View the complete set, including the greatest A-Rod shot ever (well, okay, maybe not) at http://flickr.com/firerosearien

Grab the Nostalgia Train

Honor America

Let CC pitch.

Score runs when the other team doesn’t play defense.

And on home runs.

Pick Andrus off second.

Give the baseball to the Greatest Of All Time.

Victory.

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(Something about the Yankee bullpen pitching five scoreless innings, the grittiness of Brett Gardner’s sliding into first base starting that five run eighth inning rally, and why you should never hang “Mission Accomplished” banners)

(Nolan’s only sad because Swisher decided to bunt.)

(Or what happens when you use so many pitchers in the bottom of the eighth and your best one never makes an appearance!)

Images via Fangraphs and Reuters. A more serious post in the morning. Maybe.

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Let’s go over the tropes, shall we?

+ Minnesota takes the early lead

–In every ALDS game last season, Minnesota scored first.
—Minnesota scored first today, jumping out to a 3-0 lead, which looked unbreakable as long as Francisco Liriano was on his game. In the first couple innings, Liriano looked downright unhittable. So the Yankees did what the famed Yankee teams of the late 90s and early 00s would do, they waited, working the pitch count until Liriano was over 100 pitches in the sixth inning, and then took advantage of his tired arm.

+ Yankee bullpen comes up big, Minnesota’s does not.

–Game two of last year’s ALDS comes to mind, the eleven inning affair the Yankees eventually won after heroics from David Robertson and other bullpen members. Tonight, after a mediocre kept-them-in-the-game-for-six performance from Sabathia, Boone Logan, David Robertson, Kerry Wood and Mariano Rivera combined to keep the Twins scoreless in a two run game. On the flip side, Jesse Crain surrendered a two run home run to Mark Teixeira that proved to be the difference–last year, in game two, Joe Nathan first allowed Alex Rodriguez to tie the game in the ninth inning, and then Jose Mijares served up Teixeira’s down-the-line game winner.

+ The Yankee offense is the Yankee offense.

–Every Yankee starter except Gardner and Thames had a hit tonight, and those two reached via a walk each. The Yankees didn’t score till the sixth inning, but when they broke through, the crowd at Target Field went so quiet that when Granderson tripled and Teixeira homered you could have been excused if you had thought those clutch hits were instead outs. The Twins have legitimate hitters that can compete with anyone, a franchise player in Mauer and future Hall of Famer in Thome, but the Yankees led the Majors in runs scored this season, and showed why tonight.

+ Umpiring controversy

–Last year it was a foul ball that was fair, this year a fly ball caught on a shoe-string grab by Greg Golson that was ruled a trap instead of a catch. Had it been correctly called a catch it would have ended the game; since it was a trap it meant that Mariano Rivera, who’d already thrown twenty pitches for the four out save attempt, had to now pitch to Jim Thome with a runner on first.

Fortunately, for Yankee fans, Thome popped up on the first pitch and a crisis was averted…

+ Minnesota can’t win in Minnesota.

–The Twins are now 0-6 vs the Yankees in the postseason at Minnesota.

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Miss me? No? Ah, well, too bad.

Anyway, some hopefully coherent thoughts about the postseason:

1) Since May 1st, Derek Jeter has 148 hits, of which just thirty-four have gone for extra bases, and only one out-of-the-park home run since June 12th. His slugging (.344) is only six hundredths of a point higher than his not-quite-as-awful on base percentage of (.338) in that same time span.

Since May 1st, Brett Gardner has a .380 OBP and .378 slugging. Sure, his OBP being higher than slugging doesn’t suggest he’s a great power hitter, but the argument can and should be made that Brett Gardner should hit lead off for the Yankees in the post season, as their highest OBP guy, and, at this rate, his 29 extra-base hits in the same time span is not sufficiently less than Jeter’s 34 for his lack of power to be such a liability to keep him out of the top spot.

2) A discussion on Twitter emerged tonight over who the Yankees should start game two, Andy Pettitte or Phil Hughes.

I’m falling into the Hughes camp for these reasons:

a) his home/road splits go beyond just the home run: a higher SO/9 and SO/BB rate indicate pitching better on the road, even accounting for the difference in innings pitched.

b) Target Field is a pretty massive ball park, which should theoretically help with the whole home run issue.

c) While you can argue that you’d rather have Pettitte pitching in game five, I think that it’s not the wisest move to plan for game five before you’ve finished games one, two and three. The Yankees’ best bet is, of course, to win the LDS in as few games as possible.

d) If the Yankees do lose game one, they can adjust the rotation if they see fit, although I imagine this is quite unlikely.

That said, the big difference between this year’s Yankees and last year’s has got to be the current confidence in the rotation: last season, besides CC, Pettitte was still healthy and although AJ Burnett was a wild card, he was not downright bad as he’s been for much of this season. This year, there’s CC, sometimes Hughes, pray Pettitte stays healthy…

3) It’s not that this year’s Yankees team is bad or undeserving; but that last season’s, especially after mid-June, was that good, getting better as the year went on. This year’s team started strongly enough, and then stumbled once Pettitte got hurt, Vazquez came up lame and Burnett was, well, AJ Burnett.

That said, this year’s squad has much to commend to it: Nick Swisher’s had a brilliant, consistent year, Brett Gardner has emerged as a legitimate mlb-caliber outfielder, Curtis Granderson’s remembered how to hit of late, and even with Jeter’s struggles you can still argue the Yankee infield is one of the best in the league. Kerry Wood has been simply fantastic in pinstripes, and Boone Logan’s turn around means the loss of Damaso Marte is a little less gaping.

4) So what happens if Girardi fails to win the World Series?

It seems almost unfair that he could make it to the World Series, or even game seven of the ALCS, lose and then not be invited back even when he won a World Series just last year, but, of course, the world of Yankee baseball is not a forgiving place.

I think, in the end, if the Yankees don’t win it all (and even perhaps if they do), it will depend as much on how the events occur as the events themselves; managing a team out of an ALDS win because Francisco Cervelli is hitting instead of Jorge Posada is a little bit different than losing in a game seven bottom-of-the-ninth hit with Mariano Rivera on the mound.

Of course, everything could go right and then Girardi choose not to return, but that’s probably a bridge to cross when it’s reached, to use a cliché.

5) Lastly, on the question of Minnesota or Texas as a playoff opponent, I’ll simply say that either team would offer its benefits and drawbacks, and it’s still up to the Yankees to win the games they need to win–and that, even if they do so, the much-imagined ALCS versus the Rays is not a guarantee, as the Rays would need to take care of business on their end and well.

Neither Minnesota nor Texas is a walkover…

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The last time I ever had to leave a Yankee game early, they were up by a large margin and I remarked to my friend, “well, if the Yankees blow this lead, I don’t particularly want to see it.”

I was reminded of this incident today.

I’ll keep it simple.

1) The game story, as explained by WPA, courtesy Fangraphs.

2) Prayers are with David Huff, who took an A-Rod double off of his head. Fortunately, word has it that he never lost consciousness, and his CT scan was negative. His family was in attendance at the game. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how dangerous this game can be…

3) CC Sabathia, via tweets from JMK and OSingh91, respectively:

CC currently sporting a career high in FIP, career low in BABIP, contact rate at 79%, high in HR/FB, less than 7 K/9. Career low in fastball velocity.

Wow, a career high in 2-seamers says Pitch f/x (18.1%, career 3.0%, but only 4 yrs of data). Explains low K’s and high FIP.

I mentioned that maybe CC’s heavy workload the past two years is coming home to roost. I hope it’s not the case, but no human being (except maybe old Hoss) can really pitch that many innings that often without having issues.

3) Joba Chamberlain

Needs to not be pitching in high leverage situations.

Last five games: 5 IP, 11 H, 11 R, 10 ER, 3 BB, 6 K.

What’s worse? His numbers in high leverage situations: Opponents are hitting .308/.357/.462/.819, which is very much not what you want from your set-up man. It’s the anti-what-Hughes-did in 2009.

4) Joe Girardi

This shouldn’t be entirely on him, because CC and Joba should have been able to do their jobs, but I don’t really understand removing Mitre after facing just one batter and even less removing Damaso Marte after he got the second out of the inning.

As Jay Jaffe tweeted, the Yankees do not have a shut-down non-closer, healthy RHP in the bullpen right now. That’s, um, not good.

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A baseball team cannot blow eighth inning leads three games in a row and expect to win the majority of those games. It cannot.

If CC Sabathia pitches your team seven innings of one run ball, and your team has scored five runs, there is utterly no reason that that game should be lost.

You can argue whether or not Cervelli should have bunted (he shouldn’t), whether Winn should have been pinch hit for (not a possibility because Posada and Swisher are still too hurt), or the merits of Thames playing in the outfield (he shouldn’t, but again, not really any other option), but tonight’s game came down to one thing:

Joba failed.

A set-up man handed a 5-1 lead in the eighth inning needs to leave that inning with the lead. End of story.

However, tonight, the second time in three games, Chamberlain could not get the job done. You can argue that Girardi should have removed Chamberlain earlier, but with the bullpen, in Girardi’s words, “a mess”, Chamberlain really did need to get the job done. He did not.

You can argue the leverage argument–that once the game got to 5-4, Rivera should have made an appearance, but rushing Rivera to get ready on a rainy night in the forties in May is also not necessarily the best course of action.

@leokitty kindly offers us this clue as to maybe why Chamberlain could not get the job done tonight.

I’m no pitching expert, so I can’t tell you what he should have thrown, but half of the pitching battle is (supposedly) that the hitters don’t actually know what’s coming. With Joba, you don’t necessarily have to guess.

So yes, once the ninth inning played out as it did, Marcus Thames should have caught the baseball, the umpires should have called a strike, Cervelli should have not bunted because Robbie Canó was already at second base and Cisco’s got some great RISP numbers, and Randy Winn swung at ball four twice, but NONE of that matters if the Yankees actually manage to hang onto a four run lead in the ninth inning.

Last year, we made fun of the Phillies (and the year before, the Mets) for bullpens that weren’t getting the job done. I know the Yankee bullpen has been overworked, but when Sabathia gives you seven and your two best relievers are available, you have to find a way to win that game.

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1) The Orioles won a game after being down four runs in the eighth inning.

2) The Padres are three outs from sweeping the Giants.

3) The Cardinals lost to the Astros–again–and the Astros even hit a home run (!)  (Then again, the Yankees haven’t hit one in a while, so…)

****

The point is, in baseball, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.

The Yankees dropped their second series all season, so while they may not have played particularly well against the Tigers, I’ll take winning nine of eleven series every. single. time.

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If last night the Yankees appeared sluggish, tonight they played like one would expect the defending World Series champions to play against a team more than ten games under .500 in the first month of the baseball season.

The Yankees scored early, often, and even though CC Sabathia did not pitch as sharply as one may have wished, the Orioles never seemed to be in this game.

A couple of notes:

• Robinson Canó is now hitting .390/.430/.701 on the season.  That’s, uh, kinda good.
• Francisco Cervelli could go 2-for his next-50, and still have a higher batting average than Mark Teixeira.  Or something like that.
• Jorge Posada got hit in the knee in the early innings, hence why Cervelli came in.  Latest update is day-to-day, but we’ll probably know more tomorrow.

You might also be interested to know that the Scranton Yankees won today, beating $30 million-signee Alrodis Chapman.

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It’s not often that CC Sabathia pitches a complete game, the Yankees turn a triple play, get two home runs…and then lose the game, but that is what happened this afternoon.

Sabathia struggled in the first, walking two before giving up a bomb to Kurt Suzuki, and though the score remained close, the Yankees were never able to muster anything off of A’s starter Dallas Braden.

That said, besides the Yankees’ offense failing to score three runs for the first time all season, the play we’ll see on season highlight reels came when Kurt Suzuki hit into a 5-4-3 triple play, the first one that the Yankees have turned since 1968. Yep, that’s right, 1968.

You may or may not remember this, but back in 2000 (I think it was 2000, anyway), the Yankees hit into an unassisted triple play while playing the A’s. Something about baseball symmetry and all that.

At any rate, despite dropping this game, the Yankees still have won their first five series, the first time since the 1920s they have done so, and have received, in the past six games, starting performances of six or more innings pitched from all but one (Vazquez).

Keep pitching like that, and the Yankees will win plenty more games than they lose.

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Of all Major League teams, thus far, the Yankees rank just twelfth (as of this writing) in hits.

That’s almost as middle-of-the-pack as you can get, given the thirty teams in the league over all. Not all that remarkable, one would think–certainly, one might expect a team which hits so, well, averagely, to be closer to the middle of the pack in the standings.

If, however, you learned baseball fan (which, by this point, you probably are), visit the stats page, and then move to the column third from right, labeled OBP, and click that to sort, you’ll see that the Yankees rank not 12th, but second.

On a team where Mark Teixeira and Nick Johnson are both hitting under .150, and Robinson Canó, albeit briefly, had a higher batting average than an on-base percentage, it can occasionally be hard to believe that the team has not yet had a game where they’ve scored less than three runs, or that they’ve scored five in nine of 12.

Still, if one really wants to know what’s gotten into the Yankees this season, all one has to do is look at the just-completed series with the Texas Rangers to get some idea.

The Rangers are not supposed to be a poor team, pitching wise, yet in this series only one of the three starters pitched more than four innings.

On the flip side, the Yankees starters all went at least six innings–and Sabathia, who threw 73 pitches and had a staggering 58 of them count as strikes, would have certainly pitched longer had not the game been called due to rain. AJ Burnett pitched seven innings; today Andy Pettitte has, despite not having his greatest ‘stuff’, pitched eight.

One can’t discount the Texas offense, either–a team with Michael Young, Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz and Vladimir Guerrerro is hardly the Pittsburgh Pirates or the San Francisco Giants of recent memory.

So here you have it: the Yankees aren’t (necessarily) blowing teams out 10-0 every game, but with the way the starters are throwing and the bullpen is not making headlines (because it is, by and large, doing its job), four runs begins to feel like twenty.

It’s been a while since the Yankees have had this good of an April–not only are they winning, but they are winning against teams that should shape up to be among the league’s elite–so there is certainly a temptation to let it go to one’s head.

Yeah, this team is good, but Yankee fans should know better than most that the baseball season is a marathon (yeah, yeah, cliché and all that). A hot April can turn out to be insignificant if the team levels off in June and July.

That said, the more last season progressed, the better the Yankees became. Right now, the Yankees are pretty darn good, but some of their best hitters aren’t even hitting the Mendoza line, and Javier Vazquez has, well, not been great. So, as good as the Yankees are, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

That’s reason enough to be optimistic, if ever there was one.

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