6 PM:
Yankees/YES Alert: Tonight’s Starters: NYY: CC Sabathia (4-3) BAL: Freddy Garcia (0-2). Coverage begins 6:30PM on YES.

YES reference #1.

9 PM:
Yankees/YES Alert: NYY lead BAL 3-2 with Lyle Overbay’s HR in the top of the 7th. Watch now on YES.

Right, the game’s on YES. I got it.

9:51 PM:
Yankees/YES Alert: BAL leads NYY 4-3. Cano, Hafner & Overbay up for the Yankees in the 9th. Watch now on YES.

51 minutes later, another reminder that the game’s on YES.

10:14 PM:
Yankees/YES Alert: With Travis Hafner’s game-tying HR in the 9th, the Yankees & Orioles go into extra innings in the 10th. Watch now on YES.

Oh snap, better turn the game on. What channel is it on again?

10:31 PM
Yankees/YES alert: Yankees holding on to a 6-4 lead in the 10th, as Mariano Rivera comes in to try to close the door. Watch now on YES.

OK, fair enough – if I was too busy to watch the game tonight, I would stop what I was doing to watch Mo, as his appearances are at a premium this year! And thank the good lord they mentioned that the game was on YES again! Otherwise, I would have been checking ESPN Deportes.

10:41 PM
YES Alert:
FINAL (10 INN) – NYY 6 BAL 4
WP: Robertson (3-0)
LP: Strop (0-2)
Go to YESNetwork.com for more

Oh, so now I need to go to the website?!?

NOTE: On Sunday, when they got rained out, YES did not send a text to report there would be no game. True, I could have simply looked out a window to figure that out, but on the other hand, that news would have actually been useful — but apparently it meant that I didn’t have to watch YES.

The New York metropolitan area, already packed with professional sports teams, will soon get another: a Major League Soccer team owned by Manchester City of the English Premier League and the Yankees.

The team, to be known as the New York City Football Club, will be the 20th Major League Soccer franchise and expects to begin competing in 2015, assuming it can find a stadium to play in.

Manchester City will be the majority owner of the new club, while the Yankees will own about a quarter of the team. The pairing represents a deepening of ties because the Yankees’ stadium concessions business, Legends Hospitality, provides services at Manchester City’s home ground, Etihad Stadium. Manchester City will play an exhibition match against Chelsea on Saturday at Yankee Stadium.

Manchester City had not initially contemplated inviting the Yankees to buy a share of the team. But in recent weeks the English owners decided to become partners in the deal so they could make the most of the Yankees’ political connections and experience building stadiums in New York City.

The fledgling New York City Football Club may play its inaugural season at Yankee Stadium. After that, the team hopes to play in a new stadium in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park that the owners of Manchester City would build.

The project, while backed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, has alarmed parks and community activists, who object to heavily used parkland being given to a for-profit foreign-owned team essentially free.

Bold prediction: The Yankees one day sell the team to Man City’s sheik owner.

We briefly touched on this earlier in the season when small sample sizes roamed freely and noted that Gardner was swinging more liberally. This is, perhaps not surprisingly, causing Brett Gardner to strike out more often. RUN BMG owns a career K-rate of approximately 17%; this year he is striking out nearly 22% of the time. A quick dig in the Pitch F/X numerical dirt reveals something fairly substantial: Brett Gardner is getting owned by fastballs.

In Brett Gardner’s major league plate appearances between 2008 and 2012, he saw a fastball 46% of the time, swung at the pitch 34% of the time and whiffed only 2.2% of the time. Fast forward to today…Brett Gardner has been given the heater nearly 51% of the time, has swung at the pitch 48% of the time and has whiffed 7% of the time.

Here’s what’s really interesting — Gardner is also struggling with another pitch to a much higher degree than ever before in his career: the changeup. Between 2008 and 2012, he whiffed on the changeup 7.8% of the time. This year? He’s swinging through the pitch 20% of the time.

While small sample sizes still exist (it’s still only May), that’s a fairly dramatic increase across the board and it’s entirely possible that pitchers, seeing a new weakness in Gardner, are exploiting it.

My9 Player of the Game: Hiroki Kuroda (.442 WPA)
Our Player of the Game: Hiroki Kuroda (.442 WPA)

Game 43: Cano KOs Jays, Yanks win second straight over Toronto (NYY 7, TOR 2)
Game Notes:
- David Phelps went a career-long seven innings, striking out eight and allowing only one run
- xFIP doesn’t support this, but Phelps seems much more comfortable this year as a starter than as a reliever
- The presence of Phelps, Vidal Nuno, and possibly Michael Pineda could make for some very interesting decisions this summer regarding Phil Hughes and Ivan Nova. Competition is good.
- Oh yeah, Robinson Cano hit a Yankee Stadium HR and a decidedly non-Yankee Stadium HR
- Welcome back Pronk! Travis Hafner struck a two-run HR in the 8th to give Mariano another day off

YES Player of the Game: Robinson Cano (.283 WPA)
Our Player of the Game: Robinson Cano (.283 WPA)

Sunday’s game was rained out, making this an abbreviated two-game Yankee sweep. They are now 8-1 against the Blue Jays so far this year. Concerning the Jays: as the Yankees learned in their 2009 season series with the Red Sox, you can stay afloat in the playoff race if you beat everybody else while struggling against a division opponent. But Toronto hasn’t even been able to do that yet. As for the Yanks, they head to Baltimore to start a three-game set with the O’s on Monday night.

Pitcher
Rafael De Paula, 22, RHP, A
6 IP, 11 K, 1 BB, 3 H, 2 ER, 1 HR
Notable: 23 Ks over last 2 starts (12 IP)

This is the Rafael’s De Paula’s 2nd MLPW of the season, and he would have won last week if not for the performance of High-A Tampa’s Shane Greene.

De Paula’s numbers to date read like a video game: 69 K in 39.1 IP / 23 K over his last 2 starts (12 IP) / 43.4% K Rate

He leads the SAL by huge margins in K rate and K/9 (15.79), and is second in FIP (1.88).

The international free-agent signing, who had a variety of visa and age falsification issues (read here), will reportedly not be pushed quickly by the Yankees due to his lack of competitive baseball experience.

Hitter:
Peter O’Brien, 22, RHB C, A
.409/.552/.818 in 29 PA
Notable: Walked 7 times on the week

Like his teammate Rafael De Paula, Charleston’s Peter O’Brien already took home an MLPW this season and is quickly becoming another valuable Yankee catching prospect.

Drafted out of Miami (transferred there and played 1 year), O’Brien is hitting a spectacular .325/.381/.573, ranking 6th in the SAL in OPS and tied for 5th in wRC+ (164).

One level above O’Brien (2012 2nd round draft pick) is the much-hyped Gary Sanchez, and it will be interesting to watch how the Yankees handle them both, especially if O’Brien continues this hitting pace. Sanchez is two and a half years younger than O’Brien and is having a solid season at High-A Tampa (read below). Together with JR Murphy, the club has three catchers having fine MiLB campaigns.

Honorable Mentions:

Scottie Allen, 21, RHP, A+
6 IP, 7 K, 0 BB, 5 H, 1 ER, 0 HR
2.77 FIP, 8th best in the FSL

Charlie Short, 24, RHP, A+
4 IP, 6 K, 0 BB, 3 H, 0 ER
Has only allowed 1 ER in 17.2 IP between Low-A/High-A

Dietrich Enns, 22, LHP, A
5.2 IP, 7 K, 2 BB, 4 H, 1 ER, 0 HR
2012 19th round draft pick, 15.15 K/9

Jeremy Bleich, 25, LHP, AA
3.2 IP, 5 K, 0 BB, 0 H, 0 ER
Good week, but lousy 14 K / 13 BB on the season

Jose Ramirez, 23, RHP, AA
5 IP, 7 K, 1 BB, 3 H, 1 ER, 1 HR
27 K / 4 BB in 20 IP in 4 starts

Greg Bird, 20, RHB 1B, A
.333/.454/.815 in 33 PA
3 HRs on the week, first 3 HRs of the season

Jake Cave, 20, LHB CF, A
.343/.400/.563 in 35 PA
5 doubles on the week

Dante Bichette Jr, 21, RHB 3B, A
.291/.393/.542 in 28 PA
A great week in an otherwise miserable second go-around in Low-A: .191/.257/.287

Angelo Gumbs, 20, RHB 2B, A+
.350/.350/.500 in 20 PA
His first week back from injury (sprained finger)

Reymond Nunez, 22, RHB 1B, A
.286/.310/.536 in 29 PA
2 HR on the week, .300/.364/.563 on the season

Gary Sanchez, 20, RHB C, A+
.304/.400/.478 in 25 PA
.273/.351/.473 on the season

Slade Heathcott, 22, LHB CF, AA
.304/.304/.522 in 23 PA
HR and triple on week, but hitting a very disappointing .221/283/.328 to date

The Yankees currently have a team OBP of .315, which ranks 10th out of 15 American League teams. This is very uncharacteristic of a team that led the major leagues with an OBP over .350 for the time period from 2000-2012. During that same time period, the worst OBP was by the Pirates and they still managed to post a .320 OBP.

Robbie shook the Jays to their bones

With the loss, Toronto drops to 17-26. The preseason AL East favorite now possesses a run differential of -45, which is tied for second-worst in the league (tied with LAA, Houston the worst at -89).

“Anybody would get a little nervous if you get into a seven or eight-year deal,” Steinbrenner said. “It depends on the age of the player, too, I guess. Give an eight-year contract to a 34-year old — you probably wouldn’t do that, right?“

Hmmm.