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

"Mitre dealing!"

I don't know why Kevin texts me these things. 98% of the time they owe little to no truth, and this should come as no surprise when you consider his inexplicable affinity for players like Sidney Ponson.

Mitre wasn't, in fact, dealing. He wasn't abysmal, but he certainly wasn't "dealing." Our sinkerball threw 4.1 innings and gave up 4 runs on 5 hits. He did whiff 4, which I suppose is relatively impressive for a guy with his limited arsenal.

And yet despite his very mediocre outing, he still managed to be a vast improvement over Javier Vazquez. That's kind of sad for Javy, watching your replacement pitch a Melba game, and knowing that the team is better off with mediocrity than it is with Javy-ocrity.

Basically, it was the old Yanks that led the charge against the current ones. Damon took Mitre deep on a beautiful rocket to right. A-Jax and Phil Coke also made good cases for themselves, with the former giving his team a 3-run lead and the latter coming up big with a couple of key outs.

Mark Teixeira has sent the league a message that, in case they all forgot, it's May now, and that means he officially resumes his monster offensive production. His 2-run homer helped the Yanks pull within 1 run in the 3rd, but it couldn't overcome the fact the Yanks were staunchly opposed to clearing the base path.

Despite the fact that practically the entire lineup logged hits (save Cervelli and GGBG), the Yanks' bats were fruitless when it came to RISP.

ONE FOR TEN with runners on.

Seriously, every time I looked at the little base patch icon by the score, it was flush with yellow squares that denote base runners. Unfortunately, those moments also happened to coincide with Randy Winn approaching his turn in the order.

The amount of fails in big spots that Winn banked for the day is more than too much. 3 times he converted his AB to an out, with RISP. He's starting to remind me of the guy whose dad named him Winner (and his brother, Loser). And, well, of course, ironic hijinx ensue.

The Yanks remain a half game behind TB, on account of their lifeless loss to the Halos today. The Sox manage to pull out a win against the Jays, so I expect Boston to start exchanging their "toss in the towel" cries for those of "We Always Believed!" rally whines.

Can't wait.