Yankees – Page 199 – Keefe To The City

May 15, 2015

Yankees-Royals Means Battle of Best Bullpens

The Yankees have cooled off for the first time in a month after dropping three straight games to the Rays this week. The schedule doesn’t get any easier as their nine-game road trip heads to

The Yankees have cooled off for the first time in a month after dropping three straight games to the Rays this week. The schedule doesn’t get any easier as their nine-game road trip heads to Kansas City and then to Washington to face two of the league’s top teams.

With the Yankees continuing their road trip to Kansas City to face the defending American League champion Royals, Max Rieper of Royals Review joined me to talk about the Royals’ magical run in October, having a vaunted bullpen like the Yankees and the careers of Alex Gordon and Eric Hosmer.

Keefe: The last two years as a Yankees fan were miserable. Two seasons destroyed by injuries and underachievers led to back-to-back postseason-less seasons for the first time since 1992-93. It sounds ridiculous to be upset about two missed playoffs after missing it only once since 1993, but that’s life as a Yankees fan.

Before last October, the Royals hadn’t made the playoffs since winning the World Series in 1985. With 29 years between playoff appearances, I feel bad being disappointed about the 2013 and 2014 Yankees.

What was that magical run in October like for you?

Rieper: To put things in perspective, your 84-win Yankees team was miserable, whereas the 83-win 2003 Royals was the most thrilling season for me as a Royals fan in almost two decades until last year’s magical run.

Last year was just incredible for so many reasons. The run was so unexpected as the team looked sunk in July, with many of us calling for a firesale and possible ouster of Dayton Moore and Ned Yost. Then everything just clicked. We are so used to everything going wrong for the Royals, it seemed like a karmic reversal of fortune when everything just seemed to bounce our way the rest of the season. To be honest, I think most of us were just happy to be in the Wild Card game, but to win it such exciting fashion, then go on the amazing run they went on seemed like icing on the cake. I imagine there will be a day when we look back at Game 7 of the World Series with some regret that they didn’t win it all, but as of right now, the afterglow of the season has overshadowed any negativity.

The great thing surrounding the winning was also how Kansas City got to be in the spotlight again and how there were so many feel-good stories from the Royals fans welcoming a fan from the other side of the world to Lorenzo Cain and Greg Holland having babies during the post-season to just a tremendous amount of civic pride and togetherness. I don’t think I’ll ever see anything like that again.

Keefe: The biggest strength of the 2015 Yankees is their bullpen. With Dellin Betancs and Andrew Miller combing to pitch 36 2/3 scoreless innings to start the season, they have shortened games to seven innings when the Yankees have the lead. I would have liked for the Yankees to have also re-signed David Roberston this offseason to make the best 1-2-3 combination in the league, but so far the plan of only having or needing two of them has worked out.

The Royals’ success last season and early this season can once again be attributed to their incredible bullpen where they try to win with the same exact formula the Yankees have adopted in shortening games. I know how much of a luxury it is to have unhittable arms at the end of games after growing up with Mariano Rivera as the Yankees closer and taking him for granted way too much, so it feels like the Yankees have won the lottery again (even if one of their lottery tickets cost $36 million) with their latest late-inning relievers.

How much fun and how reassuring is it to know that if the Royals have a lead after six or seven innings that the game is virtually over?

Rieper: Having such a dominating bullpen makes your manager seem a lot smarter, doesn’t it? It is a nice security blanket to have, and I think it was a huge part of the team having confidence that they could win last year. They knew that as long as they were in the game in the sixth inning, the bullpen would shut things down for the win, or at least give the offense an opportunity to come back.

I’ve been a critic of Dayton Moore over the years, but he has always been good at assembling bullpens, even in the early days when the Royals were pretty awful and he could pluck a guy like Joakim Soria in the Rule 5 draft from San Diego. What makes it even more remarkable is the contrast between the Royals and rival Tigers, a very good team with one glaring weakness — their bullpen.

Keefe: After hearing about Alex Gordon for what seemed like forever and the comparisons to George Brett and how he would become the next face of the Royals, it looked like that might never happen. Following injuries and inconsistent play to begin his career, Gordon finally found consistency at the plate and Gold Glove defense as a left fielder rather than a third baseman.

With the hype and attention got in his early 20s and what he has become as a player now on the other side of 30, are you content or disappointed by his career?

Rieper: I’m overjoyed. You’re talking about a guy that is now eighth in Royals history in Wins Above Replacement, is a two-time All Star, and four-time Gold Glove winner. How he has overcome early struggles and willed himself into becoming the best defensive left fielder in the game is remarkable.

I always felt that some of the criticism early in his career was a bit unwarranted – he was actually decent his first few seasons until injuries derailed him a bit. But I’m not sure I could have anticipated this kind of career arc for him, and he’s perhaps a good example that sometimes young players should not be dismissed so easily when they initially struggle.

Keefe: Like Gordon, Eric Hosmer followed the same sort of path. I still remember his monstrous home run for the first of his career against A.J. Burnett at the Stadium in 2011 and when he followed that one up with another one the next day. But Hosmer’s career best in home runs came as a 21-year-old rookie in 2011 with 19 and since then he has hit 14, 17 and just nine last season. This season, Hosmer already has seven in 35 games and looks to be finally becoming the elite power threat everyone expected him to be. The craziest thing about him is that he is still only 25!

How excited are you for Hosmer to finally come into his own and realize his full potential?

Rieper: Eric Hosmer is the player I think is the key to the Royals remaining competitive this season. The last two seasons he has gotten off to abysmal starts, and the dirty little secret is, he has been a below-average first baseman for his career, certainly not worthy of the hype he has received. But this year he has looked different, taking outside pitches the other way with power — and we’re talking tape-measure shots.

The Royals really haven’t had a true power threat since the days of Carlos Beltran, Jermaine Dye, and Mike Sweeney, and they were dead last in baseball in home runs last year. If Eric Hosmer can be the kind of middle-of-the-order power threat he’s seemed capable of becoming for years, then the Royals have a chance to return to the World Series.

Keefe: Last October, the Royals shocked everyone by coming back in the wild-card game, sweeping the Angels in the ALDS, sweeping the Orioles in the ALCS and then losing Game 7 of the World Series by one run. it was an impressive and at times improbable run for an 89-win team that everyone had been waiting to break through for years and it finally happened. So what’s next?

The next logical step in a team’s progression would be to get back to the World Series and win it even if the MLB playoffs are the biggest crapshoot of them all where one three-day slump or a couple of bad starts from the rotation can end a great season. I’m guessing before the season started, you felt like the Royals should win the AL Central this year and return to the postseason and make another extended run this fall.

So what were you expectations for this team before the season and have they changed after the 22-13 start?

Rieper: I was actually pretty down on their chances this year. I felt like they were a bit lucky last year and took advantage of a league that was down — Boston and New York weren’t competitive, Detroit was underachieving, Oakland collapsed, Los Angeles had major pitching concerns, and Baltimore had injuries. They also lost James Shields, a major blow to a starting rotation that was already pretty mediocre. The guys they brought in – Alex Rios, Kendrys Morales, and Edinson Volquez — were all free agents with major red flags surrounding them. Regression seemed to be in the cards for the Royals.

But somehow it has all worked out thus far. The starting rotation, as predicted, has been pretty lousy. But the bullpen is still outstanding and deeper than last year, and the defense is off-the-charts amazing this year. They’ve hit pretty well, and while I think many of their hitters will regress after a hot start, its pretty clear to me the offense will be much improved from last year’s pop-gun offense. Hosmer seems to have turned a corner and Mike Moustakas — one of the worst hitters in the league last year — has become a totally different hitter. Its still a team that worries me to due to its lack of depth among hitters, and the starting pitching woes, but the hot start has convinced me they could be in the mix all season and give us another exciting run.

Blogs • Email Exchanges • Yankees

May 4, 2015

The Yankees and Blue Jays Continue AL East Battle

The Yankees’ early-season AL East schedule continues on to Toronto for the first time this season against the Blue Jays.

The Yankees are on fire. After a weekend sweep of the Red Sox in Boston, the Yankees have now won their last five series after dropping their first three series in what was a disastrous start to the season. The AL East-heavy schedule to start the year continues on with a trip to Toronto this week.

With the Yankees and Blue Jays meeting for the first time in Toronto, I did an email exchange with Tom Dakers of Bluebird Banter to talk about Jose Bautista’s early-season struggles, the emergence of rookie Devon Travis and the continuous health issues with Jose Reyes.

Keefe: The last time we talked was before Opening Day. The Blue Jays took two of three in that series and would have swept if not for an late-inning implosion in the second game of the season. The Yankees looked like a bad baseball team during that series and continued to for another week, falling to 3-6 on the year. But the Yankees have won 13 of 16 to improve 16-9 and take over first place. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays have gone 10-13 since the opening series and have struggled to find consistency.

What’s been the Blue Jays’ problem after a month of baseball?

Dakers: Pitching, pitching and pitching. The pitching has been every shade of awful imaginable. The starters have been terrible and the relievers haven’t been that much better. The starters have been so bad that the Jays have made a little cottage industry of calling up whoever was to start the next day’s Triple-A game, to throw long relief out of the pen. None of the starters have been good.

Keefe: Devon Travis is leading the Blue Jays in average, home runs, RBIs, OBP and SLG. He’s a rookie second baseman, who only has 88 career at-bats. If he were a Yankee, they would still have him in the minors the way they do Jose Pirela and Rob Refsnyder.

How fun is it to watch a rookie get the chance to play and succeed in your team? I only ask because the Yankees are against it.

Dakers: Devon Travis has been so much fun to watch. There was a bit of luck involved in him winning a starting job. Going into spring the idea was that Maicer Izturis was going to be the second baseball, at least to start the season, with Travis getting some more development time in Triple-A, but Izturis suffered a “groin strain” a couple of weeks into camp and still isn’t play rehab baseball, so the way was cleared for Travis.

Travis started out spring very slowing, going hitless in his first 5 games, but soon after started crushing the ball. He’s become my favorite in record time.

But the whole “watch a rookie” thing hasn’t gone all that well for the Jays. We started the season with six rookies on the roster, but three of them have been optioned to the minors already.

Keefe: When Jose Bautista didn’t tear apart the Yankees in the opening series, I figured he would go off after he left the Bronx, which would be a nice change. But after a month of games and with a shoulder strain for a few days, Bautista has yet to look like himself every game. I still don’t want him up in a big spot against the Yankees, but he looks off. Is Bautista healthy? What’s been the issue with his slow start?

Dakers: Jose hasn’t been terrible, but he hasn’t quite been Jose Bautista yet. He does have 5 home runs and he is getting on base. Part of his problem is the sore shoulder, he’s been just DHing for the last 7 games, after missing a couple.

He also seems to be getting more than his share of bad strikes called against him. There seems to be at least one a game, where the ball is clearly 6 inches or so off the plate but it is still called a strike, and it seems to happen at the worst times, like when he’s at a 1-1 count. Having those calls go against him makes him feel the need to go after pitches off the plate more than he normally would. He has a very good eye at the plate, but you get a bad call and you think that you have to swing at everything.

He has been doing a better job at controlling his temper on those calls. In the past he might have given the umpire a blast, but now he’s more just shaking his head and trying not to show his displeasure as much.

Keefe: Living in New York and dealing with the Mets and Mets fans I know how frustrating it can be to watch Jose Reyes since it seems like he’s always hurt. Reyes is on the DL with a rib injury and even when he was playing he wasn’t his old self.

Are you frustrated with Reyes’ health issues? Is he losing his abilities?

Dakers: He isn’t a good defensive shortstop anymore. He doesn’t have the range you’d like to see at short. Offensively, he actually started the season hot, and was hitting .417/.444/.500 after the first week of the season, but trying to play through the cracked rib was a mistake.

The Jays seem to have this habit of hoping guys can play through painful injuries, instead of giving the players time off to heal up. I wish they would stop that.

Keefe: Before the season started I thought the AL East would be a six-month fight that would come down to end of the season with no team ever really running away and hiding with a division lead. After almost a month, 4.5 games separate the entire division, which is the smallest gap of any of the league’s six divisions.

After a month of baseball, what are your feelings on the division and how it’s projecting for the summer?

Dakers: It really doesn’t look like there is a team that is ready to run away with the division, at least at this point, which has been good news for the Jays, because they could have buried themselves by now if one or two of the other teams had a hot start. I think the division is likely to start close, no team seems good enough to rattle off a 6-10 game win streak and get themselves a bit of space.

If the Jays want to stay on the edge of the race, the pitching, especially the starting pitching, will have to come around. They are in a bad spot, about all they really can do is hope that their starters figure things out.

Mark Buehrle has been particularly terrible, and when he looks this bad, you start thinking that maybe he’s lost it and maybe he just can’t compete in the MLB anymore, but he was awful to start the 2013 season too. At about this point in 2013, he had an ERA over 7 and then he turned things around and had a normal Mark Buehrle-type year. The Jays have to hope that he, and the other starters can do that again.

Blogs • Yankees

May 4, 2015

Yankees-Red Sox Weekend Diary

In 2006, I missed my chance to be at the Yankees’ five-game sweep of the Red Sox, but I didn’t miss their most recent sweep in Boston over the weekend.

I bought two tickets to Yankees-Red Sox at Fenway Park for May 1 and May 2, 2006. It was the first two times those team would meet that season and it was Johnny Damon’s debut in Boston as a Yankee.

The first game of the series was a disaster. The Yankees led 3-1 before the Red Sox tied the game at 3 in the fifth. Then in the bottom of the eighth, the Red Sox took a 4-3 lead and with one out and two on, David Ortiz hit a three-run shot off new Yankee Mike Myers, who the Yankees had signed in the offseason for the sole purpose of getting Ortiz out.

The second game of the two-game series was postponed due to rain. It was made up in August as part of what would become a five-game sweep by the Yankees over the Red Sox that would permanently end the Red Sox’ season. By the time that game happened in August, I was home for the summer in college and unable to attend, so I sold the tickets and missed out on being at Fenway during something positive since I have pretty much only seen horrible Yankees losses there.

That five-game series was the last time the Yankees swept a series of at least three games in Boston and I had tickets to it and I missed it. But that changed this weekend.

I decided to go to the diary format that I used for a Yankees-Red Sox series in April for this past weekend. Just pretend like you’re reading this in one of those black-and-white Mead composition notebooks.

FRIDAY
I will never agree with Joe Girardi’s lineup decisions and days off for the everyday players, but now in his eighth season as manager, it’s something I’m just going to have to get used to and accept. He’s not going to change his ways, so I need to change my ways. But after seeing A-Rod’s 500th and 600th home runs in person and after being at the Stadium on Thursday only to see him go 0-for-6, I wanted to see him hit it over the weekend at Fenway. Girardi deciding to not start him in Friday night’s game didn’t help my chances.

When A-Rod’s 660th career home run, a pinch-hit home run on a 3-0 count in a tied game in Boston, cleared the Green Monster, I was ecstatic. I didn’t care about his PED past or his off-the-field issues or any negative storyline linked to him since becoming a Yankee in February 2004. All I cared about was that the Yankees had just taken an eighth-inning lead over the Red Sox in Boston with Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller waiting in the bullpen and that I had seen history.

PEDs or steroids or whatever or not, A-Rod is the fifth person in the history of everyone to ever play baseball to hit 660 home runs. It was the perfect moment in the perfect situation in the perfect setting for A-Rod to tie Willie Mays on the all-time home run list and after seeing No. 500 on Aug. 4, 2007 and No. 600 on Aug. 4, 2010, I got to see him hit No. 600 on May 1, 2015 at Fenway Park.

SATURDAY
Where would the Yankees be without Chris Young and with only Carlos Beltran? Not in first place, that’s for sure, and who knows how far down in the standings? Young’s home run let me breathe a sigh of relief on Saturday afternoon, but the Yankees were only in that spot thanks to an impressive start from Nathan Eovaldi.

Eovaldi went 6 2/3 innings, allowing seven hits and two earned runs in what was considered to be a big test against the Red Sox’ lineup in Boston. He needed 111 pitches to get there and allowed seven hits, which isn’t exactly what you want to see in hopes of progress from the hard-throwing righty, but the result was a win for the Yankees.

Most importantly, Eovaldi left just one out to get before the eighth inning and once you get to the eighth inning against the 2015 Yankees, the game is over. However, Girardi decided he was going to give Andrew Miller the day off and that meant a temporary bridge to Dellin Betances would need to be built. One out from Chris Martin and two outs from Justin Wilson ended up being that bridge and then in came Betances for a four-out save.

I told my friend with me at the game that I would bet him Betances would strike out everyone he faced and set the line at +700. I wish he had taken the bet because I could have won the money I eventually lost on the Kentucky Derby.

Mike Napoli: strikeout on four pitches.

Brock Holt: strikeout on three pitches.

Xander Bogaerts: strikeout on four pitches.

Blake Swihart: strikeout on three pitches.

Another seven-inning game for the Yankees. Not the patented Betances-Miller seven-inning game, but with this bullpen this season, it doesn’t always have to be just them.

SUNDAY
If Nathan Eovaldi is Phil Hughes 2.0 then Adam Warren is actually Phil Hughes. Not only because he also lacks a true strikeout pitch and gets himself in deep counts and pitch count trouble, but because he actually looks like Phil Hughes. If you put number 65 on Warren’s jersey and watched his delivery, his release point and even how he rubs the ball after getting a new one, he’s Phil Hughes. The difference between Eovaldi and Warren is that you know what you’re going to get with Warren. He’s going to struggle to pitch six innings and give up somewhere between two and four earned runs. It’s who he is at this point of his career as a starter and it’s who he might always be.

Hanley Ramirez is not the smartest person. I’m not sure why Ramirez would think that Warren would be throwing at him in a blowout, but a lot of players in the majors aren’t the most sane people and Ramirez is one of them. Ramirez looked ridiculous getting upset over getting hit in the butt or side thigh by Warren, given the score and situation, and the fact that Ramirez had done absolutely nothing over the weekend against the Yankees. This wasn’t the Yankees hitting Manny Ramirez 10 years ago or the Yankees avenging a hit by pitch of their own, it was just Hanley Ramirez trying to be a tough guy and looking like an absolute idiot on national TV.

I have seen a lot of bad things happen in Fenway that I know that no lead is safe and when the game was 8-0, it wasn’t over. When it was 8-2, I started to worry. I was probably a 4 out of 10 on the Worry Scale. When Joe Girardi decided to bring in Esmil Rogers, who is 29 years old and has a career 5.42 ERA, to get Mike Napoli out, I was a 6. When he hit the every-Yankees-fan-saw-this-coming home run, I was an 8. When Chase Headley made an awful ninth-inning error to extend the game and bring David Ortiz up with the bases loaded and two outs against Andrew Miller on a night when the closer didn’t have his best stuff, I was a 10. And when Ortiz made solid contact against Miller and drove the final out of the game at Ellsbury, I’m pretty I had a minor heart attack.

I might have missed out on the legendary five-game sweep in 2006, but being at Fenway this weekend for the latest Yankees’ sweep in Boston was also good. So good, so good, so good.

Blogs • Yankees

Apr 29, 2015

Everyone Is a Doctor When It Comes to Masahiro Tanaka

Everyone seems to have an opinion on Masahiro Tanaka’s right arm even though not everyone is a doctor or a surgeon.

Tuesday ended up being “that day”. “That day” is the day I have feared since Masahiro Tanaka returned from an elbow tear on Sept. 21. of last season. “That day” is the day Tanaka would land on the disabled list again.

I ranked Tanaka No. 1 on The 2015 Yankees Order of Importance and I said:

At the end of Good Will Hunting, Ben Affleck’s character (Chuckie Sullivan) tells Matt Damon’s character (Will Hunting), “You know what the best part of my day is? The ten seconds before I knock on the door ’cause I let myself think I might get there, and you’d be gone. I’d knock on the door and you just wouldn’t be there. You just left.”

You know what the best part of my day is? Every day when I sign online or go on Twitter or turn on the TV or the radio or check my phone and I don’t hear bad news about Masahiro Tanaka’s right arm.

Tanaka and Pineda are the 2015 Yankees. The success of this season and making sure the Yankees don’t miss the playoffs for a third straight time lies in the health of those two. If they stay healthy, the Yankees have the best 1-2 punch in the AL East. If they don’t, the Yankees don’t have a season.

Well, April 28 ended up being the day when I heard the bad news about Tanaka, and now that he is out of the rotation for at least a month, the first-place Yankees are in trouble. Not as much as trouble as the 2014 Yankees were in without Tanaka because they couldn’t hit, but enough trouble that it’s to rely on Chase Whitley again.

This time it’s not an elbow issue, it’s a forearm one that Tanaka thought was a wrist one when he went to the doctor. His latest MRI didn’t show any new damage to his already-damaged right elbow, but it did show a forearm strain that may or may not be related to the tender wrist Tanaka also has.

The moment George King tweeted that there could be an issue with Tanaka, you could feel the smiles of the old guard, the lazy newspaper columnists in the city, grow bigger and their Grinch-like hearts enlarge at the idea of turmoil around the Yankees and their ace. And when Brian Cashman held a “press conference” with reporters at the Stadium, everyone quickly earned their medical degree and a lifetime of knowledge in orthopedic surgery.

I used to think you had to be really smart, get into a good college, do extremely well there, apply to med schools, get into one, do extremely well there, graduate and then do a residency to become a doctor. I didn’t know you could just write for the Daily News or Post to become one. There are a lot of doctors out there that could have saved a lot of time and money and who wouldn’t be paying back hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans if they had only gotten a job on the copy desk with either of the two tabloids out of college and then worked their way to columnist to achieve their dream of being a doctor or surgeon.

If you have read the columns written by Dr. John Harper of the Daily News or Dr. Kevin Kernan of the Post, which both read like the flaming bag of dog crap that Billy Madison leaves on old man Clemens’ front steps, you would know they are clearly as qualified as someone like Dr. James Andrews or Dr. David Altchek to diagnose an elbow tear or even suggest Tommy John surgery. Dr. Harper and Dr. Kernan probably don’t know what MRI stands for let alone have the ability to read one or understand what goes on in a human elbow, but every chance they get, they’re quick to let you know that “Masahiro Tanaka should get Tommy John surgery!” and that he should have gotten it last July. Somehow they write under the impression that Tommy John surgery is a very simple procedure with a 100 percent recovery success rate.

On Wednesday in the Daily News, Dr. Harper had a column titled “Future of Masahiro Tanaka’s elbow could be doomed as Yankees’ ace head to disabled list” (the typo on “head” is there, so I left it in). In the opening sentence, Harper cites fellow doctor Pedro Martinez, who must have used the $146 million he made in his career to attend medical school after retiring in 2009 as a source for Tanaka needing surgery. Later on, he cites Dr. Curt Schilling, in trying to prove his point. And in between, he filled his word space with a timeline of Brian Cashman’s “press conference” and quotes from the Yankees general manager, who said he will follow the doctors’ orders. The real doctors. Not the newspaper ones.

Kernan’s “column” (if you consider 693 words of bad one-liners and quotes and tweets a column) on Wednesday in the Post was titled “Why Tanaka Needs Tommy John Surgery”. With a headline like that, I expected the byline to be of someone like Dr. Andrews or Dr. Altchek or someone who has performed the surgery or someone who is an expert on the surgery or someone with a medical degree. But nope, “By Kevin Kernan” was right there.

Tanaka is now on the 15-day disabled list. Brian Cashman said we likely won’t see him back in the rotation for a month. If everything goes right, Tanaka should be healthy and back to putting up zeroes by the end of May. But that’s if everything goes right, and when it comes to arm injuries, things rarely seem to go right.

If Tanaka ever gets Tommy John surgery, it will be because a real doctor decided he needs it and not someone who plays a doctor in the newspaper.

Blogs • Email Exchanges • Yankees

Apr 27, 2015

The Yankees and Rays Will Be in Tight Race All Year

After nearly a month of baseball, every team in the AL East is in a battle for first place and that’s likely to continue for the entire season.

This season was supposed to be a down year for the AL East, but after three weeks, it’s been the best division in baseball. Two games separate the five teams and the Yankees and Rays are atop the division at 11-8 with a three-game series between the two teams starting on Monday.

With the Yankees and Rays meeting in the Bronx for the first time this season, Daniel Russell of DRaysBay joined me to talk about losing the Rays’ impressive start, Rays fans’ perspective of A-Rod, Chris Archer’s dominance of the Yankees and how the AL East will play out this summer now that both teams have seen every team in the division.

Keefe: Since the last series between the two teams, the Rays have gone 5-1, winning a series against the Red Sox and sweeping the Blue Jays. After their hot start, the Rays were recently 6-8 and I thought it might be the start of their decline with the roster turnover and injuries they are dealing with, but they have rebounded to share the lead in the division with the Yankees.

For a team that was expected to have to win a lot of 2-1 and 3-2 games this year, they have done that, but they have also had no trouble putting up big numbers here and there in the first month of the season.

Given the names in their lineup, the Rays’ offense was supposed to be the weak link for 2015, but it has managed to do just enough to win games with great pitching. I guess we should all just be used to that by now?

Russell: The Rays continue to be a team built off run prevention and just-enough offense, but you’re right, the offense has done well. Most of that comes from matching up well in the handedness department. Guys like David DeJesus, Tim Beckham, Brandon Guyer and Logan Forsythe have been critical.

For any team to find success, there needs to be a little luck involved, and the Rays have done particularly well in their pinch-hitting department. That’s remarkable, as the team topped out its disabled list at 12 guys on Wednesday among several other playing-hurt guys like Souza, Cabrera, and Jennings.

Now as the starters come back into the fold, it will certainly be interesting to see what the Rays do with the guys off the bench who’ve delivered.

A lot of that has to do with taking walks as well, which we are all well acquainted with in the division. The only three teams in the American League with 10 percent walk rates are the Yankees, Rays, and Red Sox, but it’s true the offense has been putting up strong numbers.

Tampa Bay chips away at their opponents, and it’s been paying off. Their 113 wRC+ is fifth in the American League, ahead of New York at sixth (107).

Keefe: Evan Longoria hasn’t really been a part of those big numbers. He’s hitting .306/.413/.468, but he also has just one home run and four RBIs, which puts him in the Jacoby Ellsbury Club (one home run, two RBIs) early this season.

Where has Longoria’s power been? Do you ever worry about him?

Russell: Longoria has been ridiculously productive this month, so it doesn’t bother me yet that he hasn’t homered since opening day. All 19 games of the season thus far have been played in domes or under roofs, so the longballs will come.

In the mean time, Longo has a 14.7 percent walk rate and a 14.7 percent strikeout rate, while batting a .306 AVG at a 152 wRC+. It’s too soon to panic.

Keefe: The Yankees went to Tampa as a bad baseball team. They couldn’t hit or pitch with any consistency and their defense and base running was atrocious. They were 3-6 before the first game of that three game series, but then everything changed on that Friday night. Everything changed when Alex Rodriguez took over the game.

A-Rod finished 3-for-4 with two home runs and four RBIs and hit the go-ahead single in the top of the eighth in the Yankees’ win. Since that night, the Yankees have gone 8-2 to climb to the top of the AL East.

Last night on Sunday Night Baseball against the Mets, A-Rod got the Yankees started with an opposite-field home run, his fifth of the season, just two weeks after saving the Yankees’ season on Sunday Night Baseball against the Red Sox with a first-inning, bases-clearing double.

I am a huge A-Rod fan and supported, mainly because he has been treated so much worse and differently than other PED users, but also because he helps the team win. From an outsider’s perspective and from someone who watched their team lose a game single-handedly because of him, what are you feelings on A-Rod?

Russell: I’m not all Rays fans, I’m sure the fan base hates him, but what I love about baseball – and sports in general – is entertainment and narrative. A-Rod getting clean, then coming back and being the dominant baseball player he always was supposed to be, is just pure entertainment.

The Yankees winning just makes me hate the Yankees more. That sort of passion is reserved to the laundry for me.

Keefe: For the second series this year, the Yankees will thankfully miss Chris Archer as he pitched the day before the start of both series.

In six career starts against the Yankees, Archer is 5-0 with 1.93 ERA. Outside of Felix Hernandez, I think Archer is the active pitcher with the most dominant performances against the Yankees. So of course I’m ecstatic we won’t see him again this week.

What makes Archer so special? Is he considered to be the ace of the staff with Cobb and Moore still out, and is he the ace even with them back?

Russell: Archer can thrive on two pitches two times through the lineup. Thanks to some added strength this off-season he’s pushing 98 with the fastball and has a wipe out slider. When the third time comes around, he introduces the change and no one knows what to do with it. It’s a joy to watch.

He’s also an intelligent kid, a big personality, and someone who constantly gives back to the community. He signed a longterm deal thankful for everything the club has done for him.

They don’t make ’em like Archer too often.

Keefe: The Yankees and Rays are tied atop the AL East at 11-8 with the entire division separated by two games. I have a feeling it’s going to be like that the entire season with all five teams in the race and no one really pulling away and riding and hiding for the summer with the division lead.

What are your early thoughts on the division now that you have seen the Rays play all the teams?

Russell: I’ll agree I expected the division to be pretty tight, I don’t really see any club pulling ahead. New York and Toronto are susceptible to injury, the Orioles and Red Sox to pitching problems and Tampa Bay to the offense slipping away.

The fact that the Rays have not only tread water in the division, but been able to pull ahead some of the other teams, has been really something. If this is what the Rays’ B-Team can do, I’m excited to see what happens when the injured players are re-introduced.