Monthly Archives: September 2005

I’m sorry that I haven’t gotten around to mentioning it sooner, but Matt McGough’s charming memoir about being a bat boy for the Yankees in the early nineties is a light, engaging read. It is particularly compelling if you are a Yankee fan 35 and under. It’s not that the book won’t appeal to you if you are older than that, but I think “Bat Boy” will really resonate with fans who grew up during the Matt Nokes dog days in the Bronx (as it turns out, Nokes is one of the nicer players that McGough encountered, along with Jim Abbott, Bernie Williams and Don Mattingly). McGough’s prose is simple and direct and he tells a good story. It is the perfect holiday gift for a young fan–even a fan who is too young to remember that era. If you are interested, you can check out excerpts of “Bat Boy” over at The Hardball Times (Part One and Two)and at The Futility Infielder. In addition, Peter Handrinos, who has conducted a series of interesting interviews this summer at All-Baseball.com, spoke with the author (again, in two parts–one and two.) McGough was also interviewed on The Baseball Savant blog.

In a thrilling pitcher’s duel yesterday afternoon in the Bronx, the margin of difference came down to a curve ball that Jason Giambi wrapped around the right field foul pole in the first inning. Final Score: 1-0. Tim Wakefield usually performs well against the Yankees, but yesterday he was downright brilliant, allowing only three hits while striking out a career-high twelve over eight innings. Randy Johnson was equally as good, giving up just one hit over seven shutout frames. Johnson glared at the hitters (most memorably at Kevin Millar, who after striking out, gave him the gasface right back) and was his old animated self.

Flash Gordon relieved him in the eighth and with a man on first an easy pop-up to the mound almost became a nightmare for the New Yorkers. Gordon could not see the ball, while Cano, Jeter and Rodriguez rushed in. But nobody took control and the ball landed safely on the ground. Fortunately, Cano had the presence of mind to rush back to second, and the ball took a lucky hop into Rodriguez’s glove. He threw to Cano and they retired the lead runner. Gordon got the second out but then was yanked in favor of Mariano Rivera when David Ortiz entered the game as a pinch-hitter. It was a dramatic moment, by which time eight of the ten finger nails on my hands were decimated. Rivera pitched Ortiz deliberately, everything up and in, before walking him. Johnny Damon was next, and during a classic ten pitch at-bat, I thought I was going to hyperventilate. But Rivera induced an easy ground ball to first and got out of the jam.

Edgar Renteria led off the top of the ninth and drilled the first pitch back up the middle. It looked like a clear base hit. But Rivera stabbed at it and made the catch for the first out. After getting pinch-hitter Trot Nixon to ground out to first (the ball was hit sharply), Rivera worked carefully to Manny Ramirez, again, busting everything up and in. Like Ortiz before him, Ramirez drew a walk. Kevin Millar then slapped a clean single to deep center and Ramirez chugged into third. But Rivera was able to rally and strike out John Olerud to end the game and keep the Bombers in the AL East race. Had they lost, the Yanks would have fallen to five games behind Boston. With the win, they trail by just three. Cleveland won again last night, so they remain a game-and-a-half ahead of New York and two-and-a-half in front of Oakland who lost yesterday.

Whew.

It was an absolutely beautiful day in the Bronx last night . . . for Red Sox fans, that is.

As Alex predicted, Curt Schilling turned in what was easily his best performance of the year, retiring the first eight Yankees in order and holding them hitless through 3 1/3 innings. A towering upper deck shot by Jason Giambi eliminated the no-hitter with one out in the fourth, but that would be the only hit the Yankees would get until a two-out Robinson Cano single in the seventh, and only run the Yankees would get until a lead-off Matt Lawton walk came around to score in the eighth.

The Red Sox, meanwhile, equalled the two runs the Yankees would score on the day before the Yanks even got a chance to hit. With two outs and an 0-2 count, David Ortiz battled Shawn Chacon for a ten-pitch walk. Chacon then got to 2-2 on Manny Ramirez before giving up an absolute bomb into Monument Park.

Chacon worked around a pair of baserunners in the second and another in the third, but couldn’t escape the fourth, which John Olerud led off with a solo homer into the upper deck in right. Buell Mueller and Gabe Kapler followed with singles and that was a wrap for Chacon, who needed 77 pitches (just 55 percent strikes) to get his nine outs. Felix Rodriguez came on in relief and surrendered a single to Tony Graffanino, batting lead off in place of the sore-shouldered Johnny Damon. With Dale Svuem playing it conservatively (!), that loaded the bases. Rodriguez then got Edgar Renteria to hit a chopper back to the mound, and fired home for a 1-2-3 double play, but his throw sailed low and away, where John Flaherty, starting for the sore-shouldered Jorge Posada, made a great play to simply get the one out at home.

With Ortiz due up, Joe Torre then went to Al Leiter, who got Ortiz to fly out to left, only to have Hideki Matsui lose the ball in the sun and drop it for an RBI single. Singles by Ramirez and Nixon followed to make it 7-0. Then Jason Varitek hit a double play ball to short, which Jeter flipped to Cano, who pivoted and launched a hail mary pass into the stands behind first to plate another run. Leiter then got the sixth out of the inning by getting Olerud to fly out to center.

To his credit, Leiter stayed in the game, pitching five more innings and allowing just one more run, thus saving the bullpen for today’s must win series finale.

With yesterday’s loss, the Yankees are four back in the east with just four games left against Boston. If they lose today, it’s over. To make matter’s worse, Cleveland, Oakland and the Angels all won yesterday, dropping the Yankees into a tie with the A’s, a game and a half behind Cleveland in the Wild Card chase.

At this point in the season, every game is a must win, every loss devastating, but today’s confrontation between Randy Johnson and Tim Wakefield just might be the most important of them all.

With Boston generating G.T.O.U.S.’s (Game Threads Of Unusual Size), here’s a a post for today’s game, along with some food for thought from previous posts by Alex and myself:

Cliff on Friday:

Here is Curt Schilling’s combined line in his three starts since returning to the Boston rotation:

17 1/3 IP, 27 H, 15 R, 1 HR, 5 BB, 13 K, 7.79 ERA, 1.85 WHIP

And Shawn Chacon’s in his eight Yankee starts:

51 2/3 IP, 45 H, 18 ER, 4 HR, 22 BB, 34 K, 3.14 ERA, 1.30 WHIP

I refuse to even think about making any predictions here (though I expect the Red Sox to win at least one game by brutalizing the Yankee bullpen).

Alex on Saturday:

As for today’s game I think that Schilling will respond and pitch his best game of the season, putting the ball in RJ’s court to do the same tomorrow (though, to be fair, Johnson has pitched some excellent games this year) against the Yankee-killer Wakefield. This series is more important for the Yankees right now, but I think on a personal level, today’s game is equally important to Schilling. A win today gets him feeling good, and Sox fans feeling a bit more comfortable.

I sure do hope I’m wrong. And if Chacon can pitch into the seventh and keep the game close, the Yanks will have a shot. Hopefully, Posada, Giambi and Bernie pick up where they left off last night. Ditto for Rodriguez, who I think needs to play like he did last night in two of the remaining five games against Boston to cement to the writers his MVP worthiness.

C’mon, Yanks, flip that FOX jinx and prove us wrong!

Johnny Damon lifted the first pitch of last night’s game between the Yankees and Red Sox to right field for what appeared to be an easy fly out, but Matt Lawton, starting in place of the injured Gary Sheffield, perhaps unaware the game had begun, misplayed the ball so badly, staggering around right field like a man with an inner ear infection, that he didn’t even come close to catching it. The ball dropped in front of Lawton for what was inexplicably ruled a single (the old, “if he didn’t touch it, he couldn’t have made an error” ruling), setting the tone for an evening of sloppy, but enthralling baseball from which the Yankees ultimately emerged with an 8-4 victory.

With Damon on first, Renteria bunted Aaron Small’s second pitch foul, took his third for a strike and lost his bat swinging at Small’s fourth offering of the game to strike out on three pitches. That brought David Ortiz to the plate. After a first-pitch ball, Small blew a gut-high 90-mile-per-hour fastball past Big Papi, threw three pitches low and away–the first a ball, the second a perfectly placed strike, and the third fouled off by Ortiz–then came back to blow another gut-high 91-mile-per-hour fastball past Ortiz to pick up his second strike out of the night.

After striking out Renteria and Ortiz, Small got ahead of Manny Ramirez 0-1 and 1-2 before getting Manny to bounce a weak grounder to third base. Unfortunately the grounder was so weak that Ramirez was able to reach on an infield single, well ahead of the barehanded scoop and throw of Alex Rodriguez. Small then got ahead of Trot Nixon 1-2 before getting him to foul out to Derek Jeter charging the stands behind third in a faint echo of last year’s July 1st epic.

Small retiring Ortiz and Nixon would also be a sign of things to come, as the lefty-hitting, Yankee-killing duo would finish the night 0 for 9 with three strikeouts and six runners left on base, their only RBI coming when Robinson Cano booted a potential double play ball off Nixon’s bat with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh.

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Three weeks ago, the Yankees headed to Chicago to face the first-place White Sox coming off yet another dispiriting series loss to the Devil Rays. Having been spared their performance in that series in Tampa due a long weekend away from electronic media of all kinds, this is how I sized up the Yankees chances at that point in the season:

What I see when I look at the standings is that the Yankees are four games behind the Red Sox in the AL East with six games left to play against Boston and one and a half games behind the A’s in the Wild Card race with three games left to play against Oakland. That means the Yankees’ destiny is in their own hands. If they are able to match just one of these two clubs win-for-win over the remainder of the season and sweep their head-to-head confrontations, the Yankees will make the playoffs for the eleventh consecutive season.

Here’s how those three teams have faired since then:

Red Sox: 13-7
Yankees: 13-7
Athletics: 10-9

The Yankees didn’t sweep the A’s head-to-head, but they did take two out of three while otherwise outplaying the A’s by a game and a half (removing that head-to-head series, their records over that span are NYY: 11-6, Oak: 9-7). So, despite yet another just-completed dispiriting series loss to the Devil Rays, the Yankees have thus far accomplished what I said they would need to.

There are only two problems:

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“We have to be better,” said Rodriguez, who was 1 for 4 with an infield single. “We expect more out of ourselves. That is just not acceptable. We’re better, I’m better, the whole team is better.”

“It’s just one of those things I don’t think you can explain,” Derek Jeter said. “They’ve played better than us. I don’t know how many games they’ve beaten us, but they deserved to win all of them.”

…”We have to come out and play better,” Jeter said, “because we’re running out of games.”
(N.Y. Times)

A Bomber blowout? So what do I know? At least I was thinking positively. Instead, it was another pathetic outing against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, as the Yankees were trounced 7-4, and it wasn’t even as close as the final score suggests. New York was mastered by Mark Hendrickson–dig it–and their bullpen could not hold Tampa Bay down after Chien-Ming Wang’s decent return performance. The four runs they scored in the seventh inning proved to be an abberation as the offense was lousy all night–in four at-bats, Bernie Williams saw a total of five pitches. This is the Yankees?

Apparently so. The Red Sox are in town for three games starting tonight and their offense has been terrific of late–last night’s loss notwithstanding (David Ortiz, representing the go-ahead run, struck out with the bases loaded in the eighth inning–Great Googlie Mooglie, the man is human after all). I wish I had a good feeling about Aaron Small tonight but I fear that the Sox will crush him. Hopefully, the Bombers will take two of three, but these days, it’s tough to figure what you are doing to get from them on any given day. With just over twenty games remaining they are four behind Boston in the AL East and a half-a-game behind the Indians for the wildcard. They are still very much in it. As down as I feel now, I realize that can all change quickly. Or it could get worse. Ah, these are the pros and cons of hitchhiking, right?

Wang is back tonight for the Bombers. Don’t know how he’ll do, but yo, the boys are going to slap Hendrickson about the neck and face. I wanna see a blowout, dog.

As I was buying the papers this morning I saw a middle school kid waiting for the bus. He was wearing a Jason Giambi shirt and I instantly remembered being his age and how proud I’d be to wear my gear after a big win like last night’s 5-4 Yankee victory over the Devil Rays. (It was only the fifth time in fifteen games that New York has toppled Tampa Bay this year.) He was a small dude, and his napsack looked half as big as he did. Looking at the back cover of The Daily News I said to him, “You must be a happy man this morning.” He assured me that he was. I asked him if he thought the Yanks would make the playoffs and he said with the utmost confidence that he believes they will beat the Sox to win the AL East. Whatever scars he has from last year’s October meltdown were not discernable. “Damn, you are too young to remember the Yankees not being good aren’t you?” He smiled in the self-satisfied fashion that Yankee fans have for generations. Dag.

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Jaret Wright returns to the mound tonight. It should be interesting to see what kind of stuff he’s got against an aggresive Tampa Bay line up. If this gets ugly it could get ugly if you know what I mean? Couldn’t you see Gomes charging Wright? Although I don’t have much of a vibe about the game I have to think the Yanks are going to bomb those suckers.

The latest word on Mike Mussina, brought to us by Bob Klapisch, is not encouraging for the Yankees:

Asked if he was feeling better, Mussina shook his head and said, “Actually, it’s feeling worse. At least when I was pitching, it would loosen up after a while. Now, I’m just sitting around and I can feel it tightening up.”

…There’s no medical procedure to cure it. No little white pill, including an anti-inflammatory, diminishes it. No massage or acupuncture treatment can mask it. The only antidote is rest, and Mussina never considered that option.

“It was killing me three months ago, but I didn’t tell anyone. I made up my mind to keep throwing,” he said. “I pitched until I couldn’t take it any more. I had to. Everything [everyone] else was falling apart around me.”

Oy.

Randy Johnson finally got his third-consecutive quality start last night, allowing three runs in 6 1/3 innings while throwing 73 percent of his pitches for strikes, but it wasn’t enough. Thanks in large part to a quartet of baserunning errors and one decisive fielding error, the Yankees once again came up short against the last-place Devil Rays. In turn, the Devil Rays clinched the season series, while the Yankees’ opportunity to reverse course against these pesky Rays slipped away, possibly along with their postseason hopes.

Everything started out well for the Yankees last night. While Randy Johnson started the night with two perfect innings, the Yanks put a two-spot on the board in the first via a quartet of singles (two of which never left the infield) and an error by Tampa second baseman Nick Green, then added another run in the second on a Robinson Cano double and Derek Jeter’s second single in as many innings.

Things started to turn in the third. Up 3-0, Johnson allowed his first baserunners when an overactive slider hit Green in the foot and Julio Lugo followed by drawing a six-pitch walk. In the fourth, Jonny Gomes picked up the first Devil Ray hit of the night with a one-out single and moved to second on a ground out for the second out. Alex Gonzalez then pulled a double down the left field line to plate Gomes and came around to score himself on a single by Toby Hall to bring the D-Rays within one. Meanwhile, Casey Fossum kept the Yankees off balance by changing speeds and hitting his spots, setting the side down in order in the third, fourth, and fifth innings.

Then came the sixth inning.

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I first posted this in the wake of Randy Johnson’s showdown with Felix Hernandez, but as tonight is his first start since that inspiring performance, here it is again:

Randy Johnson’s best consecutive starts this season:

April 24 (Tex), 29 (Tor): 17 IP, 10 H, 3 R, 1 HR, 4 BB, 16 K

June 11 (StL), 16 (Pit): 16 IP, 9 H, 1 R, 1 HR, 0 BB, 18 K

July 21 (Ana), 26 (Min)*: 14 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 0 HR, 2 BB, 15 K

Aug 26 (KC), 31 (Sea): 15 IP, 7 H, 1 R, 0 HR, 2 BB, 13 K

*this pair, unlike the others which are more evenly split, is largely due to the excellence of the second start

Johnson has not turned in three consecutive quality starts at any point this season. The closest he came was an eight-inning, three-run performance against the Mariners following the first two starts on the above list. I’ve disqualified that start, however, as Johnson actually skipped his turn following the Toronto game due to a strained groin suffered while completing that duel against Roy Halladay.

That skipped start would have come against in Tampa against the Devil Rays (Sean Henn took Johnson’s turn and got lit-up in his major league debut). Johnson has made three other starts against the Devil Rays this year with the Yankees, none of which have produced the desired result. Here’s a brief history:

Tues 4/19 (home): With yours truly sitting in $5 seats in the upper deck, Johnson pitches well but surrenders a two run home run to Eduardo Perez in the third and a solo shot to Perez in the sixth. Meanwhile, the Yankees struggle to hit current Columbus Clipper Hideo Nomo, who was pitching on three day’s rest. Final score 6-2 Devil Rays.

Tues 6/21 (home): Again facing off gainst Nomo, Johnson gets absolutely lit up, surrendering back-to-back homers to Damon Hollins and Kevin Cash amid a five-run second inning and a two-run shot by Jonny Gomes in the third. Johnson leaves the game down 7-1 after three innings, but the Yanks come back to win 20-11.

Tues 8/16 (away): Much like the first game, Johnson pitches well save a two-run homer by Eduardo Perez in the sixth. Still, he leaves with a 3-2 lead, which is erased when Perez hits a solo shot off Mariano Rivera with one out in the bottom of the ninth. The D-Rays win it in the eleventh when Scott Proctor, on in relief of Alan Embree, is ordered to intentionally walk Aubrey Huff to load the bases, then proceeds to walk Jonny Gomes on four pitches to drive in the winning run.

By now it’s common knowledge that the Yankees are 4-9 against the Devil Rays this season. With six games to play against Tampa this week (home) and next (away), the Yankees need Johnson to step up and stop the bleeding tonight, setting the tone for the remaining five games between these two teams. Outside of the six remaining games against the Red Sox, tonight’s contest just might be the most important game on the Yankees’ remaining schedule.

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Last week Bob Klapisch wrote an interesting article for The Baseball Analysts about pitching in a semi-pro league. He wrote that no feeling in the world “matches making a hitter swing and miss.” The historian Glenn Stout has also played baseball as an adult, also as a pitcher. Here is his take on the allure pitching:

I don’ think it’s so much the feeling you get when a batter swings and misses. What’s addictive is everything you have to do and go through to make a batter swing and miss being confirmed when the batter misses – the swing is confirmation that everything that has come before has been concluded and all is right with that world – or even if it’s not, like when your arm hurts or you know you have nothing, a swing and a miss is sometimes even better then, because you used your brain – mentally and emotionally, you were able to affect the physical world, which is a powerful narcotic. And I think that as pitchers age, this generally gets more pronounced, because when you are young and can just throw the ball past people, so what? But whenever you are pitching at a level where the hitters, or a good number of them, can hit your shit and aren’t overmatched, then you have to use everything. I think I’ve said before that nothing I’ve ever done successfully before has ever required so much physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally at the same time. When it is all working together, it’s the most powerful feeling in the world. There are times you just know that you’re going to get the hitter out, or get out of the inning, or win the game. You don’t get that feeling in the rest of the world very often.

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Labor Day weekend in New York City is undoubtedly my favorite holiday of the year. The town is dead, which means plenty of room to move around for the natives. You can get a parking space without a problem, stroll around without having to deal with crowds. There is a sleeping feeling about the place that is almost magic. What makes it even more enjoyable is the knowledge that it will all soon change, in a matter of hours. Tuesday will roll around, everyone will return from vacation, kids will be on the train on their way to school, the buzz will return. It makes the last moments of summer feel even more precious.

We were blessed with gorgeous weather this year. Saturday and Sunday were bright, sunny days, still very warm–ideal for taking longs walks followed by an afternoon nap (I ate corn and tomatoes from a local farmer’s market and made the first, and probably last, fresh pesto of the season). Yesterday was sunny as well but there was a crispness in the air, a chilly breeze that felt like the start of autumn. I visited a friend in New Jersey in the morning and spent the early afternoon listening to old records. By the time I returned to my neighborhood around 3:00 the place was still deserted. Space, silence. Talk about two things that a New Yorker relishes.

The Yanks return home along with everyone else tonight, kicking off a week-long homestand with three against the Devil Rays. With six games remaining against Tampa Bay, the Bombers can still salvage the season-series (10-9) if they sweep ’em. I think they need to take 5-6 to feel good about themselves. I know if they drop more than one game to them, I will be leading the moans and groans. We Yankee fans are known to be a tad dramatic, but from here on out, all bets are off: bring on the sturm and drang. Randy Johnson, who has not pitched well against Lou’s Crew this year, goes tonight. It’ll be nice to see him settle the score with one E. Perez, no?

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Behind another unspectacular yet effective performance from Shawn Chacon, the Yankees defeated the A’s last night 7-3. They jumped all over Barry Zito early and often, knocking the Oakland southpaw from the game by the fourth inning. Zito gave up six earned runs (including two solo dingers–Jeter, Bellhorn) on five hits and three walks. With the win, the Yanks are a game ahead of Oakland in the wildcard race, two in front of the Indians. They remain three-and-a-half behind the Red Sox in the AL East.

Mark Bellhorn started at second base, hit a home run, worked a walk with the bases loaded, and made several nifty plays in the field. In the first, he made a basket catch on Mark Ellis’ foul pop in foul territory, and in the fourth he started a slick double play. With Jay Payton on first, Dan Johnson hit a hard ground ball to Bellhorn’s left. He bent over and fielded the ball, and instantly spun toward second. Turning his body, and falling into right field he made a perfect throw to Jeter who then completed the play. I was surprised that Bellhorn attempted the double play in the first place. But there was no hesitation on his part and it was a fine play.

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After a shaky outing and a thoroughly poor one, Shawn Chacon looks to get back on the good foot tonight for the Yanks. He’ll face Barry Zito in Oakland on the ESPN Sunday Night Game of the Week. The Red Sox won this afternoon, and the Angels are well on their way to a win, but the Indians fell to the Twins.

The Yanks didn’t score on Friday, and the A’s didn’t score yesterday. Wish I could say I had a hunch about what’s going to happen, but I don’t. Hopefully, the Yanks pull out a win and come back home feeling okay about things.

Enjoy. I hope everyone is having a beautiful holiday weekend. Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

Aaron Small out-dueled Kirk Saarloos yesterday afternoon in Oakland as the Bombers rebounded from Friday night’s beating. As our colleague Ken Arnson noted, the final score of 7-0 is misleading as this was a tense game until the Yankees broke it open in the seventh (Ken was at the game and took a series of nice photographs). And even then, the A’s were close to getting out of the inning without the damage being too costly.

With the score 1-0, Hideki Matsui came to the plate with the bases loaded and just one out (Posada had singled, Cano dribbled a single that barely found a hole through the left side of the infield, then Bubba Crosby sacrificed the runners to second and third before Jeter was walked intentionally). The A’s brought in the left-hander Ricardo Rincon. Though Matsui has been slumping, I had a good feeling about his at bat as I’m sure many Yankee fans did. Sure enough he smashed a line drive up the middle. But it was speared by Oakland’s second baseman Mark Ellis and it appeared as if the A’s were going to be able to turn the double play and get out of the inning. But Matsui beat the relay throw, a run scored, and the inning was alive. It was a heck of a way for Matsui to drive in his 100th run of the year.

The young right-hander, Justin Duchscherer replaced Rincon, got ahead of Gary Sheffield but then lost him. Sheffield walked and the bases were juiced again for Alex Rodriguez who had two ground ball singles and had been hit by a pitch on the afternoon. Rodriguez took a strike and then fouled off a fastball that was over the plate. The second pitch was his pitch to hit and he missed it. But Rodriguez did not give up. Duchscherer then just missed striking Rodriguez out with a curve ball. The pitch was low but Rodriguez’s knees buckled all the same. Two more balls and the count was full before Rodriguez poked an outside pitch into right field for a single, scoring two runs. Rodriguez said something aloud half-way to first, and he clapped his hands once he reached the bag, looking directly into the Yankee dugout (the visitor’s dugout in Oakland is along the first base line). At that moment Joe Torre, who held the eighth team meeting of the season prior to the game, pointed directly at Rodriguez as if to say, “Right on!” That is about as animated as Torre gets, but it was an important at bat. Rodriguez did not try to do too much, he went with the pitch and came through once again. Jason Giambi followed, and he muscled a three-run dinger into the right field seats and that, as they say, was that.

After getting blown-out on Friday night, Aaron Small pitched a shut out. Hard to believe what a ride this guy has had since joining the team this summer. I’m sure it has been the time of his life. One thing is for sure, he has been a savior for the Yankees. I shutter to think where they’d be without him.

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Kicking off the biggest series of the year thus far for the Yankees, Al Leiter faced ten batters and retired just two of them before being removed from last night’s game down 6-0 with runners on second and third. Never mind that lead-off hitter Jason Kendell, who was hit with a 2-2 pitch to start the game, appeared to be thrown out stealing second but was called safe. Or that when Mark Ellis followed Kendell’s stolen steal by hitting a payoff pitch over Hideki Matsui’s head in left that Matsui misplayed badly, Hideki recovered to throw out Ellis trying to stretch it into a triple only to have Ellis called safe as well. Such quibles are minor in the face of the 12-0 thrashing the Yankees took at the hands of the A’s last night.

Leiter had nothing, resulting in the shortest non-injury start of his career. According to Joe Torre after the game, Leiter, notorious for his refusal to throw strikes, was simply catching too much of the plate. Though Leiter’s 50/50 ball to strike split would suggest otherwise, Leiter did say that, as a result of watching video on the A’s, he expected the Oakland to take more pitches and thus tried to get away with a few gimme strikes. What he failed to realize was that the A’s take balls and swing at strikes, particullarly big juicy ones over the heart of the plate.

With Mike Mussina out indefinitely and Aaron Small insterted in his place in the rotation, Joe Torre called on Jorge DePaula to stop the bleeding and soak up inings. Armed with an 86-mile-per-hour fastball, the 26-year-old DePaula, who has spent the season in Columbus working his way back from Tommy John surgery, was only up to half the task. DePaula got the final out of the first on three pitches, but then gave up four more runs in the second and single runs in the third and sixth. Still, credit Brian Cashman (as Torre did after the game) with realizing that the Yankees might need an innings sponge such as DePaula with Leiter and Small starting on consecutive days. DePaula and Wayne Franklin, who pitched two perfect frames against Oakland’s subs to finish the job, prevented Torre from having to use any of his more valuable relievers.

On the other side of the ball, the Yankees stranded runners in scoring position with less than two outs in the second, third and fourth innings against Danny Haren, also stranding a lead-off walk by Jeter in the first. After it took Haren just 18 pitches to get through the the Yankee’s three through eight hitters in the fifth and sixth, Joe Torre put in his B-squad:

1B – John Flaherty
SS – Mark Bellhorn (now with high sox and double-flap helmet)
3B – Andy Phillips (who hit the only pitch he saw to the warning track in left in the eighth, causing my heart to skip a beat)
C – Wil Nieves
LF – Matt Lawton (2 for 2, the only Yankee with a multi-hit night)
CF – Tony Womack
RF – Bubba Crosby

Shockingly, Womack and Flaherty got themselves on first and third in the eigth only to be stranded by Nieves, otherwise Lawton’s two hits were all the subs had to offer.

Elsewhere, the Red Sox lost, thus failing to increase their 3.5 game lead in the East, but the Angels and Indians won. As a result, the Yankees have fallen into a second place tie with the Indians in the Wild Card race, a game behind the A’s and Angels, who remain tied for first.

Today’s game starts at 4:05 and it couldn’t come soon enough. Last night’s game was far too reminiscent of Game Seven of last year’s ALCS and I’m desperate for a brand new ballgame to erase those awful memories (not to mention put the Yankees back in a tie for the Wild Card). Aaron Small, show your old team what you can do.

The A’s and Yankees enter this weekend’s series with identical 75-58 records, tied for third best in the American League, the lead in the Wild Card race, and in the case of the A’s, with the Angels for lead in the AL West. It’s a rather stunning accomplishment considering how badly both teams stumbled out of the gate.

For the A’s, their lowest point came after an eight-game losing streak in late May. After losing to the Indians on May 29, the A’s were 17-32 (.347). Since then they are 58-26 (.690).* I’m not entirely sure that it’s a coincidence that May 30 was the day that the A’s activated their 25-year-old shortstop and number-three hitter, Bobby Crosby, from the disabled list.

Crosby started the A’s opening day loss to the Orioles in Baltimore, but was removed mid-game and placed on the DL due to a stress fracture of his ribs that had resulted from being hit by a pitch in spring training. The A’s had lost their last eight games prior to Crosby being activated at the end of may, but with him in the line-up, Oakland ran off four straight wins, with Crosby getting a hit in each. Crosby proceeded to hit .337/.394/.568 (.319 GPA) through the end of June as the A’s finished the month with an eight-game wining streak, the last seven games of which also saw Crosby hit safely.

Bobby fell off some from that point hitting (.260/.333/.431 – .258) in July and August, but his presence in the line-up and Gold Glove-worthy defense at shortstop (112 Rate) remained a key part of the A’s success, as they started the second half with seven straight series wins (20-4, .833). Well, last Saturday, Baltimore struck again as Crosby suffered a non-displaced fracture in his left ankle when he slid into Sal Fasano at home plate. Crosby is now back on the disabled list and the A’s are unsure if he will return before the end of the regular season.

Thus far the A’s have done well in his absence. With Crosby still at short, the A’s followed their remarkable start to the second half of the season by dropping series to the Twins, Orioles and Royals and losing the opening game of a series in Detroit, a 2-8 stretch, only to recover and with their next four games, the last of which was the game in which Crosby broke his ankle.

With Crosby on the shelf, the A’s completed a four-game sweep of the O’s and then dropped a hard-fought and well-pitched three-game set to the rival Angels, in which aggregate score of the entire series was 6-3 Angels, with A’s winning the first game in eleven innings and the Angels taking the last two. Thus it’s difficult to say whether or not the Yankees, who are 5-1 against the A’s this season having played all six games against them during Crosby’s absence in May, are returning to Oakland at an advantageous time or not. In a sense, this series will be a greater test for Oakland than it will be for the Yankees. In addition to Crosby, the A’s are likely to be without center fielder and number-two hitter Mark Kotsay for at least the first two games due to back spasms. Kotsay last played on Sunday in Baltimore and received an epidural injection on Wednesday. The A’s are also playing without their young ace Rich Harden, who has missed his last two starts due to a strained right lat and is likely to miss at least one more. With harden out a month due to a strained left oblique suffered in a start against the Yankees in Oakland on May 14, the A’s went 17-19 (including losing that game against the Yankees). They later won Harden’s first three starts (and seven of his first eight) after being activated.

These injuries to Crosby, Kotsay and Harden, along with the just completed series loss to the Angels which erased the A’s lead in the West, could put the young A’s into a psychological funk. As Barry Zito told MLB.com, “Potentially it could bring us down, but we’ve faced adversity before and come through it. Granted we sucked the last time we had a bunch of guys on the DL, but now we have some momentum. We’ve been picking each other up for the past two months.”

As it turns out, Marco Scutaro has been almost as solid as Crosby in the field (108 Rate at shortstop), and the Yankees would have missed Harden’s turn in the rotation this weekend even if he had been healthy. The Yankees will also miss Joe Blanton, who along with Harden has formed a new trio of aces with Sunday’s starter, Barry Zito.

Hot on the heels of those three aces, however, is tonight’s starter, Dan Haren. Haren will oppose Al Leiter, who is coming off six ugly two-hit innings against the Royals, proceeded by a relatively efficient seven innings against the Blue Jays. The way the pitching rotations fell this weekend may not be ideal for either team, but no matter what happens this weekend there should be a playoff atmosphere in Oakland as the odds are the team that wins the series will emerge with the lead in the Wild Card race (though a poor performance by the Angels against the Mariners this weekend could put the A’s in the AL West lead and thus Yankees in the Wild Card lead regardless of the series outcome, but we’ll ignore that for now).

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