And according to MLB.com, the Yanks will face Anibal Sanchez coming up from AA. I saw him pitch last season when he was with the Sox's A affiliate in Wilmington. He has good stuff.

Giambi's back is better. And it's Bubba in CF, JD as DH.

Johnny Damon DH
Derek Jeter SS
Jason Giambi 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Bernie Williams RF
Melky Cabrera LF
Bubba Crosby CF
Kelly Stinnett C

Carolina is rolling in the CWS, it's theirs to lose now--4-0 in the 3rd.

This is nearly exactly what he did yesterday.

Gator apparently told him to stop throwing his curve. He hasn't been the same since.

I agree, when you take profit sharing money that is greater than your actual payroll, or your payroll is less than the general partner's take at year end, you should be forced to forfiet the season.

To bad Andy got bumped, he's been our best hitter these last (two) games...

If Guidry told him that. Let me officially call for the old man's head, 70's sideburns and all.

Then again, I think Sean Henn had a good first inning and it was all downhill from there...

Get well soon.

Very truly yours,
Ben

The more cynical fans think Torre thought better of putting Giambi in against murder-on-lefties Willis. Perhaps after remembering how he did against Young King Cole, the other murder-on-lefties pitcher we've faced recently. Cano actually has better numbers against lefties than Giambi.

Man, Cabrera put a charge into that one. At least Torre and company didn't pitch to him in the eighth inning in the first game. Oy.

Now are you saying that's more or less classy than what Ozzie said about Jay Mariotti?

Let's go, Yankees!

Absolutely not. I just think he should have said it clearly and been done with it. Saying he may have to walk into his office and fire him to appease some media clowns on national TV wasn't neccessary. I disagreed with what Ozzie said, and I think he's a great manager, but taken on the whole, he's good for baseball.

And now stupid DC area is cutting away from the game to a flash flood alert. I care thismuch.

Or not. At least he got wood on it.

He does lead the league in GIDP.

It should be when you're the Yankees and you're playing the Marlins. With Atlanta coming in, we have a great opportunity to win some games here and ensure Boston doesn't pull out way ahead of us.

Thank you.

The management

Jesus. Giambi you lunkhead. The guy is flat scared to make that throw to second. Yanks are slowly giving this one away.

It's almost shocking how well that worked.

So, do you think Chacon can actually retire Cabrera? Joe doesn't either. He's being intentionally walked.

We have a no-hit, no-throw, no-awareness back-up catcher.

Let's go with the sleeping offense already.

Stinnett, shock us all by getting on base to start it off, will ya huh?

Better than the 500' homerun swing last time.

Though last time, with two outs and Stinnett up next, I guess I can't blame him for swinging for the bleachers.

(Got that, Baseball Gods? A shut out, I said.)

11-5 Oregon. Beavers might want to save some for tomorrow.

Looks like they are all using the Mariano Duncan approach to hitting.

Yes, we did get to Hamels eventually, but we didn't exactly rock him. And we're putting up even less of a fight against this last minute callup.

I dont know how to calculate Runs Created, and translate that into Wins. But I would love to see someone that does know how to do this, to do it for ShefSui compared to BubbaCabrera, and see on paper how many games those injuries have cost us.

Seems like the only team we've been able to knock around lately is the Nats...and we lost 2 of 3 to them. Also, any team with Arthur Rhodes in the bullpen.

C'mon, Robbie!

182 He'll get it back. He was Player of the Month in May. Maybe if Yankee fans stopped booing him...

And give a polite round of applause to Anibal Sanchez. The Marlins did well landing Hanley Ramirez and Ani Sanchez in exchange for Beckett and Lowell.

The CWS will continue for one more day, OSU wins.

I dread the thought of losing Cano for any length of time. For some reason, it bothers me a lot more than losing Sheff or Matsui or Jeter or A-Rod or Giambi.

What is up with the lack of earned runs and the errors?

Have I ever mentioned that I hate Giambi (not even knowing what the errors were or the circumstances)? Yup. I do.

I really didn't like the way he was limping. Bubba didn't limp that badly, and he ended up out for a month.

I guess it had to happen sometime.

The Astros just cannot beat the White Sox.

Houston sucks, I know why Clemens came back but then again, I don't know that those reasons outweigh the fact that they stink so why come back to Houston. But I think Clemens will probably be the NL equivalent of Jaret Wright when it's all said and done, a guy who can give you five or six and that's it. As crazy as that may sound.

I dunno though, this loss was somewhat expected given the Yanks age and depth , a double header for the Yanks is a bad thing.

As for the playoffs, I'm not that down right now if you consider these lines.

Runs scored:
Yanks: 412
Sox : 397

Runs allowed
Yanks:338
Sox :349

so far, the Sox record is a bit lucky while the Yanks have been woefully unlucky.

At least Chacon showed some good signs this game, i still think we have a good shot at the playoffs and the Red Sox are due to regress back down a bit sooner or later. (how soon do we forget their two strait GS night and swept by the Twinkies.)

Pulling two out of 3 from one of the hottest team in baseball is not exactly a problem.

The Competition has plenty of problems. They have stretches where they go limp. They had one just before the National League was kind enough to pick them up.

The Yanks don't need a miracle. They just need the Sox to be just as inconsistent as they are, and that's the way it's been this season. It may end up being a nailbiter, but no miracles should be necessary.

Someone suggested that the problem tonight was the empty stands. The Yanks thought it was an exhibition game. While the Marlins are used to playing in front of empty stands. ;-)

But I have to say...Giambi gets my vote for goat of the game. Christ on a cracker. He's in no danger of of winning a GG, that's for sure. And he didn't hit much, either.

Quick, somebody compare him to Rivera!

Can't people just be happy and say "hey look, we are playing pretty well...just won 4 of our last 5."

And leave it at that.

The Sox are on an 8 game winning streak...that isn't going to last forever.

I imagine that the standings will flip flop at least 3 more times before all is said and done.

And look, at this point last year, we were in 3rd place, and something like 5 games back.

Just let it be.

I am wary of teams running into the Yankees while on loooong losing streaks.

(At least I think the Braves were in the middle of a 10 game losing streak)

Actually, what makes me most gloomy is the fear that Steinbrenner will insist on trading Hughes for Carlos Lee or someone like that. :-P

Re Cano, he said they should know more tomorrow. Apparently he specifically did not say it was minor and likely to be better tomorrow.

317 Could not agree more. Was rooting for Atlanta to win a couple so we don't get Royal'ed.

Somewhere, there's a Red Sox fan sticking pins in pinstriped voodoo dolls, I swear...

Andy Phillips
Miguel Cairo
Kelly Stinnett

Are you kidding? That sounds like something joe morgan would say.

"Lowell wasn't supposed to be this good this season. Switching leagues...coming off his worst season. The Red Sox got VERY lucky there."

That's called scouting.

So the sox are leading the division because of luck, all kinds of luck. Or maybe they've played better, just two games better, but better. And maybe they saw lowell as having a down year, and unlike the marlins, have enough of a payroll to take the chance he'll bounce back.

And anyone who points to runs scored and allowed as a lump statistic as a reason not to be worried doesn't understand baseball.

Come on. I like reading the discussion here. It's normally better than claiming another team is 'lucky'.

Boston obviously have it's own share of problems, it's difficult to really say they have been the better team except defensively when they clearly trail the Yankees in every other catagory by a considerable margin.

Perhaps "lucky" wasn't the right word to put it, every team needs luck from time to time obviously, but let's just put it this way, statsically the Red Sox havn't really been a better team than the Yankees

Coming in to the season, we knew:
1) we had a below average defense...
2) our pitcher was somewhere between a little better then average to very good depending on if Good RJ/Good Moose showed up and what was left of ShawnSmall.
3) We were a run scoring machine. 1000 runs may have been in the cards.

Unless we can buy Clemens or steal Zito, I don't know how we can improve our starters. Certainly a good Dotel and a trade for the Pen will help.

Our D is pretty much fixed, unless we trade Cano for a pitcher and get a good D/average hit 2nd basemen.

We all like kids and are tired of mercenaries/veterans/sluggers. But we really need to score close to 6 a game to win the PS. I don't see how we can do this, with the current lineup. A Cano/Posada/Damon or Giambi/ARod injury will eliminate us.

Cashman is creative. No one saw the ARod deal. But I don't think we can win it all (especially if the WC comes from the Central) with our current offense, unless our pitching does a 2nd half turnaround and Wright and Chacon show up big, Randy becomes Dominant, and Moose stays good.

I am not trying to be gloomy, but a lot of the maybes (Schilling, Lowell, the 2nd baseman, Nixon) have gone their way.

Did we really want to pin our playoff hopes on the Sox collapsing?

The thing is...your solution is no more of a solution than hoping the Sox collapse. We've brought in veterans before, and it didn't work. It hasn't worked for the past five years. We haven't won in the PS...not enough, anyway. Maybe it's time to try something different?

To upgrade out D we simply have to.
A. hope A-rod will return to normal (he really been sucking this year.. and in turn dragging Jeter down with him)

B.Never play Giambi at first again.

C.Never put Bernie out there .

If all 3 of these comes true we are above average with only our SS being below average.

I'm not woefully concerned right now, over the course of the losing streaks the only thing we havn't been doing is getting hits in clutch. that was the main reason we went on a tear for a while earlier in May. our OPS is still way up there. and our pitching havn't been worse than expected (and in fact one could argue it has been better than expected)

I think it's really just a matter of comming through in clutch.

As for Boston, if I'm a Sox fan i wouldn't feel too comfident IMHO, they've been losing to division rivals. their bullpen is 2 mans deep, their back rotation is in shambles, their captian is struggling and their supposed ace for the year is posting a ERA between 4.5 to 5+ .

Just as a note, If both teams are at their projected wins based on runs scored minus runs allowed, the Yankees and Red Sox would swap position right now exactly 2.5 games inbetween them (as in the Yankees should be leading 2.5 games)

A Red Sox losing streak wouldn't suprise me anymore than a Yankee winning streak.

What I don't understand about the infield errors is that the Yanks were doing great on that for the first month or so of the season. At least, I seem to recall a lot of comment on how low their error rate was, and various streaks of error-free games, etc. It all went to heck when Matsui went out, and darned if I know why. A-Rod was the worst offender. He's got as many errors already as he usually has for the entire season. He seems to have straightened up a bit, getting no errors recently...but he still doesn't look as crisp to my eye as he has in the past.

Giambi also has as many errors now as he had for the entire last season, and last season he had twice the errors he usually had. Lack of 'roids? Just getting old? I dunno, but it's not looking good.

Unfortunately, I don't think we can afford to have a full-time DH, with our "veteran" team.