Going back to 2008, the American League East crown has belonged to two teams in alternation, and this year, I guess, is technically Tampa Bay’s turn (and yes, this was mostly meant as a roundabout insult of the Red Sox). The Rays swept the Yankees at Tropicana Field in the season’s opening series, and tonight the two teams will meet at Yankee Stadium for the first time in 2012. Lineups as follows:

Rays (19-10):

Ben Zobrist RF
Carlos Pena 1B
B.J. Upton CF
Matt Joyce LF
Luke Scott DH
Jeff Keppinger 3B
will Rhymes 2B
Sean Rodriguez SS
Jose Molina C

James Shields RHP

Yankees (15-13):

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Nick Swisher RF
Raul Ibanez DH
Russell Martin C
Eduardo Nunez LF

Ivan RHP

First pitch is at 7:05, and the game can be seen on YES or MLB Network. Enjoy!

It’s official, Andy Pettitte will make his next start this Sunday in the Bronx. I’m somewhat intrigued by the fact that he’s starting Sunday and not Saturday, as that require the rotation to take one more full turn which, I guess, means that the Yankees want at least one more chance to see David Phelps and/or Phil Hughes before deciding who is going to be removed from the rotation to make room for Pettitte, but that will sort itself out in the end. I don’t really know what to expect from Andy when he returns to the big leagues but, at least for now, I’m just going to enjoy the fact that he’s going to pitch again. Andy’s retirement always felt a little abrupt, and the lack of a chance to “say goodbye,” as it were, continues to feel a bit awkward. Even now, covering his minor league starts has felt like covering someone on a rehab stint more so than someone trying to come out of retirement. So it should be a fun event, if nothing else.

If the Yankees are ever going to snap their almost half-year-long (seven game, but it makes it seem worse if I say “half-year” without adding that there was no baseball at all for a good chunk of that time) losing streak to the Tampa Bay Rays, this weekday series in the Bronx might be the best time to do it. And I did open this with “if” and “ever” because, well, our friends at various media outlets have been trumpeting the Rays “domination” of the Yankees (which, apparently has been going on for a long time, over six months of nonstop losing!!), and I didn’t want to be left out of the loop.

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Forty-five years ago on Mothers Day, May 14, 1967, my Mom took “her kids” to the Emerson Restaurant in Emerson, New Jersey. The Emerson was always “our” place and our only place to go out to eat. They had the best slice steak sandwiches and my Mom always made sure she gave me half of hers. Moms do those kinds of things and my Mom wasn’t any different. It was an especially tough time since my father had died the previous year. We had to leave our beloved house for a crummy apartment. My mom had to work and was struggling along to make ends meet and we had my poor older sister taking care of us two younger boys.

A source of comfort and survival was baseball. We played it, we watched it, we lived it. The Yankees had fallen on hard times in 1967 and would finish the season in ninth place. Between Mel Stottlemyre, Al Downing and a hobbled, broken down Mickey Mantle, there wasn’t much else to root for. For many reasons that have already been covered by Billy Crystal, back then, Mantle was every kid’s ideal. Of course we all know now that Mantle wasn’t perfect but that doesn’t matter, he was our hero. In 1967, he was moved to first base to take some pressure off his legs. But he was still our favorite. He still had that boyish grin and on occasion, could still hit the ball a mile.

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This past Friday, Baseball-Reference updated the formula for their version of Wins Above Replacement (bWAR). Sean Foreman posted a fantastic explanation of the changes on the B-R blog. It’s a bookmark-worthy link, not only for it’s insight into the statistic’s evolution, but also for the table outlining the differences between the bWAR and fWAR (FanGraphs) formulas.

The Baseball-Reference update also inspired an outstanding Tangotiger post which analyzed changes that were made, changes which weren’t made, and differences behind the various popular (and personal) versions of WAR. Both are rather dense reading, but, if one wants to understand Wins Above Replacement’s increasing popularity and, moreover, if one wants to make informed arguments using it as evidence, there is probably no better place to start than these two posts.

As regular IIATMS readers know, I have serious qualms with the way WAR is habitually used, especially as evidence in single-season (or even smaller) samples. Unfortunately, because of the metric’s seeming elegance, it is too often regarded as the final word in assessment, rather than as a starting point, and its margin of error is wholly disregarded, sometimes even by savvy analysts.

I applaud Sean Foreman and Baseball-Reference for continuing to improve the wildly popular metric and for making it transparent. WAR is better for their diligence, and sabermetrics are better with bWAR. However, the changes also reveal exactly why conclusions drawn solely from marginal WAR differences are inherently flawed.

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Um…uh-oh?

Mariano Rivera’s visit with surgeons yesterday was expected to result in a date for surgery to repair a torn right ACL.

However, things didn’t go as smoothly as expected for the Yankees closer.

“We ran into complications,’’ agent Fernando Cuza told The Post. “I am referring to Dr. Ahmad and [Yankees general manager] Brian Cashman for further information.’’

Neither Cuza nor the Yankees would elaborate on what was discovered when Rivera met with Yankees team physician Dr. Chris Ahmad, Dr. Russell Warren, the Giants’ physician, and David Altchek, the Mets’ doctor, who performed surgery on Rivera’s shoulder after the 2008 season.

This could be nothing, but “complications” is a word you never want to hear when discussing surgery.