"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

A.J. Burnett (10-7, 4.08) can be one scary fire-breathing dragon to face, even despite his August struggles. Our ace is 0-3 with a 6.32 ERA in his last 5 starts, including one mess of an outing against the Red Sox. Today's Texas starter Dustin Nippert (4-2, 3.95), whose name spells "Pinstriped Nut" if you mix up the letters, isn't faring much better in his last 5 on the road (0-2, 5.79). I don't know at what point this happened, but I just realized this guy's on my fantasy team.

(The significance of this as well as his anagrammed name, I'm not sure.)

The Yanks have now scored 47 runs in the last 5 games, and this includes one game where they only banked 1. The only chinks in their armor heading into this afternooner, stem from Posada and ARod's penchant for fouling balls off themselves. I'm sure everyone is overjoyed to see Burnett with a non-Jorge battery mate today, but our primary catcher is currently 3-7 with 6 RBIs and 2 HRs in the past 2 games. His replacement is 6 for 25 with 7Ks in the month of August.

Johnny Damon comes back into the lineup, and good God, the New York order is just stacked. The Rangers' bats are no slouches either, with Michael Young and Josh Hamilton showing no signs of waning, but the Yankees are hungrier right now. Win today, and they've won 11 of their last 12 series. The "Pinstriped Nut" should be shuddering about now.