For the first 5 and a half innings of last night's game, I'd say that most Yankees fans probably had that feeling of impending doom. Each inning that went by without a run from the Yankees against Mark Hendrickson, he of the career 5.07 ERA, was probably promptly greeted with a swallow of the Pepto. Luckily, Shawn Chacon was up to the task of matching Hendrickson pitch for pitch until the fifth when Damon Hollins doubled and a single by Joey Gathright sent him home.

In the sixth, the Yankees were finally able to get on the board, using a walk from Jeter, an error by Russell Branyan on a Sheffield grounder and an A-Rod walk to to load the bases with one out. A Jason Giambi grounder got Jeter home and then Hideki Matsui (in a 6-for-43 slump) came through with a seeing-eye 2 RBI single right up the middle (in the highlight, the shortstop and second baseman both dive for the ball, just barely miss and slide pretty much into each other's gloves; hilarity ensued - okay, maybe not).

Mike Myers and Kyle Farnsworth provided 2 innings of relief and then Joe Torre tried to use a rock to put the nail in the coffin. It didn't work as Sturtze gave a hit so he brought in the hammer, which worked a lot better.

Derek Jeter was 3 for 3 with a walk and is now hitting at .408 for the month. His OBA sits at .511 and he's slugging .667 with a dozen extra-base hits and as David Pinto at Baseball Musings pointed out, it looks like Jeter will end up with the best April of his career. His previous high in BA was .378 (31/82) in 1999. On another positive in their last five games, Yankees starters have allowed five runs over 34 1/3 innings, a 1.31 ERA.

Oh, and before too many people start gloating about the Red Sox's new starter being lit up by the Indians, such a thing has happened before in NY. (Man, was that painful).

Just a quick note/plug to a site that I stumbled upon recently that I feel compelled to share with the rest of you, YankeesProspects.com. The webmaster does a great job of aggregating a lot of information on the Yankees minor league system.

I love The Baseball Cube for the wealth of minor league stats that it offers but it's far easier to go to Yankees Prospects and see all the kids in one place. On top of regular stats, there are some extras which I enjoy. For example, not only can you see that Melky Cabrera is hitting .333 for the Clippers this year but it shows his XBH% and K% as well (yes, you can calculate it yourself but hey, I'm lazy). There are game logs, draft class reports and my personal favorite, a daily report of what happened in the minors the night before. I'd encourage anyone who is interested to go check the site out - its value will speak for itself.

The Yankees left 16 men on base, were 2-15 with runners in scoring position. Who do you think won based on these stats?

The Yanks came up empty last night based on the weight of their bats, and lost 4-2. The only shining moment came in the 5th with a Gary Sheffield home run to tie the score 2-2. It stayed knotted at 2-2 into the 10th. Rivera came into the game during the 9th, but gave up 2 runs in the 10th. It was Rivera's second loss of the year.

I would imagine this is a game we should just forget about, and look to the next game. But how can you forget about this game when they lose to the Devil Rays? They walked 14 of our men last night. None of these walks amounted to any runs on the board.

Tonight Shawn Chacon (2-1, 5.59 ERA) takes on Mark Hendrickson (1-0, 0.00 ERA) 7:05pm ET at Yankee Stadium.

I've been to a few Yankee games in my life. 3 in all. The Yankees have yet to lose in my presence. But, they haven't won them all, either. 2 of them at Fenway Park. Only once in my life have I attended a game at Yankee Stadium. Retrosheet is a cool site. A couple weeks ago, I went to find the only game I've attended and it didn't take long, since I knew what I was looking for and knew various details about the game. I was 10 at the time. The game was on July 17, 1995 and it ended in a tie, 1-1, between the Yankees and White Sox.

The White Sox outhit the Yankees 9-2 (5 walks for the Yankees, 4 for the White Sox), but Pettitte pitched well, keeping the Sox from scoring. A Mike Devereaux RBI groundout scored Ray Durham for the Sox only run while a Mike Stanley homer to left (one of the few specific moments I actually remember) put the Yankees on the board. My favorite player, Don Mattingly, started and led off the bottom of the 7th with a double. And then Randy Velarde walked. But, then, I remember the pitching coach coming out and ... the game was delayed for rain. We left before it was officially cancelled, but hours later, it was.

As I look at this box score, the first thought that strikes me is: "John Kruk played for the White Sox?!" We went by Monument Park before the game and Wilson Alvarez (who started the game for the White Sox) walked right by me. We had seats near the railing in the deck above the ground level on the third base side (for some reason, I'm thinking this was called Lower Tier). Both Alvarez (6 IP) and Pettitte (7) were given a complete game and the game was not picked up from where it was delayed. Instead, the stats counted, but the game didn't. They replayed the game from square one and the Yankees won. Retrosheet has the game that I went to marked as a tie. So, if you look at the 1995 page, you'll see a 1 in the T column. That's my game.

Just playing around with some numbers earlier and thought that I would take a look at Jason Giambi's resurgence. We all know the story. In 2005, after an offseason of being vilified in the media, Giambi started out badly and stayed that way. Through the first 47 games (6/12/05), Giambi posted a .234/.383/.340 line with just 7 XBHs...and then it all started to click.

6/14/05: NY starts a series with the Pirates. Jason goes 1 for 2 with a double and from this point until the game last night, Giambi’s line has been .298/.478/.668/1.146 with a HR every 9.29 ABs. His full line is actually .298/.478/.668 with 74 R, 15 2Bs, 35 HRs and 92 RBIs (not to mention 99 BBs compared to 78 Ks). All of this in 325 ABs (108 games started). Holy moley, that's...wow. He's hit in pretty much every situation too.

-Lefties: .278/.451/.565. Righties: .310/.493/.724.
-Home: .333/.481/.721. Away: .263/.476/.613.

Pretty much the only time he didn't hit as well was as the DH, .222/.454/.500 in 90 ABs, compared to a blistering .329/.490/.735 (234 ABs). Oh, and in 94 ABs with RISP, he's merely hit .337/.476/.716 with 9 HRs. I hate to throw all these numbers at you since you can see that the guy is on fire but what the hey, I thought it'd be interesting to see just how hot he has been. In any case, between 1996 and 2003, Giambi has averaged 540 ABs so I'm looking for to seeing what he can do in the next 200 ABs or so and what his final "yearly" line looks like.

Tom Verducci talked with Moose about his hot start:

Jason O'Connell is the latest addition to our staff here at YanksBlog.com. You may recognize him as commenter Jason O. Welcome aboard. :)

That's how much of the season is now over. The Yankees stand at 9-8, 2 games back in the AL East (and 1.5 back in the wildcard). There are 145 games left but what the hey, here are some of my thoughts so far.

-The Yankees work the count (some long games), can outhit anyone (.303/.391/.497/.888 as a team) and have a real shot at 1000 runs.
-The pitching, while inconsistent, has been better (overall) than people expected.

-People love the come-backer...especially when they are raking everything in sight (see Giambi, Jason).
-A-Rod's defense has been amazing so far.
-The same cannot be said about the rest of the infield which could be troublesome for the rest of the year (see Wang, Chien-Ming & Wright, Jaret)
-Johnny Damon might not have the strongest arm but he sure does cover a LOT of ground out there.
-Mike Mussina, a smart man in a contract year = very good season.

-Bernie Williams is done.
-Tanyon Sturtze is just about there.
-Jaret Wright never even started.
-Loyalty will force Joe Torre to use the the first two as often as he can and dollar bills dictate that Wright will be trotted out there many more times this season.

-If Carl Pavano ever actually pitches in a major league game this season, there will be much rejoicing.
-The Yankees are the best team in the American League.

Throw in what you've seen in the comments - as always, I'd love to read them.

The New York Daily News has an interview with Mr. Steinbrenner:


Via Mike A..

Randy Johnson returned to his old form on Sunday afternoon by pitching eight strong innings and beating the Orioles 7-1. The win enabled the Yankees to take two of three in the series and move over the .500 mark.

He allowed only three hits, all to Miguel Tejada including a home run to lead off the second inning. The Yankees came right back in the bottom of the second with Jason Giambi slugging the first of his two homers to tie the game. Andy Phillips followed later in the inning with an RBI single to right center field. Giambi connected again in the third with a man on to extend the Yankees lead to 4-1.

Later in the game Giambi came up again with two men on base and hit a double to the wall in left field to score both runners. Johnson breezed through the game only walking one and striking out five on the day.

Mariano Rivera worked a scoreless ninth despite the game not being in a save situation. He gave up a two out single to Miguel Tejada, his fourth hit of the day, before retiring Jay Gibbons on a fly ball to center to end the game.

The Yankees are off today and will face the pesky Tampa Bay Devil Rays starting tomorrow night at the stadium. Mike Mussina will be on the mound and will face Tampa's young left hander Scott Kazmir.