Despite a slow start after the All-Star Break, the Yankees had turned things around in the last three games.  Bartolo Colon started Tuesday evening looking much better than he had in his last two outings, but some costly errors late in the game landed the Yankees a 3-2 defeat.

While both offenses started the game quietly, the Yankees broke through in the third inning.  After getting two quick outs, Mark Teixeira doubled to right.  Robinson Cano drove a homer to left and New York had a 2-0 lead.

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Scranton lost 6-1 to Columbus:
Columbus scored early and often, as the Yankees were unable to string hits together.  They were 1-8 with runners in scoring position and left ten runners on base.  Ivan Nova left the game with a leg injury, after just 1.1 innings of work.  George Kontos took over for Nova and pitched 2.2 innings of scoreless baseball.  He gave up two hits and a walk, while striking out four.  Mike Lamb went 2-4 with a double and the Yankees lone RBI.

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After two less than stellar outings, there was certainly a lot of pressure on Bartolo Colon to perform tonight in Tampa, but with one eye cast towards potential trade deadline additions, the big man came through with a very solid outing against the pesky Rays. Though he would end up being charged with 3 runs allowed in total, though only 2 of them were earned runs, Colon would allow just 5 hits and 2 walks in 6.1 innings, while striking out 9 Rays.

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Via Donnie Collins, Ivan Nova has left his start at Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes Barre with an apparent injury to his right leg. Nova apparently planted the leg oddly while trying to field a comebacker. We’ll certainly update this when more information is known.

If you don’t want to trade for Ubaldo Jimenez, I respect that.  One can certainly argue that under the current labor agreement, no player warrants a return of three or more premium prospects with little or no service time.  One could also certainly argue that such calculations are less relevant to a team whose resources allow them to swallow long-term risks in favor of short-term gains.  Whatever your opinion of a potential trade with Colorado, however, it should be founded upon an honest appreciation of what Ubaldo has to offer.  Let’s dispel a few of the common anti-Ubaldo memes:

1.) He’s only be good for half a season.

This is a surprisingly common refrain, used to dispute the idea that Ubaldo is a legitimate Ace and should be priced as such.  As with most logical fallacies, it is rooted in a truth which has been misunderstood and misappropriated.  Yes, Ubaldo’s performance over the first half of 2010 was an outlier.  It was unsustainable, not only for Ubaldo, but for nearly anybody.

In case you have forgotten, he started the season 15-1 with 2.20 ERA and was the NL starter in the All-Star Game.  He was aided, of course, by a BABIP about thirty points lower than his career norm, an insanely low HR/FB rate, and the best run support in the NL.  We have been particularly eager to deem this stretch “fluky” because Jimenez was not a high profile player when it began, became popular mainly because of the obscene rate at which he was piling up wins, and has not been able to repeat the same level of dominance since (it’s been, to be fair, one year).

However, because Jimenez was nigh invincible for three months, we’re tempted to perceive everything else as underachieving.  The truth is, for a pitcher in the mid-twenties, Jimenez has been quite consistent (Dave Cameron makes a slightly different version of this argument at FanGraphs).  His 6.3 WAR “Cy Young-caliber” season was preceded by a 5.7 WAR season that few outside of Colorado took notice of.  Despite his slow, injury-plagued spring in 2011, he’ll likely post his fourth consecutive season of 4+ WAR…at age 27.  He is #10 in WAR among starting pitchers over that span, just a hair behind Jon Lester and ahead of Jered Weaver, Cole Hamels, and many other pitchers whose “Ace” status is rarely in dispute.

C. C. Sabathia is in the midst of the second stretch in his career in which extraordinary execution and a little good luck has taken him from merely excellent to superhuman.  Because he cannot maintain this rate of production permanently, does that make him less reliable?

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As Josh Norris first announced on Twitter, the Yankees called up left-handed pitcher Steve Garrison today. Garrison was claimed off waivers from the Padres last September, and here is some excellent information about him from River Ave Blues. In 51 innings in the minors this year, he has put up a a 5.65 ERA, 6.2 K/9, and 2.3 BB/9. Garrison was also already on the 40-man, which likely explains his call-up as opposed to JC Romero or another lefty in the system.

Sergio Mitre was placed on the DL with a case of bad pitching shoulder tendinitis to make room for Garrison on the 25-man roster.

I confess, the notion that Pitcher X is “inconsistent” on a game-t0-game basis has always sort of annoyed me, largely because a) it’s very prone to confirmation bias and b) it would take a lot of work to disprove. Thankfully, inspired by such talk about Ubaldo Jimenez in the past few days, Dave Cameron has done just that, using Game Score as a basis. The takeaway is that a lot of great starters are “inconsistent” under this standard. You should definitely read the whole thing, and keep that in mind the next time you’re worrying about a starting pitcher being inconsistent game to game.

For the vast majority of my baseball watching life, the Kansas City Royals, Baltimore Orioles, and Pittsburgh Pirates have been kindred spirits of a sort; perennial bottom-feeders with seemingly no idea how to put together a decent baseball team. The Orioles and Pirates didn’t really develop any quality big leaguers for years, the Pirates and Royals were consistently wasting money on free agents like Jeremy Burnitz and Jose Guillen, while the Orioles spent even more money on washed up well-known names like Sammy Sosa and Javy Lopez. Predictably, the losing continued.

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After salvaging a split against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Yankees headed down to Tampa for a series against the Rays.  A.J. Burnett looked awful in the first couple innings, as the Yankees offense was slowed by Tampa’s rookie hurler, Alex Cobb.  Burnett rebounded and the Yankees offense woke up late and patience at the plate paid off as New York took a 5-4 comeback win from the Tampa Bay Rays.

Curtis Granderson dropped a bunt single back to Cobb, giving the Yankees the first base runner of the game.  He stole second and moved to third when Sean Rodriguez made a fielding error on a ball hit by Mark Teixeira.  Robinson Cano grounded into a force out at second, but Granderson crossed the plate, giving the Bombers a 1-0 lead.

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Triple-A Scranton is playing right now, and losing to Columbus 6-2.
Jesus Montero has homered, and Doug Bernier, Austin Krum, and Terry Tiffee also have hits. Overall it’s been a terrible night so far for Scranton; Buddy Carlyle and Andrew Brackman have thrown three wild pitches each (!!!!). Carlyle and Brackman have also hit a batter each. Carlyle walked three, and Brackman walked two.

The Rockies are not insane. In fact, if their reported wish list from the Yankees is accurate, I’m actually a bit surprised there isn’t an even bigger name on the opening wish list. I know the general reaction from Yankee fans yesterday was that the Rockies were out of their mind for wanting to receive Jesus Montero, Manny Banuelos, Dellin Betances, and Ivan Nova in exchange for their ace, Ubaldo Jimenez, but in all honesty, that’s probably pretty close to a fair price.

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Well, I guess you can take one potential addition to the rotation off of the table:

O’Dowd has been in the eye of the storm because Ubaldo Jimenez‘s name has been out there, more prominent than the other starting pitching names definitively on the market, like Wandy Rodriguez, Hiroki Kuroda (who has a complete no trade and would not, according to two East executives, accept a trade to the East Coast before becoming a free agent this fall) and Jeremy Guthrie.

Now, you can’t take everything you hear this time of year literally, and if I had to guess, I wouldn’t say the odds this is true are anymore than 50-50. After all, Kuroda’s only on a one year deal with a team that isn’t in contention, whose owner has made a laughingstock of the franchise, and he probably won’t be back next year. Would he really like to ride out the rest of the year in L.A. rather than having a chance to win the World Series?

If nothing else though, it probably means Kuroda is looking for some financial compensation in exchange for waiving the no-trade clause to a team like the Yankees or Red Sox, and that probably means the Yankees will lose interest in him.

Phil Hughes probably would have liked to throw more than 80 pitches Sunday afternoon, but I’m sure the youngster will take consolation in throwing his best game of 2011 all the same. In his second start since coming off of the disabled list, Hughes went a full 6 innings and allowed just 2 runs on 4 hits and 2 walks while striking out 5. It was Hughes’ first quality start since September 26, 2010, and a welcome sign that we may well have good things to look forward to from Hughes in the second half.

The interesting thing about Hughes’ start Sunday is that he used just 3 pitches altogether, and his much discussed changeup was persona non grata. In fact, Hughes was effectively a two pitch pitcher, with his fastball and curveball combining to account for 70 of the 80 pitches Hughes threw. And indeed, both of them were plus pitches on this day, and Hughes was even able to record 8 swinging strikes, with 6 coming on fastballs. Though not overpowering by any means, Hughes averaged 91.25 MPH with the fastball and topped out just under 93 MPH. That will work just fine with a quality breaking pitch if he can locate the fastball and change speeds when he needs to.

Ideally I’d still like to see Hughes continue to refine his changeup and use the curveball much less, but results like this will certainly suffice. He didn’t really get a chance to empty the tank, because he hasn’t started since July 6th and it’s only his second start off of the DL, but what he did do was certainly encouraging. Hopefully he can go a little longer in his next outing, with similar results. How Hughes pitches in his next outing or two could likely determine just how aggressive the Yankees will be at the trade deadline.