Brett Gardner: Can he feel Carl Crawford breathing down his neck? (AP) Brett Gardner has been a different player since injuring his wrist at the end of June. Hitting .321/.403/.418 in 70 games to that point, he has hit only .233/.368/.327 since and has been considerably more reluctant to run—having ...

Chances are none of these propsects will be as good as Ruffing, Gordon, Dickey, Keller, or DiMaggio, but we track 'em anyway (AP). The finals weeks of minor-league ball are upon us. The Gulf Coast League Yankees failed to make the playoffs, but there are five minor-league affiliates still in action. ...

Jorge Posada congratulates Javier Vazquez on another solid long-relief outing. (AP) Following up on Steve’s prescient post on the Yankees pitching predicament, I think we saw the Yankees’ plan emerging in Tuesday night’s game. With Javy Vazquez having thrown 70 pitches on Dustin Moseley’s ...

It's been a rough season in Los Angeles for this pair of familiar faces (AP). As you no doubt heard if you were watching or listening over the weekend, the backdrop to the Yankees taking care of business on the south side of Chicago was the White Sox’s attempt to pry Manny Ramirez loose from ...

Rickey burned so bright the elephant on his sleeve had to wear shades. (AP) In the first inning of Monday night’s game, YES showed a graphic indicating that Coco Crisp’s current streak of 14 stolen bases without being caught was the longest by a member of the A’s since Rickey Henderson ...

Ivan Nova: Absolutely the right call, but will they make another? (AP) The Yankees are forewarned. Now it’s up to them to use that information to become forearmed. Over their last 30 games, a span stretching from July 29 to August 29, the Yankees have gone 16-14, a pace equivalent to 86 wins over a ...

I note that while I was away, Jay made reference to the great Bob Dylan/Band Basement Tapes song “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.” He linked to the song’s Wikipedia page, but he didn’t give you the song itself, an unforgivable oversight given (1) how many great versions are ...

The A's young rotation led by 22-year-old Trevor Cahill, who starts tonight against Dustin Moseley, gives Billy Beane something to build around in Oakland (AP) I was pretty hard on the A’s in my previews of the Yankees’ last two series against them, but with the smoke beginning to clear ...

Nothing like a long car trip with the wife and kids to make you miss your job. That sounds like a slap at my family, but it’s not. They were terrific fun to be with. What I mean is that the long, empty hours of highway time, with nothing but vistas of scrub pine to distract the eyes, one has a lot ...

You can do this trick now using Baseball-Reference.com, but back when I did it in 2001, BB-Ref didn’t yet exist and I had to figure it out by myself . . . twice. Henderson’s long career makes him the perfect candidate for this kind of game. Six Degrees Of Rickey Henderson #1: Rickey And Honus Wagner. 1. ...

The Yankees are hoping to avoid this man this weekend. (AP) Stephen Strasburg’s MRI results just devoured my afternoon, so I’ll make this short and sweet . . . On June 8, the White Sox were 24-33 (.421), 9.5 games out in third place in the American League Central. From June 9 to August 5, ...

You can bank on Brian Cashman making sure that Joe Girardi remains in pinstripes (AP). If ever a meme deserved to die a lonely, miserable death, it’s the one about how Lou Piniella’s retirement paves the way for Yankees manager Joe Girardi to depart for his so-called dream job of managing ...