Over at SI.com, our man Cliff takes a look at the Yankees’ aging roster:

The Yankees’ success over the last two decades was largely built around a core of home grown stars in Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada, but it’s clear that the end is nigh for each of them. Williams and Pettitte are retired, Posada is 39 and batting just .179 in the last year of his contract, Jeter is hitting a career-worst .255 as he approaches his 37th birthday and Rivera, though still pitching brilliantly, is 41 years old.

The decline of those players has brought attention to the advancing age and cost of the Yankees roster, which currently boasts five players who are at least 34 and earning eight-digit salaries and two other players earning annual salaries north of $20 million signed through or beyond their 34th birthdays. Setting aside Posada, who will turn 40 in August and is in the final year of his four-year, $52.4 million deal, here is a look at the six players the Yankees have signed through their age-34 season or beyond.

[Photo Credit: Ralph Gibson via This Isn’t Happiness]

It ain’t that bad, chum. Cliff’s got the preview.

Never mind the pity party:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

The Royales with Cheese are in town for a three game series and they are an improved team.

Cliff has the series preview.

We kick back and cheer:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Yanks return to the scene of the crime. At least they are out of Detroit. Let’s hope for a mess o runs, piled high and deep. Yeah, and another good start from Ivan Nova would be swell too. Here’s Cliff with the preview.

Don’t burn the brisket and Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photograph by Steve Perille]

Over at PB, Jay Jaffe takes a look at what BP’s PECOTA means for the back of the Yankee rotation.

And while you are there, check out Cliff’s take on Eric Chavez, and Steve Goldman on Jose “Can You See” Cruz.

Via Hardball Talk, Cash drops science, or something like that.

Over at PB, Cliff takes on Cashman’s comments about Joba Chamberlain.

Over at Pinstriped Bible, our man Cliff takes a look at the Yankees starting rotation:

Of the pitchers who have yet to reach the majors, there are two basic groups, a quartet of middling arms that have reached Triple-A and the three Killer Bs, the team’s top pitching prospects, none of whom has spent a full season at Double-A. The former group consists of David Phelps, D.J. Mitchell, Hector Noesi, and Steve Garrison, all of whom will be 24 this season. Noesi and Garrison are on the 40-man roster. Phelps and Mitchell are not. Garrison is the lone lefty. Noesi is the only fly-ball pitcher among the bunch. Phelps is the most ready having posted a 3.17 ERA in 11 Triple-A starts last year with an outstanding 4.73 K/BB. Per a recent conversation with Baseball Prospectus’s Kevin Goldstein, Garrison is the weakest of the bunch, and none of them have stuff as good as Nova’s.

The other three arms, of course, are Dellin Betances, Manny Banuelos, and Andrew Brackman. I don’t expect the Yankees to jump any of the three of them to the majors given that they have combined to make just 20 Double-A starts, but if the Yankees get desperate enough during the season, and one of the above is simply dominating in Trenton, they may have no other choice, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, which we very well might given the fact that the Yankees would have difficulty fleshing out a four-man playoff rotation right now, never mind a five-man unit that will allow them to keep up with the Red Sox over a 162-game season.

[Photo Credit: Zimbo]

Our man Cliff takes a look at Roy Halladay’s Hall of Fame chances over at SI.com:

In each of the five seasons since then, Halladay has won at least 16 games and finished in the top five in the Cy Young voting in his league. He has led his league in complete games in each of the last four seasons and in six of the last eight, led the majors in complete games in three of the last four seasons, led his league in shutouts and strikeout-to-walk ratio in each of the last three seasons, and the majors in both categories in two of the last three years.

Over the last three seasons combined, he has clearly been the best pitcher in the majors, leading all hurlers with 500 or more innings over that span in ERA (2.67), ERA+ (157), wins (58), innings (735 2/3), complete games (27, 10 more than his closest competitor), shutouts (10, four more than the next man on the list), K/BB ratio (6.09), WHIP (1.07), fewest walks per nine innings (1.27), and average game score (61, tied with Tim Lincecum), and Baseball Prospectus’s win-expectancy based Support Neutral Lineup-adjusted Value Above Replacement (SNLVAR), which rates him as worth 24.6 wins more than a replacement starter over the last three years.

Over at PB, Steve Goldman reflects back on the 1958 Whirled Serious. The Yanks won, coming back from a 3-1 hole:

Casey did some things that Joe Girardi can’t do. He can’t/won’t ask CC Sabathia to pitch in every game, he can’t ask Mariano Rivera to throw four innings—hell, it seems like he can’t ask Rivera to throw at all—but Joe also has some things that Casey didn’t have, like a bullpen stocked with pitchers, some of whom aren’t Sergio Mitre or Dustin Moseley. He has far more freedom to make moves with pitchers than Stengel had, and at much less of a risk to anyone’s health. In short, if there is any lesson to be taken away from the 1958 World Series, it is this: HEY, JOE: QUICK HOOK.

Back to the (immediate) future, Cliff wasn’t moved by yesterday’s Yankee win:

Perhaps its because, even if they do come back to tie this series, they’ll still have to beat Cliff Lee in Game Seven to win it. Perhaps its because, after being dominated by the Rangers for four games, a single win, even a lop-sided one such as the 7-2 Game Five, doesn’t carry enough weight to restore balance to the series. Whatever it is, Game Five felt like a repeat of Game Three of the 2007 Division Series against the Indians, a face-saving but empty victory that did little other than postpone the inevitable series loss suffered in the following game.

The Yankees roster is set.

AJ Burnett isn’t all bad, after all. Dig this from Chad Jennings:

“It would be silly for Hughesy not to start,” said Burnett.

…“Joe’s the best manager I ever played for…He’s done more for me this year probably than any manager has ever done. He cares about me as a person and as a player. I’ll be down in that pen and be ready to get one out or two outs or whatever I’ve got to do for him.”

Cliff breaks down the line ups for the ALDS like only he can.

Jay roasts it up at BP.

And Steve Goldman’s always droppin’ science:

Andy Pettitte starts Game 2: This isn’t necessarily a bad decision, because if healthy, Pettitte is a terrific, experienced pitcher who any team would like to have on the mound in a tight spot. That said, foregoing the opportunity to let Phil Hughes pitch before Target Field’s wall of wind (“The Air Monster?”) seems like an error.

…Greg Golson makes the postseason roster: This is not a bad call as Golson can play defense, pinch-run, and swing at a southpaw in an emergency. Hopefully, Joe Girardi can remember not to make moves with Golson that he wouldn’t have made during the regular season. Otherwise, Golson will pinch-run for Nick Swisher in the fourth inning of some game and then end up getting three at-bats.

[Picture by Chris Giarrusso]

Only three teams in baseball have a better record than the American League West-leading Texas Rangers. The Yankees, who have the game’s best record, are of course one of them, which makes this week’s two game set in Arlington both very compelling and simultaneously disappointingly brief. That’s now further complicated by the fact that Mark Teixeira is currently on paternity leave from the team in anticipation of the birth of his third child. So as much as we might like to build up this series, I don’t think we can consider it a true playoff preview.

Still, the Yankees haven’t played the Rangers since the second week of the season, so this will be a chance for Yankee fans–not to mention their players, coaches and scouts–to get a good look at a potential playoff rival. That the Yankees will get, as they’ll be facing the Rangers’ top two starters, July addition Cliff Lee and converted reliever C.J. Wilson, both left-handers. So much for the Yankees “avoiding” Lee when he was traded prior to his scheduled start against them in Seattle just before the All-Star break.

Lee, who starts against Javier Vazquez tomorrow, has made six starts for the Rangers, four of which were dominating (minimum eight innings pitched, maximum two runs allowed, and a total of one walk and one home run allowed against 31 strikeouts). In his other two he also went deep (he’s completed at least eight innings in all six of his Rangers starts), but gave up a few too many runs along the way, taking the loss each time. Surprisingly, Lee has received just 2.5 runs of support on average since joining the Rangers, that after leaving the worst run scoring team in the majors for one of the top four.

Wilson, who faces A.J. Burnett tonight, has been very impressive in his transition to the rotation. He posted a 1.48 ERA in his first seven starts before experiencing a four-start slump (possibly a dead-arm period). After pulling out of that, he posted a 2.54 ERA over his next starts before turning in a three-inning stinker his last time out. Wilson has been hit-lucky (.255 BABIP), but his low line-drive rate suggests that has been a bit more than luck. Still, he leads the AL in walks and is close to doubling his innings total from last year. Wilson wasn’t moved to the bullpen until arriving in the majors in 2005, but entering the year, his career high in innings was the 136 he threw as a 21-year-old minor leaguer in 2002. He enters tonight’s start having thrown 136 1/3 innings this season and one wonders when and if he’s going to hit a wall and what effect that will have on the Rangers’ postseason rotation and postseason chances.

As for Burnett, he was scratched from his start on Sunday due to back spasms, which is a new item in his career-long list of minor aches and pains. Prior to that he had been lit up by the Blue Jays, coughing up seven runs in a disastrous fifth inning on August 2. Since opening the season 4-0 with a 1.99 ERA after six starts, Burnett hasn’t gone more than two starts without a disaster outing and has posted a 6.33 ERA over his last 16 starts, but at least he’s only 33 and signed for three more years. Oy.

With Teixeira away and Robinson Cano out with a cold, Joe Girardi is running out this lineup against the lefty Wilson:

R – Derek Jeter (SS)
S – Nick Swisher (RF)
R – Marcus Thames (DH)
R – Alex Rodriguez (3B)
R – Austin Kearns (LF)
S – Lance Berkman (1B)
R – Francisco Cervelli (C)
L – Brett Gardner (CF)
S – Ramiro Peña (2B)

Let’s just say I’m not too optimistic about this game. The bright side is that this is so far from what the Yankees will likely look like in a potential playoff series as to be meaningless beyond tonight.

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Five-and-a-half years ago, Alex plucked me from relative obscurity to co-author this esteemed blog, and not a day has gone by that I haven’t been grateful to him for bestowing that honor upon me or thankful to all of our readers for their passion, conversation, and surprising interest in what have likely been the millions of words I have spilled into this space, first at the late, lamented Baseball Toaster, and for the last two seasons here at SNY.

It is not without a great deal of emotion that I depart Bronx Banter today to take advantage of an opportunity that has opened up for me over at YESnetwork.com, and while it is an opportunity that I cannot afford to pass up, for both myself and my family, it is one that I am very much aware might very well not have come to pass had it not been for the previous opportunity given to me by Alex and the strength of this platform. The same is true of my increasing presence on SI.com, the door to which Alex was even more directly involved in opening. Yet, in departing Bronx Banter, I thank Alex not only for helping me gain ground on my aspirations, but for providing constant motivation and inspiration, for his boundless enthusiasm for life outside of baseball, for his endless support, even when that support pushes me in directions opposite to his own interests, and most importantly for being a good and trusted friend.

A lot of life happens in five and a half years. Alex and I both got married, Will Weiss and I both became fathers, and we lost some people very close to us, Alex’s father and Todd Drew among them. Bronx Banter has been part of our lives throughout all of that, it is a virtual home, but a home nonetheless, one that I have found very comfortable and welcoming. That makes it all the more unsettling to leave, but I’m comforted by the fact that I’m leaving Alex and all of you in good hands with the vastly expanded stable of Bronx Banter contributers, Will, Emma, Diane, Bruce, Hank, Jon, and Matt, and by the fact that I am leaving the side of one good friend and supporter to join another (YES’s official announcement of my new gig has yet to drop, but it’s not hard to connect the dots).

As for what you can expect from me over at YES, well, life may happen, but I don’t change all that much. I’ll be doing the same things for YES that I’ve been doing here at Bronx Banter, which were essentially the same things I was doing on my own blog prior to that (though I hope seven years in I’m doing them better by now). I’m hoping you will all make the few extra clicks to continue reading me at YES and SI.com, or to follow my twitter feed. Check out my analysis and series previews on YES, then click back to Banter for the game threads and recaps and for all of the other things Alex and the crew will continue to do so well. As I said to Alex last night, I don’t see this as a splintering of the Bronx Banter family, but as another step in its expansion. I hope you all come to feel the same way.

This, then, is my penultimate post as co-author of Bronx Banter. I’ll bow out tonight with my preview of the quickie two-game series with the Texas Rangers and then reemerge in the morning over on YESnetwork.com. Thanks to everyone involved with Bronx Banter on every level, to Ken Arneson and the good people at SNY, to every last reader, but above and beyond all else, to Alex Belth, without whom, to paraphrase Yogi, none of this would be necessary.

The Yankees and Red Sox last met for a two-game set in the Bronx in mid-May. At the time, the big story surrounding the Red Sox was their poor start. In splitting those two games, the Sox held tight at .500. Almost immediately after, they finally found their groove. Including that last win against the Yankees, the Red Sox went 30-12 coming out of that series. That’s a blistering .714 pace that brought them within a half-game of the first place Bombers on July 3. Since then, however . . . meh, not so much. The Sox have gone 13-15 since that high-water mark, and seem to be rotating through the disabled list more often than they’re rotating through their lineup.

You might have heard that the Red Sox have been dealing with some injuries this season. Prior to returning Wednesday night, Jacoby Ellsbury had played just nine games all year due to various problems related to broken ribs suffered in an April collision with Adrian Beltre. He’s back, but he might have been the worst hitter in their opening day lineup and was moved to left field this spring because the Red Sox had major concerns about his defense in center. However, Mike Cameron, his intended replacement in center, is back on the DL for the second time this season with an abdominal strain, making Ellsbury the team’s center fielder and leadoff hitter, which may or may not be any better than having Ellsbury back on the DL. That also leaves J.D. Drew, who routinely misses games with a strained this and a sore that, as the only Boston outfielder having a “healthy” season.

Among those who have joined Ellsbury on the DL this season were Dustin Pedroia and Jason Varitek (both still out with broken feet), Victor Martinez (recently returned), Kevin Youkilis (more than countering Martinez’s return by hitting the DL the day before Cameron with a thumb injury that will require season-ending surgery), Daisuke Matsuzaka (of course), Josh Beckett and Clay Buchholz (both recently returned), and Manny Delcarmen (returned, but to low-leverage innings). Did I miss anyone? Boof Bonser doesn’t count, and I’m not sure Mike Lowell does either, though he’s suddenly become a very important player in the wake of Youkilis’s injury.

The good news for Boston fans is that, assuming Jon Lester’s Wednesday night leg cramp isn’t anything, the rotation is back at full strength. Buchholz and Beckett, who start tonight and Sunday, respectively, each enter this series coming off a pair of quality starts. Less encouraging has been the fact that Lester, who pitches Monday, has been off his game for four straight outings, and John Lackey, who faces CC Sabathia on Saturday, has been little more than a league-average-innings eater in his first season with the team. The Sox’s bullpen has been as problematic as the Yankees’, and the pitching staff as a whole, which has surely been undermined by the drop in the quality of team defense resulting from the many injuries to the starting lineup, something unlikely to be helped by Ellsbury’s return, has been below average in keeping runs off the board.

Whatever winning the Red Sox have been doing this season has been due to a few stretches of sharp starting pitching and their lineup, which has been buoyed by David Ortiz’s rejuvination and by a fantastic season by Adrian Beltre, but Youkilis has been the team’s best hitter, and Pedroia was in the top four, and without those two bats, this is a very different ballclub.

The best-case scenario for the Red Sox this weekend is to sweep a four game set in the Bronx and pull within two games of the Yankees for the Wild Card. I don’t see that happening, though the Yankees would be advised to win at least one of the first two as the pitching matchups become more favorable for Boston as the series progresses. The Sox will have 50 games left after this series, enough to overcome any deficit, but if the Yankees simply split, they will have robbed the Sox of a prime opportunity to make up ground and will take control of their rival’s fate by having a six-game lead over the Sox with just six head-to-head games left to play. All of that may take the edge of this series, but it’s worth noting that beating the Rays does the Yankees little good as both teams are likely to make the postseason. It’s burying the second place team in the Wild Card chase that will secure the Yankees’ playoff berth, and that second-place team is the Boston Red Sox.

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I say my piece on the Yankees three deadline acquisitions on the latest episode of SNY.tv’s “Baseball Show.” Dig it:

Sure, Shaun Marcum gave up Alex Rodriguez’s 600th home run in the bottom of the first inning Wednesday afternoon, but in the early innings of the game, he was pitching better than Phil Hughes, who didn’t give up a run until the fourth. Hughes, who later revealed he had a head cold on a muggy afternoon in the Bronx, just didn’t look sharp early on, and though he retired the first six men he faced, striking out three, he needed 28 pitches to do it and seemed to get away with a number of mistakes.

Hughes opened the third by walking Lyle Overbay, then gave up a single to Edwin Encarnacion, but despite Overbay reaching third base with one out after a fly to center field by John McDonald, Hughes wiggled out of the jam, getting Travis Snider to pop out and Aaron Hill to ground out to third.

Marcum, meanwhile, allowed three runs on five hits in the first three innings, but looked sharp and seemed to be making his pitches. Derek Jeter led off the first with a slow ground ball that just happened to find the hole between short and third. Marcum then struck out Nick Swisher on a perfectly placed cutter and got Mark Teixeira to pop out on two pitches. Marcum’s first two pitches to Rodriguez were off the plate inside, but his third was a hanging slider out over the outside half of the plate, and Rodriguez got his arms extended and lifted it into the netting over Monument Park just a few feet to the right of dead center field.

I was pleased to see that the game didn’t really stop the way it did when Derek Jeter passed Lou Gehrig for first place on the all-time Yankee hit list, and his teammates all came out of the dugout to congratulate him. The team did great Rodriguez in front of the dugout, but the hugs and congratulations weren’t extended, and his subsequent curtain call, while it was a full-on Reggie (both feet on the grass), also didn’t linger excessively.

In the second, Marcum got Jorge Posada to ground out on his first pitch, then struck out Lance Berkman before Curtis Granderson delivered a two-out single. Granderson stole second, almost breaking both ankles with a horrific slide less “into” and more “near” second base, but Marcum struck out Brett Gardner to end the threat.

In the third, Jeter shot a ground-ball double down the left field line, and with one out, Mark Teixeira went down and got a low outside curveball and yanked it into right field for an RBI double. Rodriguez and Robinson Cano then both ground out weakly to strand Teixeira at second.

Rodriguez’s homer didn’t break the damn of his recent slump. After that weak groundout, he popped out to short in the fifth and ground back to reliever Shawn Camp in the seventh, but you could see the relief and relaxation in his face during his post-game press conference, after which he gave the security guard who retrieved the ball from Monument Park a signed bat in exchange for the milestone rock.

The Yankees padded their lead in the fifth, with Marcum starting to look more the part of the losing pitcher. Gardner led off with a ground rule double to right that bounced off a fan’s shoulder and back onto the field (Mr. Wonderful Jose Bautista flipped the ball back to her). Jeter then dropped down a perfect bunt single up the third base line, moving Gardner to third. Nick Swisher walked, and Teixeira delivered a two-RBI single to set the eventual final score at 5-1.

The lone Toronto run came off Hughes in the fourth. That man Bautista led off with a single. With one out, Adam Lind walked, and with two outs, Lyle Overbay delivered an RBI double. Hughes then struck out Edwin Encarnacion to end the threat.

Hughes never really did settle down, but he never really got in much trouble either. He just sort of labored through his 5 1/3 innings. After Bautista led off the sixth with a rare single to right that he practically queued off the end of his bat while trying to pull the ball, Vernon Wells sent Hughes’ 100th pitch to the wall in the left-center-field gap on such a massive arch that Granderson had plenty of time to drift over and catch it with his shoulder pressed against the padding.

That was enough for Joe Girardi to get out the hook with an off-day coming on Thursday. The Yankee end-game got some nice warmup work for this weekend’s Red Sox series. Boone Logan got the last two outs of the sixth, striking out Jose Molina, whose one offensive skill is hitting lefties, and getting lefty Lyle Overbay to ground out. Joba Chamberlain worked around a ground ball single up the middle in the seventh. David Robertson recovered from a leadoff walk to Bautista by retiring the next three batters in the eighth, striking out Lind and Molina to end the frame. Then Mariano Rivera got some work in, hitting Encarnacion with a pitch but otherwise working a flawless inning to seal the win.

The Red Sox and Rays both lost, so the Yankees pulled back into a first-place tie in the East with the win and now lead Boston by 6.5 games. Both play again tomorrow, but the worst case scenario entering the weekend’s wrap-around four-game set against the Bosox would be a half-game deficit in the division and a comfy six-game lead on the visiting Crimson Hosers.

All in all, a good day for the home nine.

My full game recap will be up later this evening, but by now you surely know that Alex Rodriguez finally hit his 600th home run in the bottom of the first inning, a two run shot driving home Derek Jeter and giving the Yankees an early 2-0 lead. SI.com has a full slate of Rodriguez pieces in connection with the milestone, including articles by Joe Posnanski, Joe Sheehan, Ben Reiter, and Joe Lemire, two photo galleries, a trio of video essays, a vintage piece from 1996, a timeline, and this by-the-numbers breakdown by yours truly. That should keep you busy during prime time. Back with the recap during late night . . .

Well, this series has been absolutely no fun at all. A.J. Burnett stinks up the joint on Monday, Rickey Romero is untouchable on Tuesday, the Jays score eight runs in each of the first two games, and here we are on Wednesday afternoon begging for a face-saving win in advance of a visit from the Red Sox while looking up at the Rays in the standings for the first time since June 19. Oy.

It don’t get any easier today, folks. Shaun Marcum is 10-4 with a 3.24 ERA and a 3.82 K/BB on the season, the best numbers of the 28-year-old righty’s brief, injury-interrupted career. He’s given up more than two runs in just one of his last seven starts (5-1, 2.95 ERA) and takes the mound this afternoon coming off a dominant outing against the Indians (7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 10 K).

Phil Hughes opposes Marcum on regular rest, which is good. In his last two starts on regular rest, he has allowed just three runs each time out, albeit without getting past the sixth inning.

The prime-time lineup is out there for this matinee with Fat Elvis batting seventh.

C’mon, boys, give us something . . . anything.

I have a couple of pieces up on SI.com today. The first is my Rookie of the Year Awards Watch. It was a frustrating column to write this week because of the glut of strong rookies in the National League and lack thereof in the American League, though I squeezed in a lot of NL honorable mentions in the introduction. [Update: I initially had an old column linked. The link is now fixed to this week’s Awards Watch.]

The second is my look at the top waiver-trade pickups of the Wild Card era. No Yankees make my top 5, though the botched Pat Listach trade in 1996 yielded Graeme Lloyd, who after struggling mightily down the stretch, got some huge outs in the postseason as the Yankees won their first championship under Joe Torre. Other notable Yankee waiver trades were the returns of Mike Stanley in 1997 and Luis Sojo in 2000, and the dumping of Mariano Duncan and addition of Rey Sanchez as a second-base solution in ’97. Meanwhile, Sterling Hitchcock went 5-1 with a 3.78 ERA for the Cardinals after the Yankees traded him to St. Louis in August 2003.

Elsewhere, the latest edition of Kevin Goldstein’s Future Shock at Baseball Prospectus kicks off with good words on a pair of red-hot Yankee prospects:

Dellin Betances, RHP, Yankees(High-A Tampa): 6 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 11 K

Of Betances 11 starts this year, eight of them could arguably be described as dominant, with none more so than last night’s when Betances retired the last 14 batters he faced, nine via the strikeout.  With a fastball that is all the way back (94-98 mph) and control that we’ve never seen before, the 22-year-old has whiffed 68 over 57 innings while allowing just 31 hits and walking 15.  Only an ugly ttrack record when it comes to staying healthy prevents him from being labeled with an elite tag.

Brandon Laird, 3B, Yankees(Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre): 4-for-4, 2 HR (2), 3 R, 2 RBI

It’s been a darn good year overall for the Yankee farm system, and one of the brightest points of light has been Laird, who entered the year as a nice little hitter with some upside, and is now considered one of the better offensive prospects in the system.  After batting .291/.355/.523 in the Eastern League, you couldn’t have asked for a better Triple-A debut, but much like Jesus Montero, it’s hard to figure out where his big league future lies if he remains a Yankee.

I have to be honest, I just can’t figure the Blue Jays this year. It’s not just that I expected them to be a poor rebuilding team yet they haven’t been more than a game under .500 all season. It’s not just that they’ve had a confluence of career and comeback seasons, most of them boosted by the long ball (29-year-old Jose Bautista: 32 HR; 31-year-old Vernon Wells: 20 HR; 33-year-old Alex Gonzalez: 17 HR; 29-year-old John Buck: 14 HR). Now that the trading deadline has passed, I can’t figure out why the Jays did so little.

The Jays made a solid deal in mid-July, flipping Gonzalez to the Braves for 27-year-old Cuban shortstop Yunel Escobar, who had fallen out of favor in Atlanta, but has already rebounded nicely in Toronto, hitting .323/.344/.500 in 14 games (with three homers, of course). Escobar, a solidly above-average offensive shortstop who won’t hurt you in the field, will be arbitration eligible this winter, but won’t have much of a case given his .238/.334/.284 performance for the Braves, and will then remain under team control for the next three years.

Kudos to general manager Alex Anthopoulos for that one, but I can’t figure out why Bautista, Buck, Lyle Overbay, Jason Frasor, Shawn Camp, and especially Scott Downs are still Blue Jays. I’m going to go out on a very short limb and say that Bautista will never have a more productive season than he’s having now and will not be on the next Blue Jays playoff team. Given his performance this season, he’s due for a huge arbitration raise, and his trade value will never be higher than it was on Saturday. Buck, Overbay, Frasor, and Downs are all free agents this winter and should have been cashed in. Perhaps there was no market for the first three, but Downs was highly sought after. As his predecessor J.P. Ricciardi did with a much bigger chip at last year’s deadline, Anthopoulos set his price too high and refused to budge. In the case of Roy Halladay, the Jays still owned him for another season and after Ricciardi was fired, Anthopoulos was able to get a solid return for him (though he frittered away part of it, turning impressive prospect Michael Taylor into marginal one Anthony Gose via two subsequent moves). Downs, however, will now provide the Jays no long-term benefit.

So the Jays are left to click along as just-above-.500 team in a division in which a .600 winning percentage is typically required for a second place/Wild Card finish. I don’t get it.

The twist for the Yankees this week is that the Jays, having held onto all of their major league trade chips, remain a solid team worth taking seriously. Tonight, the Yankees and A.J. Burnett face Brandon Morrow, one of Anthopoulos’s better additions, who has begun to find some consistency after having finally been left alone in the rotation. He leads the major leagues in strikeouts per nine innings with an even ten and enters tonight’s game coming off two quality starts, although both came against the Orioles. The knock on Morrow at the moment is that he seems to thrive against bad teams and struggle against good ones, though that pattern isn’t consistent. The Yankees have already faced Morrow twice this season. He dominated them in Toronto on June 6 (7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 8 K), but struggled in a rematch in the Bronx (6 IP, 9 H, 5 R, albeit with just one walk and seven Ks).

Burnett enters this game having not allowed a run in 11 1/3 innings over two starts since cutting his hand in a clubhouse temper tantrum and having to leave his previous start in the third inning. Burnett has faced his former team twice this season, inverting Morrow’s results (or echoing them, depending on your perspective) by pitching poorly in Toronto and well in the Bronx, throwing 6 2/3 shutout innings against the Jays at home on July 2.

Nick Swisher returns to the two-hole tonight, Mark Teixeira returns to first base, and Alex Rodriguez returns to the lineup. Jorge Posada is catching and batting sixth ahead of Fat Elvis. Quothe Berkman, “I don’t know if I’ve ever hit seventh. I’ve hit sixth before, I know that. But I also can’t remember the last time that I’ve been on a team with like eight Hall of Famers. That has a lot to do with it.” Future Hall of Famers Curtis Granderson and Brett Gardner fill the last two spots

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The latest buzz has the Yankees acquiring Kerry Wood from the Indians for a player to be named later. The Yankees needed a relief pitcher, but Wood, who was just activated from the disabled list where he had landed due to a blister on his right index finger, is an underwhelming solution. Not only is he seemingly always hurt, but in two seasons with the Indians, he has posted a 4.80 ERA and 4.7 BB/9, the worst of that work coming this year (6.30 ERA, 5.0 BB/9), while his typically stellar strikeout rate has been a bit more ordinary at 8.1 K/9 (down from 10.3 K/9 both last year and career). Wood has also given up 1.4 home runs per nine innings this year, all of which combines to make him look a lot like Kyle Farnsworth with a sketchier injury history. Given that Joe Girardi used to catch both pitchers with the Cubs and was likely a driving force behind the Wood acquisition, the comparison seems apt.

As Tyler Kepner has been pointing out on twitter, Wood has been better since a disaster outing on May 19, posting a 3.78 ERA since, but even that figure isn’t overwhelming, and he’s still blown two games and lost a third over the course of just 18 games before landing on the DL with that blister. All of which is to say, I’m not optimistic, and part of me would have rather taken a chance on Chad Qualls (who went to the Rays early this morning) and his outlandish .427 BABIP. Qualls has had better peripherals than Wood this year and, from what I can tell, has never been on the DL. Anyone want to place bets on who pitches better over the next two months?

Update: The Wood deal is official, with Joel Sherman tweeting that the compensation could be money or two “middling” minor leaguers. Indians’ choice if Wood says healthy, price drops after the fact if Wood gets hurt.