It was almost the West Coast trip from hell. After dropping five of six in Oakland and Seattle, not to mention losing Alex Rodriguez to a broken hand, the Yankees were poised for another defeat on Wednesday afternoon. However, Jayson Nix’ bases clearing double in the eighth inning wiped away a 2-1 deficit, and with it, some of the sting of a difficult road trip.

If not for Nix’ heroics, the Yankees would have recorded their second lowest winning percentage on any West Coast trip of at least six games. By squeaking out a win, the Bronx Bombers also nudged their all-time record in the Pacific timezone to just over .500 at 385-384.  Although Yankees’ fans are seldom satisfied with mediocrity, that record might come as a pleasant surprise because trips out West have always seemed to have more than their share of misadventures.

Winning Percentage Distribution of Yankees’ West Coast Trips, 1968 to 2012

Note: Includes trips involving two or more cities.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

The Yankees’ first regular season game on the West Coast took place on May 5, 1961, when the Bronx Bombers traveled across the country to face the expansion Los Angeles Angels. Media accounts expected the Yankees to romp over the Angels, especially considering the friendly confines of Wrigley Field (there was one in Los Angeles too). Although the AP compared the mighty Yankees’ visit to “letting a channel swimmer work out in bath tub”, Casey’s crew wound up losing two of three in the series and six of nine against the Angels in Los Angeles overall.

Since the Angels joined the American League, the Yankees have played 769 games in the Pacific Time Zone as part of 126 distinct trips. Until the Athletics moved to Oakland in 1968, visits to the West Coast were basically three game stopovers amid longer road trips that included cities like Cleveland, Minnesota, and Kansas City. Then, when the Pilots landed in Seattle for the 1969 season, the jaunt became a lengthy swings up or down the coast. In 1970, East Coast teams were given a bit of a reprieve when the Pilots relocated to Milwaukee, but the three-city circuit became a staple when the Mariners joined the A.L. in 1977.

With Seattle back in business, the three-city trip along the Pacific became a rite of passage for A.L. teams until the next round of expansion in 1998. Since that time, the Yankees have only made one trip covering all three cities. In fact, with the exception of the nine-game jaunt in May 2011, last week’s seven-game trip out West was as long as any other from the past 14 seasons.

Yankees’ Winning Percentage on the West Coast, by Decade, 1961 to 2012

Note: Includes all games played in the Pacific timezone.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

So, if this most recent West Coast swing almost qualified as the second worst in Yankees’ history, what was the worst? On May 23, 1995, the Yankees, who trailed the Red Sox by 1.5 games at the time, lost the first game of a three-city tour in a 10-0 blowout at the hands of Chuck Finley and the Angels. However, there was a silver lining, albeit one that wouldn’t pay off until the following year. In need of a spot starter, the Yankees promoted a skinny Panamanian kid named Mariano Rivera. Although the loss presaged the kind of trip the Yankees would have, Rivera’s debut turned out to be the more important omen.

The Yankees wound up losing the first five games of the trip before finally getting a win in Oakland behind, you guessed it, Rivera, who, this time, allowed only one run over 5 1/3 innings (the losing pitcher was present day Yankees’ bullpen coach Mike Harkey). Unfortunately, the losing resumed as the Yankees were swept in three games at the Kingdome. By the time the Bronx Bombers limped onto the plane to head back home, the team had dropped seven games behind the Red Sox.

Incredibly, the Yankees followed up the disastrous trip to the West Coast with another epic failure when the team returned in August. This time, the Yankees eked out one more victory to finish the 10-game trip at 2-8. Combined with the three losses the team suffered to the Mariners in the ALDS, the Yankees ended 1995 with 3 wins against 19 defeats on the banks of the Pacific.

Yankees’ Worst West Coast Trip: May 23-31, 1995

Note: Based on winning percentage; minimum six games.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

One season before the Yankees’ nightmarish Western experience in 1995, the team compiled its most glorious visit to Anaheim, Oakland and Seattle. Following the All Star Break in 1994, the Yankees opened up the second half in the Kingdome, and, for eight innings, looked headed for defeat. Trailing 8-6 in the ninth, the Yankees’ rallied for seven runs and then seemingly never stopped scoring after that. In total, the Bronx Bombers scored 90 runs on the 10-game trip, culminating in Don Mattingly’s first and only pinch hit home run, which helped the Yankees erase another ninth inning deficit in the final game of the trip. The 9-1 stretch allowed the Yankees to build a 5 1/2 game lead in the A.L. East, putting the team in line for its first full season division title since 1980. However, it was all for naught. Less than three weeks later, the players went on strike and the season never resumed.

Yankees’ Best West Coast Trip: July 14-24, 1994

Note: Based on winning percentage; minimum six games.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Over at Deadspin our pal Eric Nusbaum has a good piece on a game called Out of the Park Baseball:

The summer after my freshman year of college, I told somebody’s mother that I wouldn’t be attending her son’s funeral. I remember the moment, if not the conversation, with great clarity. I was working in my dad’s shop, filling orders for spare bike rack parts, when my phone rang. My hands were sticky with glue from the ancient packing-tape dispenser.

Here are some things I didn’t tell her: I never met your son. We only talked on the phone once or twice. He had my number in the first place because we played at being general managers in the same imaginary baseball league. When Chris and I did speak, it was about lineup exports.

Here is something I don’t remember if I told her: I’m so sorry.
I was 18. Chris, sick as he was, could not have been much older. I panicked. Our friendship was too convoluted and trivial to explain in the moment. Who was I to waste the time of a mother as she slogged dutifully from A through Z in her dead son’s contact list when I didn’t even know what her dead son looked like? But there was also another thing that was harder to admit: Chris’s death turned something fake into something real.

Tonight, Carl Crawford is expected to be in the line-up for the Red Sox. Kevin Youkilis will be in the house too, starting for the visiting White Sox. And Daniel Bard will still be in the minors. Over at Grantland, Charlie Pierce has a story on Bard’s interesting and horrible season:

There was an ill-starred attempt to make him a starting pitcher, which seemed to get deeply into his head. He started thinking like a starter, not like the blow-them-away reliever he had been. He was nibbling, trying to induce ground balls, the way starters are supposed to do it. As a starter, he was 5-6, with an ERA over five. He had 37 walks as opposed to 34 strikeouts. He hit bottom on June 3 against Toronto, his last start in the major leagues so far this season. He lasted 1⅔ innings, walking six and hitting two dudes besides. He told the Red Sox he thought he should be a reliever again. They sent him down to Pawtucket.

There were whispers that it might be gone from him for good, that whatever it was that had brought him to the majors had abandoned him at 27. The whispers were in Boston, but they carried down Interstate 95 to this small ballpark tucked amid the abandoned factories. Outside Gate A at McCoy Stadium, there is a cyclone fence covered with canvas billboards that display some of the players who have passed through Pawtucket on their way to the big club in Boston. The very last of these, right where the fans entered the park for this weekend’s series with the Buffalo Bisons, is a picture of Daniel Bard, his arm like a whip, throwing the ball very hard, looking very young.

In the clubhouse, as he got ready for whatever fresh hell baseball was going to hand him this day, I told him about that extraordinarily vivid evening in Fenway a few years earlier. “The first time I hit 100 was in college, I think,” he mused. “It was some time ago, and it was kind of a gradual thing. It was cool, like when you hit 90 in high school. It doesn’t really mean anything. It just sounds cool.”

He still looked very young. He sounded very old.

[Photo Credit: Charles O’Rear via It’s a Long Season]

Here is a piece that Pat Jordan wrote for the New York Times back in 1989. It is reprinted here with permission from the author.

A Team Divided Can Still Win

At the Yankees’ spring training clubhouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Rickey Henderson tells reporters Yankee pitchers drink too much. Dave Righetti tells reporters Henderson should mind his own business. Don Mattingly tells reporters he thinks maybe Henderson has a point. Dave Winfield, seated at his locker, watches with a big mischevious grin as schools of reporters swim back and forth from Henderson’s locker to Righetti’s locker like tiny fish being led blindly by the pilot fish of dissension.

A few days later, at the Mets’ training camp in Port St. Lucie, Fla., Darryl Strawberry threatens to walk out of camp if the Mets don’t renegotiate his contract. He sulks on the field during photo day. Keith Hernandez tells him he’s acting like a baby. Strawberry takes a swing at Hernandez while cameras click. They scuffle and are finally pulled apart by teammates.

Back at the Yankee camp, Winfield, laughing now, says that the Mets have outfoxed the Yankees and now it’s the Yankees’ turn to find some way to get attention back on them. His teammates laugh.

Reporters, however, take the two disturbances seriously. They wonder, in print and on television, if dissension is ripping apart what they perceive as the delicately stitched fabric of clubhouse harmony each team must weave if it is to be successful? They see it all so clearly from their perspective, as men and women who have never been part of such clubhouses. They have always imparted to clubhouse harmony a certain romance of brotherhood they would only laugh at if someone tried to impart it, say, to the boardroom of I.B.M. They see relationships among players in a baseball clubhouse as merely an extension of the child-play relationships they remember from their youth.

In a way, this is condescending to the players, implying as it does a childishness on their part, which, as grown men, they don’t have. What reporters see, then, exists only in their mind’s eye. Which is why the players laugh. They know that clubhouse harmony or the lack of it hasn’t much to do with a team’s success on the field. Players know that good-natured camaraderie in the clubhouse, shared intimacies over a locker, plans to get together with families for a cookout on a day off, all have nothing to do with a team’s success.

Many a sublimely contented baseball team has finished out its season dead last, while more than a few angry, squabbling teams have gone on to win their league titles and the World Series. The Oakland A’s of the Reggie Jackson-Sal Bando era, and the Yankees of the Reggie Jackson-Thurmon Munson era are perfect examples of the latter.

Jackson and Munson may not have shared too many intimacies in the clubhouse before a game, but that certainly never affected their play on the field. Which is the point. The only thing that matters to players is the game. It unites 25 grown in spite of the fact that they all come from diverse backgrounds and may not have much in common.

The game is what gives players great tolerance for their teammates’ foolishness in the clubhouse. (”Oh, Rickey. He’s just being Rickey.”) They can accommodate themselves to Rickey being Rickey or Darryl being Darryl in the clubhouse as long as Rickey is Rickey and Darryl is Darryl once they step across those white lines. Then, everything is forgotten, fades from memory, becomes trivial.

Like most men in business, baseball players compartmentalize their jobs. What goes on across the white lines is infinitely more important than what goes on behind them. A close friend who consistently strikes out with the bases loaded isn’t as much use to a ballplayer as a despised teammate who consistently strokes game-winning hits. The respect a player feels for a teammate’s personal life has nothing to do with the respect he feels for a teammate’s baseball talent. Babe Ruth, Pete Rose and Wade Boggs are three of the greatest hitters ever in the game, and yet not many teammates might envy their personal lives. Yet to a man, every player in the game would want one of those three at the plate if a World Series championship was on the line.

Dissension then, although it may exist in the clubhouse, doesn’t much affect the game beyond it. That possibility is a creation of the news media, which mistakingly judges the game by the same standards it judges other jobs in ”the real world,” a phrase ballplayers use. In the real world, workers work in their clubhouse or office. The mood of their workplace does affect their jobs. A writer can’t write in a hateful environment any more than a salesman can sell his wares in one.

Employee recognition, unlike the occasional dissension in a sports clubhouse, plays a significant role in shaping workplace productivity and satisfaction. While media narratives might overlook the nuanced impact of workplace dynamics, statistics from Workhuman reveal that a positive environment fueled by regular recognition can profoundly influence employee performance. Just as a writer’s productivity suffers in a hostile atmosphere, so too does an employee’s engagement and output in a lackluster environment.

Effective recognition fosters a supportive and motivating workplace, enabling employees to thrive despite challenges and contributing to overall organizational success. This underscores the importance of acknowledging achievements and creating a positive atmosphere to enhance job satisfaction and effectiveness.

In the real world, a worker can sabotage a despised co-worker, and get away with it, because it generally won’t affect his job in a negative way. Often, it affects his job positively. He leapfrogs above his sabotaged co-worker. But baseball players work before a vast, all-seeing audience, not in the private confines of their clubhouse. If Henderson were to drop a fly ball deliberately to show up Righetti on the mound, it would be he, Henderson, who would be heaped with ridicule by the fans. Ballplayers’ egos are too big for them to expose themselves to such abuse. Therein lies the beauty of the game. It appeals to both an individual’s ego and his sense of team play.

Baseball isn’t like other team sports where the play of the individual and the team are often blurred. A running back in football can’t show much without the help of his linemen anymore than a basketball player can score points without sharp picks and passes from his teammates. Dissension in those sports can spill over onto the court and field and affect team play. Basketball players can freeze out a despised teammate, just as a football quarterback can freeze out a wide receiver.

In baseball, an individual’s play is distinct from the team’s success even though it contributes or detracts from it. Every player does his own solo dance before the fans. The shortstop, gliding into the hole like a skater on ice, backhands a sure hit, straightens himself, and throws the runner out to thunderous applause. His individual play is rewarded at the same time that his team is rewarded with an out. That’s the beauty of baseball. It’s the only team sport where an individual’s accomplishments or failures are first chalked up to him, personally, and only then added or subtracted from the team’s success or failure in a peripheral way. And always the team’s success or failure is greater than the sum of it’s individuals’ contributions.

In the late 50’s and early 60’s, I played minor league baseball throughout this country. I spent four years in baseball clubhouses with players who cheated their teammates in cards, who seduced their teammates’ wives, who were drunks or bigots or just plain mean, and I can’t remember one time when any of those players’ characteristics affected the play of their team on the field. In fact, I remember one time most clearly of all when I had a fistfight with a teammate who was most closely tied to my success or failure as a pitcher. The player was Elrod Hendricks, now a coach with the Baltimore Orioles.

Then, in 1959, we were playing for the McCook Braves in McCook, Neb. Elrod and I squared off on the sidewalk on Main Street one sunny afternoon in July. It was a brief fight. I lowered my head and charged Elrod like a bull. He grabbed me around the neck and began punching me in the stomach until I lost my wind and collapsed to the sidewalk. I sat there, ridiculously, legs spread like a child, gasping for breath.

That night, all of our teammates knew about the fight, as did our manager, who fined us both $25. When I took the mound in only my third professional game Elrod was my catcher. He called a beautiful game. He threw out two runners trying to steal second base and he tagged out the potential tying run in the eighth inning in a play at the plate. The runner slammed into Elrod with his shoulder and they both went tumbling in the dust. But Elrod held onto the ball, despite being spiked in the shin, drawing blood.

In the ninth inning, I struck out the last batter of the game with a nice curveball to record my first professional shutout. Elrod caught that third strike and leaped out of his crouch, grinning. He ran to the mound and threw his arms around me and hugged me.

Oh, Bobby, Where Art Thou?

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

Sorry I’m late in sharing this story about Arnold Hano.

For more on Arnold read Hank Waddles’ two part interview (part one and part two).

[Photo Credit: Scott Smeltzer]

Wayne Coffey has a nice piece in the Daily News today about R.A. Dickey and my friend, the late Mike Gitelson. Mike died earlier this year from myeloid leukemia.

It is a touching story. Mike, who we called “Getty,” was my best friend in middle school. We collected comics, records, and pined for someone to take us to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the 8th Street Playhouse. Getty did not care about sports. At all.

My mother once took a group of us to Yankee Stadium for my birthday to see the Angels because Reggie Jackson was my favorite player. We sat in the bleachers. Mike made a placard at home and brought it with him. It read: Reggie Sucks. During batting practice, Reggie shagged flies near us and Getty waved the placard and yelled at him. At one point, Reggie turned in our direction, grabbed his crotch and spit on the ground. Getty whooped and laughed, his mission accomplished.

He was a political kid. Both of Getty’s parents were social workers and so he came by his left-leaning attitudes naturally. (I remember him railing about something once when we were in high school. We were  in the car with his father, who was a funny guy, and his dad said, “Michael, you are the only socialist I know with a bank card.”) By the time we were upperclassmen in high school, Mike had gone through the Clash and the Sex Pistols and was listening to the Dead Kennedys and Jello Biafra. He was the only guy we knew who was into the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone and Bad Brains.

His senior quote came from a Chili Peppers song: Don’t be a slave/No one can tell you/You’ve got to be afraid.

Getty was an angry kid (then again, so was I). He couldn’t wait to get to college. We had a falling out by then and I didn’t talk to him again for more than twenty years. But because we still had some of the same interests, I ran into him periodically: at a rest stop in New Jersey in 1994 or ’95 on the way home from a Mumia Abu Jamal demonstration in Philadelphia; at Fat Beats, a hip hop record store in the village; in ’96, on the night the Yankees won the Whirled Serious, at a De La Soul/Fishbone concert at Roseland; on the subway platform of the Carroll Street station in Brooklyn. I approached him at the rest stop after the Mumia Abu Jamal rally and startled him. It was clear that he didn’t want to reconnect so the other times I saw him–“Getty Sightings”–I left him alone.

I was surprised, then, when he reached out to me about five or six years ago. We exchanged e-mails and whatever hard feelings that might have existed were gone. We didn’t see each other but touched base every now and then. Mike had become a baseball fan through his wife who was–and is–nuts for the Mets. I thought that was amusing coming from a guy who loved to ridicule overpaid, conceited jocks.

Mike suffered with Crohn’s and he died too young. Go figure that baseball would provide distraction and comfort for him. His encounter with R.A. Dickey was moving. You know, when we were kids, Getty laughed in the movie theater at the end of Terms of Endearment when everyone else sobbed. During The Breakfast Club when the kids bared their souls and the theater was quiet, Getty cackled.  He was allergic to sentiment. But after R.A. Dickey called him on the phone, Mike cried. And I think he’d very much appreciate Coffey’s article.

Yet another reason to pull for Mr. Dickey who sounds like some kind of mensch.

[Photo Credit: Matt Cerrone]

The Yankees finally found a cure for TB. After losing nine straight games at Tropicana Field in Tampa (OK fine, St. Petersburg), the Bronx Bombers finally broke the schneid on Robinson Cano’s game winning two-run single with the bases loaded. If not for Cano’s timely hit (and Kyle Farnsworth’s four consecutive walks), the Yankees, who have seemingly saved their worst baseball for the unfriendly confines of the dome, would have recorded their seventh double-digit losing streak at a road stadium.

Yankees’ Longest Losing Streaks at a Road Stadium, Since 1918
 

Source: Baseball-reference.com

Even though the Yankees probably weren’t heart broken about the three game sweep in Tampa that occurred at the end of last season, the nine game skid was still the longest in any one road ballpark since the Bronx Bombers went winless in 15 straight games at Arlington Stadium from 1989 to 1991. Unfortunately, the Texas heat wasn’t the only thing that caused the Yankees to wilt during that span. Over the same period, the Yankees dropped 10 consecutive games to the Athletics at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Of course, during that period, the Yankees didn’t have much luck beating the Bash Brothers, or anyone for that matter. From 1989 to 1991, the team’s .437 winning percentage was the fifth lowest of any three-year span in franchise history and the worst since 1913-1915.

Yankees’ 15 Game Losing Streak at Arlington Stadium, 1989 to 1991

Source: Baseball-reference.com

As you’d expect from a team with the highest road winning percentage in baseball, the Yankees have had more double-digit road ballpark winning streaks than losing skids.  The all-time high run of 13 straight victories dates back to 1939-1940 against the hapless St. Louis Browns at Sportsman’s Park, but the most recent double-digit streak was also deep in the heart of Texas, as the Yankees reeled off 10 straight victories versus the Rangers from 2005 to 2007. That mark, as well as the all-time franchise record for most wins in a single road ballpark, could be in jeopardy later this month when the Yankees visit Oakland. The last time the Bronx Bombers lost at the Athletics’ home field was on April 22, 2010, the same day that Alex Rodriguez violated the sanctity of Dallas Braden’s mound. Since then, the Yankees have won nine straight victories in “the 209”, and could tie the current longest streak of 13 road ballpark wins with a four game sweep in the teams’ final series in two weeks.

Yankees’ Longest Winning Streaks at a Road Stadium, Since 1918

Source: Baseball-reference.com

Viciedo's ninth-inning homer cooked the Yankees (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Going into Thursday night, Ivan Nova had a 1.27 ERA in four starts in June. This is good, because Ivan Nova is suddenly much more important to the Yakees than he was supposed to be. A day after CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte both headed to the disabled list, with Adam Warren and Freddy Garcia looming, an authoritative, effective performance from Nova was an oasis of relief — though, speaking of relief, that part of the equation didn’t go so well. The bullpen, specifically Clay Rapada and David Robertson, worked together to take turn a 3-1 lead in the ninth into a 4-3 loss thanks to a three-run homer from Dayan Viciedo. It was not a particularly charming party trick.

Any last-minute loss is a tough one, but this one was particularly so because it wasted a now-precious good start. Stinging even more was Clay Rapada’s ninth-inning throwing error, which cost the team a double play and probably the win, and the question of whether it all could have been avoided if David Robertson had just started the inning. Girardi said afterwards that he was trying to avoid overusing Robertson given his recent injury and use. I think that’s understandable, but of course Robertson ended up pitching anyway, and there’s room to second guess if you’re so inclined. It was hard not to feel for Rapada watching his postgame interview, in which he looked downright haunted, as if he had just accidentally run over Derek Jeter’s dog.

The runs the Yankees did get came from two doubles in the fifth – Alex Rodriguez knocking Granderson home, and then Cano doing the same for A-Rod – and a Mark Teixeira solo shot in the eighth. Chicago starter Dylan Axelrod ended up with a solid line, even though at times it seemed the Yankees were about to crack him wide open: 7 innings, 6 hits, 3 walks, 4 Ks, 2 ER. In fact, it was just about identical to Nova’s except that the Yankee hurler tossed an additional third of an inning, struck out one more batter, and allowed one less run.

This series also gave Yankees fans their first glimpse of Kevin Youkilis in another kind of Sox uniform, which took me aback even though I was of course expecting it. Youkilis’ odd bat-waggling stance still makes me want to yell obscenities at my TV, just because – the guy is inherently infuriating – but I’m nevertheless a bit sad about his unpleasant separation from Boston, where up til just recently I imagined he might stay for his entire career. It’s not one of the world’s tragedies, but seeing him in the Chicago uniform – and whatever other uniforms are to come – will always be odd.  He was 0-for-4 on the night.

How much panic is necessary about the Yankees’ sudden pitching concerns is still unclear, and will largely depend on your individual brand of fandom. It doesn’t sound like Sabathia will miss much too much time, though of course you never know and I just reached down to knock on the wood floor after typing that. But we will not see Pettitte again until September, at best, bringing to a crashing halt one of the best stories of this baseball season. I was in upstate New York visiting my dad when the Yankees announced Pettitte’s return; there’s not much reception where he is, and when I checked my phone as we drove through a rare three-bar zone, the news was so unexpected that I wondered if the phone was actually working properly — as if somehow I had just received a delayed tweet from 2007. That he would not only come back, but do so the tune of a 130+ ERA and regularly pitch into the eighth inning, surpassed my dreams of a best-case scenario. Even his injury was caused by a comebacker, a freak accident, not age or rust. But so it goes.

Hopefully, the Yankees have employees guarding Phil Hughes, Hiroki Kuroda and Nova 24/7, preventing staircase trips and cooking cuts and fending off stray meteors, lightning strikes and coyote attacks. I want their best men on it.

If the opposition has the Yankees seeing red tonight, you really can’t blame them. When the White Sox take the field at Yankee Stadium, their lineup will include Kevin Youkilis, the latest rivalry castoff from the Red Sox whose .942 OPS against the Bronx Bombers is one highest in the long running feud between Boston and New York. However, Chicago didn’t acquire Youkilis before their series in the Bronx just so they could antagonize the Yankees. Rather, GM Kenny Williams jumped at the opportunity to fill one of the most cavernous holes on a major league roster. That he was able to do so with a three-time All Star was icing on the cake.

Best and Worst by Position, 2012

*DH excludes National League teams.
Note: Player in parenthesis has most plate appearances at the position.
Source: fangraphs.com

Other than catcher for the Oakland Athletics, no position has been more undermanned from an offensive standpoint than third base on the South Side. Before Youkilis was acquired, the combination of Brent Morel, Orlando Hudson, and Eduardo Escobar turned the position into the cold corner, so even with a hot start (5 for 12) by the former Red Sox’ star, it will take some time before the team’s woeful production from third base starts to thaw out.

Now that the White Sox have filled their deepest hole, the onus shifts to the Detroit Tigers, who have frittered away the benefits of having sluggers like Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder by giving away outs from two positions on the diamond. In order to keep up with the White Sox, who currently reside in first place in the A.L. Central, Detroit may also need to make a deal. As the trade deadline nears, the Cubs are expected to hold a fire sale, so, who knows, the answer to the Tigers’ troubles may also reside in Chicago?

For the most part, the primary player who has helped their team lead the league in offense at each position also happens to be in line for an All Star Game start (who says the fans don’t know how what they’re doing?), leaving only Jed Lowrie and Carlos Ruiz as mild surprises. It’s also interesting to note that no team has enjoyed top production from more than one position, which speaks further to the level of parity that currently exists in the game. In the past, a team like the Yankees would dominate the “best list”, but these days, the Bronx Bombers are more of a streamlined offense. Other than second base, the Yankees only rank in the top-five at shortstop, even though they have maintained above average production at every position but left field and catcher.

Yankees’ Relative Production at Each Position, 2012

*DH excludes National League teams.
Source: fangraphs.com

Thanks to the revised postseason structure, the period leading up to the trade deadline promises to be unique, if not active. With so many teams now contenders because of the added wild card, buyers could wind up outnumbering sellers, making the cost of a trade increasingly prohibitive. By striking early, however, the White Sox were able to take advantage of extenuating circumstances in Boston to address their greatest needed without paying too high of a price (or, according to some, any price at all). Because of how well Youkilis has performed against the Yankees, fans of the team may rue the White Sox good fortune over the next four days, but with 15 games left against the Red Sox, the Bronx Bombers could also wind up being one of the early winners of the trading season.

Or: How to Insure You Won’t Get a Holiday Card from one Omar Vizquel.

Jay Jaffe examines the Hall of Fame candidacy of a gifted infielder who has enjoyed a fine, long, career. In the process, gets lumped with Jose Mesa on Vizquel’s enemies list.

[Photo Credit: Ron Vesely]

Wanna know your favorite big league ball player’s home town?

This is the spot.

Another place I found because I read Kottke, the dopest site on the ‘Net.

Over at Grantland, Michael Schur presents this Requiem for a Hardass:

In his prime, Youk was an elite hitter, and he fielded two positions quite well. His OPS+ from 2008 to 2010 were 144, 146, and 157 (all OBP-heavy), and over those three years he was among the five or so very best hitters in most ways that matter. He was one of the best players in the game. But what made him special was how weird it was that this was true.

Kevin Youkilis is one of the most oddly shaped human beings in professional athletics. His torso is giant and cylindrical — he looks like a cartoon poor person wearing a barrel. He is completely bald — like, aggressively bald, like he hates hair — except for a fiery red goatee bush that tumbles out of his face like Play-Doh from a fun factory. When he hits, he stands with his feet so close together the ump could tip him over with one quick index-finger jab to the sternum — an action that must have been tempting for many umps over the years — and as he raises the bat above his head and aims the barrel back toward the pitcher in a manner any Little League coach would surely curtail (“No, Kevin, not like that, that’s all wrong … just … is your dad here? I need to talk to him”), his hands are a foot apart on the handle of the bat, and he then slowly slides them toward each other as the pitcher moves through his delivery. It’s fucking insane. (“Kevin? Buddy? Hands together, buddy. See? Like this? … Is your dad here?”) From this stevedore’s frame, alopecic head, and just completely goofy stance came a truly elite ballplayer. Who is also kind of a dick.

[Photo Credit: AP]

Kevin Youkilis has been traded to the Chicago White Sox. Jon Heyman broke the story. Details to come…

Youk was a classic Boston Red Sox, one of the dreaded “dirt dogs” and out of respect, I hated his guts. He was a tough, pain-in-the-ass out for a long time. Now, other than Pedrioa and Ortiz, the old Red Sox are but a memory.

[Photo Credit: Willa Dios]

Here’s Roger Angell on R.A. Dickey:

Dickey, whose full beard and peaceable appearance suggest a retired up-country hunting dog, is thirty-seven years old, with ten years and three prior big-league teams behind him, and hard work has brought him to this Shangri-La, perhaps only briefly. He’ll hope for another visit on Sunday, against the Yankees. Watching him, if you’ve ever played ball, you may find yourself remembering the exact moment in your early teens when you were first able to see a fraction of movement in a ball you’d flung, and sensed a magical kinship with the ball and what you’d just done together. This is where Dickey is right now, and for him the horrendous din of the game and its perpetual, distracting flow of replay and statistics and expertise and P.R. and money and expectation and fatigue have perhaps dimmed, leaving him still in touch with the elegant and, for now, perfectly recallable and repeatable movements of his body and shoulders and the feel of the thing on his fingertips.

[Photo Credit: Barton Silverman/N.Y. Times]

The Yankees hope to start a new winning streak against the Mets at Citi Field.

The Yankees entered yesterday’s off day in unfamiliar territory: on a losing a streak. It had been almost a full month since the Yankees last lost consecutive games, so you can bet the Bronx Bombers will be chomping at the bit to get back in the win column tonight at CitiField.

Over the first three months of the season, the Yankees have had seven stretches featuring consecutive losses, but none has lasted longer than three games (three have been two games and four have been three games). Even when they weren’t playing particularly well, the Yankees managed to avoid the kind of long losing streak that can put a team deep in the hole. As a result, the Yankees recent hot stretch has allowed them to build a lead instead of chip away at a deficit.

Distribution of Yankees’ Losing Streaks, Since 1918

Note: Includes all streaks of three or more losses.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

The last time the Yankees avoided a losing streak of at least four games was 1980. Probably one of the most overlooked teams in franchise history, Dick Howser’s club won 103 games that year, but all was forgotten when they were swept by the Royals in the ALCS. Ironically, the Yankees had only lost three games in a row on three occasions during the regular season, just once more than the lowest total in franchise history. Unfortunately for Howser, the team’s fourth three-game losing streak came at an inopportune time as it not only denied him a chance to manage in the World Series, but also wound up costing his job.

It’s a good thing the Yankees have avoided losing streaks in June because, over the first two months of the season, they were on pace to rank near the bottom in terms of both the number of losing stretches and games contained therein. Since 1918, 26 different Yankees’ teams have finished the year with four or fewer losing streaks of at least three games, which puts this season’s current total in perspective. Pro-rated over the entire season, the 2012 Yankees would still fall toward the bottom quintile in both catgeories, which illustrates the extent to which the team sputtered in April and May.

Yankees’ Top-10 and Bottom-10 Total Streak Losses, Since 1918

Note: Totals are the sum of losses that are a part of distinct losing streaks of three or more games in one season.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Tomorrow night against the Mets, the Yankees will be seeking to avoid another three-game losing streak. After winning at least 10 in a row for only the 26th time in franchise history, the last thing the Yankees want to do is start ceding some of the ground they gained by following up that stretch with a string of losing. Over the years, the Yankees have done a good job of avoiding a winning streak hangover, so history seems to be in their favor. Not only has the team gone 14-11 after having a long winning streak snapped (one streak came at the end of the season), but on only three occasions did the Bronx Bombers lose three or more games in a row.  Is that a good omen heading into the Subway Series? Perhaps, but having Andy Pettitte on the mound doesn’t hurt either.

Yankees’ Season Record in Years with and Number of Losses Immediately Following a 10-Game Winning Streak, Since 1918

Source: Baseball-reference.com

Another good sign is the amount of success enjoyed by Yankees’ teams that have won at least 10 games in a row during a season. The 23 different Bronx Bomber ballclubs to record such a lengthy stretch of winning (three teams had two 10-plus game winnings streaks in one season) have posted a combined winning percentage of .628, and all but six wound up finishing the year in first place (four of which still won at least 94 games). The only real outlier in the group was the 1968 team, which won 10 in a row in September. Unfortunately, it was too little too late as the winning streak only pulled the Yankees to within 16 games of first place. Besides, even had they been closer in the standings, losing six in a row and nine of 10 immediately thereafter would have been the final nail anyway. At the very least, the 10-game winning streak helped the 1968 club finish above .500, thereby avoiding a share of the franchise record of four consecutive losing seasons.

Even the very best baseball teams lose 30%-40% of their games, but the ones who enjoy the most success seem to spread them out evenly over the season. Although the long stretches are the ones that gain the most notoriety, streaks of three and four games can really take a toll. The 2012 Yankees probably won’t become the fourth team in franchise history to have two 10-game winning streaks in one season, but if they can avoid those smaller losing streaks, another division title could be in the offing.

Photograph by Holly Wilmeth/Aurora Photos via National Geographic.

Roger Clemens: Not Guilty. On all six counts.

I took this picture at Yankee Stadium last month. Bet this guy is happy today.

We usually refrain from mixing sports with politics round these parts but this here column about Bryce Harper by Charlie Pierce over at Esquire.com is worth a look.

Johnette Howard has a piece on A.J. Burnett over at ESPN:

When a New York Daily News reporter passed through Pittsburgh in late May and checked in with him, Burnett volunteered a telltale story. He spoke about how in the first inning of his home debut as a Pirate, he coughed up a walk, a single and another walk to the very first three batters he faced. Oh no.

“I could imagine what that place [Yankee Stadium] would sound like,” Burnett said. “But there was about two words that came out of the crowd here. So it’s just different.

“You’re a little less on edge. Some guys thrive in that.”

I’m pleased for Burnett. He seemed like a guy that wasn’t cut out for pitching in New York. If that was the case, it’s nice to see him flourish in Pittsburgh.

[Photo Credit: David Richard-US PRESSWIRE]