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

“They will pick up the slack, you will see something new,
Two extra large pitchers. I call them Fat One and Fat Two.
These Fats will not hurt us. They don’t give up runs.
And out on the field came Fat Two and Fat One!”

--Dr. Seuss, if he changed all the words to be more relevant to my blog post about fleshy starters

After losing that annoying little 3-2 blechfest on Friday, the weekend was a nice little celebration of blimp-like pitchers leading allowing us to salvage a west coast road trip that began with a near-sweep in Seattle (I hope I never have to utter/write that last phrase again), Tubbo.com and Allergy come in on Saturday and Sunday (respectively) to bring the series a BIG FAT W, AS WE BREAK FOR HOME AND GET THE HOUSE READY FOR OUR BOSTON GUESTS.

Fatso, being Fatso, almost went a complete game on Saturday, as the Yankees flip flopped the score and took Game 2. Cano and Arod went deep, as Cano and Arod are want to do. And that was all the Bombers needed to do in the Halos. Well, that, and Round Boy's increasingly devastating change-up.

It's funny, because I think it was sometime at the end of 2009 when I was talking to my favorite all-time lunatic Ollie about the importance of a change-up, and how every pitcher who's worth his salt, adds a lethal change-up to his arsenal.

And that's exactly what CC has done in the last few years. His fastball isn't of Daniel Bard caliber, or Kyle Farnsworth, or even Joba. But look at those 3 names and tell me just how indispensable they've been. Or, rather, haven't been.

The fastball is passe. The change-up is the equivalent of adding a major in Spanish to your accounting major (a combination that my dad swore left right and center would be the absolute smartest way to go in college. So, of course, I was an English and Theater major, which made it reallllly easy to get a job after graduation. Nope.)

In CC's words:

"It was huge for me tonight. The only reason I pitched eight innings tonight was because I was able to get some swings early, get some weak fly balls and some ground balls with that pitch. A couple of years ago, I probably would have been in trouble, not being able to command it if I didn't have it early."

Ha. "It was huge for me tonight." Hehe.

So that was Game 1. As for today, it was a glorious afternoon of winning.

There were 2 text messages from Tex tonight, according to Sterling. And a swishalicious bomb from Swisher, also according to Sterling. But that's where I'll cease and desist using Sterling as a reference for the recap, since there are about 912 other incidents that Sterling alleged occurred, but that we as viewers (and as viewers presumably of sound mind) that we know weren't real.*

*More specifically, I'm referring to the number of lazy pop-ups and in field ground outs that the aforementioned radio announcer deemed "high and far."

I digress. As usual. Back to bullets:

• The Yankees' numbers were big in the right places and small in the right places. Like an aesthetically pleasing chick. With one exception, and it wasn't even that big a deal, I think, so in terms of this metaphor, it'd be like the equivalent of like a weird laugh. Something not really noticeable at first glance, but something that could potentially start to be problematic over the long term. And that annoying titter is: the number of pitches they saw.

I am a HUGE proponent of sitting on pitches. HUGE. I don't think I've ever in my entire life swung at the first pitch, which isn't even really a good idea statistically since it means I'm often down in the count AND end up having to swing at less than stellar pitches.

But my dad told me never ever to swing at the first pitch, and I guess if I had to pick between the Choice of College Major and Patience at Plate words of paternal advice, I probably should have picked the former to follow, rather than the latter. Semantics.

The Yanks took barely 13o pitches, the Halos nearly 170. Interestingly, though, the players who saw the LEAST amount of pitches were Tex (with 2 bombs on 9 pitches) and Posada (who went 2 for 4). I don't care. Economic appearances be damned. We're about to face the Sux and I feel like nothing quite dismantles them like shaking up their pitchers.

• The best low number of the night: 5 LOB. 11 hits, only 5 men left on base. That's great! The Halos had 10 hits, with 10 LOB. ((Insert this here.)) Look at that, the whole annoying laugh thing coming full circle! I didn't even plan it that way.

• The low number with the big significance: Jeter going 1 for 5. Which puts him 14 shy of 3000.

• The big significance number with ridiculous significance: 28. Jeter would be the 28th player to hit 3000. That's big significance. In my warped mind, the 28 also happens to be the number of WS we're chasing right now. That's ridiculous significance.

• D-Rob is either a breath of a fresh air or a coronary waiting to happen. I can't decide which. Maybe both though. He has the market cornered on being thrown in the game in the WORST possible times, and I think it may have started because Girardi was like "Ok, kid. Let's see what you got." And then he was sooo good at it, that they kept doing it.

And now I think it's just morphed into some kind of pushing the enveloped type of scenario. Like, there's some kind of over-under bet in the clubhouse like, "how many innings before the other cleat drops." Either that or he's being punished for something bad.

Regardless, he's just really good at it. The Allergy gets pulled, and D-Rob comes in, walks the bases loaded for good measure, and strikes out Maicer Izsturis to end the 6th. Joba K's Kendrick with 2 out to end the 7th, pitches a scoreless 8th and in effect becomes the bridge to Mo we always wanted him to be, and Mo subsequently gets the last 3 outs of the game. Yankees win!

• Piniero, the starting pitcher for the Halos, whose name always conjures up some images of B-list Mafiosa dude, like the one in charge of knocking off real estate agents of something, had this to say about his performance:

"I thought I had good stuff. You limit the long ball and maybe you have a chance to win. But they're built off the long ball, and obviously they did that today. I guess (Teixeira) was seeing the ball well today. I thought the changeup was a good pitch, then he went and got the sinker."

I get the biggest kick out of when losing pitchers are all, "I mean, I thought I was doing pretty well! Guess not. Since we lost and all. Sigh."

It's SORT of like this weird, incongruous shot from ESPN today:

It's this article on how it's more important to pick hitters first in fantasy drafts, over pitchers, which a.) seems a little irrelevant now that drafts have been over and done with for about 3 months now, and b.) even if it was relevant, is that the best example to use? Mauer?

Mauer, who was my 3rd pick, hasn't played a game since April 12. He has been collecting dust on my roster for what feels like forever, and is now this year's Jose Reyes. The dude I picked up early, will never drop, even when there's only 2 games left of the season and he's still sporting a red DL tag next to his name.

So, ESPN, maybe that's the way YOU operate. But your choice of supporting imagery is something of cognitive dissonance.

So thank you, Fat 1 and Fat 2, for keeping us 1 game up on the Sux. There's something about watching 2 straight days of starters devoid of any metabolism-related that inspire you to get out of the house. (Which was maybe the same mentality behind FatBooth, the new app for the iPhone that shows you what you look like if you're fat. Sounds very...cheerful.)

(To this end, I decided to go rollerblading and it turns out you have to wear a helmet to rollerblade. Is this a real law? I don't own a rollerblade helmet. Does anyone? I own a Giants football helmet, which is what I later went home to retrieve upon being informed of this NYC rule, but seriously, is that what NY wants? Me skating around in a football helmet like some kind of G.U.T.S. contestant, rather than me skating around in youthful blitheness? Whatever.)

So there it is. The Yanks head out of the West Coast, and we can all go back to normal bedtimes. (I say this as I'm blogging away at 3am, but you know what I mean.) The week of 10pm starts and weird scheduling stuff has subsided in favor of a hellish homestand that will feature Boston, Cleveland (still mute), and Texas...before we head to Chi-town for the Cubbies.

Happy Monday everyone!