yankees228

haha, ok, but you know what I mean. And in response to your post last night, the Yankees are playing well, the Blue Jays aren't "bending over". Contrary to what you may have thought, teams don't see the Yankees on their schedule and say "oh, well, it's the Yankees, we better play like s***".

lol, haven't seen you in this game thread in awhile.

As I said in the other thread, it's a great feat, regardless of anything else.

Agreed. It's a tremendous accomplishments, steroids or no steroids.

Congratulations to Barry Bonds, the new home run champion.

Tonight might be the night where the three-headed monster of Okajima, Gagne, and Papelbon gets tested in a close game.

Maicer has got to throw to first there.

I guess they're really trying to stretch him out as a reliever...assuming he pitches the ninth. I agree, but I was really impressed with his ability to throw the slider for a strike. Obviously the most impressive thing was how he fell behind 3-1 on the leadoff batter, and then easily struck him out. I don't really want to pick apart his first appearance though, so we'll see how he progresses. He is going to go through some tough times at some point, and the best part about Joba, in my opinion, is that he seems to have the right attitude to deal with everything.

The most anticipated inning of 9-2 baseball of the entire season.

Again, I'm not saying I disagree with that. All I'm saying is that I think you're blaming the wrong person. The umpires are supposed to issue warning in those situations. Blame the people making the rules, not the individual umpire. By the way, Melky is really coming into his own from the left side of the plate.

My god this bullpen sucks. EDIT: But they get out of it.

In my opinion, he's been getting ahead mostly with sliders so far tonight. EDIT: Or at least more then usual, and I think that's more due to the fact that he doesn't really have his fastball, rather than that he has an exceptional slider tonight. EDIT 2: The first three pitches to Zaun (for example) were of the off-speed variety. The fourth was a poorly located fastball, and then the fifth was another splitter.

This whole team, minus Posada (tonight), has been running the bases extremely well as of late.

That's exactly the problem, in my opinion. In his start against Chicago, and tonight, he hasn't located his fastball well. Most of his fastballs have been hit hard, and he has pretty much stopped throwing them.

He's plays the game the right way. I'm not gaga over him like some people are, but he's have shown the ability to hit the ball out of the ballpark, and he gives it his all on every play. He's a good guy to have on the bench, and for the occasional start at DH.

But he's beating nobody with his fastball.

For what it's worth, I've never seen Roger throw this many off-speed pitches.

Agreed, but that was a closer play, in my opinion, than it may have looked. The umpire was blocked out by the fielder and automatically called him out because the throw beat the runner. But wow, minus the two Eric Byrnes/Gabe Kapler dives from Reed Johnson, the Jays have played some tremendous defense tonight.

I really want to see Farnsworth throw a few punches. He could probably take on three or four Blue Jays by himself and no one would care if he got suspended. As for the what actually happened, Towers is wrong for a number of different reasons. 1.) A-Rod was hit yesterday, no one on the Yankees (including A-Rod) was upset by it, because it's part of the game. He was hit once, that should have ended it. 2.) As the announcers pointed out, there is a proper way to throw at people, and it's not by throwing at the other players knees. 3.) Everyone was back on the bench, things were about to get back to normal, and then Towers clearly instigated the situation again.

According to WFAN, Jason Giambi has been recalled from AAA Scranton and Miguel Cairo has been DFA'd. I like this move, and I like the fact that Cairo is finally gone. He seemed like a nice guy, but he is just not a very good hitter at this point in his career. He filled in nicely at first base for awhile, but he made some key errors (see the Saturday game before the all-star break). Obviously Giambi is a question mark, but I think the Yankees have turned a weakness into a strength. The bullpen still has a lot of issues, although Joba could provide a positive there, but things are beginning to move in the right direction. EDIT: By the way, it's unclear how much playing time (even at DH) Giambi will see, especially in the near future.

It actually appears that Karstens is staying, which makes sense. In blowouts, Mike Myers was serving as the long man, and now he is gone. Instead it looks like it's Bruney. I've never been a Bruney fan, but he was improving a bit after changing to the wind-up with nobody on-base. However, he was still struggling. Maybe he solves his control issues in AAA, and can be a factor in September, or (more likely) next year.

Joba has been called up and will be be activated before tomorrow's game. No word yet on who is going to be sent down. yankees.lohudblogs.com

I agree with both points, although I have my doubts about Seattle sticking around. However, that just could be me being optimistic.

Oh, I absolutely agree about the back end of the rotation. The reason that I listed Hughes, Chamberlain, and Giambi is that they are going to be new to the team. As for the point about the road, I agree that they haven't shown the ability to play well on the road, however, some of that has to be attributed to the fact that they simply weren't playing well in the first half. Although the last month doesn't necessarily reflect how good they really are (because of the competition they've faced), I think it's fair to say that if they continue to play good baseball they will play better on the road. But I also agree that the true test for this team hasn't come yet. EDIT: I also think that another good sign for the Yankees, is that if they can continue to hang around through the rest of August, their September schedule is considerably easier. As it did in 2005, the fact that they won't be playing playoff contenders down the stretch should help (although I understand that teams like the Blue Jays and Orioles have proven to be quite capable this year).