Javier Vazquez has made just one start in the Bronx since being reacquired by the Yankees, and it ended with a bunch of blockheads booing what was actually a fairly solid start that just happened to come opposite a fantastic performance by the Angels’ Joel Piñeiro. What they were booing wasn’t really Vazquez’s performance that day, but his disaster start in Tampa Bay the turn before and the back-breaking grand slam he allowed to Johnny Damon in Game Seven of the 2004 ALCS, Vazquez’s last appearance in Yankee pinstripes. Never mind the absurdity of blaming Vazquez for the Yankees’ collapse in 2004 (or even for the four runs allowed on the Damon slam given that Vazquez was exactly the worst pitcher for Joe Torre to have brought in after Kevin Brown had loaded the bases). We all know there’s a thriving contingent of mouth-breathing jackasses in every ballpark, particularly those in the northeast. What worries me is that this afternoon’s game looks primed to dump more blood into the water as Vazquez is going up against one of the game’s hottest pitchers in White Sox lefty Jon Danks.

Vazquez, as we all know all too well by this point, has been struggling with his mechanics in the early going this year, rushing his delivery and thus causing his arm to drag, his slider to flatten out, and robbing his fastball of both location and velocity. Though he did pick up a win against the punchless A’s in Oakland, he has yet to turn in a quality start, and in three of his four outings he has missed both the innings and runs qualifications for that statistic. I still have faith that Vazquez will get on track, but more abuse from the home fans will only make the allegations of Eddie Whitson syndrome a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As for Danks, he’s the real deal. All of his four starts this season have been quality, and he’s averaging nearly 7 1/3 innings and barely more than one earned run per game. He leads the American League in WHIP (0.86), and boasts a 1.55 ERA and 4.33 K/BB. Like CC Sabathia, Danks has been hit-lucky in the early going (.224 opponent’s average on balls in play), but also like CC, he has the stuff to survive a correction. I’m willing to believe the 25-year-old is making the leap this year.

Danks faced the Yankees just once last year, allowing four runs in six innings but picking up a win. The Yankee who has faced him most is former Tiger Curtis Granderson, who has gone 1-for-19 with no walks against the lefty. Granderson is hitting .172/.200/.242 against lefties this year, but Nick Johnson is the man taking a seat to make room for Marcus Thames in the lineup. I understand not wanting Thames in the outfield behind a flyballer like Vazquez, but if Randy Winn doesn’t start this game, he shouldn’t be on this team.

Nick Swisher hits second. Jorge Posada is back behind the plate.

In the American League last year, only the Mariners allowed fewer runs than the White Sox, but only the M’s and Royals scored fewer runs. General Manger Kenny Williams has made a lot of changes to the White Sox dating back to his acquisition of a then-injured Jake Peavy at last year’s trading deadline, but despite all of his tinkering, I’m expecting more of the same from the Sox this year.

In April, the White Sox’ offense–restocked with Mark Teahen, Juan Pierre, controversial late-season waiver claim Alex Rios, and the ghost of Andruw Jones, the last being far and away the most productive of that quartet–has obliged by scoring just four runs per game (better than only the M’s, Indians, and Orioles), while the bullpen, stocked with veteran arms, leads all major league pens with 11.45 strikeouts per nine innings and is second in the AL to the Tigers with a 2.79 ERA. Twenty-five-year old lefty Jon Danks has been among the league’s best starters in the early part of his fourth season (3-0, 1.55 ERA, 4.33 K/BB, league-leading 0.82 WHIP). The Sox just need the rest of the rotation to shape up to fulfill the team’s destiny as an unbalanced mediocrity.

Fortunately for the White Sox, the guys who need to shape up are Jake Peavy, Mark Buehlre, Gavin Floyd, and Freddy Garcia. Peavy and Buehlre are givens. Floyd has allowed a .406 average on balls in play after four starts, so positive correction is guaranteed. Garcia, well, he’s 35, has made just 23 starts over the past three seasons, and has gone 0-2 with a 5.82 ERA this season despite a .217 BABIP, so maybe he won’t be there, but he’s the fifth starter, so the Sox will take what they can get there.

Looking at this weekend’s series, on paper, Garcia versus Andy Pettitte tonight is a win, and Danks versus Javy Vazquez on Saturday afternoon is a loss, which boils it down to a Sunday rubber game between Buehrle and Phil Hughes. I’m looking forward to that one.

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A night after opening their series in Baltimore with a bumbling loss, the Yankees won a comparatively clean, crisp game 8-3, making life easy for ace CC Sabathia, who wasn’t in top form, but still gave the Yankees 7 2/3 quality innings. The Yankees got to Orioles starter Jeremy Guthrie early, putting up two runs in the first, three and the second, and holding a 6-1 lead after the third. The rest was just killing time.

Nick Swisher had the big day at the plate, going 3-for-5 with a two-RBI triple in the second on a ball off the base of the wall in center that O’s center fielder Adam Jones failed to field cleanly. The only Yankee who failed to reach base in the game was Alex Rodriguez, who still contributed with a sac fly in the first.

The only negative for the Yankees came when Guthrie hit Jorge Posada on the side of his right knee with his first pitch of the second inning. Posada stayed in to “run” the bases, jogging gingerly to second on Curtis Granderson’s single, then sauntering home just barely ahead of Granderson on Swisher’s triple. Francisco Cervelli went into the game in the bottom of the second and went 2-for-4 with an RBI the rest of the way.

The early diagnosis on Posada was that he just has a bruise and is day-to-day. Joe Girardi suggested that he won’t start the series finale, though Posada will be further evaluated on Thursday. For the short term, the Yankees should do just fine with the defensively superior Cervelli, who is 8-for-18 with a double and three walks in the early going, though there’s some concern about the fact that, with Posada out, Ramiro Peña is the backup catcher.

Failing to complete a sweep of the A’s, that was no big deal. Losing two of three to a good Angels team in Anaheim, you almost expect that. Losing the opener against a struggling Orioles team that had only won three games all season then looking back and realizing you have lost four of their last five, that’s a wake-up call. The Yankees need to win the next two games in Baltimore to avoid an embarrassing series loss to the lowly O’s as well as a losing record on their three-stop road trip. Fortunately, they have CC Sabathia on the mound tonight to help get the team back on track.

Sabathia’s last three games have been a near no-hitter and a pair of shortened complete games (six innings in a rain-shortened game, eight innings in a 4-2 loss), which makes this one of his better Aprils on record. One point of warning: CC has been pretty hit-lucky, holding opponents to an absurdly low .197 batting average on balls in play. As is typical for CC in April, his walks are up a bit, and his strikeout rate is no better than it was last year (which was a four-year low for the big lefty). We all know he’ll only get better from here, but those peripherals show there’s actually room for him to do so.

With Nick Johnson back in the lineup as the DH, Sabathia will pitch to Jorge Posada for the first time since Opening Day Night. That shouldn’t effect his performance, but Sabathia’s breakout game as a Yankee came here in Baltimore with Francisco Cervelli behind the plate just less than a year ago, on May 8, 2009. The opposing pitcher that night, Jeremy Guthrie, is on the hill for the O’s again tonight. All four of Guthrie’s starts this season have been quality (three of them against the Rays and Red Sox) and he has walked just five batters total. Despite that, the Orioles have lost all four of those games due to poor run and bullpen support. Guthrie faced the Yankees five times last year and turned in three quality starts, but his and the Orioles’ only win in those five games was Guthrie’s Opening Day matchup against, yes, CC Sabathia. In fact, tonight Guthrie and Sabathia face off for the fourth time dating back that Opening Day tilt. CC holds a 2-1 advantage in those matchups.

Despite struggling with his command and walking four, two of those free passes forcing in a run in the second inning, Phil Hughes managed to pass a 2-1 lead (courtesy of a Jorge Posada solo homer in the top of the fourth) to his bullpen after 5 2/3 innings and 109 pitches. Unfortunately, the Yankee bullpen coughed up three runs before getting the final out of the sixth. Boone Logan walked the only man he faced, and David Robertson, after getting ahead 0-2 on Ty Wigginton, hit the Orioles’ replacement second baseman in the backside, then gave up a trio of RBI singles to the bottom three men in the Oriole lineup before finally striking out Adam Jones to end the inning. Alfredo Aceves took over in the seventh, but in the eighth Derek Jeter booted a leadoff groundball by Wigginton and Jorge Posada threw a rainbow into center field when pinch-runner Julio Lugo attempted to steal second with two outs, setting up a crucial insurance run.

Baltimore starter Kevin Millwood was similarly inefficient, but lefty Alberto Castillo and righty Jim Johnson held the Yankees to just two hits over 2 2/3 innings, handing a 5-2 lead to newly promoted Alfredo Simon in the ninth. A Nick Swisher one-out single and a pinch-hit walk by Nick Johnson set up, sandwiched between strikeouts of Curtis Granderson and Derek Jeter, set up a pair of two-out Yankee runs, the first of which scored on an error on a groundball by Brett Gardner (which, curiously, was also how the first Yankee run of the game scored), but after Mark Teixeira got the Yankees within one and pushed Gardner to third with a first-pitch single, Alex Rodriguez’s hopper up the middle was corralled for the final out of a 5-4 Oriole win, their fourth of the season.

Hughes’ performance was actually quite encouraging. He allowed just one run on two hits despite having far from his best stuff, but he was undermined by sloppy play around him. In addition to Logan and Robertson’s failures in the bottom of the sixth and Jeter and Posada’s errors in the eighth, the Yankees gave away two outs in the top of the sixth when Robinson Cano, who has been thrown out on 54 percent of his stolen base attempts in his career, followed a leadoff single by being caught stealing. Jorge Posada followed Cano with an ironic walk, then with two outs was caught rounding second too far on an infield single to the left side (Nick Swisher singled off Miguel Tejada’s glove, and Tejada wrangled the ball before Posada realized he never had a prayer of making it to third base). The Yankee offense also failed to score a run with the bases loaded and one out in the third when Alex Rodriguez lined out and Cano flied out.

I’m tempted to chalk this one up to a hangover from the team’s big day at the White House on Monday (Michael Kay said during the broadcast that he had never seen Joe Girardi look more exhausted than he was Monday night). Hey, Randy Winn got his first Yankee hit, so that’s . . . something. Of course, he also slipped when attempting a throw home in the bottom of the sixth, resulting in a throw that barely trickled into first base from shallow right field. It was that kind of game.

In other news, Johnson, who has reverted to number 36 which he wore in his first stint with the Yankees, should be in the starting lineup Wednesday night, but Chan Ho Park was unable to throw off flat ground and thus seems no closer to returning to the Yankee bullpen.

I like to think I have a firm command of the obvious. To wit, the Orioles, who at 3-16 are four games worse than the next worst team in baseball less than 20 games into the season, aren’t this bad. After all, no team in baseball history has ever finished with a sub .200 winning percentage (the O’s are at .158 entering this week’s three-game series against the Yankees in Baltimore), and the O’s don’t profile as one of the worst teams in baseball history. What’s more, their Pythagorean winning percentage has them at a less compellingly awful .316.

Coming into the season, I thought that this would be the year the rebuilding O’s would slip past the directionless Blue Jays into fourth place, and I still feel that way. The Orioles have a solid collection of good young talent, some of which is still in the process of establishing itself in the major leagues, some of which could arrive in the bigs as the season progresses, and some of which may not even make it until next year or beyond. For that reason, when prescribing off-season strategies for all 30 teams for SI.com back in November, I said the Orioles needed to “avoid trying to buy in too early . . . Once those pieces have established themselves, the O’s can open up the coffers and flesh out the roster, but for now they’ll let [free agent Melvin] Mora go and should stick with inexpensive veteran stop-gaps in the infield . . . while giving the youngsters their opportunities.”

That’s exactly what the O’s did in bringing back the 36-year-old Miguel Tejada to play third base for $6 million, signing deposed Rockies third baseman Garrett Atkins to play first base for $4.5 million, and sticking with Cesar Izturis, on the second year of a two-year, $5 million contract, at shortstop. In a way, wins aren’t really what the O’s are after just yet. General Manager Andy MacPhail has been in enough rodeos to know that there’s no point shooting for a fluky 83-win division title in a division that also contains the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays. Instead, he’s taking his time, trying to get his kids established and sort the prospect wheat out from the remaining chafe. That sort of strategy can lead to exactly the sort of growing pains the O’s are experiencing now, but misfortune can create opportunity.

With the team desperate to get off the floor, manager Dave Trembley has found an excuse to bench the struggling rental Atkins in favor of minor leaguer Rhyne Hughes. Hughes is a 26-year-old rookie and not among the team’s better prospects, but he hit .301/.357/.510 in his Triple-A debut last year, and his time is now if ever. Hughes was the return for sending Gregg Zaun to the Rays in early August of last year, and if Hughes turns out to be a solid major leaguer, that’s essentially free production. If that happens, the decision to effectively leave first base “open” by signing Atkins will have been key to getting something for nothing there. Hughes has gone 4-for-9 with a walk in his first two major league games, one of which was the O’s third win of the season. That’s not terribly meaningful, but it’s better than having starting off with an 0-fer. Hughes is additionally compelling because the O’s top first-base prospect, Brandon Snyder, really isn’t. Snyder hits for average with some doubles, but he doesn’t walk much, doesn’t have significant home run power, and isn’t anything special in the field.

The O’s are much better off at third base, where they can thank another slick late-season deal for Josh Bell, who arrived from the Dodgers for lefty reliever George Sherrill at last year’s trading deadline. Bell is a big, power-hitting third baseman who is making his Triple-A debut this year and could be among the O’s prospects to arrive in the majors mid-year. There’s some concern about Bell’s defense at the hot corner, which makes him a peripheral concern in the first base picture as well, but wherever he plays, he should be a mid-lineup presence for the O’s in the very near future.

Add Bell and possibly Hughes to a lineup that already includes Matt Wieters and the outfield of Adam Jones, Nick Markakis, and Nolan Reimold, and the O’s have a solid young core that can be complimented through free agency or more deft trades. Before that can happen, however, those youngsters have to get their feet under them in the majors, which only Markakis has done thus far. Wieters and Jones are just 24 and Wieters, off to a solid start this year, has less than a full season of major league experience under his belt. Reimold, who like Markakis is 26 this season, is closer to Hughes than the other four and still needs to prove he’s a major league starter. The flip-side of the Atkins-Hughes situation is that the team’s start has been so bad that is has shortened the leash for lesser prospects such as Reimold. Despite a significant injury which will keep his primary left-field rival Felix Pie out until at least mid-season, Reimold, off to a slow start, has begun losing playing time to the still-older, still-lesser ex-prospect Lou Montanez (though Montanez is in the process of playing himself out of the lineup as well).

On the mound, the O’s have upgraded their brutal 2009 rotation by acquiring veteran Kevin Millwood, on the last year of his contract and thus effectively on another one-year deal, from the Rangers for reliever Chris Ray, who struggled mightily last year in his first year back from Tommy John surgery. More importantly, they’re already getting strong work from lefty Brian Matusz, who was the fourth overall pick in the 2008 draft and is a budding front-of-the-rotation starter and a popular pre-season pick for the American League Rookie of the Year. Millwood and Matusz effectively push Jeremy Guthrie down to the third spot in the rotation. Guthrie is still overextended, even as a number-three, and the final two spots are still filled by pitchers who probably shouldn’t even be in the majors, but that major league mediocrity is again just thin cover for budding prospects including Chris Tillman–who came over with Jones, Sherrill, and reliever Kam Mickolio in the Erik Bedard deal and got a taste of the majors last year at age 21–Jake Arrieta, a 2007 draft pick out of college who could join Tillman in the big league rotation later this year, and Brandon Erbe, who is making his Triple-A debut this year at age 22.

So the O’s have half a lineup, half a rotation, and following a shoulder injury suffered by fragile free agent closer Mike Gonzalez, not much to speak of in the bullpen, but those component parts remain compelling and potential building blocks of a future contender in Baltimore. Right now the Orioles aren’t a good team, but they’re not as bad as they’ve looked in the early going, and are continually getting better. The Orioles should move into fourth place for the first time since 2007, but they’ll still finish with their 13th-straight losing season, yet there remains reason for optimism in Baltimore.

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Sunday wasn’t Joe Girardi’s best day as Yankee manager.

Things seemed to be going the Yankees’ way in the early innings of their rubber game against the Angels in Anaheim on Sunday afternoon. Angels starter Scott Kazmir seemed oddly determined to hit Robinson Cano leading off the second, missing him with a fastball up and in then hitting him in the rear with the next pitch. Kazmir’s next pitch was also a fastball, and Jorge Posada sent it into the new trees beyond the center field fence to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. Marcus Thames followed with a ringing double, and the Yankees were in business.

Unfortunately, Thames was starting for the red-hot Brett Gardner (11-for-24 in the team’s last seven games) instead of the ice-cold (1-for-15 over the last six games) and lefty-challenged Curtis Granderson. So, it was Granderson who followed Thames in the lineup with a second-inning sacrifice bunt. Thames did score on a subsequent groundout by Derek Jeter, but (say it with me) when you play for one run, that’s all you get, and that’s all the Yankees got, letting Kazmir and the Angels off the hook with a manageable 3-0 deficit.

Bobby Abreu got the Angels on the board in the third when he homered off Yankee starter Javier Vazquez for the tenth time in his career (tying Manny Ramirez against Jamie Moyer for the most homers by an active batter off a given pitcher). Fair enough. Abreu clearly owns Vazquez, and though the pitch Abreu hit was a flat slider, Vazquez did start to get his fastball up to 91 mph in the third inning after starting out in the high 80s in the first two frames. In fact, Vazquez struck out the side in the third around Abreu’s solo shot, and he experienced a similar increase in velocity in the middle innings of his last start, a win over the A’s.

Unfortunately for Vazquez, he was no longer facing the punchless A’s in their forgiving ballpark, and in the fourth inning, things fell apart. After Hideki Matsui flied out. Kendry Morales singled, Juan Rivera was grazed on the forearm by a pitch, Howie Kendrick singled Morales home, and Mike Napoli worked a walk to load the bases. That brought up Brandon Wood, the Angels third baseman who has looked lost thus far this season and struck out swinging at a pitch that nearly hit him the previous inning. This time, Wood jumped on Vazquez’s first pitch, a hanging curveball, and hit a sinking liner to left field were Thames, again not Gardner, was playing. Thames broke late and made an awkward and unsuccessful dive toward what proved to be a two-RBI double that gave the Angels the lead. A Maicer Izturis grounder then scored Napoli to make it 5-3 Halos, and Vazquez’s day was over after 78 pitches in just 3 2/3 innings.

Pulling Vazquez there and then was the best decision Joe Girardi made all day, as Boone Logan and Alfredo Aceves combined to hold the Angels into the seventh, and Robinson Cano got the Yankees within one by extracting further revenge on Kazmir via a solo homer to left in the sixth (Cano’s third home run off Kazmir this season in just five official at-bats).

Then, with one out and none on in the seventh and Aceves having thrown just 15 pitches (13 of them strikes), Girardi brought in Damaso Marte to face Bobby Abreu. Marte walked Abreu on five pitches, but with David Robertson warm in the pen, Girardi stuck with Marte against righty Torii Hunter, whom Marte hit in the back knee with a slider. That put two men on for Hideki Matsui, a left-handed hitter whom, as Girardi should well know, has had considerable success against lefty pitching. Though he had yet to get an out, Marte stayed in the game and got a check-swing fielder’s choice for the second out, a lucky break that wasn’t quite enough to save the Yankees in this game.

Matsui’s tapper set up the key at-bat in the game. With men on first and second, two out, and the Yankees still just one run behind, switch-hitter Kendry Morales stepped into the right-handed batters box. Girardi initially called for Marte to intentionally walk Morales with the intention of bringing Robertson in to pitch to righty Juan Rivera with the bases loaded, but after one intentional ball, Girardi popped out of the dugout, seemingly to have Robertson issue the walk himself. Two steps out of the dugout, the Yankee manager froze, perhaps called back by one of his coaches, climbed back down into the dugout, called off the walk, then sent catcher Francisco Cervelli out to the mound, seemingly to stall for more time.

Marte’s next two pitches were balls anyway, and with the count 3-0, Girardi later admitted he thought of putting up four fingers again, but instead he, bench coach Tony Peña, and pitching coach Dave Eiland simply reminded Marte and catcher Francisco Cervelli that Morales would indeed swing on 3-0, implying that there would be no gimme strike. Nonetheless, Marte grooved a fastball, and Morales, true to the Yankee coaching staff’s warning, swung, connecting for a game-breaking three-run homer.

And that was that. Facing relievers Fernando Rodney and Scot Shields in the eighth and ninth innings, respectively, the Yankees managed only a leadoff walk by Mark Teixeira in the eighth that was erased by a Cano double play. The 8-4 loss handed the Yankees their first series loss of the young season and sends them back east with a sister-kissing split on their six-game trip to the west coast.

After the game, Girardi took full blame for his indecision in the seventh, uncharacteristically second-guessing himself for not going with his first instinct (the IBB plus Robertson). However, the amateurishness of that sequence of events overshadowed the other poor decisions he made in this game including starting Thames in the field when Nick Johnson was already on the bench with a stiff back leaving the DH spot open (Posada was the DH after a day off Saturday with Cervelli catching for the second day in a row), playing Granderson over Gardner then calling for a second-inning sac bunt from Granderson, pulling a cruising and efficient Aceves from a one-run game, and sticking with Marte at least two batters too long.

As for Marte, his description of the decisive pitch against Morales, delivered in his broken Dominican rasp, summed up this head-slapper of a loss: “Three ball, no strikes, you know. Waiting for a fastball. I throw the fastball in the middle. He hit.”

Yup.

With Joel Piñeiro going for the Angels this afternoon and Javy Vazquez taking the hill for the Yankees on Sunday, last night’s loss was a tough one for the Yankees to take, but while Kendry Morales’s two-run homer off Joba Chamberlain might have been the decisive blow, the more memorable one came in the third inning when Mark Teixeira, after being hit in the triceps by a pitch, rounded third and absolutely flattened Angels backup catcher Bobby Wilson, who was making his first major league start.

After the game, both managers (both former catchers) said they thought the play was clean, and despite a few more bits of accidental contact and hit batsmen later in the game, there was no jawing between the teams, no real sense of anger or conflict. Despite all of that, I thought it was a dirty play on Teixeira’s part, not only because Wilson had set up behind home, giving Teixeira a clear path to the plate, but because of Teixeira’s behavior in the immediate after math of the collision.

After leveling Wilson, Teixeira stood up and went back to touch home, clearly indicating that his initial target had been the catcher, not the plate. As he then spun back around to head toward the Yankee dugout, his eye caught Wilson sprawled out in the dirt, clearly in pain, but not only didn’t he ask Wilson if he was okay, he didn’t acknowledge him at all and showed no concern after returning to the dugout despite the fact that Wilson had to be helped off the field and carried down the dugout stairs. After the game, Teixeira spoke kindly of Wilson and said he intended to call him to make sure he was okay (Wilson was taken to a local hospital for a CT scan and was diagnosed with a concussion), but in the heat of the moment, I don’t believe Teixeira had any regard for the well being of his opponent.

Was it because of the hit-by-pitch? Because of the virulent booing he’d gotten from his former home fans at Angel Stadium? Was it boiled-over frustration because of his slow start? Probably not, though all likely helped bring out the red-ass in the Yankee first baseman.

We’ve seen that before. Last year, in a game against the Twins, Tex almost got into it with Carlos Gomez because the Twins’ center fielder was crossing first inside the bag and Teixeira was afraid of a potential collision. We’ve also seen him level catchers before. The first thing I thought of when I saw Tex flatten Wilson last night was the play in that wild triple-comeback game against the Rangers in May 2006 in which Jorge Posada was knocked back into the homeplate umpire on a collision at the plate but held on to the ball for the out. The baserunner on that play? Mark Teixiera. From Alex’s recap:

By the end of the next inning, the Yanks would have a one-run lead. But before the home team came to bat, Jorge Posada was involved in what will go down as one of the unforgettable plays of his career, let alone the 2006 Yankee season. With two men out, Hank Blalock laced a double down the left field line. The ball hugged the corner and Melky Cabrera fielded it nervously–he looks unfamiliar and uncomfortable out in left. Mark Teixeira, who had a great night with the stick and seems to have gotten his groove back, raced around second and now charged towards home. Cabrera finally got the ball to Jeter who fired to Posada. The ball skipped home in time, Posada fielded it and then was crunched by Teixeira, who lowered his shoulder and let him have it. It was as hard a collision as I can ever remember Posada being involved with. The blow knocked Posada backwards and into the leg of the home plate umpire. But he hung onto the ball and the place went nuts.

Best I can tell, Mark Teixeira didn’t play football in college (though he’s a big football fan, both college and NFL), but given his ability to lay a hit on an opponent, he should have.

So, Tex put a little extra heat in this series. We’ll see if anything comes of it. For now, the Yankees need to win two unfavorable pitching matchups to avoid their first series loss of the year. (I told you it wouldn’t be easy.)

This afternoon, Andy Pettitte takes on Joel Piñeiro on FOX. Both starters have been outstanding in their first three starts, Pettitte going 2-0 with a 1.35 ERA, Piñeiro going 2-1 with a 1.77, his one loss coming in a quality start in which he got just one run of support from the Angels’ offense. Piñeiro dominated the Yankees for seven innings in the Bronx last week, striking out seven against no walks while allowing just one run on five hits, the key hit being an RBI triple by Nick Swisher. The night before that, Pettitte held the Halos scoreless for six frames, striking out six.

The Yankees hosted the Angels for three games last week, facing the same three pitchers that they will in this weekend’s three-game set against the Halos, and took two of three. Doing that again won’t be as easy. That’s because, after leaving the Bronx with a 3-7 record, the Angels flipped the switch, pealing off five wins against the Blue Jays and Tigers; because Jeff Mathis’s broken wrist has pushed Mike Napoli’s superior bat into the lineup; because Scott Kazmir, who pitches against Javy Vazquez on Sunday, shook off the rust against the Tigers in his last turn; because Joel Piñeiro was as dominant against the Tigers as he was against the Yankees; and because these games will take place in Anaheim, where the Yankees went 3-6 last year.

Tonight erratic stuff-misers A.J. Burnett and Ervin Santana face off. Burnett has gotten better in each of his starts in the early going and is coming off seven impressive shutout innings against Texas on Saturday. Santana lost his first two starts–one of which came in the Bronx and saw him give up five runs on five walks and eight hits (including solo homers by Nick Johnson and Derek Jeter)–but is coming off a sharp, 106-pitch complete game win against Toronto in which he walked none while allowing just one run on another solo homer (by Adam Lind). I’ll be impressed if either can manage a second straight dominant outing tonight.

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Wednesday night, Phil Hughes held the first 22 batters he faced hitless. Thursday afternooon, CC Sabathia gave up a hit to the fourth man he faced. That wouldn’t have been particularly notable if that hit hadn’t been a three-run homer by A’s catcher Kurt Suzuki that effectively won the game for the A’s.

Sabathia couldn’t locate his fastball in the first inning on Wednesday, and after walking two of the first three men he faced, he was supposed to throw a fastball down and away to start off Suzuki, who had hit two home runs off Sabathia prior to yesterday and also homered of Javy Vazquez on Tuesday night. Instead, he grooved a 93 mile-per-hour pitch on the inside half of the plate (see photo). After Suzuki’s blast, Sabathia worked in more changeups and managed to settle down, facing the minimum until giving up a cheap run in the fourth on a walk, an throwing error by Robinson Cano on a would-be double-play pivot (the Yankees’ first error since the second game of the season), an infield single, and a sac fly. Sabathia got out of that inning when Francisco Cervelli picked Kevin Kouzmanoff off second base, then again faced the minimum until the eighth thanks to an around-the-horn triple play started by Alex Rodriguez in the sixth (more on that below the fold).

Down 4-0, the Yankees cut the deficit against A’s lefty Dallas Braden with solo homers by Marcus Thames (who has successfully shrugged off his awful spring training) and Mark Teixeira, but otherwise managed little more than a series of long outs that were contained by the spacious Oakland Coliseum. No other Yankee reached third base in the game against Braden (who didn’t take kindly to Alex Rodriguez crossing the mound after making an out in the top of the sixth), set-up man Brad Ziegler, or closer Andrew Bailey.

The 4-2 final includes the Yankees’ lowest run tally of the young season. Meanwhile, Sabathia, after tallying a six-inning complete game in a rain-shortened win his last time out, again went a shortened distance, this time to an eight-inning complete game loss, needing just 97 pitches to do so despite six walks and five strikeouts.

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So Phil Hughes took a no-hitter into the eighth inning last night. How can this afternoon’s starter match that? Well, CC Sabathia has already taken a no-no into the eighth this season, getting two outs further than Hughes did last night, so he’ll have to come up with a new trick. Completing the Yankees second straight sweep and extending their winning streak to seven games would be sufficient.

CC needed just 73 pitches to get through six innings while striking out nine Rangers (and walking none) his last time out, and over his last two starts he’s allowed just one run on four hits and two walks while striking out 14 in 13 2/3 innings. He’ll face crafty 26-year-old lefty Dallas Braden this afternoon. Braden has shown improvement in each of his last two big-league campaigns and has been sharp in the early going, starting 2010 with three quality starts, all leading to Oakland wins. He faced the Yankees just once last year and was torched in the Bronx (seven runs on ten hits and six walks in 5 2/3 IP). A week later, an infected rash on his foot ended his season.

Nick Swisher returns to the lineup this afternoon while Curtis Granderson yeilds to Marcus Thames against the lefty Braden. Brett Gardner is in center. Francisco Cervelli catches the day game after the night game. After Cano, the lineup is Swisher, Thames, Cervelli, Gardner.

Tonight the Yankees look to go five-for-five in series in the young season and extend their current five-game winning streak to six. If that should happen thanks to another solid start from Phil Hughes, the latter would be as encouraging as the former. Hughes looked sharp early in his regular season debut against the Angels last Thursday. Though he ultimately walked five and ran up his pitch count in turn, limiting himself to five innings, he also held the Halos to two runs on three hits while striking out six. For all of my grousing about Joba Chamberlain being wasted in the bullpen, Hughes is every bit as important to the future of the Yankee rotation (and thus the Yankees’ future) and his time is now. His strong debut was more than just the cherry on top of the Yankees’ hot start.

Opposing Hughes will be Ben Sheets, who despite being a veteran All-Star, has something to prove himself coming off a season lost to elbow surgery and ill-timed free agency. After three starts, Sheets has a 2.65 ERA, but has walked two more than he’s struck out and hasn’t pitched past the sixth inning, leaving room for the A’s bullpen to blow his first two games. It’s a compelling matchup of talented hard-throwing right-handers at very different stages of their careers.

Randy Winn will start in right field tonight as Nick Swisher gets a curiously-timed day off after returning to his old haunt and breaking an extended 0-fer. Maybe he was proving it all night, too.

The A’s team the Yankees will face over the next three days is currently in first place in the American League West. That doesn’t mean they’re any good.  The A’s are 9-5, with six of those wins having come at home. Thus far they have gone 4-3 against the Mariners, 3-1 against the Orioles, and taken two of three from the Angels. That’s a solid intra-division showing, but the Mariners are missing Cliff Lee, and one of the A’s wins against the Halos came against replacement starter Matt Palmer.I’d say the A’s are headed for a fall, but they haven’t really climbed to any great height just yet. The Angels and Rangers, the real cream of their division, are just two games behind them in the standings, and with the Yankees coming to town, things are about to get serious.

The A’s have some pitching. Justin Duchscherer and Ben Sheets are currently healthy. Twenty-two-year-old lefty Brett Anderson is an emerging ace. Twenty-six-year-old lefty Dallas Braden, who will face CC Sabathia on Thursday, is emerging as a nice, team-controlled mid-rotation innings eater, and tonight’s starter, 24-year-old lefty Gio Gonzalez, is a prospect with good stuff, a nice high-upside option for the fifth spot. That rotation has posted a 2.70 ERA thus far, second only to the Cardinals in the majors, and home-grown arms such as Trevor Cahill (currently rehabbing an injury to his non-throwing shoulder) and Rutherford, New Jersey’s Vin Mazzaro provide depth with major league experience at Triple-A. The A’s bullpen, headed by 2009 Rookie of the Year closer Andrew Bailey, has been solid as well and should continue to be so.

That the A’s have been the stingiest team in the American League in the early going is particularly impressive given that they’re nothing special on defense. That their pitching has carried them to the top of their division is similarly impressive given that they can’t hit. In terms of runs scored per game, the A’s have been roughly league average in the early going, but their component performances, especially their .362 team slugging percentage (third worst in the AL and sixth-worst in baseball), are unimpressive. There is worse to come.

Here’s a question: who is the A’s best hitter? Is it Daric Barton, the first base prospect who finally seems to be clicking? Barton is an on-base machine, but he doesn’t have much power. His ceiling seems to be something like a healthy Nick Johnson. Is that their best hitter? Is it Kevin Kouzmanoff, the power-hitting third baseman acquired from the Padres? The right-handed Kouzmanoff has finally escaped Petco Park only to find himself playing his home games in a stadium that had a 77 park factor for right-handed home runs over the past three years per The Bill James Handbook (Petco’s was 86). Kouzmanoff has hit .284/.328/.477 on the road in his career. Is he their best hitter? Is it Eric Chavez, the man once tagged as the A’s franchise player whose bad back limited him to 31 games over the past two years and who, having returned as a designated hitter, has yet to start hitting again? Chavez has hit .249/.323/.439 over the last six seasons. Is he their best hitter? Their third-place hitter is Ryan Sweeney, a righty-swinging outfielder with a career .286/.343/.388 line in 1,109 plate appearances in the major leagues. Is he their best hitter?

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So, I thought I’d do a thing where, every so often at the end of a home stand or road trip, I’d pop in to take a look at how things are going for the Yankees. Call it “Howzit Goin’?,” make it a casual, quick-hit look at the team. Figured it would give me an opportunity to address what’s going right and wrong for the Bombers at that particular point in time. So here’s my first attempt, but I have a problem: everything’s going right.

What’s there to say? The Yankees have won their first four series of the season for the first time since 1926, doing it against their two primary division rivals (believed to be the best teams in the league if not the majors other than the Yankees themselves), as well as my pick to repeat as the AL West champs and one of their primary rivals. They open a new road trip tonight on a four-game winning streak having gone 5-1 on their just-completed homestand and 9-2 since their Opening Day loss to the Red Sox in Boston. Overall they’re 9-3, a record better than all but one team in the American League, that being the 10-3 Tampa Bay Rays, whom the Yankees took two of three from in Tampa the weekend before last.

The Yankees’ three losses break down this way: On Opening Day in Boston, they took and early 5-1 lead on the Red Sox, but CC Sabathia and the bullpen gave the lead back and then some, resulting in a 9-7 loss. In their first game in Tampa, the Yankees took a 2-0 lead in the top of the fourth, but Javier Vazquez, making his regular season debut, fell apart immediately after, giving up eight runs in an eventual 9-3 loss. In Vazquez’s next start, against the Angels in the Bronx, he again took a loss, but in that game, the Yankee offense was stymied by Joel Piñeiro and was unable to give Vazquez a lead. Trailing 2-1 after five, Vazquez gave up two more runs in the top of the sixth which sealed the Angels’ eventual 5-3 win (note that two of those three Yankee runs came against the Angel bullpen).

That last loss was the only one that could really be pinned on the offense, which leads the league with 5.75 runs scored per game and has yet to score fewer than three runs a single game this season. John Lackey actually had the best starting performance against the Yankees in the early going, holding them scoreless for six innings, but Andy Pettitte kept the Red Sox in check in that game and Lackey’s bullpen quickly blew his slim one-run lead and ultimately the game in ten innings (the Yankees’ only extra-inning game thus far). In addition to Piñeiro and Lackey, the Rays’ David Price, who beat Vazquez in his first start, was impressive, but did give up both an early lead and three runs on seven hits and three walks in total.

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As long as I can remember, the line on the Rangers was always that they’d be dangerous if they could ever find some pitching. Scoring runs in the Texas heat was no major challenge (though scoring runs on the road often was), it was preventing them that was the trick. Well, last year the Rangers were the fourth stingiest team in the junior circut, but it wasn’t so much that they found some pitchers (though they have several talented young arms in development) but that they found some fielders.

The Rangers were dead last in the majors in defensive efficiency in 2008, but climbed all the way to third in the AL (seventh overall) in 2009 thanks in large part to the arrival of defense-first shortstop prospect Elvis Andrus and late-blooming all-around right-field talent Nelson Cruz, and massive improvement in the field by star second baseman Ian Kinsler (who currently on the DL with a sprained ankle). This year, they’re mixing in speedy center fielder Julio Borbon, which has the added advantage of pushing Josh Hamilton to left field, thus giving the Rangers an above-average defender in all three pastures. Chris Davis, a repurposed third baseman, is also capable of athletic play at first base and could soon be pushed by top prospect Justin Smoak, who is considered even better afield, and though Michael Young has long been a liability in the field (his 2008 Gold Glove was completely undeserved), his having a year of experience at third base under his belt can only help his play at the hot corner. They’ve done it quietly, but the Rangers have added their names to the rapidly expanding list of American League teams that have greatly improved themselves by using the rising tide of their defense to lift their pitching boats.

That’s good, because for all of the pitching talent the Rangers have in their system, they’re still a season or two away from reaping their fruits. Top prospects Derek Holland and Neftali Feliz reached the majors last year, but lefty Holland has opened 2010 back in Triple-A, and fireballing Feliz, a starting prospect, is still biding his time in the bullpen (though two early blown saves by Frank Francisco have already moved him into the closer’s job). The next arm on the list, Venezuelan lefty Martin Perez, is a 19-year-old trying to find his feet in Double-A.

In the meantime, with Holland back in the minors, Feliz in the pen, and middling home grown arms such as Tommy Hunter and Eric Hurley on the disabled list, the major league rotation continues to be patchwork. Scott Feldman and Matt Harrision (the latter of whom came over from the Braves in the Mark Teixeira trade along with Feliz, Andrus, and catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who is also on the DL) are in their proper spots, but the Rangers had to turn to free agency, Japan, and their own bullpen to fill the other three.

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Coverage of the Angels this past offseason focused on the fact that, a year after they let Francisco Rodriguez depart as a free agent, four more of their key players were eligible to do the same. It was generally believed that the Angels had to resign at least two of them to maintain their hold on the American League West, but after quickly re-upping Bobby Abreu for two years at an annual salary of $9 million, the Angels watched as Chone Figgins, John Lackey, and Vladimir Guerrero, not to mention valuable veteran set-up lefty Darren Oliver, all signed elsewhere.

Here’s the thing. I still think the Angels are going to repeat as division champions this year. For one thing, though they didn’t resign Guerrero, they did sign Hideki Matsui for a mere $6 million, and to my eyes, that’s an upgrade. Matsui’s actually eight months older than Guerrero, and both have a lot of mileage on their bodies and have struggled with injuries in recent years, but Guerrero, who signed for $6.5 million plus an option with division rival Texas, just looked used-up last year, playing in just 100 games and failing to reach 20 homers or walks. After leading the league in intentional walks in each of the previous four years, Guerrero was passed intentionally just three times in 2009, damning evidence that the Impaler’s blade has dulled significantly.

Matsui, meanwhile, arrives in L.A. coming off one of his best seasons. Both seem capable of replicating Matsui’s career line of .292/.370/.483 if healthy, but I think Guerrero will need the help of his new park to get there, while Matsui can do it on his own. The catch is that Mike Scioscia has already given Matsui a start in left field. If he continues to do that every so often, the chances of Matsui staying healthy are significantly reduced (not to mention the effect of his two bad knees on the Angels’ defense).

As for Lackey, the Angels replaced him last July when they acquired Scott Kazmir from the Rays for three prospects including Sean Rodriguez. Kazmir is ably filling Lackey’s shoes by starting the season on the disabled list, which Lackey did each of the last two seasons. When he returns, Kazmir will give the Halos a young, hard-throwing lefty to complete a five-deep rotation that also includes Jered Weaver, lefty Joe Saunders, Ervin Santana, and free agent addition Joel Pineiro, the last of whom is the only of the five Angels starters to have reached his thirties. None of those guys is an ace, but Weaver and Kazmir can be number-twos, Saunders and the groundballing Pineiro slot in well at three and four, and the erratic Santana has front-end potential as evidenced by his strong 2008 campaign which earned him his first All-Star selection and even a few Cy Young votes. Hidden in Santana’s 2009 numbers is the 3.18 ERA he posted over his last 11 starts, much in the same way that Kazmir’s unimpressive 2009 figures mask a strong second half in which he posted a 3.27 ERA and a 1.73 mark after becoming an Angel.

The depth of that rotation is a large part of the reason that I believe the Angels are going to repeat, but their lineup is still solid as well. Only the Yankees scored more runs than the Angels in 2009, and with Matsui replacing Guerrero, the only real change is the loss of Figgins. It remains to be seen if Erick Aybar will be an out machine while taking Figgins’ place atop the order, but things are solid behind him, with Abreu getting on base in the two-hole and Torii Hunter, Matsui, and Kendry Morales lining up to drive him in. If Aybar can hit for enough average to prop up his OBP, and Brandon Wood, who replaces Figgins at third base and opens the season batting eighth, can deliver on his considerable power potential (the 25-year-old slugged .541 in the minors and averaged just shy of 29 homers a year over his last five minor league seasons), the Angels should actually be better without Figgins than they were with him. Those are big “if”s, of course, but the Angels have room for error given their production last year.

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The story of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays over the last three years has been all about run prevention. In 2007, the last of their wilderness years, they allowed more runs than any team in baseball (944, 5.83 per game) and lost 96 games. That offseason they traded defensively challenged right-fielder Delmon Young for right-hander Matt Garza and slick fielding shortstop Jason Bartlett, and moved Akinori Iwamura to second base to make room for rookie Evan Longoria. Those moves, along with the mid-season acquisition of strong defensive right fielder Gabe Ross, upgraded their defense from the worst in baseball in 2007 (according to defensive efficiency) to the best in 2008, and filled a big hole in their rotation in the process. The result was that in 2008 the newly re-named Rays allowed the third fewest runs in baseball (671, 4.14 per game) and won 97 games and the American League pennant. Last year, some correction set in as the Rays fell just below the major league average by allowing 754 runs (one more than the Yankees) or 4.65 per game and finished third in the division with 84 wins.

The good news for the Rays is that, while all that was going on, their offense has developed into one of the most potent in baseball, ranking sixth in the majors with 4.96 runs scored per game last year, and there are reasons to expect a better performance from their starting rotation this year.

In 2009, Scott Kazmir and Andy Sonnanstine combined to make 38 starts for the Rays in which they posted a cumulative 6.32 ERA. This year, Kazmir is an LA Angel (and back on the DL) and Sonnanstine is being limited to long relief. Their places in the rotation have been taken by David Price, the top overall pick in the 2007 amateur draft, and Wade Davis, a third-round pick from 2004 who pitched well in a September call-up last year. I’m among those who believe that Price and Davis, both of whom are 24 this season, could be the top two arms in the Tampa rotation before long.

Price made 23 starts for the big club last year, and though he had his struggles, seven of his last 12 starts were quality, including two against the Yankees, and he went 7-3 with a 3.58 ERA over those dozen outings. There’s no doubting Price’s wicked left-handed stuff, which mixes mid-to-high 90s fastballs with sweeping curves some 20 miles per hour slower and changups and sliders, the latter being his best pitch, that split the difference.

Adding Price and Davis to Garza (26), James Shields (28), and 6-foot-9 sophomore Jeff Niemann (27) gives the Rays a strong, five-deep rotation that has the potential to compete with those of the Yankees and Red Sox despite the relative lack of star power. At the same time, Price and Davis, and to a lesser degree Niemann’s ability to follow up his strong rookie showing, are the keys to the Rays’ 2010 season.

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For all the interest in how A.J. Burnett was going to handle his return to Fenway or how the Yankees were going to handle Jon Lester, the starting pitchers ultimately proved to be irrelevent in Tuesday night’s game as both lasted just five innings and left a 4-4 tie in their wake. Burnett struck out five Red Sox against just one walk, but also gave up seven hits including a two-run homer and an RBI double, both by Victor Martinez. Those runs added to the one manufactured by Jacoby Ellsbury and a Jorge Posada throwing error in the first.

Lester looked dominant at times, but was lucky to escape the second with only one run scoring. After Nick Swisher doubled in Robinson Cano, Lester walked Marcus Thames (who drew the start in left field against the left-handed Lester), but struck out Curtis Granderson, who was batting ninth against the lefty, on a weak check swing and got Derek Jeter to ground out to end the threat. Granderson and Jeter got their revenge in the fifth when they started the inning with singles off Lester, who then drilled Nick Johnson in the ribs to load the bases. Granderson scored on a Mark Teixeira fielder’s choice that erased Johnson. Jeter scored on an Alex Rodriguez double to left, and Teixeira scored on a sac fly by Robinson Cano. That gave the Yankees their first lead of the game, but Martinez’s double in the bottom of the fifth tied it up and handed the game to the bullpens.

The Yankees immediatly mounted a threat against Manny Delcarmen when Nick Swisher led off with a double and moved to third on a Brett Gardner pinch-hit groundout. Granderson followed by creaming a ball to the right side but almost directly at Kevin Youkilis, who caught the sinking liner to hold Swisher. Jeter then grounded out to end the threat. Alfredo Aceves answered that goose egg as well as one from Daniel Bard in the seventh, passing the tie on to Hideki Okajima in the top of the eighth.

Okajima is legitimately one of the better set-up men in the league, but he has struggled against the Yankees in his brief major league career. In 23 1/3 career innings against the Bombers prior to last night, Okajima had allowed 14 runs (not counting inherited runners who have scored), good for a 5.40 ERA. Curiously, though he’s blown saves against the Yankees, he’d never taken a loss against them prior to last night, a night when he didn’t actually pitch all that poorly.

Okajima started the eighth by getting ahead of Jorge Posada 0-1 and 1-2, but Posada battled back and yanked a ground rule double into the seats behind the Pesky Pole in right. Nick Swisher followed by fouling off a bunt attempt and taking strike two only to hunker down and engage Okajima in an 11-pitch battle that the Red Sox lefty ultimate won via a groundout to short that kept Posada at second with two outs. Okajima then got ahead of Brett Gardner 0-2, but Gardner, too, battled back to 2-2 before fighting off a single into shallow left field beyond Marco Scutaro’s outstretched glove. Because he wasn’t sure if Scutaro had a play, Posada held yet again. Okajima then threw a first-pitch strike to Jeter and got him to ground to shortstop, but Scutaro pulled his throw and Youkilis was unable to come up with it, loading the bases and giving the Yankees another chance. With that Okajima imploded, walking Nick Johnson, who never took his bat off his shoulder, on five pitches to walk in the go-ahead run. Scott Atchison, who spent the last two years pitching in Japan, then came on and got Mark Teixeira to fly out to deep right to end the threat.

Joe Girardi played matchups in the bottom of the eighth. David Robertson was brought in to face righty-swinging Kevin Youkilis, but gave up a single that put the tying run on base. Girardi then brought in Damaso Marte to face David Ortiz, who was still looking for his first hit of the season, but after throwing ball one, Marte threw a limp-wristed changeup to first base to check Youkilis. If you’ve ever tried to play catch with a four-year-old you know exactly how Mark Teixeira felt as Marte’s weak throw dove, bounced, and ultimately skipped by him allowing Youkilis to get to second base. Marte recovered to get Ortiz to fly out just shallow enough in center to hold Youkilis (Curtis Granderson has shown a half-way decent arm; I’m guessing Youkilis would have move up had Johnny Damon or Bernie Williams caught Ortiz’s fly). Girardi then called on Joba Chamberlain to pitch to the right-handed hitting Adrian Beltre.

Per the scouting report I linked to regarding Sunday’s game, Beltre is a first-ball, fast-ball hitter, and Chamberlain and Posada started him off with a curve that dropped into the zone for strike one. Chamberlain then just missed low and inside with a 95 mile-per-hour heater and came back with another curveball that Beltre fouled off for strike two. Chamberlain came back with the fastball, but put it low and away, well outside Beltre’s weak hack for strike three. That pitch hit 96 on the YES gun. Chamberlain stuck with the fastball against J.D. Drew, burrying one low for ball one, then beating Drew in the zone on a 95 mph pitch down the middle that Drew fouled off well down the left-field line.  After a 96 mph heater well outside seemed to get away from him, Chamberlain whipped out the slider, breaking off a good one, an 87 mile-per-hour pitch that dove as soon as it reached the plate. Drew, protecting against the fastball, was unable to check his swing in time, giving Yankee fans flashbacks of how foolish hitters looked against Chamberlian in 2007. A second, identical slider struck out Drew swinging and stranded Youkilis, handing the game to Mariano Rivera, but not before Robinson Cano crushed a Scott Atchison pitch into the right field seats to inflate the Yankee lead by a run.

Rivera gave up a one-out double to left to old nemesis Marco Scutaro, but against the other three batters he faced he threw just seven pitches, all strikes, resulting in one strikeout and two fly outs. With that, the 2010 Yankees recorded their first win, beating the Red Sox 6-4 to set-up a rubber game in the series finale Wednesday night. What do you think the chances are that one’s decided by the bullpens as well?

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The Yankees haven’t won an April series against the Red Sox since 2005 and haven’t won an April series in Fenway park since 2001. In the last three years (the two teams didn’t meet in April in 2006), the Yankees are 3-13 against the Red Sox in April. Over that same span, the Yankees are leading the overall series 28-26. The Yankees haven’t lost a season series to Boston since 2004, though the last two years the two teams split the series, going a combined 18-18.

My point is that I half expect the Yankees to split the remaining two games at Fenway (I won’t bother telling you what the other half of me expects with Jon Lester and John Lackey starting those two games for Boston), and while these three games count as much as three in September, I’m just not terribly upset about it.

A.J. Burnett goes for the Yankees tonight. One of of the selling points that got Burnett his big contract with the Yankees was the fact that he had survived for three years in the AL East and posted a 2.60 ERA in four starts against Boston in 2008. So, of course, in his first year as a Yankee, Burnett posted an 8.85 ERA in another four starts against the Red Sox. Burnett did have that one brilliant outing when he dueled with Josh Beckett and held the Sox to one hit over 7 2/3 shutout innings, but that came in the Bronx. His three starts at Fenway last year were all disasters as he allowed 22 runs in just 12 2/3 innings while walking as many as he struck out (ten). So Burnett comes into tonight’s start with something to prove, and I have to say, as is typically my reaction to A.J. Burnett, I’m not optimistic.

Opposing Burnett will be lefty Jon Lester, who frankly should have drawn the Opening Day start as he’s Boston’s best starter. Lester actually got beat up by the Yankees at Fenway the last time he faced them on September 25 of last year, but the other six starts he made against the Yankees in 2008 and 2009 were all quality starts, some of them downright dominating performances.

In more encouraging news, Phil Hughes was sharp in his simulated game in extended spring training yesterday and will join the team today in Boston. He’ll pitch another extended spring training game while the team is in Tampa playing the Rays this weekend. I’m looking forward to his return to the rotation a week from Thursday.

Tonight’s lineup against the lefty Lester finds Marcus Thames in left field and Curtis Granderson batting ninth behind Nick Swisher and Thames. As I’m sure Ken Singleton will say on tonight’s broadcast, there’s only one spot after ninth, and that’s “bench.” Just ask Brett Gardner, who also had a good showing on Sunday night and has a much better track record against left-handed pitching than Granderson.

CC Sabathia is notorious for having rough starts to his seasons, but in the fifth inning of Sunday night’s Opening Night game against the Red Sox in Boston, he seemed to be putting that behind him. Sabathia faced just one more hitter than the minimum through 4 2/3 innings, allowing a lone run in the second when Kevin Youkilis doubled and came around to score on a pair of outs.

By then the Yankees had built up a 5-1 lead. In the second, Jorge Posada and Curtis Granderson connected for back-to-back solo homers off Red Sox starter Josh Beckett, Posada’s clanking low off the Pesky Pole, Granderson’s going more than 100 feet further to right center. In the fourth, a two-out rally added three more runs when, wth Robinson Cano on third following a leadoff double and a productive out by Posada, Nick Swisher walked, Brett Gardner singled home Cano, and Derek Jeter singled home Swisher. Nick Johnson followed and, on Beckett’s 0-2 pitch, Jeter took off for second, then slammed on the breaks just shy of the bag with the intention of getting into a run-down to allow Gardner to scamper home from third. The plan worked even better than expected as Victor Martinez’s throw was so weak that not only did Gardner score, but Jeter was able to scamper safely into second without a throw, though that was moot as Johnson struck out on the next pitch.

The Yankees drove Beckett from the game in the fifth when, with two outs, Cano was held to a single on a ball off the right-field wall by a fine play by J.D. Drew and Posada walked. Both were advanced by a wild pitch by reliever Scott Schoeneweis, but the lefty recovered to strike out Granderson and end the threat.

Sabathia got the first two outs of the bottom of the fifth rather quickly, getting David Ortiz to pop up and striking out Adrian Beltre, but he then gave up three straight singles to Drew, Mike Cameron, and Marco Scutaro, resulting in the second Boston run. After striking out Jacoby Ellsbury to end that inning, Sabathia failed to retire the first three men he faced in the sixth, issuing a five-pitch leadoff walk to Dustin Pedroia, then giving up a double to Victor Martinez and a triple into the right field corner by Youkilis that plated both runners. Over 100 pitches and clearly fatigued, Sabathia hung around to retire fellow lefty David Ortiz, then left in favor of David Robertson, who gave up a first-pitch single to Adrian Beltre that tied the game, but then retired the next two men on five more pitches.

With that, a typical, high-scoring, see-saw Yankees/Red Sox game at Fenway emerged. The Yankees scored two runs off Ramon Ramirez in the top of the seventh on a Mark Teixeira walk, Alex Rodriguez double, surprising Robinson Cano RBI groundout (Cano hit a hard grounder right at Pedroia, but Pedroia hesitated to throw home, giving up the run), and a Posada RBI single, but the Red Sox got them right back plus one in the bottom of the inning.

Despite Robertson’s efficiency in the sixth, Joe Girardi replaced him with Chan Ho Park in the bottom of the seventh. Park surrendered the lead almost immediately, giving up a lead-off single to Scutaro and, after another Ellsbury strikeout, a home run just over the Green Monster down the left field line by Pedroia (Posada’s second-inning homer traveled roughly 350 feet, Pedroia’s Monster shot went roughly 340). After getting Martinez to ground out, Park was driven from the game by a Youkilis double. Girardi called on sore-shouldered Damaso Marte to face fellow-lefty David Ortiz, but Marte slung his first pitch, a slider, outside beyond Posada’s reach, moving Youkilis to third. Three pitches later, his 2-1 offering was a fastball that was supposed to be low but sailed shoulder-high where it clanked off Jorge Posada’s glove for a run-scoring passed ball.

Joba Chamberlain replaced Marte (who ultimately walked Ortiz) and got the elusive final out of the seventh, but in the eighth, Chamberlain got into his own bit of trouble, giving up a one-out single to Mike Cameron, walking Scutaro, and giving up  an RBI single to Pedroia. That handed a 9-7 lead to Jonathan Papelbon, who worked around a two-out Posada single to nail down the win.

And it only took three hours and 46 minutes!