Bartlett seemed to be out of magic as well in July, but silenced doubters with a .357/.443/.577 August, though he’s cooled off again over his last ten games.

As for today’s double header, the Yankees have stacked the deck, throwing CC Sabathia in Game 1 and A.J. Burnett in the nightcap. Sabathia’s numbers over his last six starts are eyepopping: 5-0, 1.83 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, 10.76 K/9, 7.57 K/BB. The Yankees have won his last seven starts, his last loss coming against the Rays on July 28.

CC goes against Matt Garza, who has spiked his strikeout rate this year and leads the league in fewest hits per nine innings (7.8), but the latter is due to an abnormally low .268 BABIP (though he was at .271 last year), and his home run rate has also spiked, giving him a higher ERA than he had a year ago. Garza’s allowed just 3 runs in 12 innings against the Yanks this year, but has posted a 6.00 ERA over his last five starts.

As for Burnett, everyone keeps talking about the fact that he hasn’t won a game since July 27, a stretch of seven starts, but the Yankees have won three of those starts and A.J. has four quality starts in that stretch, which includes his dominant outing against the Red Sox in that 15-inning scoreless affair on August 7. Still, two of his last three have been awful. With his first playoff start looming roughly a month away, he needs to use his remaining starts to rediscover that groove he had in July lest he become what I’d always feared he’d be, the 2009 version of Randy Johnson, who blew a pair of crucial ALDS Game 3s in his only two Yankee playoff appearances.

Facing Burnett will be Andy Sonnanstine, who initially looked like Kazmir’s replacement down the stretch until Davis announced his presence with authority last night. Not that it really matters. Though Sonnanstine spent all of July and August in the minors, the Yankees have already seen him thrice this year. Sonnanstine got the better of the Yanks the first two times (though without earning a decision either time), but the Yanks touched him up for four homers (by Tex, Swisher, Damon, and Jeter) on June 8, marking his career high for a single game.

Brett Gardner returns for today’s action. He’s playing center and batting ninth in the opener, with Melky in left, Hinske at DH, and Damon and Matsui on the bench. Nick Swisher bats second, Robinson Cano moves up to fifth, and Hinske, Melky, and Gardner, in that order, make up the bottom three.

I’m going to be car shopping today (my 12-year-old Saturn was totaled by a tree branch a month ago and I’ve been too busy in the interim to get to the dealers), so this post will have to serve game threads for both games. I’ll be back late tonight to wrap it all up.

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It’s thus far been a beautiful Labor Day weekend in the tri-state area, and with a double-header against the third-place Rays coming tomorrow, watching Sergio Mitre and Brian Tallet face off on artificial turf in Toronto’s half-empty concrete behemoth of a ballpark might not seem like the best way to spend your Sunday afternoon. Still, there’s a bit of intrigue as the Yankees are looking to win the series. If they do, they’ll have won 14 of 16 second-half sets. As it stands, the Yanks have won eight of their last nine games and should have Mariano Rivera available to close again today.

There’s also the fact that, since Chien-Ming Wang went back on the disabled list, the Yankees are 8-2 in games started by their fifth starter (be it Mitre, Chad Gaudin, or Alfredo Aceves). Mitre is coming off a legitimately dominant outing against the White Sox (0 R, 1 H, 1 BB, 11 of 19 outs on the ground) that was ended after 6 1/3 innings when he was hit on the pitching elbow by a comebacker. Mitre pitched that game on seven-day’s rest and is pitching today having had another seven day’s off.

Tallet has made two starts since July 25 and has a 10.07 ERA over his last four starts. He does, however, have two quality starts against the Yankees this year, both of them Blue Jays loses.

Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada get the day off. Jerry Hairston Jr. plays third and bats seventh ahead of Melky and Jose Molina.

So much for Cito Gaston’s brilliance. Yeah, the Blue Jays traded Scott Rolen, let Alex Rios go via waivers, lost Rolen’s replacement, the disastrous Edwin Encarnacion, to a hamstring injury, and have been forced to play musical closers due to injury and poor performance, and have had to similarly improvise their starting rotation for similar reasons. Despite all that they have outscored their opponents only to find themselves with an actual record eight games worse than their Pythagorean.

The Jays have been in free fall since the end of June, playing .340 baseball (18-35) over that stretch. Since eking out a one-run victory over Sergio Mitre and the Yankees on August 10, they’re 5-16 (.238!). They haven’t won a series, or even had consecutive victories since they faced the Orioles the series before that. Even, Roy Halladay, who pitches tomorrow, has gone 0-3 with a 7.94 ERA over his last three starts. Top prospect Travis Snider has come back from the minors to replace Rios and has hit .167 in 16 games. Things really can’t get much worse for the Jays.

Well, I suppose there’s the Yankees coming to town. The Yanks, like they were against the Orioles prior to their just-completed sweep, are 9-3 against the Jays this year, and two of those losses came in May. The Yankees are 7-1 against Toronto since then. No wonder the Yanks figured they could bounce A.J. Burnett to Monday’s double-header against the Rays and throw Chad Gaudin (tonight), Sergio Mitre (Sunday), and the innings-challenged Joba Chamberlain (tomorrow) in this series. At least they’re giving the Jays a sporting chance.

Rookie of the Year candidate Ricky Romero starts for the Jays tonight. He has two quality starts in as many tries against the Yankees on the season, though the Yankees won the later contest via one of their many extra-inning walkoffs (Cano single). Gaudin was been alternately great and awful in August, striking out 12 in nine scoreless innings in his three “great” appearances (including his one start, in Oakland, all three as a Yankee) and giving up 11 runs in 8 1/3 innings in his three “awful” appearances (two in relief for the Yankees plus one start for the Padres). If he makes like Saberhagen, he’s due for “awful” tonight. Hopefully the Yankees can out-hit whatever it is he gives them.

With Mariano Rivera nursing a tender groin, Phil Hughes will close this weekend. Jonathan Albaladejo has been called up to add innings to the pen. Yanks run out the standard lineup tonight.

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This just in: the Yankees are cruising to their first AL East title since 2006. There, I said it. The Yankees have a six-game lead with 32 left to play and nearly half of those remaining games, 15 of 32, will come against the Royals, Blue Jays, and Orioles, three teams with a combined .416 winning percentage.

The Yankees are 9-3 against the Orioles this season and 9-1 since dropping the first two games of the season in Baltimore due to poor starts by CC Sabathia (who has since turned back into CC Sabathia) and Chien-Ming Wang (who has since landed on the 60-day DL).

Since the Yankees last saw them, the Orioles have traded away first baseman Aubrey Huff, closer George Sherrill, and veteran backup catcher Gregg Zaun. Lone All-Star Adam Jones has been fighting back pain and hasn’t had a hit in over a week, and supposed rookie phenom Matt Weiters has been slower to adjust to major league pitching than was expected (.258/.307/.366 in August with 24 Ks against 6 walks in 25 games). The debuts of top pitching prospects Chris Tillman (yet another product of the Erik Bedard trade) and Brian Matusz have kept the O’s interesting, but the Yankees will miss both this week.

So, really, there’s nothing to see here. The Orioles are 10-19 (.345) on the month and have won just one series in August. The Yankees have lost just two series since the All-Star break, have scored 7.5 runs per game in their 11 contests since being shutout by the A’s and Brett Tomko, are coming off a sweep of the White Sox, and have their top three starters lined up for this series in Andy Pettitte, CC Sabathia, and A.J. Burnett. The O’s will be lucky to avoid a sweep.

Jeremy Guthrie takes the hill for Baltimore tonight coming off a pair of strong starts against the White Sox and Twins. In both outings, Guthrie allowed just one run on six hits in seven innings. In the latter he struck out five against no walks or homers. Of course, his season ERA is 5.26, and he’s 1-2 against the Yankees in three starts this season. Guthrie’s first two starts against the Yanks were similar quality starts (6 IP, 7 H, 3 R). He won the first thanks to Sabathia’s bad outing and lost the second when CC got his revenge with a four-hit shutout. He last faced the Yankees on May 20 and gave up five runs in seven innings to lose to Phil Hughes.

Despite a hiccup in Boston hidden by the offense’s 20-run outburst, Andy Pettitte’s second-half numbers are still fantastic: 2.79 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 9.4 K/9, 3.6 K/BB, just 2 HR allowed in 8 starts averaging more than 6 1/3 innings per start. Andy started that run with 7 1/3 dominant innings against the O’s (1 R, 8 K). Surprisingly, that was his only start against Baltimore this season prior to tonight.

Alex Rodriguez gets the night off tonight. Jerry Hairston Jr., hitting a fluky .316/.413/.553 as a Yankee, plays third and bats eighth. Everyone else moves up a spot.

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Prior to the Rangers’ just-complete series win in the Bronx, the only series the Yankees had lost in the second half came against the White Sox in Chicago. The Sox took three-of-four in that weekend series as July turned to August. The first win came via an unearned run off Andy Pettitte in a 3-2 game. The next two came by a combined score of 24-9 as the Sox tore into Sergio Mitre, Alfredo Aceves, A.J. Burnett, and Phil Coke, who combined to allow 22 of those 24 runs.

Since then, the White Sox have acquired two high-profile players, but have yet to see any benefit from either addition. The first actually occurred on the eve of that last series, when the Sox traded for injured Padres ace Jake Peavy. I analyzed that deal for SI.com:

The White Sox’s trade for Jake Peavy appears on its surface to be a trump card designed to keep them in the division race. It is not that. . . . Peavy is hurt. He tore a tendon in his right ankle in early June, hasn’t pitched since, and isn’t expected back for several of weeks — if at all this season. Certainly the White Sox could benefit from activating Peavy down the stretch if they’re still within striking distance (they’re 2½ games out entering the weekend), and would benefit from his presence in the postseason should they get there. But more likely, the Tigers, with Washburn, are going to win the division.

Indeed, the Sox have since fallen to four games behind the Tigers as Peavy remains on the DL while the Sox have scrambled to fill Clayton Richard’s spot in the rotation. Richards’ spot has come up four times since he was dealt to San Diego in the Peavy deal. The Sox won the first two with spot starters, but have lost the last two behind Freddy Garcia, who will start again on Sunday after Peavy took a liner off his elbow in what was supposed to be his last rehab start.

The other big acquisition was their waiver claim of the Blue Jays’ Alex Rios. The White Sox seemed like one team that could actually benefit from taking on Rios and his contract given their proximity to first place and the .224/.280/.311 line their center fielders had put up prior to Rios’s arrival. However, Rios has started just eight of 13 games in center since joining the Sox, including just three of the last eight and is hitting a mere .200/.213/.333 in that limited time. Rios isn’t helping the White Sox at all, but he’s still going to cost them $59.7 million over the next five years. There’s still a month to go in the season, but Kenny Williams’ claim of the 28-year-old Rios is already looking like a worse move than the contract J.P. Ricciardi signed the 27-year-old Rios too last April.

It will be a great story if Peavy and Rios suddenly emerge to carry the White Sox to the Central title in September, but it ain’t gonna happen. In the meantime, the team the Yankees face this weekend is much the same one they faced at the beginning of the month, minus speedy second baseman Chris Getz, who is out with an oblique strain, and with better work from their bullpen (led by the major’s top set-up man), but weaker work from their rotation.

Tonight’s game pits lefty aces Mark Buehrle and CC Sabathia against each other. The two have had wildly disparate Augusts:

Sabathia: 5-0, 2.65 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, 9.40 K/9, 7.8 K/BB, 1.2 HR/9
Buehrle: 0-3, 6.03 ERA, 1.76 WHIP, 2.59 K/9, 1.5 K/BB, 1.7 HR/9

On top of that, Sabathia and Buehrle have met up ten previous times without Buehrle ever picking up a win. CC is 6-0 in those match-ups.

Jose Molina starts again today as Jorge Posada continues to rest his bruised ring finger. Same lineup as yesterday.

In other news, the Yankees have decided to put Joba Chamberlain back in regular rotation, but to honor his innings limit by taking him out early. Sounds like a move to long relief minus the baggage of the word “bullpen.” This is a viable option because of the team’s lead in the division and rosters expanding on Tuesday, thus deepening the bullpen in support of Joba’s short starts. Given how poorly Joba’s pitched on irregular rest and how well he’s pitched in short stints in the past, this does seem like a better plan, even if it will drive some fans nuts to see Joba repeatedly pulled after five or fewer dominant innings.

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The Yankees have scored 47 runs over their last five games. That works out to 9.4 runs per game. They’ve scored a minimum of eight runs in four of those five contests, all of which have come against the top two teams in the Wild Card race. That’s what 28-year-old righty Dustin Nippert has to contend with this afternoon.

Nippert has made just seven previous starts this year. Just one of them was a quality start. This is just his fifth start in regular rotation. In the previous four the Rangers have gone 1-3 despite Nippert’s average 4.50 ERA and strong strikeout rate.

Nippert goes up against A.J. Burnett, who is coming off his miserable outing in Boston. In August, Burnett has sandwiched three quality starts between two total stinkers in which he’s given up 16 runs in 9 2/3 innings.

Jose Molina catches Burnett this afternoon, but not because of the head-butting A.J. and Jorge Posada were doing in Boston. Molina was scheduled to catch today’s day-game-after-night-game regardless of the pitcher, and the foul ball Posada took off his left ring finger last night cinched it. The rest of the lineup is the usual suspects, with Johnny Damon returning to left field.

The last two times the Yankees lost the first game of a series, they bounced back to win the next two and the series, doing so in Oakland and at home against the Blue Jays. The Rangers pose more of a challenge, but the Yanks hope to repeat the feat starting tonight as veteran lefty Andy Pettitte takes on 22-year-old lefty prospect Derek Holland.

Andy got smacked around a bit in his last start, but the Yankees scored 20 runs, so not many people noticed or cared. Prior to that he’d been awesome in the second half with five quality starts in six tries, a 2.04 ERA, and a 4.3 K/BB. Against the Rangers on June 3, he gave up four runs on seven hits and six walks in just five innings.

Holland started against the Yankees on May 27 and gave up six runs (five earned) on ten hits and two walks. He then gave up two more runs to them in relief the following week. Along the way, the rookie gave up homers to Derek Jeter, Hideki Matsui, and Kevin Cash (!). He’s come a long way since then, however, and has posted a 2.95 ERA in seven starts since returning to the rotation in mid-July. He’s been particularly sharp in his last four starts: 1.85 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 3.5 K/9. The best of those outings was a three-hit, eight-strikeout shutout of the Angels, with his 8 2/3 innings of one-run, two-hit, ten-K ball against the Mariners finishing second.

Johnny Damon sits today. Nick Swisher bats second. Jerry Hairston Jr. bats ninth and plays left. Everyone else is in their usual places.

When the Yankees first played the Rangers in late May, I took a look at Texas and saw Toronto, at hot team with a strong defense that had yet to be tested by its schedule and thus seemed headed for a fall. The Blue Jays fulfilled that prophecy by going 10-24 (.294) against the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays and playing at a .429 overall clip after going 15-9 in April. The Rangers, however, have proven me wrong.

Against the Red Sox, Angels, Rays, and White Sox this season, the Rangers have gone 24-9 (.727), and they nearly matched their 20-9 May with a 17-8 July. As a result, Texas enters this week’s three-game series in the Bronx just 1.5 games behind Boston in the Wild Card race, and 11.5 games ahead of the seventh-place Blue Jays.

How have they done it? That great defense, led by rookie shortstop Elvis Andrus and break-out right-field slugger Nelson Cruz, has played a large part, as it has helped the Texas pitching staff (brace yourself) allow the fewest runs per game in the American League. Yes, the Texas Rangers‘ pitching staff.

The Rangers have needed pitching since they arrived from Washington. Even two of their three playoff entries allowed more than the league average of runs per game. This year, however, that’s all changed. Leading the charge has been veteran Kevin Millwood, who starts tonight. Millwood has benefited tremendously from the improved defense behind him. In his first three seasons as a Ranger, Millwood’s BABIPs were .310, .340, and .358. This year, opposing batters are hitting just .274 on balls in play, and Millwood’s ERA has dropped a full run and a half as a result.

Behind Millwood, 26-year-old sophomore starter Scott Feldman has paired a similarly low BABIP with improved peripherals to shave a run and a half off of his own ERA. Toss aside his three ugly relief outings in April and he has gone 13-4 with a 3.46 ERA in his 23 starts. More recently, 22-year-old rookie Tommy Hunter has gone 6-2 with a 2.66 ERA in ten starts since joining the rotation at the end of June, thanks in part to a still-lower BABIP.

One Ranger starter who is not just a product of his team’s defense is 22-year-old rookie Derek Holland. Holland, who starts tomorrow night, has thrived since his mid-July return to the rotation, going 4-2 with a 2.95 ERA over seven starts and 4-1 with a 1.85 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, and 3.5 K/BB over his last five. He’s a legitimate prospect who could pair with recently promoted 21-year-old Neftali Feliz (part of the Mark Teixeira booty) to give the Rangers a legitimate rotation in the years to come. Feliz is working out of the major league pen for now and has struck out 19 men in 14 2/3 innings against just one walk and four hits. Be afraid.

The Rangers’ bullpen has been a large part of their success this year. First-year closer Frank Francisco has been on and off the DL, but has struck out 41 in 35 innings against just 8 walks (10.5 K/9, 5.13 K/BB). Deposed closer and current lefty set-up man C.J. Wilson has done admirably both setting up and closing for Francisco, striking out 61 in 56 innings and allowing just three home runs. Righty Darren O’Day, a mid-season waiver claim from the Mets, has posted a 1.87 ERA with similarly sharp peripherals in 50 games since arriving in Texas and leads the team in the win-expectancy-based WXRL.

The Rangers have pitched so well, in fact, that it’s easy to overlook the fact that they’re not hitting as much as they used to. Josh Hamilton has been hurt and only recently found his stroke (.373/.425/.513 since August 3, .657 OPS before that). Chris Davis struck out 114 times in 77 games and was demoted in early July. Hank Blalock has taken Davis’s place by getting on base at a .274 clip and doing little other than hitting homers. Andrus is hitting (and running) just enough to make his glove valuable, but no more. Prior to his current arm injury, fellow Teixeira-trade product Jarrod Saltalamacchia wasn’t doing that. Ian Kinsler is not repeating his production from last year and was hurt for a while himself. All of that has counteracted Cruz’s breakout, Andruw Jones ultimately half-hearted comeback, and Michael Young’s MVP-quality performance (if not for his stone glove and that Joe Mauer guy, of course). As a result the Rangers are actually a tick below league average in runs scored per game at 4.85. As usual, that gets worse on the road, where they’ve scored just 4.2 runs per game on the season.

Could this Yankees-Rangers series in the hitting-friendly Yankee Stadium yield a series of pitchers’ duels? Don’t be surprised if it does.

Joba Chamberlain goes against Millwood tonight on eight-day’s rest. He had nine days off around the All-Star break and came back looking like and ace, allowing two runs on eight hits over his next three starts. He then had seven days off before facing the Red Sox at the beginning of the month and came back looking like the nibbler we saw in the first half of the season, walking seven in five innings. Which Joba takes the mound tonight is anyone’s guess. It was the nibbler who faced Texas in Arlington back in late May (4 IP, 4 BB).

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I said in my series preview yesterday that I thought taking two of three in Boston this weekend would ice the AL East title for the Yankees. All they need to do to reach that goal is beat 23-year-old Japanese rookie Junichi Tazawa in this afternoon’s FOX game.

Tazawa made his major league debut in the 14th inning of that 15-inning scoreless marathon between the Yanks and Sox at the new Yankee Stadium two weeks ago. The Yanks hit him hard in that inning, with both Eric Hinske and Melky Cabrera just missing game-winning hits down the right-field line with runners on first and second, but ultimately came up empty, only to finally tally off Tazawa in the bottom of the 15th via a Derek Jeter single and an Alex Rodriguez walk-off homer.

Tazawa pitched well at Fenway against the Tigers in his first major league start four days later, striking out six in five innings and allowing just one earned run on four hits and two walks, but his last outing, in Texas, was shakier as he failed to strike out a batter and gave up four runs on ten hits, two of them homers, in another five frames.

Today, he takes on A.J. Burnett, who was the Yankee starter in that 15-inning marathon. Burnett was awful in his first two starts against Boston this year, but came up huge in that game, pitching 7 2/3 innings of scoreless, one-hit baseball despite six walks. He’s turned in two more quality starts since then, giving him 11 in his last 12 outings dating back to his last start at Fenway, in which he failed to survive the third inning.

Jason Varitek, who homered of Sergio Mitre in then ninth inning last night, returns to the Red Sox lineup to face Burnett while Mike Lowell sits. Johnny Damon, who fouled a ball of his knee in the top of the first on Friday night, sits today in favor of Eric Hinske. Hinske plays left and bats eighth. Nick Swisher takes Damon’s spot in the two-hole. The Red Sox have reloaded their bullpen, demoting Michael Bowden, who threw 63 pitches in two innings while allowing seven runs Friday night, in favor of Enrique Gonzalez. Given Tazawa’s brief track record, the Yankees will likely bring the underside of the Boston pullpen into play today as well, which bodes well for the Bombers, as do most things these days.

In the good old Curse of the Bambino days, it seemed the Red Sox always led the AL East on Memorial Day, and the Yankees always caught and passed them by Labor Day. The Sox broke the Curse in 2004, but the Yankees still won the division that year and the next two, with the Red Sox failing to reach the postseason at all in 2006. It seemed 2004 was a fluke. Then the Sox stormed to both the division title and another world championship in 2007 and it was the Yankees who found themselves watching the postseason on television in 2008.

The Yankees, flush with the new stadium revenue, spent wildly this past winter, but I still thought they’d have to settle for the Wild Card given the strength and depth of the Red Sox’s roster. Indeed, the Red Sox held a slim one-game lead over the Bombers on Memorial Day having already won the first five head-to-head games between the two teams to that point. Two weeks later, the Sox would take three more from the Yankees in Fenway Park, suggesting that, no matter how well the Yankees played against everyone else, the Red Sox were still the better team.

Then came the four-game set in the Bronx two weeks ago, when the Yankees not only got of the schnide against their division rivals, but beat them in every way possible (13-6 laugher; 15-inning scoreless duel; clean, well-pitched 5-0 win; and dramatic late-inning comeback). When the dust cleared, the Yankees held a convincing 6.5 game lead, a lead they’ve maintained heading into this weekend’s three-game set in Boston.

Both teams have gone 7-3 in the interim. The Yankees won series against the second-division Blue Jays and A’s as well as the should-be second-division Mariners. The Red Sox took a four-game set from the AL Central-leading Tigers, but dropped two of three to the Wild Card rival Rangers, only to rebound by sweeping the Jays, outscoring them 14-2 in their last two games.

The Yankees now arrive at Fenway to do the one thing they haven’t managed to do all season: beat the Red Sox in Boston. The Sox are a .679 team at home, where they score 5.66 runs per game and allow just 4.05. The Yankees, however, are no chumps on the road. Coming off a 5-2 west coast swing, they’re playing .565 ball away from home, scoring 5.44 runs and allowing 4.58 away from their homer-happy home park. Only the Angels and Phillies have had more road success than the Yankees in all of baseball.

Once again, the mission for the Yankees is to prove it when it counts. Their four-game sweep of the Red Sox in the Bronx didn’t ice the division, but if they can take two of three from Boston this weekend, doing it to them in their own park and leaving town with a 7.5-game lead with just three head-to-head games in the Bronx remaining, that very well could do the trick.

The pitching matchups favor the Yankees as they’ll have their top three (Andy Pettitte, A.J. Burnett, and CC Sabathia) going while avoiding Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz, the latter of whom has turned in three straight quality starts dating back to his six innings of two-run ball against the Yankees on August 8. If the two teams split the first two games, Sunday night’s ESPN matchup of Josh Beckett and the red-hot CC Sabathia will be must-see TV for baseball fans of all stripes.

Brad Penny goes tonight. Relative to the performance of John Smoltz and the health of Rocco Baldelli, Penny has been a successful gamble. In a rotation that has been surprisingly thin due to Daisuke Matsuzaka’s disaster season, Tim Wakefield’s back injury, Smoltz’s failure, and the departure of Justin Masterson in the Victor Martinez deal, Penny hasn’t missed a turn, delivering 23 starts, 11 of them quality. Sure, his 5.22 ERA is ugly, but he was never supposed to be more than a fifth starter, and he’s been very much that. He’s been a bit too hitable (opponents hitting .291/.345/.482), but he gets out there and battles. He also shut out the Yankees at Fenway for six innings back on June 11.

Penny’s mound opponent tonight is Andy Pettitte, who has been flat awesome since the All-Star break with five quality starts in six tries, posting a 2.04 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, 4.3 K/BB, 9.73 K/9, and allowing just one home run in 39 2/3 innings. That run includes seven shutout innings against the Red Sox in the Bronx on August 9.

Adding to that disadvantage, the Red Sox are without Jason Varitek tonight for the fifth straight game due to a sore neck and have now resorted to reacquiring Alex Gonzalez to play shortstop. Gonzalez is hitting .214/.258/.298 on the season and has never had another defensive season like he had for the Red Sox in 2006. He’s also just one year removed from knee surgery. The Sox might actually be better off without their captain in the lineup, but Gonzalez represents a hole in the Boston order that just doesn’t exist for the Bombers.

Damaso Marte has been activated and joins the Yankee bullpen tonight, bumping Ramiro Peña back to Triple-A. Marte has been on the disabled list for most of the season with shoulder problems, last appearing for the Yankees on April 25. He pitched 13 innings on his rehab assigment, 11 of them coming in Triple-A. In those 11, he struck out nine against four walks and gave up three runs on ten hits, two of them homers. That all works out to a 2.45 ERA and 1.27 WHIP with solid strikeout and walk rates, but the PawSox (whom he faced twice) and the Red Sox are two different monsters.

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The Yankees enter tonight’s game having lost consecutive games for the first time in August. Last night they were shut out for the first time since June 23 (though honorable mention goes to that 15-inning scoreless tie on August 7). This is what qualifies as a slump in a second-half that has seen the Yankees go a staggering 23-8 (.742).

Vallejo, California native CC Sabathia takes the mound to try to keep Yankees from playing like a normal team comprised of humans rather than ass-kicking baseball-playing robots. He has his own battle to fight as well, as he’s struggled at the Coliseum over the course of his career (0-4 with an 8.54 ERA in his last five starts there). CC has been flat awesome in his last two starts (15 2/3 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 HR, 4 BB, 19 K, 0.57 WHIP, 0.57 ERA, 2-0).

Facing CC will be Hackensack, NJ native Vin Mazzaro, who gave up six runs in 4 1/3 innings against the Yankees in the Bronx on July 23. Mazzaro started his major league career in June with four quality starts, but hasn’t had one since. He did pick up wins his last two times out by holding his opponents to three runs across five innings, but those opponents were the Royals and Orioles.

The Yankees run out their standard lineup tonight against the righty Mazzaro. That means Hideki Matsui is back in at DH having missing just one game after having his knee drained during Sunday’s contest. Last night the lineup behind Derek Jeter went 4-for-28 with a pair of walks against Brett Tomko and company. They’re almost guaranteed do better tonight.