2001: Thus Yawned Zarathustra

Before you freak out, let me assure you that I’m not saying 2001: A Space Odyssey is a bad movie. I’m not saying it’s not well-made, beautifully crafted, and culturally significant. I’m not saying it doesn’t have interesting, thoughtful things to say about human consciousness and technology and the nature of intelligent life.

I’m just saying I don’t like it.

I tried, I really did. I watched it in high school, and was ashamed to find myself bored. I watched it on the big screen in college, as a film major, and fell asleep. I watched it later in college – this time with the help of substances my friend was sure would help me “get it” – and fell asleep much faster. After loving Dr. Strangelove and Lolita I watched it one more time, just to make sure, because I felt my failure to embrace or even tolerate 2001 was one of my greatest failings as a film major.

I still don’t like it.

Partly this is just personal preference – the movies I love most tend to have involving, well-drawn characters and great dialogue, and even Stanley Kubrick’s most ardent admirers surely can’t claim that for this movie. I’m not especially visual, so while I can love and appreciate great cinematography or camerawork when I see it, movies like this (or for example, Solaris) which are almost entirely about their images just don’t tend to grab me, through no fault of their own.

But my issues with 2001 run deeper: I can think of very, very few films that take themselves this seriously. And there’s nothing wrong with being serious about art, but in my view 2001 crosses the line into pompous pretension early on and never makes it back. Any movie that begins with the chyron “THE DAWN OF MAN,” and is not a Mel Brooks comedy, is unlikely to hit the mark for me.

Can I remind you that this movie leads off with fifteen minutes of people in monkey suits hopping around and screeching. Fifteen minutes. God forgive me, but rewatching it today on YouTube in preparation for this post, all I could think of was the Star Wars Holiday Special and its opening 20 minutes, which are nearly entirely in Wookie, sans subtitles.

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Here’s a childhood favorite…

My brother loved this one…

Nathan Denette/Associated Press

So if you’re just waking up and wondering how things went with the Yankees while you were sleeping, I don’t have a lot of good news to report.  It all started out okay, as A.J. Burnett retired the first two Arizona hitters relatively quickly, prompting Michael Kay to wonder aloud if Burnett would be able to have a 1-2-3 first inning, which would be his first in nine starts.  Justin Upton ended the suspense almost immediately by rocketing a 430-foot home run to straight-away center field.  But that was only the beginning.  Following Upton’s blast, five more hitters paraded to the plate with these results: single, single, home run, home run, double.  Thankfully the game was being played under National League rules, so Burnett was able to stop the damage by striking out pitcher Rodrigo López, but it was already 5-0.

Burnett started the second inning the same as he had the first, by retiring Kelly Johnson and Stephen Drew, but with two outs and the bases empty, the Diamondbacks had him right where they wanted him.  Upton singled and promptly came home on a long double by Miguel Montero, bumping the lead to six.

The third inning was uneventful, but Burnett returned to his pattern in the fourth, retiring Johnson and Drew just as he had in the first and second innings.  Upton drew a walk, stole second, then came home on a Montero single to put Arizona up by a touchdown.  Burnett would retire the next hitter to escape without further damage, but it would still be the end of his night.  Four innings pitched, nine hits, seven runs, three home runs — and all of that came after two were out in the inning.

Rodrígo López, meanwhile, was making like Greg Maddux.  He kept the Yankee hitters off balance all night long by changing speeds (sound familiar?) and throwing strikes.  He was so efficient, in fact, that 12 of the first 15 Yankee hitters started out with strike one, and ten of those twelve were called strikes.  Brett Gardner managed four base hits (a slap to left, a drag bunt, and two other infield singles), but everyone else seemed to be just missing all night long.  Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, and Alex Rodríguez seemed to end each at bat by tossing their bats away in frustration.

Even so, they were able to scratch out three runs to cut the lead to 7-3 while Chad Gaudin held down the fort with two scoreless innings of relief.  Chan Ho Park follwed up with a scoreless seventh, and there were two moments when a big hit could’ve cut the lead down to something more manageable, but it never quite happened.  CHP ran into some trouble in the eighth, putting two men on with two outs.  (Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before.)  Facing Upton, Park jumped out to an 0-2 advantage, but then quickly worked himself into a full count.  Apparently worried about walking Upton, Park instead called timeout and ran into the dugout.  He returned with a batter’s tee, set it down on home plate, placed the ball on the tee, and got out of the way.  Upton deposited the ball 408 feet away in the left field stands, and the game was over.  Diamondbacks 10, Yankees 4.

In other news, the Yankees decided that Phil Hughes will be skipped when his turn comes up this Friday. It’s probably a good thing, since the off-days allow them to move everyone else up without having to pitch on short rest, and it will help keep Hughes’s innings down.  But coming when it did, while the team’s worst starter continued to spiral downward, it was troubling to learn that its best starter wouldn’t be back on the mound for more than a week.

In 2007, the Diamondbacks won the National League central with a 90-72 record despite a negative run differential that translated to a 79-83 Pythagorean record. That team, which swept the Cubs in the Division Series only to be swept by the Rockies in the NLCS, was flush with young talent including shortstop Stephen Drew, second baseman Alberto Callaspo (then a backup to Orlando Hudson), and right-fielder Carlos Quentin (all 24), third baseman Mark Reynolds, center fielder Chris Young, and back-up catcher Miguel Montero (all 23), 19-year-old right-fielder Justin Upton, 25-year-old first baseman Conor Jackson, 26-year-old catcher Chris Snyder.

That winter, Arizona flipped Quentin to the White Sox for first-base prospect Chris Carter (not the one on the Mets, the now-23-year-old slugger who lurks in Sacramento as one of the top prospects in the American League) then made a big-splash by trading Carter to the A’s with outfielder Carlos Gonzalez and left-hander Brett Anderson, among others, for starter Dan Haren. Haren, then 27, partnered with the then-29-year-old Brandon Webb to give the Diamondbacks a tremendous 1-2 punch in their rotation, and with a lineup filled with developing young talent, the team looked ready for a big break out after experiencing a bit of correction with an 82-80 second-place finish in 2008.

I was one of four SI.com “experts” to pick the Diamondbacks to win the NL West in 2009, but all of us were surely banking on the impact of Webb and Haren atop the rotation. Instead, Webb got smacked around for four innings on Opening Day and hasn’t pitched since due to shoulder issues, surgery, and subsequent set-backs. Mind you, this was a pitcher who from 2006 to 2008 went 56-25 (.691) with a 3.13 ERA and finished in the top two in the Cy Young voting each year, winning in ’06.

That was a devastating loss, but it was made no easier by the fact that the young talent in the Arizona lineup has failed to coalesce into a productive offense. Callaspo was, like Quentin, traded after the 2007 season, ultimately yielding Dontrelle Willis (via Billy Buckner) earlier this month. As for the rest, Jackson never developed power, came down with Valley Fever last year, and didn’t seem fully recovered this spring before being flipped to the A’s last week for closer prospect Sam Demel. Stephen Drew, J.D.’s little brother, slugged .502 with 21 homers in 2008 and looked primed for a breakout, but has hit just .266/.328/.430 since. Young was two stolen bases shy of a 30/30 season in 2007, but saw his production decline each of the last two years, though he seems to have finally righted his ship this season. Upton showed steady progress the last two years, but is striking out at an alarming rate this year (92 Ks in 67 games) and has seen his production regress in turn (.247/.326/.429). Montero claimed the catching job from Snyder with a break out season last year, but has played just 12 games thus far this year due to knee surgery.

Then there’s Reynolds, who had perhaps one of the most unique offensive seasons in baseball history last year when he hit 44 home runs, stole 24 bases, and shattered his own single-season strikeout record by wiffing 223 times. Reynolds’ positives (314 total bases plus 76 walks and those steals at a 73 percent success rate) out-weighed all those Ks last year, but he’s testing that balance this year having already struck out 99 times while hitting just .215/.327/.472 and stealing just three bases.

To that frustrating core, the Diamondbacks have added reheated ex-Braves Adam LaRoche and Kelly Johnson at first and second base, respectively. Johnson started the season with a wholly unexpected barrage of home runs (9 in April), but has hit just four more since while hitting .244/.355/.399. LaRoche, perhaps the game’s most notorious second-half hitter, typically hits the turbo boost around this time of year and has hit .300/.363/.546 after the All-Star break in his career.

That all adds up to one of the NL’s better offenses thus far this season, but it also makes for one of the league’s worst defenses, and the pitching staff, without Webb and with Haren’s ERA inflated by bad luck on both balls in play and fly balls leaving the yard, is suffering for it. Curiously, old pal Ian Kennedy has actually had very good luck on balls in play, and thus leads the Snakes’ staff in ERA despite a similar home run problem (which has not been a product of his new home park). Edwin Jackson, who accompanied Kennedy to Arizona in the three-way Curtis Granderson deal, however, is having similar problems to Haren, his BABIP having lept up from .278 last year to .326 this year.

The D’backs’ bullpen, meanwhile, has just been flat awful, posting a 7.14 ERA, blowing 12 saves and picking up 16 losses. Closer Chad Qualls has lost his job to ex-Met Aaron Heilman, the only Arizona reliever with an ERA below 4.00. The less said about the rest of the pen the better other than to point out that the pen has contributed to the Diamondbacks allowing the most runs in baseball thus far, having allowed 38 percent of the 405 the Snakes have give up.

Perhaps all you need to know about the Diamondbacks pitching is that tonight A.J. Burnett faces Rodrigo Lopez. Lopez resurrected his career (briefly) as a fill-in for the Phillies last year, going 3-1 with a 5.70 ERA in five starts and a pair of relief appearances. He’s been a rotation regular for the D’backs this year and pitching pretty much in line with his career rates, which means he’s not a far cry from the pitcher you might remember from his five years with the Orioles from 2002 to 2006. Lopez’s main trick this year has been pitching efficiently enough to go deep into games regardless of his ability to keep runs off the board (a product of that lousy bullpen). In his last two starts, Lopez pitched 14 innings, but allowed 11 runs. Burnett, meanwhile, is in the middle of a full-on skid, having gone 0-3 with a 9.00 ERA across just 16 innings over his last three starts. More bad numbers from those last three: nine walks against ten Ks, three hit batsmen, and six home runs allowed.

Meanwhile, outfielder Colin Curtis has been called up from Triple-A, replacing Chad Moeller on the 25- and 40-man rosters. A fourth-round pick out of Arizona State (which has also produced Ike Davis and Mike Leake in recent years) in the Yankees boffo 2006 draft, Curtis disappointed up on hitting Double-A in mid 2007, hitting .250/.311/.359 in 1,343 plate appearances above High-A from 2007 to 2009. Curtis reportedly fixed his swing before appearing in the Arizona Fall League last fall and raked there (in a hitting-friendly environment), in spring training, and for Triple-A Scranton in April (.339/.435/.441), but an ankle sprain interrupted his season and he’s been back to being awful since returning to action, hitting .226/.284/.306 in June. Even with his strong start, he’s homerless on the season. Curtis, now 25, bats lefty with a reverse split (at least this season) and can play all three outfield positions. I don’t see the point, but then I didn’t see the point in Moeller, either.

Joe Girardi runs out his primary lineup tonight. Remember, there’s no designated hitter, so A.J. Burnett hits ninth behind Brett Gardner.

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Another week of comic book dudes…first up, George Perez.

I’ll take one to go.

From the wonderful food blog, Food52.

Welcome to Stanley Kubrick Week on Million Dollar Movie.

Claire Quilty: I get the impression that you want to leave but you don’t like to because you think I think it looks suspicious, me being a policeman and all. You don’t have to think that because I haven’t got a suspicious mind at all. A lot of people think I’m suspicious, especially when I stand on street corners. One of our boys picked me up once. He thought that I was a little too suspicious standing on the street corner. Tell me, I couldn’t help noticing when you checked in tonight–It’s part of my job, I notice human individuals–and I noticed your face. I said to myself when I saw you, there’s a guy with the most normal-looking face I ever saw in my life. It’s great to see a normal face, ’cause I’m a normal guy. Be great for two normal guys to get together and talk about world events, in a normal way.

Peter Sellers is best remembered as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies, but his artistic masterpiece is generally considered to be Dr. Strangelove. Sellers plays three characters in Stanley Kubrick’s dark, political satire. His performance is all that and them some and deserves all the praise it gets, but I believe Sellers’ accomplishment in Kubrick’s previous film, the 1962 adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s notorious book, Lolita, is just as fine—a comic actor at the height of his powers.

Sellers plays Claire Quilty, a pompous hipster playwright, the alter ego and nemesis to James Mason’s lustful professor, Humbert Humbert. “Are you with someone,” Humbert asks Quilty at one point. “I’m not with someone,” Quilty replies, “I’m with you.”

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Pass me my oxygen mask, would you dear?

Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

It’s June, so we can stop worrying about CC Sabathia.  The Yankees were 2-4 when he took the mound in May, but they’ve won all four of his June starts as CC has posted a fairly imposing line: 29 IP, 21 H, 8 R, 7 BB, 22 K, 2.48 ERA, 0.97 WHIP.  A week after beating Roy Halladay (who pitches as if having returned to Krypton when he faces the American League), Sabathia faced and defeated another ace, the Mets’ Johan Santana.  During his eight scoreless innings, Sabathia allowed six base runners, only four of whom made it to second base.  It might not make sense to say that he wasn’t dominant, but he was pretty close.

The Yankee offense was able to do just enough against Santana to secure Sabathia’s eighth win.  Scanning the box score, you might notice a third-inning explosion, but here’s what really happened.  Brett Gardner led off by slicing a single to left (and really, it’s only a matter of time before Michael Kay begins describing hits like this as “Gardnerian”), and Jeter followed with a dribbler to the left side that David Wright was unable to handle cleanly.  Nick Swisher then dropped a beautiful push bunt towards second and was able to reach safely, loading the bases for Mark Teixeira.

Normally, this is a great situation.  Bases loaded, nobody out, the three and four hitters due up.  The problem, though, is that right now I have absolutely no confidence in either Teixeira or Alex Rodríguez, and I braced myself for the worst.  Watching live as Teixeira took a ball and then a strike, I figured he would probably just strike out.  My next thought, though, was this: “He’s probably gonna hit a grand slam just to piss me off.”  And then he deposited the next pitch into the left field stands.  I can’t explain why it pissed me off, it just did.

But that was all the Yanks needed, as the 4-0 lead held up. First place feels good.

Hey, y’all. Sorry for the delay in posting yesterday’s recap. It’ll be up jiffy. Then, we’re back to our regular schedule. Hold tight…

[Picture by Bags]

Gray haze, that’s how it be in the Bronx today.

Hot all over the asphalt jungle of New York as Sabathia and Santana square off at Yankee Stadium.

Sabathia had plenty of nothing last time he faced the Mets; here’s hoping he brings the rukus and the score truck.

Let’s go Yan-Kees!

[picture by Bags]

Big shout–much love, respected and admiration–to all the Old Men out there on Father’s Day.

Saturday night in New York. A Yankee win. How civilized.

Continue to be cool.

One time.

[Pictures by Bags]

Heading into today’s game with the Mets, I decided that based on everything I was reading, seeing and hearing, some media trends needed to be stopped:

* Thinking that one or two hits by a player in a slump immediately means he’s broken out of his slump (see Teixeira, Mark; and Posada, Jorge).

* This might anger some Banterers and I know it may upset Cliff — I apologize in advance — but the love for Posada’s offensive prowess needs to be tempered. Aside from the two grand slams he hit last weekend, maybe it’s just me, but I have little confidence that he’s going to drive in a run with men in scoring position. Any opposing pitcher with an above-average slider can throw that pitch at Posada’s back foot, regardless of whether he’s batting lefty or righty, and he’ll swing over the top of it.

* The Yankees’ recent offensive downturn has everything to do with the opposing pitchers. The Yankees beat up mediocre pitching, yes, but pitchers who change speeds give them fits. Neither Jamie Moyer, Kyle Kendrick, nor Hisanori Takahashi light up the radar gun — Moyer barely registers a reading — but they threw strikes early in the count and kept the Yankees off balance by changing speeds.

Mike Pelfrey, the Mets’ starter on Saturday, is a similar pitcher to Roy Halladay, who the Yankees shelled for six runs in six innings on Tuesday. Granted, Pelfrey’s stuff isn’t as good as Halladay, but he’s a hard-throwing, sinker-slider type. As good as he’s been this season, sinkerballers have a propensity to leave pitches up in the strike zone, as Halladay did Tuesday. Pelfrey seemed due for one of those outings. Hence, in my mind, he was the perfect elixir to the Yankees’ anemic bats.

Another factor in the Yankees’ favor: they countered with Phil Hughes, who led the American League among pitchers to have made a minimum of five starts with a Run Support Average of 10.38. In his nine victories, the Yankees scored 88 runs.

The Yankees answered Jose Reyes’s leadoff home run with two hits and a run in the first. In the third, they answered another Reyes home run with a two-run shot off the bat of Teixeira. It was at this point of the YES telecast that a prescient conversation between Michael Kay and Paul O’Neill took place:

KAY: “For a pitcher like Hughes, he’s got to be thinking, ‘I’ve given up two home runs to Reyes and my team has picked me up.’ Now he’s got to pick his team up. He’s got to settle down and put up zeroes.”

O’NEILL: “That’s right. You have to start thinking, ‘I’ve had my bad innings, and if I can get cruising here for three or four innings, chances are my offense swings the bat today.”

That conversation took place in the fourth inning. Hughes put the Mets away on nine pitches. In the bottom half, Posada led off with a walk and Granderson got ahead in the count 2-and-1. Granderson then fouled off a few tough pitches before launching a hanging curveball into the box seats to give the Yankees a 5-3 lead.

Now with the lead, Hughes needed to respond. Reyes stepped to the plate with two outs and a runner on first. Hughes fell behind 1-0 and again 2-1. Hughes fought back with a good fastball that painted the outside corner to even the count. After Reyes fouled off another fastball, Hughes delivered a curveball on the outside part part of the plate that Reyes swung through to end the inning.

The Mets worked Hughes again in the sixth. Angel Pagan hit a one-out single and then advanced on a wild pitch, and Hughes proceeded to walk Ike Davis to bring the go-ahead run to the plate in the form of Jason Bay. Bay, who had seen just four pitches in his two previous at-bats, swung at the first pitch and grounded into a 5-4-3 double play to end the threat. Hughes had no problems working through the seventh inning and holding the two-run edge.

The Yankees’ offense had chances to break the game open in the sixth and eighth innings. In both innings, they had runners in scoring position with less than two outs — in the eighth, they had runners on second and third with no one out — and failed to score. Counting today, the Yankees have two hits in their last 21 at-bats with runners in scoring position. The lack of situational hitting, more than anything, has been the root cause of the Yankees’ offensive slide.

Another positive to take from Saturday: Joba Chamberlain pitched a scoreless eighth. Even better, he struck out David Wright without having to throw a fastball. Mariano Rivera followed by pitching a flawless ninth to close out the 5-3 victory.

The win snapped the Yankees’ three-game losing skid and ended the Mets’ eight-game run. As for Hughes, he didn’t have his best stuff, but he pitched well enough to preserve the lead he was given. He is now tied with David Price for the AL lead in wins (10), and furthered his case to become a member of the All-Star team.

Now it’s set up: Santana vs Sabathia for the series win. Should be a good baseball Sunday.

Man, it’s a hot one out there. Damned Mets are hot, while the Yanks are decidedly not.

Still, the Bombers remain tied for first place with the Rays. The Can’t-You-Hear-Me-Knockin’ Sox are just a game back.

Hope everyone is staying cool.

[Picture by Bags]

It’s official, the Yankees are in a team hitting slump. Since opening up a can of Whoop-Ass on Roy Halladay on Tuesday, the Yankees have scored a total of four runs in three games started by 47-year-old Jamie Moyer, Phillies’ sixth-starter Kyle Kendrick, and Mets fill-in Hisanori Takahashi, and two of those runs came on solo homers off Moyer.

Through the first five innings against Takahashi Friday night, the Yankees managed just a walk and two singles. One of those singles, an infield hit to second base by Derek Jeter, should have been ruled an error as Mets first baseman Ike Davis dropped the throw on a bang-bang play on which the ball hit Davis’s glove an instant before Jeter’s foot hit the bag. That, by the way, stands as Jeter’s only hit in the last four games. He is “2”-for-21 with two walks and a caught stealing in his last five.

Nonetheless the game was a compelling one, because Javier Vazquez nearly matched Takahashi pitch-for-pitch. In fact, through the first seven innings, the difference in the game was a matter of mere inches on a play at home with two outs in the top of the first.

Vazquez got the first two outs of the game on six pitches, but the red-hot David Wright spoiled things with a two-out double into the left-field corner. Ike Davis followed with a single into right. As Wright rounded third, Nick Swisher uncorked a strong throw to the plate. However, while the ball was in the air, Francisco Cervelli inched just slightly up the first base line for the catch. Wright saw that and slid to the far side of the plate. Cervelli caught the ball and lunged, but just missed Wright’s left arm, which Wright then stuck out to catch the tip of the plate with his fingertips.

Watching it live, I thought Wright had failed to touch home, but on replay I noticed a telltale streak of dirt across the point of the plate, which was otherwise sparkling clean given that the game was just 11 pitches old. Cervelli was convinced he had tagged Wright, but replays proved he didn’t.

That was it for seven innings. Vazquez pitched around a two-out single in the second, then didn’t allow another baserunner until the sixth, when he walked two men only to have the first of them, Angel Pagan, caught stealing by Cervelli from his knees. Vazquez then struck out Davis to end that non-threat and pitched around a two-out walk in the seventh as well. His final line was a sparkling 7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 4 K, with all three of those walks coming in his final two innings.

The only downside to Vazquez’s outing was that one run, which slipped in by the smallest of margins, and the Yankees’ complete inability to do anything to support him.

The Yankees didn’t get a man past first base until the sixth, when, with one out, Nick Swisher and Mark Teixeira delivered consecutive hard singles up the middle to put men on first and second. Takahashi got Alex Rodriguez to ground out for the second out, and while that moved the runners up, it also allowed Takahashi to pitch around Robinson Cano, who walked on eight pitches. That brought up Jorge Posada, who was essentially the entire Yankee offense through the first five innings, owning both the walk and the only legitimate single. However, Posada chopped Takahashi’s 0-1 pitch to the third base side of the mound where David Wright charged it and made a great, bare-handed play that proved a bit excessive as he threw Posada bout by about 15 feet.

With Elmer Dessens on in relief of Takahashi, who passed 100 pitches during the Yankees’ sixth-inning rally, Cervelli, likely still burning from that play in the top of the first, led off the seventh with a double. With the lefty starter out of the game, Joe Girardi then called on Curtis Granderson to pitch-hit, but Jerry Manuel countered with ace LOOGY sidearmer Pedro Feliciano, who struck out Granderson. Brett Gardner did what Granderson couldn’t grounding to the right side to get Cervelli to third, but it was of little use after Granderson’s out, particularly as the slumping Jeter tapped out to Feliciano on the first pitch to strand Cervelli at third.

Then things fell apart. Girardi went to Chan Ho Park to start the eighth, and Park coughed up two runs to the first three hitters he faced before recording a single out. Boone Logan cleaned up that mess, but then yielded a run of his own in the ninth to make it 4-0 Mets.

For their part, the offense got a man to second in the eight when Nick Swisher led off with a single then ill-advisedly took second on a fly out to left, benefiting from another dropped ball on what was ruled an assist and an error, but stranded him there when Feliciano struck out Rodriguez and got Cano to fly out.

With lefty Raul Valdes on in the ninth, the Yankees built another rally on one-out singles by Cervelli and Granderson, forcing Manuel to call on his closer, Francisco Rodriguez. Gardner greated Rodriguez with a 12-pitch battle that saw him foul off seven pitches including five 3-2 offerings before finally getting ball four to load the bases, but Rodriguez struck out Jeter on three pitches, the last an unsuccessfully checked swing, and Swisher fouled out to Wright to end the threat and the game.

The Yankees are now 12-12 in games against left-handed starting pitchers and are on a three-game losing streak having gone 2-5 in their last seven games against teams with winning records. They also now face having to beat the Mets’ two-best starters, Mike Pelfrey and Johan Santana, each of whom shut the Bombers down in Queens four weeks ago, in order to win this series.

On the bright side, the Yankees  continue to share first place in the AL East with the Rays, who lost for the sixth time in their last eight games last night. Oh, but the Red Sox won and are now just a game out of first place.

Gulp.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wally Wood

Wrapping up boxing week, here’s one that Diane suggested:

And, well, I couldn’t resist…

When your team is grappling with the Rays for the best record in baseball, there is not much that needs to be overhauled. But fine tuning is always a consideration, especially considering the high standard that Tampa Bay has established over the first two and a half months of the season. Then there is the presence of the Red Sox, who have quietly moved within sniffing distance of first place. Those factors, coupled with the long-term concerns over the groin and the hip (not again!) of Alex Rodriguez, should have the Yankees thinking about their infield depth and their overall bench strength.

Kevin Russo and Ramiro Pena, the two current backup infielders, have hit about as well as Chicken Stanley on a good day. If A-Rod has to miss significant time later this season, or if he has to be relegated to extensive DH duty, the Yankees will find themselves with a gaping hole at the hot corner. So lo and behold, two significant names have found themselves designated for assignment over the last week. They are Jake Fox, late of Oakland, and Akinori Iwamura, formerly of Pittsburgh. Both players happen to be having lousy seasons (their combined OPS figures would fall short of one of Barry Bonds’ hallmark seasons), but both are far better hitters than they have shown. Either man would give the Yankees a better backup option at third base, while also providing depth at other positions.

The 27-year-old Fox is not much of a corner defender, but he can hit like a third baseman–at least when it comes to power. (Fox slugged a respectable .468 for the Cubs in 2009.) He can also play the outfield, serve as a DH against left-handers, and perhaps most significantly, is capable of putting on shin guards and a face mask. He would make an ideal third catcher, far better than the offensively-overwhelmed Chad Moeller.

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