Last week Derek Jeter was on the Jimmy Fallon Show. The Roots and Fallon tried out some new theme music for Jeter’s at bats.

Here’s the winner:

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

A Go Figure Sunday ended on the good foot for the home team. Here’s what you need to know: Alex Rodriguez and Alfonso Soriano homered, Mariano gave up two dingers, blew his third save opportunity in a row (the first time that’s ever happened in his career), and Brett Gardner hit a game-ending shot into the middle deck of the right field seats.

Rodriguez’s home run led off the second inning. It was a long pop fly, really. He hit a high, outside fastball for a line drive single in his second at bat and didn’t see where the ball went so he stood there at the plate looking like a dope (remember he pulled the same was-that-a-foul-ball? move when he hit a homer once at Fenway Park).

Lil’ Sori hit a solo home run, the 2,000th hit of his career and while Andy Pettitte was mediocre again, the Yankee bullpen held things together–Shawn Kelly and Boone Logan were especially good. They had a 4-2 lead in eighth when David Robertson gave up a solo shot and then an infield hit. Rodriguez made a nice play moving to his right and threw to second to get the lead runner. Never mind that the ump botched the call.

Gardner did him one better when he tracked a deep fly ball by Torii Hunter, caught it, and slammed against the wall. He flipped the ball to Soriano who threw it to the infield and doubled off Austin Jackson, who stood on second base confused as to what happened (he must have seen Gardner flip the ball and assumed that he had not caught it).

A relief, then, to have Miguel Cabrera lead off the ninth. Against Mo, again.

And Mariano had two strikes on him. But then made a lousy pitch and as we know, Cabrera doesn’t miss those. Another homer.

One out later…

Mo threw another horseshit pitch, this one to Victor Martinez who launched it deep into the seats in right.

So another save blown. And Michael Kay almost hyperventilated telling us that it’d never happened before, three in a row.

But Jose Veras, ah, Jose Veras, pitched for the Tigers in the bottom of the inning. Hunter made a nice catch to rob Eduardo Nunez of an extra base hit, Vernon Wells got out in front of a breaking ball and hit a long foul before striking out, but then Gardner hit the second pitch he saw into the second deck.

Gatorade bath and all those hurt feelings made better.

Final Score: Yanks 5, Tigers 4.

Andy, man, he’s looked old this summer. But he’s on the hill today against Justin Verlander.

Brett Gardner CF
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Lyle Overbay 1B
Alfonso Soriano LF
Curtis Granderson DH
Eduardo Nunez SS
Chris Stewart C

Never mind reality:

Let’s Go Yank-ees

[Photo via: Aberrant Beauty]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Phil Hughes didn’t pitch well. Neither did Joba Chamberlain. The Yankee hitters didn’t score much. Should I go on?

The Tigers put up 9 runs on 17 hits. About the only one who got relief for the Yanks is Alex Rodriguez who had the day off. Had he played, fans would have certainly had a fat target on which to direct their frustration.

Final Score: Tigers 9, Yanks 3.

And moving on…

[Painting by Matthew Davis]

Once again, it’s our pal Phil Hughes. On a humid summer day. Against a powerful-hitting team. Yeah, so, I know, it doesn’t look good for him. And I’ve been as down on him as anyone but you know what? Screw it.

The man needs some love. And today, he’s getting it from my corner of the Bronx.

Day-off for Rodriguez:

Brett Gardner CF
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Alfonso Soriano DH
Curtis Granderson LF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Lyle Overbay 1B
Jayson Nix 3B
Austin Romine C

Never mind the odds:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Leroy H. Woodson via This Isn’t Happiness]

What you need to know is that Ivan Nova pitched another good game and Rick Porcello wasn’t bad either. You should know that Alex Rodriguez was cheered and booed in his return to The Stadium, the boos becoming more piercing as the night wore on and he whiffed in three of his four at bats. You need to know that the Yankees had a two-run lead in the ninth and Austin Jackson on second with one out when Tori Hunter came to the plate.

Hunter’s one of those guys who has never had much luck against Mariano. So, what happens? He blisters a cutter back up-the-middle. It’s headed directly for Mo’s nuts, on one clean hop. But Rivera fields the ball, hops in the air, turns to second to freeze Jackson and then throws the ball to first for the second out.

Okay, now for one more for the money.

Miguel Cabrera, 0-4 in his career against Mo, popped the first pitch up in foul territory. Lyle Overbay edged his way near the camera well, reached over, extended his glove, the ball just out of his reach. If only he…damn.

Still, Mo got ahead 1-2 and then Cabrera fouled a pitch off his left knee. He called time, and hobbled around for a few minutes. Play resumed, he got back in the box, Rivera threw practically the same pitch and Cabrera fouled this one a few inches lower, same leg. He didn’t swing at the next pitch, a cutter outside but was ready when Mo made a mistake. Cause this next one may have been down  but it right over the plate. And Cabrera being the stud that he is, did not miss it. In fact, he murdalized it, and the fucking thing sailed well over the fence in center field. The game was tied.

Mo’s second straight blown save, some hurt feelings all around, and a bummer of the first magnitude. Yet it was hard not to be impressed. Cabrera is a beast, and hey, at least Mo didn’t get beaten by a chump.

Prince Fielder followed with a double and after an intentional walk Mo got out of it. His boys didn’t do dick in the bottom of the inning and the Tigers left two men stranded on base in the tenth.

Jayson Nix, who replaced Rodriguez in the ninth cause he’s a better glove, walked to start the bottom of the inning against Al Alburquerque. Curtis Granderson, not bunting, singled to right, Nix to second.

So I sat on my couch and asked Overbay not to hit into a double play (using my late night, inside voice, my pleading voice). He got ahead 2-1, swung through a tight, darting slider, fouled another pitch off, and then swung through a splitter, to strike out. The pitch was in the dirt, so low that got passed the catcher allowing the runners to advance. Nunez was walked intentionally for…Chris Stewart.

And I wondered if maybe a squeeze wasn’t in order. Stewart hit into a double player earlier in the game, you know.

Here’s out it went: Fastball, inside, ball one. Fastball at the knees for a strike, 1-1.Slider, inside, swung on and missed, 1-2. Outfield shallow, infield tight. Fastball, outside corner and he just stares at it for strike three.

Grimace, teeth grind, walk of shame.

Gritty Gritner took a strike and then slapped a little ground ball between third and short, an innocent little grounder, but one that found the hole and got into the outfield, which permitted the game-winning run to score.

Yanks 4, Tigers 3.

Exhale, y’all.

The Yanks limp home to the Bronx. Alex Rodriguez’s return is the only thing breathing life into a weekend series against a formidable Tigers team.

1.  Gardner CF

2.  Suzuki RF

3. Cano 2B

4. Soriano DH

5. Rodriguez 3B

6. Granderson LF

7. Overbay 1B

8. Nunez SS

9. Stewart C

It’s Nova…

Never mind the bollocks: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

The Wife’s favorite comment this season is, “Who?!?!” Cause she can’t keep track of all these dudes. Over at SI.com, Joe Lemire on trading places nature of the 2013 Yankees:

Every so often, Yankees traveling secretary Ben Tuliebitz will pick up the P.R. department’s game notes, scan the list of all the players who have participated for the club this season and stumble across a name he hadn’t considered for a while. Cody Eppley? Ben Francisco? It’s easy to forget those players were 2013 Yankees, but both were on the Opening Day roster, an ancient document of little present-day use.

“This has been the craziest year for me,” said Tuliebitz, who is in his seventh season as traveling secretary. “I have a checklist of all the things I need to do, and it seems like every time I start crossing something off my list, I have to add something because we’re going to call this guy up and send this guy down.”

…It’s Cashman’s job to choose the players and Tuliebitz’s job to get them there, no matter the logistics. Veteran first baseman Travis Ishikawa, for instance, was home with his family in the Bay Area when the Yankees plucked him off the waiver wire, so Tuliebitz said he arranged for Ishikawa, the player’s wife and their two young children to fly cross-country. Ishikawa arrived a day earlier than his family in order to play on July 8. His family made the game, but they weren’t around much longer — Ishikawa played just the one game before being designated for assignment on July 11.

Adams arrived at the ballpark at first pitch on Monday night after his flight landed two hours before the 7:10 p.m. CDT start and rush hour traffic impeded his progress from there. That’s still better than his return to Triple A two weeks ago. The team was playing in Louisville, but all New York-area flights there were canceled because of storms, so Adams instead was booked on a flight to Cincinnati. The bad weather delayed that flight five hours, so he was bunkered down in Newark airport until 1 a.m., landing in Cincinnati at 3 and then taking a car service the last hour and a half to Louisville.

Things fall apart. It looked there for the taking. Alfonso Soriano hit a two-run home run in the first, the Yanks built up a 4-0 lead and it didn’t matter that they left a ton of men on base (and in scoring position, no less) because C.C. Sabathia was dealing. Until the 7th, that is, when the first two men reached and then Paul Konerko hit a double to score a run. But C.C. got out of the inning, thanks in part to an alert play by Robinson Cano, with the lead. And that lead held until two outs in the 9th. Mariano retired the first two batters then gave up a double and with two strikes to Adam Dunn, a single to left field which scored the tying run.

Blown save. Oy. Mo did pitch a scoreless 10th inning, though. And Robinson Cano looked to bail him out when he hit a solo home run in the top of the 12th but Adam Warren botched the save in the bottom of the inning–couple of base hits and a game-winning triple did him, and the Yankees, in.

Final Score: White Sox 6, Yankees 5.

A tough loss on a rough trip. That’s 1-5 against the sad-ass Padres and White Sox. Which makes the Yankees, what? Sad asses. Plenty of bruised feelings to go around.

[Photo Credit: David Banks/USA Today]

It’s C.C.

Brett Gardner CF
Alfonso Soriano LF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells DH
Curtis Granderson RF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Lyle Overbay 1B
Austin Romine C

Never mind the speeches:

Let’s Go Big Fella!

[Image Via: Belles d’amour]

Yeah, Hard Luck Hiroki didn’t pitch poorly. It was that damn 3rd run he gave up before getting the final out in the 7th. Otherwise, man, he pitched another competent game. But the Yankees had Chris Sale on their hands, a formidable, hard-throwing lefty. They scored a run and would have had another if the home plate umpire didn’t blow a call at the plate. When your team doesn’t score those moments are critical because the Yanks scored another run in the 9th but Alfonso Soriano whiffed with the tying run on base and that was that: another loss. And the downward spiral continues.

Final Score: White Sox 3, Yanks 2.

[Photo Credit: David Banks/AP]

It’s Hiroki–Our Guy!

Brett Gardner CF
Alfonso Soriano LF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells RF
Jayson Nix 3B
Eduardo Nunez SS
David Adams 1B
Austin Romine C

Never mind the boo boids:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo via This Isn’t Happiness]

Alex Rodriguez wasn’t half-bad at the plate last night. He had a bloop single in his first at bat, drove a high fastball to deep center the next time up (hit it pretty well but it was just high enough for him not to center it), was late on an inside fastball in his third at bat and flied out to deep left, and then struck out looking to end his night. Unfortunately, Andy Pettitte wasn’t half-good. The White Sox scored 3 runs in the first inning and while nobody hit the ball hard and luck was on the home team’s side, things got worse after that and Pettitte was gone before the end of the 3rd inning.

Rough night for the Bombers. Final score: White Sox 8, Yankees 1. 

Derek Jeter goes back on the DL, David Adams called up, Brent Lillibridge cut, Andy Pettitte faces—ah, screw it: Alex Rodriguez is in the lineup tonight.

Brent Gardner CF
Alfonso Soriano DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Vernon Wells 1B
Curtis Granderson LF
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Chris Stewart C

Never mind the boo birds:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Is Bud writes Glenn Stout:

Measured only by the dollar, Selig’s tenure has been a success. However, by almost any other method, it has been a failure, for during his tenure whatever special place baseball still held in American society and culture has irreparably eroded. More than that however, baseball used to matter. Now, despite its financial health, the game is in many ways like an invalid living on an old fortune, wealthy but sequestered, important only to those who still need to keep the old boy alive to live off the crumbs that drop from his lap.

…At the same time, under Selig, the credibility of the game has been shredded. Under his limited sense of leadership, the game chose not just to ignore PEDs, but to revel in their impact, to juice the game artificially after a period of labor strife. Did they plan this? No. Did they see it happen and get all goose-bumpy, and start drooling at the financial rewards? Absolutely. As long as the checks cleared it mattered not that a host of records essentially became meaningless, that history was devalued, or that fully two decades of seasonal results are suspect (including Boston’s long awaited world championships in 2004 and 2007). All in the name of short-term gain, baseball under Selig chose to insult the intelligence of several generations of fans in favor of those who came to the game, not as fans, but as corporate guests.

Baseball has always been a business, but for years its success depended, at least in part, on the ease with which it was easy to forget that. All pretense of that is gone now. Baseball is only business, and business is the only measure that matters. Witness the changes to the All-Star game, the playoffs, the escalating cost of watching the game, in person, on TV, or the Internet. If there is a National Pastime anymore, it is the ATM.

And let’s not forget drug testing.

ss

No, we aren’t talking about Alex Rodriguez. His nightmare is recurring and not likely to go away anytime soon. Tomorrow will bring official word that he’s being suspended and the coming days and weeks will give us more than we can stomach.

Today’s nightmare isn’t even Phil Hughes, who didn’t make it out of the 3rd inning today pitching in front of family and friends in San Diego. No, it’s Derek Jeter who has a Grade 1 calf strain:

“It’s been terrible,” Jeter said. “It’s been like a nightmare. The whole season has been a nightmare. I really don’t know what to tell you. I wish that wasn’t the case and we were sitting here talking about something besides another injury. We’ll see what happens. I have no idea.”

The game, a bummer (Padres 6, Yanks 3) but the news is more dispiriting than that.

..with more mishegoss on deck. Buckle up.

[Photo Credit: Matt Slocum/AP]

It’s Phil Hughes vs. former Yankee, and new Padre, Ian Kennedy. This is the first time Kennedy has ever pitched against the Yanks.

Ichiro Suzuki RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Alfonso Soriano LF
Curtis Granderson CF
Lyle Overbay 1B
Eduardo Nunez SS
Jayson Nix 3B
Austin Romine C
Phil Hughes RHP

Never mind tomorrow’s hoopla:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

There is a sentiment within and around the Yankees that if they are to make the playoffs, they need CC Sabathia to pitch like CC Sabathia. This is a rather short-sighted point of view. The Yankees have five starting pitchers, and like most staffs, those pitchers can be easily ranked from one through five; the names shouldn’t matter. Contending teams need an ace, a pitcher they can count on to win big games down the stretch, and the Yankees happen to have two of them — Hiroki Kuroda and Ivan Nova. Their third and fourth starters are Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes, which, in the event that the Yankees make the playoffs, would leave Sabathia as a left-handed specialist out of the bullpen.

So instead of worrying about Sabathia, we should instead be thankful for Nova. He was on the mound for the Yankees on Saturday night, and he did what aces do: he shut down the opposition to give his team a much-needed victory.

With bad news bookending the game (the Yankees pulled Derek Jeter from the lineup to rest his ailing leg and announced that he’d likely miss a game or two, and ESPN reported after the game that Alex Rodríguez will be suspended on Monday through the end of 2014), the nine innings in between were a welcome respite.

Nova took a few innings to find his groove, but he was able to work out of minor trouble early on. He gave up consecutive singles with one out in the first inning, then yielded a lead-off double in the second, but in each case he emerged unscathed. After that second-inning double off the bat of Alexi Amarista, Nova retired fifteen consecutive Padres and never really broke a sweat. Only one of those fifteen batters was even able to work a three-ball count; that was Chase Headley in the sixth, who then struck out on the next pitch.

The problem for the Yankees, though, was that San Diego starting pitcher Tyson Ross was just as good. Ross set down the first thirteen hitters he faced, and did so in fairly dominant fashion, striking out seven of them with a strong fastball, a quality changeup, and a devastating slider. Lyle Overbay broke the spell with a clean single in the fifth, but it wasn’t until the seventh inning that the Yankees were able to make any headway against Ross.

Alfonso Soriano lifted a fly ball that floated just over the infield and landed just in front of center fielder Amarista for a single. Soriano had given up on the play immediately and jogged to first, costing himself a double, but Curtis Granderson erased that minor mistake two pitches later when he launched a home run to right field to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. Consecutive walks to Overbay and Eduardo Núñez pushed Ross from the game, but the Yanks weren’t able to do any more damage that inning.

Will Venable doubled to lead off the Padres’ seventh, but once again Nova simply bowed his neck against the yoke. He struck out Jedd Gyorko on three pitches, got Amarista to ground out, then followed his first walk of the game with his eighth strike out to end the threat. He had only thrown 85 pitches on the night, but he was done. His final line was impressive (7 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 8 K), but it was really just more of what we’ve come to expect from him. Over his last five starts — a significant sample size — Nova’s numbers look like this: 38 IP, 25 H, 7 R, 10 BB, 37 K, 1.66 ERA, 0.92 WHIP. If it looks like an ace, and walks like an ace, it must be an ace. He’s 3-2 over those five games, but only because the Yankees managed just a total of five hits in his two losses.

David Robertson pitched an efficient eighth inning, the Yankees scored another run in the ninth with a Granderson single, stolen base, and an RBI single from Jayson Nix, and then it was time for Mariano Rivera.

Each of Rivera’s appearances now are bitter sweet. It’s as if you’re eating the most delicious piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever had. Even as you’re delighting in each heavenly bite, you can’t help but feel a bit of sadness as you watch the piece on your plate growing smaller and smaller. And so it is with Rivera. How many more times will we get to see him take the mound? Fifteen? Twenty? Each one now is precious.

As chants of “Mar-ee-ah-no!” were filtering down from the San Diego crowd, the Great One produced another masterpiece. Venable and Gyorko were retired on fly balls that wouldn’t have scared anyone in a slow-pitch softball game, and Amarista struck out swinging on three pitches. All three men will tell their grandchildren about those at bats.

Yankees 3, Padres 0.

[Photo Credit: Denis Poroy/Getty Images]

Alex Rodriguez spoke to reporters after he hit a home run in a rehab game last night. And here is Sally Jenkin’s Washington Post column on Rodriguez vs. Selg:

Selig and A-Rod’s attorneys are discussing a “settlement” according to reports. A settlement? The word is an apt description of how this commissioner operates: What’s most important to him is not the health of players but the health of revenues. Last year Selig bragged on the “Mike & Mike” radio show, “I said to the owners, ‘Look, guys, in the end you can judge me by asset values. Because in the end, that is really the sum total of everything we do.’ ”

A-Rod is the perfect defendant for a show trial. He is despised alike by spittle-flecked hecklers behind the plate who scream at him for not hitting in the clutch and by solemn self-appointed keepers of the emerald chessboard’s sanctity for admitting four years ago to PED use during a three-year stretch with Texas from 2001 to 2003. He’s an incurably self-conscious phony who incredibly still insists he’s “a role model,” an awkwardly hapless stumbler who is always getting caught, whether frequenting a shady clinic or letting Cameron Diaz feed him popcorn on camera like Cleopatra taking grapes from a love slave. He is a tone-deaf egotist who never understood the deep resentment he engendered by being baseball’s highest paid player and then not producing astronomic numbers. The reaction to him by fans and critics has always been excessive to the point of disturbing. My friend Joe Posnanski wrote maybe the truest thing ever about A-Rod and his audience: He gives them “guilt-free hate.”

Meanwhile, the Yanks are still in San Diego.

Never mind the hubbub:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Stephen Shore]

Nineteen ninety-eight was a lifetime ago. Personally, I had only just started dating my wife, and we were still just imagining the three children we have now. The Yankees, meanwhile, won every single night and coasted through the first two rounds of the playoffs before sweeping the Padres in the World Series. It was all a lifetime ago, and last night’s game in San Diego was a harsh, harsh reminder.

For one thing, CC Sabathia used to be an absolute stud. Even when things were going well for the Yankees — and I’m not thinking back all the way to 1998 anymore — CC’s games stood out on the schedule. He was the horse who would always pitch seven or eight innings, and even on the nights when he didn’t have his best stuff, you’d still look up in the end and he’d have made it through seven innings while allowing just three runs and earning a hard-fought win. He was that rare quantity — the pitcher on the staff with the best stuff and the most heart.

Because of that, the fall of Sabathia has been perhaps the most unsettling part of this incredibly unsettling season. He was good in April, stringing together three straight quality starts, but it’s been all downhill since then. His monthly ERA numbers have looked like this: 3.35, 4.14, 5.11, and a whopping 6.60 in July. He has been the worst Yankee starter this season, it hasn’t even been close. If his name weren’t CC Sabathia, there would be talk of removing him from the rotation. But since his name is CC Sabathia, he will almost certainly take the mound ten more times this season, and there’s nothing to indicate that those starts won’t go like it did on Friday night.

The Padres didn’t waste any time, as they sent seven men to the plate in the first inning and scored two runs. The first run came on a bases-loaded walk, the second on a ground out to the pitcher. Sabathia made a highlight reel play to get that out, otherwise the inning might have lasted forever.

The Yankee hitters gamely answered with two runs of their own in the top of the second when Eduardo Núñez poked a double down the right field line to score Ichiro, then scored two batters later on a Sabathia ground out. There was reason for hope at that point, but the Bronx Bombers managed only three lousy singles over the next seven innings. Sure, there were at least three or four blistered line drives that died in Padre gloves, a horrific call at first base that robbed Núñez of a hit in the fourth, and another blown call at second in the fifth, but what you see in the box score tells the sad truth. Three San Diego pitchers named Andrew Cashner, Luke Gregerson, and Tim Stauffer held the Yankees to two runs on only seven hits.

Sabathia began to crumble in the top of the fourth. He gave up a long home run to Logan Forsythe with one out, then instead of covering first on Cashner’s ground ball to first, Sabathia stood on the mound like a statue and allowed the opposing pitcher to reach base without a throw. (As egregious as this mental error was, it shouldn’t have been a surprise; Sabathia has not recorded a putout at first base in more than two years.) Cabrera capitalized on CC’s non-error by launching a triple over Brett Gardner’s head in center field to score Cashner and give the Padres a 4-2 lead.

There was more of the same in the sixth inning. Nick Hundley drew a one-out walk, and Cabrera singled him to second two batters later. After Chris Denorfia singled to drive in Hundley, Joe Girardi had no choice but to pull his starter. Sabathia’s line on the night: 5.2 IP, 11 H, 5 ER, 3 BB, 4 K.

Joba Chamberlain gave up a home run to Jedd Gyorko in the seventh, and Adam Warren coughed up another to Will Venable in the eighth, and soon enough it was all mercifully over. Padres 7, Yankees 2.

It can’t be worse on Saturday night, can it?

[Photo Credit: Denis Poroy/Getty Images]