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The Yankees are 12-8 in the their last 20 games, a .600 winning percentage. For most teams, even for the Yankees, that would usually be considered a very successful record. Why, then, does it seem like they have been slacking? First, the Yankees have mostly played better than .600 this year. In every April, June and July, they were winning more often. Only in May did they slip, and just slightly, to .552. Last month, they went 19-7. If you go 19-7 often enough, folks will start comparing you to the 1927 or 1998 Yankees. In contrast to July’s dominance, in their last ten games, the Yankees are 4-6, which is not just winning less often, it’s also not winning. They haven’t won more than two games in a row since the third week of July. But for two games in Toronto (starts

Or as Cole Porter wrote, it was just one of those things. Normally, Wallace Matthews of ESPN.com would have a very good point: why would Joe Girardi rest his regulars against their top division rival?

No Alex Rodriguez? No Brett Gardner? Berkman at first in place of Mark Teixeira? Kearns starting in left? If it wasn't for the name "Jeter" appearing where it is just about every day, at the top of the list, it would have been difficult to determine at first glance that this was a Yankees lineup card at all.

Thus did the Yankees go down quietly in the rubber game of a key series. The problem with getting exercised about this is that it really wasn’t all that key. Sure, the Yankees are now at greater risk of swapping places in the standings with the Rays, but they are also still 6.5

599 EH
Craig Calcaterra has a fine post up about the lack of excitement regarding Alex Rodriguez’s imminent home run No. 600. Now, when you write a post talking about the general lack of excitement about something, you run the risk that you are projecting your lack of excitement on the rest of the populace. Since I share said lack of excitement, I have no problem with presuming universal home run fatigue, A-Rod fatigue, or fatigue in general. In this case, I don’t think it’s Rodriguez, though his frequently observed anti-charisma probably has something to do with it. No, it’s that in modern baseball, home runs have become so cheap that it feels as if all of the 500 and up guys of recent years—Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez, Rafael Palmeiro, Jim Thome, A-Rod,

I want to try out a new philosophy today. I know in advance that you’re not going to like it, but I want to try it anyway: I don’t care about steroids. I don’t care about how steroids supposedly perverted the record book. I don’t care that the playing field may have been uneven. I have no use for moral outrage on the subject. Just don’t care. Hands over ears, can’t hear you, nah nah nah nah nah.

The forgoing is not a preamble to one more discussion of why the reaction to steroids has been overblown. If at this late date you’re not ready to take an unbiased look at why the effects of steroids on a baseball player might be different from the way it aids a track runner or a cyclist, you’re probably never going to get there. A whole lot of ink

Six years ago, it seemed like Khalil Greene would be an All-Star shortstop. Drafted 13th overall by the Padres in the first round of the 2002 draft, ahead of youngsters who proved to be good players—Scott Kazmir, Nick Swisher, Cole Hamels, James Loney, Denard Span, Joe Blanton, Matt Cain. It wasn’t a bad call. Greene spent about 1.5 seasons in the sticks, showing good pop for a middle infielder, and in 2004 he took over a shortstop position that had been a revolving door for the Padres since the decline of Gary Templeton 15 years earlier. He hit .273/.349/.446 as a rookie, including .301/.353/.543 away from the difficult Petco Park, and finished second to Jason Bay in the Rookie of the Year balloting. The Padres seemed to have had a shortstop they could build around.

What they