We’ve seen this before. Last year, the Blue Jays shot out of the gate, were 27-14 (.659) on May 18, but went just 48-73 (.397) the rest of the way. This year, the Jays were 25-17 (.595) on May 19 and have gone 15-23 (.395) since. Of course, they took two of three from the Yankees in Toronto during the latter stretch, but that’s because the one thing the Jays still have going for them are some strong starting pitchers.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: the Jays have scored just three runs per game since June 1, but lefties Brett Cecil and Ricky Romero and righty Brandon Morrow, the same three pitchers who will face the Yankees this weekend in the Bronx, held the Yankees to a total of four runs in 23 combined innings in that previous series. Cecil, who faces A.J. Burnett tonight, has struggled in his last three starts (0-3, 9.19 ERA), but the other two, who face Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes over the weekend, have remained sharp.

Of course, the focus today will be how A.J. Burnett responds to the early-week return of pitching coach Dave Eiland. Not that Eiland had any magical fix. Here’s what he had to say upon returning to the team on Tuesday:

For me to sit here and say the reason that A.J. pitched the way he pitched was I wasn’t here is not fair. A.J. has been pitching a long time. He knows what he needs to do. It’s nothing that A.J. and I haven’t addressed and discussed already. Every pitcher you have to stay on about certain things, and with A.J. there are a couple of things. They’re very minor things that are going to make a huge difference. But A.J. has to do it. He’s been told over and over in the past what they are.

It seems Burnett’s main problem was opening up his left side to early. Said Eiland Thursday after working with Burnett in the bullpen, “It’s not like I gave him anything new today. Mike Harkey was telling him the same thing.”

There’s a certain element there of not wanting to throw Harkey under the bus for failing to get Burnett straightened out, but there’s also a lot of exasperation in those Eiland quotes.

Normally you’d feel good going up against a pitcher like Cecil who has been 0-3 with a 9.19 ERA in his last three starts, but Burnett has gone 0-3 with a 16.55 ERA in his last three starts and was 0-5 with a 11.35 ERA in June. The big question heading into tonight’s game is which one of these guys is going to snap out of their funk. The upside might be that, if the answer is neither, you have to like the Yankees’ chances of winning a slugfest in their own park.

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Cliff Lee was good on Tuesday night, limiting the Yankees to a pair of Nick Swisher solo home runs and two meaningless ninth-inning tallies on his way to a complete game victory. Felix Hernandez was great Wednesday night, limiting the Yankees to a trio of walks and just two hits, one of which was a pop-up to second that Chone Figgins lost in the gloaming and Colin Curtis hustled into a double, on his way to an 11-strikeout complete game shutout. Lee and Hernandez thus became the first two pitchers to throw back-to-back complete games against the Yankees since 2000 and Hernandez became the first visiting pitcher to shutout the Yankees at the new stadium.

Meanwhile, the Mariners scored seven runs against the Yankees in each of the last two contest. Phil Hughes, who was not only pitching on nine-days’ rest but also fighting off a cold, gave up all seven on Tuesday. Last night, Javier Vazquez turned in a bare-minimum quality start (6 IP, 3 R), striking out eight but using up 113 pitches in the process, then the bullpen coughed up four more Mariner runs in the final three frames. All but one of those Seattle runs came on home runs. Milton Bradley hit a solo shot of Vazquez in the second. Michael Saunders had a pair, a solo of Vazquez in the third and a two-run jack off Chad Gaudin in the eighth. Lefty-swinging Russell Branyan, just reacquired before this series to give the Seattle lineup some thump, did his part with a two-run shot off Damaso Marte in the seventh. The other Mariner run came with two outs in the third when Vazquez hit Branyan with an 0-1 pitch, Bradley reached on an infield single, and Jose Lopez singled Branyan home from second.

The lone legitimate Yankee hit was a double down the left field line by Mark Teixeira to lead off the fourth. He never got to third base as Hernandez retired 17 of the next 18 men (the exception being Curtis’s dropped pop-up) until Ramiro Peña, who entered the game with the subs in the top of the ninth, walked with one out in the bottom of the ninth and Hernandez up past 100 pitches.

Amazingly, this was just the second time all season that Lee and Hernandez registered back-to-back wins, though the first time was just two turns ago. In their last six combined starts, Lee and Hernandez have gone 5-0 with five complete games. In the sixth game, Hernandez allowed just one run in nine innings, but the Mariners lost in 13.

Facing Cliff Lee wasn’t much fun for anyone other than Nick Swisher last night. Facing Felix Hernandez doesn’t seem likely to be much more pleasant. In his last three starts, King Felix has posted this line:

26 2/3 IP*, 14 H, 5 R, 3 BB, 26 K, 1 HR, 1.69 ERA, 0.64 WHIP, 8.67 K/BB

*That’s one out shy of three complete games, in case you didn’t notice, but only one of those starts turned into a complete game as the Mariners lost his last 3-2 in 13 innings.

Four starts ago, Felix got lit up by the red-hot Rangers, but his two starts before that both saw him go eight innings and allow just one run (with 16 total Ks), and in his last nine starts he’s posted a 2.62 ERA and allowed just three home runs. Of course, the Mariners have gone 3-6 in those nine games thanks to either poor bullpen support, poor run support, or both.

Javier Vazquez wasn’t sharp his last time out against his old team in Arizona, but in his four starts prior to that he posted a 2.25 ERA and 0.79 WHIP, lasting exactly seven innings each time out, his only loss coming when the Yankee bats got shutout by Hisanori Takahashi and company. Dating back to May 12, he’s 5-3 with a 3.12 ERA, and 0.98 WHIP in eight starts and one relief appearance.

Brett Gardner remains out of the lineup but is available to pinch-run and play defense. Colin Curtis starts in left and bats eighth. The rest of the lineup is the same as last night’s.

Coming into last night’s start, Cliff Lee was 4-1 with a 1.62 ERA over his last six starts, half of which were complete games. In that span, he had struck out 44 men against just three walks and three homers. Given that Lee had dominated the Yankees the last time he came to the Bronx, there wasn’t much reason for optimism heading into Tuesday night’s series-opening tilt against Lee and the Mariners, I don’t care how pathetic the Mariners’ offense has been this season.

That Phil Hughes lacked his good stuff pitching on extra rest after being skipped the last time through the rotation sealed the deal. Hughes fastball topped out around 91 miles per hour and his location wasn’t sharp. As a result, the Mariners were able to build a picket fence against him with runs in the second, third, fourth, and fifth, before delivering the finishing blow with a three-run sixth as Hughes seemed to lose it around 90 pitches. Boone Logan and Chan Ho Park held the line from there, but when the line is a 7-1 deficit against Cliff Lee and the opposing offense is the worst in the American League, who cares?

Through the first eight innings, all the Yankees managed against Lee was a pair of solo homers by Nick Swisher. Hitting a pair of right-handed home runs off a pitcher who had allowed just three dingers in his last six starts isn’t impressive, particularly when those were just Swisher’s second and third right-handed home runs of the year, but the rest of the offense didn’t show up until the ninth.

Just one other Yankee made it as far as second base in the first eight innings (Jorge Posada following a one-out walk in the second, the only walk Lee has issued in his last five starts), and no more than one Yankee reached base in any of the first eight innings of the game. Swisher’s two home runs came in the first and the sixth, and after the second, Lee retired the next nine men he faced until Mark Teixeira led off the ninth with a double down the left-field line. A Robinson Cano single, Michael Saunders throwing error, and Posada ground-rule double got the Yankees to within 7-4, but it took Lee just three more pitches to retire Curtis Granderson (who did have a pair of singles earlier in the game and was the only Yankee other than Swisher with a multi-hit night) and Chad Huffman (who started for the injured Brett Gardner) to nail down his third-straight complete game victory.

While Hughes season-worst outing was somewhat reminiscent of Joba Chamberlain’s struggles after the Yankees started skipping his starts last year, Hughes didn’t blame the rest for his poor performance, and he didn’t really get lit up until the sixth. He’ll stay on-turn until the All-Star break as the Yankees have no off-days in the next two weeks. His next start comes on Sunday at home against the Blue Jays. Meanwhile, here’s hoping Cliff Lee gets traded back to the National League, just don’t get your hopes up about him coming to the Bronx, the Yankees made clear their unwillingness to trade prospects for a pending big-money free agent such as Lee by letting CC Sabathia go to the Brewers and Johan Santana go to the Mets.

In other news, Dave Eiland returned to the team and Gardner could be out for a few days with a wrist contusion after being hit by a Clayton Kershaw pitch on Sunday. Meanwhile, Marcus Thames is expected to start at designated hitter for Triple-A Scranton on Wednesday, meaning he could be activated from the disabled list soon.

Okay, so I just wrote one of the longest previews I’ve ever written getting some stuff off my chest that’s been there since November and shoved aside some other important work to do it. But it all got erased. So while I try not to lose my mind, here’s the roster of the Mariners, who have scored just 3.4 runs per game this year, but are running out one of the league’s best pitchers tonight.

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Sunday night’s rubber game between the Yankees and Dodgers didn’t deliver on its promise as a pitchers duel. Dodgers lefty Clayton Kershaw was nails, but Andy Pettitte made two throwing errors on bunts in the third, putting the Yankees in an 3-0 hole, then coughed up two more runs in the fourth, the latter on a Ronnie Belliard solo homer, to put the Yanks down 5-0.

Kershaw, meanwhile, allowed just three baserunners through five innings, those coming on a Derek Jeter leadoff single, a pitch that hit Brett Gardner in the wrist, and a single by Gardner’s replacement, Chad Huffman (Gardner will see the team doctor on Monday). Jeter singled again to lead of the sixth, but Kershaw struck out Nick Swisher, and Casey Blake made a nice play on a hard grounder to his right by Mark Teixeira to force Jeter at second. That brought up Alex Rodriguez with two out. Rodriguez worked the count full, then turned on an inside fastball, sending it over the “Mannywood” sign in left for a two-run home run, his third jack in the last five games, to bring the Yankees within 5-2.

The Dodgers added an insurance run against Joba Chamberlain in the eighth, handing a 6-2 lead to their dominant closer, Jonathon Broxton, in the ninth. Broxton entered the game with some ridiculous numbers, including a 0.83 ERA, 13.2 K/9, and 9.60 K/B, and had allowed just one earned run in his previous 23 appearance, including 1 1/3 hitless innings against the Yankees on Saturday.

The Ox started his night by striking out Teixeira on four pitches, but Rodriguez singled on his fifth. Alex took second on defensive indifference on the first pitch to Robinson Cano, and when Cano connected for a double to right, Rodriguez scored to make it 6-3 Dodgers.

That brought up Jorge Posada, who quickly fell into a 0-2 hole, then battled Broxton for seven more pitches, working the count full before singling to right to bring the tying run to the plate. Following Posada’s nine-pitch battle, Curtis Granderson worked Broxton over for an eight-pitch walk, putting the tying run on base and loading the bases for . . . Chad Huffman?

With Brett Gardner knocked out of the game and no designated hitter, the Yankees’ rally came down to Chad Huffman and Colin Curtis, who had gone in for Nick Swisher as part of a double-switch, a pair of rookies who to that point in their major league careers had combined for three hits and three walks in 15 plate appearances. Joe Girardi’s bench at that point consisted of Francisco Cervelli, the backup catcher, and Ramiro Peña. On the mound stood the 300-pound Broxton, one of the game’s most dominating closers. It hurt to watch.

Until Huffman singled to right on a 1-1 pitch, scoring Cano and Posada and pushing Granderson to third. Suddenly all Curtis had to do was deliver a productive out with a speedy runner at third to tie the game. Curtis fell into a quick 0-2 hole, but then took three balls, one of which looked like strike three at the knees, and one of which, a slider in the dirt, almost tied the game on its own. With the count full, Curtis fouled off four pitches. Then, on the tenth pitch of his at-bat and Broxton’s 40th of the inning, he hit a hard grounder to James Loney at first base.

With two outs, Huffman on first, and Granderson on third as the potential tying run, Loney had two choices. He could either throw home to prevent the run, allowing the inning to continue, or he could throw to second in the hope of turning a game-ending double play. Loney chose neither of those options, instead trying to accomplish both at once by scrambling over to force out Curtis at first, then firing home to get Granderson. Only Loney’s throw tailed away from the runner and the time it took him to get the force was enough to allow Granderson so slide in clearly ahead of Russell Martin’s tag with the game-tying run.

From there, the Dodgers lost their cool as both Garret Anderson (who entered the game in the ninth as a defensive replacement for Manny Ramirez) and Martin got ejected for arguing over called strikes that were indeed strikes, while the Yankees made it look easy. Mariano Rivera worked a 1-2-3 bottom of the ninth around Anderson’s ejection. Robinson Cano responded to Joe Torre’s decision to bring in lefty George Sherrill to face him in the top of the tenth by launching a two-run home run to left center, and Rivera worked around an infield single and Martin’s ejection to nail down the 8-6 win in the bottom of the tenth.

Meanwhile, the ESPN camera’s lingered on Joe Torre, who had the look of a man watching his ex-wife make out with an underwear model. Torre said before the game that he was looking forward to putting this much-hyped and emotionally charged series behind him. I don’t imagine that was ever more true than when he was watching Mariano Rivera nail down a comeback win against him for the first time.

The one positive to A.J. Burnett crapping the bed Saturday evening is that we now get one heck of a rubber game to cap off this hotly-anticipated series between the Yankees and Dodgers. Starting for the visiting Yankees is Andy Pettitte, who has been one of the best pitchers in the American League thus far this season and is having his best season as a Yankee at the age of 38. Pettitte has averaged 7 1/3 innings pitched over his last six starts while posting a 2.25 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 7.6 K/9, and 4.11 K/BB. Every single one of those six outings has been a quality start, and Pettitte hasn’t allowed more than two earned runs in any of them. In fact, Andy has allowed more than two earned runs in just two of his 14 starts this season.

Opposing Pettitte will be 22-year-old lefty Clayton Kershaw, who was the seventh-overall pick in the 2006 draft. Kershaw allowed more than two runs, earned or otherwise, in just two of his first 11 starts, but has fallen off a bit in June, allowing three or more runs in three of four starts. Not that he’s been bad. He’s 2-1 with a 3.90 ERA and 10.1 K/9 in his four June starts, his only real dud being his last start in which he gave up five runs in 6 2/3 innings against the Angels, all of those runs coming in his final two frames. The Yankees should be able to get their walks against Kershaw, but his impressive four-pitch arsenal (which includes a mid-90s fastball, big yakker of a curve, changeup, and slider), has shut-down potential. Over the past two seasons, a stretch of 262 2/3 innings, Kershaw has posted a 2.95 ERA and struck out 9.9 men per nine innings.

For those of you wondering if Joe Girardi would leave Curtis Granderson in the lineup against a tough lefty like Kershaw in a rubber game, the answer is yes (you’d prefer Chad Huffman, a player with just one major league hit to his name, or Kevin Russo, who is hitting .196/.260/.239 in 51 plate appearances?), but he’s dropped him to seventh in the order. Swisher bats second. Posada is back behind the plate and batting sixth. Marcus Thames, meanwhile, joined Triple-A Scranton last Tuesday, but has yet to begin playing rehab games there.

On Friday night, Edwin Jackson became the third pitcher to no-hit the Tampa Bay Rays in the last calendar year. No team has ever been no-hit three times in a 12-month span before. What’s more, the Rays are one of the best teams in baseball and have one of the top offenses in the game.

What gives? I search for an answer to that over at SI.com.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Yankee offense did it’s best to keep ahead of A.J. Burnett’s advancing vortex of suck Saturday evening. Before Dodger starter Hiroki Kuroda could record an out, the Yankees were up 3-0 thanks to walks to birthday boy Derek Jeter and Curtis Granderson and a home run by Mark Teixeira, who extended an eight-game hitting streak during which he has homered as many times as he’s struck out (thrice each). Burnett gave two of those runs back in the bottom of the first, the big hit being an RBI double by Manny Ramirez on a fastball up in the zone, but he worked around a walk in the second and the Yankees got a run back in the third on singles by Jeter and Granderson and a throwing non-error by Blake DeWitt on a would-be double play pivot.

That 4-2 lead lasted all of four batters. Burnett’s bottom of the third started with a five-pitch walk to Matt Kemp, an Andre Ethier single, a wild pitch that moved both runners up, a walk to Ramirez to load the bases, and a game-tying single by James Loney. After a five-pitch walk to Casey Blake to reload the bases, Burnett got Russell Martin to hit into a double play, though the go-ahead run scored in the process. Burnett then walked DeWitt and struck out the pitcher, Kuroda, to end the inning.

Amazingly. Shockingly. Stunningly, after that performance, Joe Girardi let Burnett hit with runners on the corners and one out in the top of the fourth. Burnett sacrificed, but didn’t squeeze, trading an out for putting a second runner into scoring position. Kuroda then struck out Jeter on three pitches to end the threat.

If it wasn’t already clear that Girardi was less than fully committed to trying to win the game at the expense of blowing out his bullpen, after Burnett lasted just two batters in the bottom of the fourth, he brought in Boone Logan, who suddenly seems to be some sort of long man for Girardi despite the fact that righties were hitting .289/.372/.421 against him entering yesterday’s action. Logan swelled the Dodger lead to 7-4, after which Chan Ho Park added on a couple more runs to set the final at 9-4.

Meanwhile, Kuroda quashed a two-out Yankee rally in the fifth, and fireballing lefty Hong-Chih Kuo stranded two runners for Kuroda in the sixth. The Yankees did bounce old frenemy Jeff Weaver before he could complete the eighth, but George Sherrill and Jonathon Broxton shut things down from there.

Burnett is now 0-5 with a 11.35 ERA in June. By way of comparison, Javier Vazquez had a 9.78 ERA in his first five starts of the year in which the Yankees went 1-4. That was enough for the Yankees to skip Javy’s next turn. Ivan Nova, meanwhile, has a 1.34 ERA over his last five starts for Triple-A Scranton. Nova threw three scoreless, walkless innings for the Yankees in mid May. I say it’s time to give him another look and let A.J. work things out in the bullpen for a while. Logan can be optioned to make room for Nova.

You couldn’t really have asked for much more than Friday night’s game delivered: a tense pitching duel; Alex Rodriguez coming up big in what for him was a grudge match against his former skipper; a little bit of hit-batsman antagonism with Vicente Padilla, but everything kept safely below the waist; CC Sabathia coming up big and striking out his last man in the eighth; Mariano Rivera coming in to face Manny Ramirez, who had an RBI single and a dropped fly ball earlier in the game, and striking out the side to pick up the save with no margin for error in a 2-1 win. It won’t get better than that, so I hope you all stayed up for it.

In fact, with A.J. Burnett on the mound this evening, things could get a lot worse in a hurry. Burnett has gone from poor to awful in June, providing a counterweigh to Sabathia’s strong month by going 0-4 with a 10.35 ERA in four starts while allowing nine home runs in just 20 innings pitched, inflating his season ERA by a run and a half in the process. Part of Burnett’s inconsistency is that you don’t expect his struggles to last long, either, but it seems as though each of Burnett’s starts this month has been worse than the last (not exactly true, but close), and with Dave Eiland on leave for a personal matter there are some have begun to wonder if Mike Harkey isn’t up to the task of getting Burnett back on track, while others, including the general manager, are wondering if Burnett is tipping his pitches.

To make matters worse, the pitcher opposing Burnett this evening, Hiroki Kuroda, is just the kind of crafty, off-speed groundballer prone to giving the Yankees fits. Even if he wasn’t, his success this season speaks for itself (3.06 ERA, 2.92 K/BB, career-best 7.1 K/9). In stark contrast to Burnett, Kuroda has been aces in his last three starts, the last two of which have come against the best offense in each league, the Reds and Red Sox, in those teams’ hitting-friendly ballparks. In total, Kuroda has posted a 0.95 ERA with 23 Ks in 19 innings against just four walks and no homers in those three starts (the third of which came at home against the Cardinals, who have some dangerous hitters themselves). That line works out to a 10.9 K/9 and 5.75 K/BB to go with that sub-1.00 ERA and 0.89 WHIP.

Gulp.

Jorge Posada, who fouled a pitch off his healing right foot last night but stayed in the game, gets the night off. Francisco Cervelli hits seventh ahead of Brett Gardner and Burnett. Curtis Granderson remains in the two-hole. Nick Swisher bats sixth.

The good news is that, if the Yankees do drop this game, as it seems they’re likely to do, it sets up a hell of a rubber game on ESPN tomorrow night with the Dodgers’ young lefty ace Clayton Kershaw facing off against veteran southpaw Andy Pettitte, who thus far is having his finest season as a Yankee at the age of 38. Well, that and the fact that you won’t have to stay up ’til 1am to watch the carnage tonight.

I’m pretty jazzed up for this weekend’s interleague set between the Yankees and Dodgers. Not just because of the familiar faces in the opposing dugout (yes, Joe Torre, but also Don Mattingly, who has also never been part of the Yankees’ opposition before tonight and who never wore another team’s uniform before following Torre to L.A. for the 2008 season, and former undesirables Manny Ramirez and Jeff Weaver, whose presence helps stir the emotional pot), but because it’s Yankees-Dodgers. This matchup was the greatest World Series rivalry in baseball history. From 1947 to 1956, the Yankees and Dodgers met in the World Series six times in ten years, and from 1977 to 1981 they met three more times in a five-year span. Altogether, the Yankees and Dodgers have played 11 World Series against one another, the most of any paring in major league history, with the Yankees holding a 8-3 advantage in those Series.

Given that history, it’s shocking to me that this is just the second interleague meeting between the two teams and that they have yet to play an interleague game in the Bronx (which means the the final dozen years of Yankee Stadium’s existence passed without such a matchup). Since the Dodgers come-from-behind victory in the 1981 World Series, the Yankees and Dodgers have played just one series, a three-game set in Chavez Ravine in mid-June of 2004 that the Dodgers took two games to one. The winning pitchers in that series were Brad Halsey for the Yankees in the middle game and Weaver (who, in his first Dodgers stint immediately following the Kevin Brown trade, beat Javy Vazquez in his first  stint with the Yankees) and the late Jose Lima for the Dodgers.

This year, Weaver is in the bullpen and Vazquez won’t pitch until the Yankees return home next week, but the matchup is even more compelling. Beyond that history and the familiar faces, this series pits the defending world champions against the team that lost the last two National League Championship Series. Say what you want about Joe Torre, but he has kept his postseason streak alive since leaving the Bronx.

I figured the Dodgers would make it 15 straight seasons for Torre before this season started, and though they got off to a slow start (13-17 and six games out of first place on May 8), they turned things around in a hurry with a nine-game winning streak, the start of a 23-7 run from May 9 to June 9 that put them a game ahead of the inexplicable Padres. They’ve only won three of their last 12 since then, however, and have fallen back to third place, three games behind San Diego. Included in that swoon has been a 1-5 performance against their local rivals in Anaheim and a three-game sweep at the hands of the surging Red Sox in Boston, where the return of Ramirez and old rival Torre added a similar charge of emotion.

The bad news for Yankee fans is that despite the Dodgers slide, Manny has been red-hot, hitting .421/.463/.711 with three homers in his last ten games (nine starts) and enters this game with a six-game hitting streak. The Dodgers are finally seeing some signs of life from Andre Ethier as well. Ethier was having an out-of-his-mind season before breaking a finger in batting practice in mid-May. He didn’t hit a lick upon returning on May 31, but has gone 5-for-13 with a pair of doubles in his last three games. The same goes for Matt Kemp, who slumped badly for most of June but went 4-for-13 with a double and a homer in those three games. The Dodgers also just got Rafael Furcal back in the lineup after he missed close to a week on bereavement leave.

The most favorable pitching matchup in this weekend’s series for the Yankees is tonight’s as CC Sabathia takes on Vicente Padilla. CC has been sharp in June, going 4-0 with a 2.48 ERA 28 strikeouts in 29 innings, a 3.11 K/BB and just two home runs allowed, both in his first start of the month. Padilla, meanwhile, has made just one start since April 22 due to a nerve irritation in his right forearm that shelved him for nearly two months. Padilla gave up four runs in 5 1/3 innings at Fenway his last time out. In his last start against the Yankees, on June 2 of last year while he was still a Texas Ranger, he gave up seven runs in 3 2/3 innings.

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War Pigs

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

–from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751)

Depending on where you want to draw the line, Paths of Glory was either Stanley Kubrick’s fourth feature film or his second. Taking an inclusive view, his first two features were  Fear and Desire (1953) and Killer’s Kiss (1955). However, Kubrick later disowned the former, and both were independent, self-financed films that ran 72 and 67 minutes, respectively, and employed minimal crews comprised largely of family and friends.

Taking the exclusive view, Kubrick’s proper film-making career began with 1956’s The Killing (which Matt will visit later this week). The first of three films (along with Paths of Glory and Lolita) made under the auspices of a production company formed by Kubrick and fellow New Yorker James B. Harris, The Killing was Kubrick’s first experience with a proper crew, an actual budget (though still minimal, it was provided by distributor United Artists), and a real-life movie star, Sterling Hayden (who would later reunite with Kubrick as Brigadier General Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove), and it propelled him into the big time.

Still considered an essential film noir, The Killing caught the eye of Kirk Douglas, who lept at the chance to star in Kubrick’s next project, an adaptation of Humphrey Cobb’s 1935 novel Paths of Glory. (Three years later, Douglas would tap Kubrick to replace Anthony Mann as the director of his Roman epic Spartacus.) The novel (and film) center on an abuse of power by French officers during World War I supposedly inspired by the Souain corporals affair in which four French soldiers serving under General Géraud Réveilhac were unfairly executed for mutiny.

The film was Kubrick’s first to be set and shot outside of the United States (set in France, it was filmed in Germany, likely due to it’s portrayal of the French officers; the film was banned in France until 1975), and it was by far his most elaborate and high-profile production to that point. Watching it now, the 87-minute film shot in black-and-white in the old, boxy 1.33:1 aspect ratio with a mono soundtrack, seems modest and quaint by the director’s later standards, which is part of it’s appeal. Paths of Glory is by far the most direct film in Kubrick’s discography. Lolita was nearly twice as long, and Dr. Strangelove, while similar in many ways in terms of format and theme, was far busier and complex. Even The Killing had a fractured chronology, which would later be a key inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s early films.

Paths of Glory, by comparison, is an exceedingly straight-forward film in terms of plot, theme, and structure. The first two thirds play like a typical court-martial film, one obvious comparison being The Cain Mutiny, starring Humphrey Bogart, which came out three years earlier. Paths is neatly bifurcated. The first half of the film sets up and executes the key events and the second half of the film unfolds the fallout from those events, but it is not a trial movie. The court martial itself turns out to be little more than a show trial that takes up just ten minutes of screen time, and the verdict is revealed with a third of the film’s running time remaining.

Warning: Spoilers below

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gulp.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The good news out of Wednesday night’s game is that, through the first seven innings, every Yankee hit was a homer, Alex Rodriguez returned to the lineup and contributed and RBI double, and the bullpen was dominant, pitching in 5 2/3 scoreless innings allowing only a walk and striking out six.

If 5 2/3 innings from the bullpen sounds suspicious, you’re beginning to figure out the bad news. Here’s another clue for you all: the relievers were Boone Logan and Chad Gaudin, the last two men on the Yankee bullpen depth chart.

Yup, A.J. Burnett got lit up and bounced after just 3 1/3 innings, burning through 87 pitches (just 55 percent of them strikes) and leaving the Yankees in a 6-1 hole half-way through the fourth inning. Burnett simply had no command of his pitches, particularly his fastball, as he walked four men, hit a fifth, and uncorked a wild pitch in his short stint. When he got the ball over the plate, he gave up a bases-clearing bases-loaded triple to Shane Victorino to blow the game open in the second, and back-to-back solo homers by Ryan Howard and Jayson Werth to start the third.

The first run Burnett allowed came after 38-year-old Raul Ibañez walked on five pitches then stole his first base of the year, giving Burnett the most stolen bases allowed by any pitcher in the majors thus far this year. Burnet allowed 23 steals in all of 2009, but has already allowed 19 this year, the 19th coming in the fourth inning after Victorino led off with a five-pitch walked then stole second.

Placido Polanco followed Victorino with a fly out, then Chase Utley hit a hard shot down the first-base line that Mark Teixeira smothered only to discover that Burnett broke late for first base and wasn’t there to take the throw. Certainly Burnett couldn’t have anticipated Teixeira’s fine play, but it seems like more than a coincidence that Joe Girardi chose that moment to take Burnett out of the game to heavy booing from the Yankee Stadium crowd.

Logan stranded Victorino and Utley, but the story of the game was Jamie Moyer, who was flat out dominant. Other than solo homers by Robinson Cano in the second and Jorge Posada in the fifth, Moyer didn’t allow a baserunner until the seventh, when Alex Rodrguez drew a one-out walk and was promptly erased by an inning-ending double play. With two outs in the eighth, Kevin Russo reached on an infield single that scooted under Polanco’s glove at third and was fielded too deep in the hole by Wilson Valdez for Valdez to record the out. Brett Gardener then flied out to end the inning.

That was it. That was all the Yankees managed in eight innings against Moyer, who at 47 years and 211 days became the oldest pitcher ever to record a win against the Yankees, trumping Phil Niekro, who picked up a win against his former mates in a rare relief appearance in the second game of a double header back on August 1, 1986. Ron Guidry took the loss for the Yankees in that one and Pat Tabler scored the winning run for the Indians on Julio Franco’s double. Three days earlier, Jamie Moyer pitched a gem for the Cubs to beat the Mets at Shea, the first game he ever pitched in New York. Yankee manager Joe Girardi (who, like YES announcers Paul O’Neill and Al Leiter and four of Girardi’s coaches, is younger than Moyer) was in his first year of pro ball at low-A Peoria at the time. Most impressively, Moyer’s performance was only his second best of the season, just outranking his complete game against the Padres on June 5.

Moyer threw 106 pitches in those eight innings and, despite a four-run lead, Phillies manager Charlie Manuel used the opportunity to give his closer, Brad Lidge some work. Facing the top of the order, Lidge got two quick outs (one on a high called strike three to Derek Jeter that was well within the rulebook strike zone but above where umpires typically call strikes, much to the chagrin of pitchers and myself), but Mark Teixeira drew a two-out walk, launching a rally that got Jorge Posada to the plate as the tying run only to strike out on one of the 900 sliders Lidge threw in the inning. Game over, Phillies win 6-2. Rubber game tomorrow. Andy Pettitte on the hill, I like the Yankees’ chances.

The Yankees look for a quick series victory over the Phillies tonight as A.J. Burnett takes on 47-year-old Jamie Moyer.  Moyer has been all over the place this season. On May 7, he became the oldest pitcher in major league history to throw a shutout, blanking the now-first-place Braves on two hits and no walks. In his last start, he gave up nine runs to the Red Sox before recording an out in the second inning, getting the hook four batters into the second. In between those two extremes, he posted a 3.51 ERA with three quality starts and one complete game in five tries but went just 2-3 due to the slumping Phily offense. Moyer has struck out just four men in his last four starts while inducing just one double-play.

As for Burnett, as I wrote in my “Howzit Goin’?” on Monday, despite the feeling that Burnett has been struggling (he allowed ten runs over 12 2/3 innings in his last two starts), on the season, he’s actually performing right in line with his career numbers (2010 ERA: 3.86; career: 3.84). His strikeouts are down, but so are his walks and wild pitches. This is A.J. Burnett: erratic, but generally effective. Just look at how he fared against the Phillies in the World Series last year:

Game 2: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 9 K
Game 4: 2 IP, 4 H, 6 R, 4 BB, 2 K, 1 HR, 1 HBP

I’m mostly impressed that he’s managed to avoid the DL in nearly a year and a half with the Yankees.

As Alex reported earlier, Alex Rodriguez returns to the lineup, but only as the DH as Joe Girardi didn’t like what he saw from Alex’s lateral movement during drills on Tuesday. Kevin Russo finally gets a start at third base against a righty, just his second start at third this season. With Rodriguez at DH, Jorge Posada moves behind the plate as Russo effectively replaces Francisco Cervelli as the eighth-place hitter. Nick Swisher returns to the two hole. The full lineup can be seen in Alex’s post below.

So much for that pitchers’ duel.

In 13 starts this season prior to Tuesday night, Roy Halladay had allowed more than two earned runs in just two of them and allowed a total of three home runs on the entire season. Tuesday night, he matched his season worst six earned runs allowed with four of those runs scoring in a trio of Yankee homers that doubled his season total.

I’d like to know who saw that coming.

Halladay cruised through the first on ten pitches, eight of them strikes, then got Robinson Cano to ground out on an 0-1 count to start the third, but Nick Swisher followed with a single and everything went to pot for the Phillies’ ace after that.

Jorge Posada drew a four pitch walk and Brett Gardner tattooed a hanging slider into the right-center-field gap for a two-RBI triple (aided slightly by Shane Victorino bobbling the ball at the wall). In the third, Curtis Granderson led off with a solo homer, and after Mark Teixeira flew out, Robinson Cano doubled to right-center on the first pitch he saw. That brought Swisher back around and on a 2-0 count, he cracked a two-run homer to give the Yankees a shocking 5-0 lead over Halladay with one out in the bottom of the third.

Halladay settled down a bit with a 1-2-3 fourth, but with one out in the fifth, Teixeira snuck a 1-2 pitch just inside the foul pole down the right-field line, hitting a ducking YES cameraman in the back with a solo home run of his own. The Yankees made some noise against Halladay in the sixth as well, loading the bases with two outs but failing to push across another run.

CC Sabathia, meanwhile, didn’t allow a hit until the fourth inning, though things got dicey at that point. Utley led off the fourth with a bouncer that Sabathia stabbed at with both hands, deflecting the ball enough to give Utley a hit. Placido Polanco followed with another single and on a 1-2 count, Sabathia hit Ryan Howard to load the bases. Jayson Werth and Raul Ibañez followed with RBI singles.

With the bases still loaded, two runs in, and no one out, Ben Francisco hit a would-be double play ball to a far-ranging Mark Teixeira in the second-base hole. Teixeira could have come home with his throw to try to get the slow-footed Howard on what still might have been a close play, but he opted instead to start a 3-6-1 double play, trading Howard’s run for a pair of outs. Only Sabathia never broke for first base and the Yankees had to settle for a single out as Howard scored to cut the Yankee lead to 5-3.

Sabathia picked himself up by getting the next two men out, but then got into more trouble in the fifth when with one out, Utley singled, was replaced by a Polanco fielder’s choice, Ryan Howard drew a five-pitch walk, and both runners move up on a wild pitch. That last might have been a blessing as it allowed Sabathia to turn a 2-0 count on Werth into an intentional walk, after which he got Ibañez to ground out to leave the bases loaded.

That was the end of the excitement. Sabathia retired the last seven men he faced and David Robertson and Chan Ho Park each tossed a scoreless inning, a Robertson walk to Ibañez being the only blip, as the Yankees padded their lead against the Philadelphia bullpen by plating a pair of hit-batsmen on a two-out Francisco Cervelli single in the seventh.

Yankees win 8-3 as the Phillies drop the one game in this series they had to have. With the pitching matchups favoring the Bombers the next two nights, suddenly a sweep is not out of the question. Then again, as Halladay proved on Tuesday night, anything can happen.

Three weeks ago the idea of the Yankees coming out of the soft part of their schedule and running right into the two-time defending National League champion Phillies was downright frightening, but as luck would have it, the Yankees might be catching the Phillies at exactly the right time. Though they’ve split four of them, the Phillies haven’t won a series since mid May and are 6-14 in their last 20 games having fallen to third place in the NL East behind the Mets (the Mets!).

Shockingly, the Phillies big problem has been scoring runs. Over an 11 game span from May 22 to June 2, they scored just 14 runs while going 2-9 over that span. Since then they’ve perked up a bit, but only a bit. Take out their one ten-run outburst against the Marlins a week ago and the Phillies have scored just three runs per game in eight of their last nine contests while going 3-5 in those games.

How did the team that led the NL in runs in each of the last four seasons suddenly lost the ability to score? Start with a calf injury that has limited 2007 MVP and leadoff hitter Jimmy Rollins to 12 games. Chase Utley missed two games with the flu in mid-May, has hit just .175/.295/.263 in 95 plate appearances since, and hasn’t homered since May 20. Ryan Howard, always a slow starter (.260/.342/.525 career in the first half vs. .303/.407/.633 in the second half) is sticking to that pattern with a .286/.342/.461 line thus far. That’s the core of the Phillies’ offense right there, and the team’s inability to replace Rollins with even a replacement level bat (per VORP, Wilson Valdez and Juan Castro have combined to cost the Phillies a half a win relative to replacement level already this season) has made his absence hurt even more than it should.

But that’s not all. Raul Ibañez, who was a stud last year before a groin injury interrupted his flow, is looking every one of his 38 years this year, putting up his worst performance since he became a full-timer a decade ago, hitting .247/.335/.394. There’s so much slumping going on in the Phillies’ lineup that it seems to have become contagious. Jayson Werth, who should be one of the top free agents to hit the market this winter, was hitting .327/.403/.641 on May 25, but has hit just .137/.241/.235 in 58 PAs since.

I bet Roy Halladay thought he had left his complete-game losses behind him in Toronto, but he suffered a complete game loss on May 18 to the Pirates of all teams, losing 2-1, and in his last start, he allowed just one run in eight innings but took another loss as the Phillies failed to score against Josh Johnson and lost 2-0 (though I suppose that latter was fair play as Johnson was the losing pitcher in Halladay’s perfect game despite not allowing an earned run in that start).

Halladay has a 1.96 ERA on the season and has complied this line in his last three starts: 24 IP, 16 H, 3 R, 0 HR, 2 BB, 26 K. He faces CC Sabathia tonight, who according to Yahoo! Sports, “is 6-3 this season, but four of those wins have come against the Orioles, who began play Monday with by far the worst record in baseball (17-46). Sabathia’s ERA in his other nine starts this season is 4.69.” Indeed, Sabathia has been sharp in his last two starts, but both came against the O’s, and in the two before that he gave up 11 runs (ten earned) in just 11 innings in losses to the Mets and the lowly Indians.

Facing a slumping Phillies team that typically relies on big lefty bats Howard and Utley could help CC continue his recent success, but even if he pitches well, one will still have to wonder if it was CC or his slumping opposition that was the key factor. Either way, he’ll have his work cut out for him facing Halladay.

The next two pitching matchups are far more favorable to the Yankees. On Wednesday, A.J. Burnett takes on Kyle Kendrick, who is filling in for injured lefty J.A. Happ, and on Thursday the seniors tour comes to town as 47-year-old Jamie Moyer takes on the red-hot Andy Pettitte, who, at 38, is still nine years Moyer’s junior.

Alex Rodriguez remains out of the lineup tonight due to his hip flexor tendonitis, but said the swelling has gone down and that he could start at third base tomorrow. Rodriguez was supposed to DH tonight and is available to pinch-hit. Ramiro Peña bats ninth and plays third base and with the DH spot opened back up, Jorge Posada, who was originally in the lineup at catcher, will DH and hit sixth behind Nick Swisher with Robinson Cano cleaning up. The bottom three in the lineup are Brett Gardner (LF), Francisco Cervelli (C), and Peña.

In other injury news, Sergio Mitre, who hadn’t pitched since the first day of the Toronto series, was placed on the 15-day disabled list with an oblique injury that occurred during batting practice on Sunday (the Yankees play six games in NL parks next week, though I can’t imagine Mitre would have gotten an at-bat or been expected to deliver had he had one). He is being replaced by lousy lefty Boone Logan. If the Yankees retroactively date Mitre’s DL stay, he would be eligible to be activated on Saturday, though I’m sure he wouldn’t be ready to return that quickly.

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Things weren’t going so well the last time I checked in with this feature, but since then the Yankees have gone 14-5, kicking things off with a series win against the NL Central-leading Twins in the new ballpark in Minneapolis, then taking a big bite out of the soft part of their schedule by going 11-2 against the Indians, Orioles (twice), and Astros with only a series loss on the road to the upstart Blue Jays in the middle of that run to sour the mood.

That soft part of the schedule has been particularly beneficial to Javier Vazquez, who over his last six starts is 4-2 with a 2.94 ERA and has won each of his last three starts, posting a 2.57 ERA while striking out 22 in 21 innings against just five walks and 11 hits (albeit with four of those hits leaving the park). Vazquez was, however, responsible for the one loss against the Twins, as he gave up 5 runs in 5 2/3 innings, though the offense’s inability to get to Nick Blackburn was equally problematic.

The Yankees’ one loss in the seven games that followed was entirely the fault of the pitching as the offense staked CC Sabathia to a 9-3 lead against the Indians after four innings, but CC and the bullpen couldn’t hold it. Joba Chamberlain was the goat in that one, giving up four runs while getting just one out, blowing the save and taking the loss. That was the last of a bad stretch for Joba in which he gave up a total of 11 runs in three ugly outings, all Yankee losses, over a span of five appearances. Since then, he has allowed just one run in his last seven outings and hasn’t walked a batter.

The Yankees’ one loss in their last seven games was largely the result of the offense being stifled by Orioles pitching prospect Jake Arrieta in his major league debut. A.J. Burnett took the loss in that game, but pitched well enough to win (6 2/3 IP, 4 R). The Yankees also lost Burnett’s previous start, which was equally the fault of Burnett (6 IP, 6 R against his old team in Toronto) and the offense’s inability to do anything against young lefty stud Brett Cecil (8 IP, 1 R).

Cecil is now 7-2 with a 3.22 ERA on the season, and Arrieta is a highly regarded prospect for the O’s, so I can’t get on the offense too much for those two games. As for Burnett, he still has a 3.86 ERA on the season, which is better than his 2009 mark (4.04) and almost a dead match for his career ERA (3.84). His strikeouts are way down, but his walks and wild pitches are down with them. There’s not much to complain about. That he’s being outpitched by the rest of the rotation says more about the rest of the rotation than it does about him.

The only other Yankee loss over this recent stretch was a 3-2 loss in 14 innings to the Blue Jays in Toronto. You can again blame the offense for that one, but again Ricky Romero has a 3.29 ERA on the season and worked the first eight innings of that one, so again, tip your hat to a good young pitcher from the division who could continue to make life hard on the home nine for years to come. Also tip your hat to the Yankee bullpen’s performance in that one as Chamberlain, Damaso Marte, David Robertson and Chan Ho Park kept the 2-2 tie in tact for five innings in relief of Andy Pettitte before Chad Gaudin finally came in and lost it. Gaudin has allowed runs in four of his six outings since returning to the Yankees.

The end result of the Yankees’ recent feast on the soft, supple flesh of the leagues’ weakest teams is that they’ve pulled into a first-place tie with the Rays in the division and for the best record in the majors. Tomorrow they open a three-game set at home against a slumping Phillies team, then continue with interleague against the Mets, Diamondbacks, and the surging Dodgers before finding another soft landing with ten of 13 against the weaker teams in the AL West (including seven against lowly Seattle) before a mid-July showdown with the Rays in the Bronx.

Looking over the remainder of the schedule, the Yankees face the Rays and Red Sox for seven of ten games in early August followed by two against the Rangers, but otherwise they have plenty of landing spots until they hit a season-ending gauntlet that has them play 16 of their last 22 against the Rangers, Rays, and Red Sox, and 13 of their last 19 (or, if you prefer, 10 of their last 13) against the Rays and Sox. All the more reason for the Yankees to fatten up while they can, which is exactly what they’ve been doing.