"Similar" pitchers.

Baseball-reference's "similar" pitchers is not the be-all and end-all.

But these are the top five "similar" pitchers to Joba Chamberlain at this age, just to contrast his actual career vs. the number of tee-shirts he has sold:

1. Mike Fornieles (979)
2. Joey Jay (978)
3. Mario Soto (977)
4. Harry Feldman (974)
5. Manny Sarmiento (973)

What's your favorite Mr. Mister album? Let's debate it for three years on call-in radio shows.

The heir apparent to Mariano is a mediocre starter and a mediocre reliever.

A lot of wasted mental energy spent debating whether this guy should be a starter or a reliever.

Completely absurd.

Brian Cashman has four Championship rings and the Yankees are the current World Series champs.

The Yankees also currently have a better record than the Mets.

Bill Madden inexplicably wants to diminish Cashman's accomplishments by analyzing a bunch of scrubs after two months:

"But here's the point: At the start of the season there was nary a pundit who didn't think Minaya had done a terrible job in putting this Mets team together, in particular last winter when he elected to take a pass on all of the (albeit mostly flawed) free agent starting pitchers despite the acknowledged uncertainty of John Maine and Oliver Perez. And yet, as we arrive at Memorial Day, the performances of Minaya's off-season acquisitions - Japanese import Hisanori Takahashi (4-1, 2.13) Rod Barajas (team-leading 10 HR), the Cuban expatriate Raul Valdes (2-1, 2.86, 33 K, 10 walks in 28.1 innings) - have far surpassed those of his Yankee counterpart, Brian Cashman: ([sic] Curtis Granderson (.225, .311 OBP, injured most of May), Nick Johnson (.167, out, probably for season, with a wrist injury), Javy Vazquez (3-5, 6.86), just-released Randy Winn, Boone Logan (5.06 ERA, 13 hits, 7 walks in 10 innings) and Chan Ho Park (8.71 ERA, 17 hits, 5 HR in 10.1 innings)."

What point?

If that's your answer, you're asking the wrong question.

All praise to Pettitte.

Most other pitchers would have begged out:

"Twins 8th

Andy Pettitte pitching:

Drew Butera :Strike looking, Butera doubled to right.

Denard Span :Bunt foul, Span safe at first on 3rd baseman Rodriguez fielding error, Butera to third.

Orlando Hudson :Ball, Pickoff attempt to first, Pickoff attempt to first, Hudson lined out to pitcher.

Joe Mauer :Ball, Pickoff attempt to first, Strike looking, Ball, Pickoff attempt to first, Ball, Mauer grounded into double play shortstop to second to first, Span out at second."

Mike Lupica wants you to root for the Mets.

"It seems like about 15 minutes ago that the Mets looked as bad as they ever could against the Marlins. This morning they are a game over .500 and closer to first place than the Yankees are."

This is an accurate statement. The Mets are 3 games out of first place while the Yankees are 3.5 games out of first place.

The Yankees, of course, are in second place in their division and are in first place in the wild card standings. The Yankees, of course, possess the second-best record in baseball.

The Mets are tied for third place in their division... and tied for last place in their division, if that's how you want to look at it.

So, yes, if winning the division is the goal, then the Mets are one half game closer. But the Yankees have one other team to catch while the Mets have four other teams to catch.


"Say what you want about the Mets - and they have pretty much heard just about everything this season already - but they fight hard."

This is what I want to say about the Mets: They have the highest payroll in the NL and they're one whole game over .500 and they have the same record as the Washington Nationals and the Florida Marlins.

This is what I want to say about Lupica: He is a hack and a shill.

Teixeira Stinks, Somebody Notices.

I simply don't recall the $20 million man getting any so-called "big hits."

I did the same thing when I was a child.

I can come clean now, but, when I was in fourth grade through sixth grade, I handed in the same report on "How Nuclear Energy Works" three years in a row:

Mike Lupica on Sunday: "A-Rod's cheating - he says it was only when he was with the Rangers - isn't really an issue at all with the Yankees, with their fans, with Major League Baseball, with anybody.

Why? Because he's a winner now, that's why. We've been over this. He's a big winner Yankee."

I was kind of wondering why Lupica was hassling ARod in the first place while ignoring Ivan Rodriguez, Edgardo Alfonzo, Troy Glaus, Chipper Jones, Shawn Green, Adrian Beltre, David Ortiz, Randy Velarde, Mike Piazza ...

In fact, in the same article, Lupica actually praises David Ortiz.

So please don't pretend you're anti-steroid. You're anti-ARod. There's a difference, pal.

Mike Lupica on Thurdsay: "And you have to say that people have become a lot more forgiving about A-Rod when he had one of the great and most dramatic postseasons in Yankee history and helped carry them on his back to World Series title No. 27."

Yes, I agree. That's because nobody was ever angry about steroids in the first place. It's retro-fitting their anger. Andy Pettitte is still one of the Core Four Good Guys while Roger Clemens is still an enemy.


Mike Lupica on Wednesday: "We are expected to believe that while Galea may have been treating other professional athletes from baseball and football with HGH and Actovegin, our guys from New York would never have allowed that to happen with them because, well, that would be wrong, wrong, wrong.

We're supposed to trust them on this, because, hey, they're our guys."

That's the same article three times in a row. Basically, the same article three times in five days. Copied and pasted.

Sir, you get an incomplete.

Media critic.

"Excuse me. The Bombers still have Derek Jeter, A-Rod, Robinson Cano, Mark Teixeira, and a healthy pitching staff.

There presence did not stopped Kay from throwing a pinstriped pity party for his wounded warriors."

"There" presence did not "stopped" Kay.

A weird answer to a question nobody was asking.

"Interleague play for American League teams typically is what a reachable par 5 is for PGA pros: par is a bad score. It's the perfect opportunity to pad your score."

It kind of depends which NL teams you're talking about.

The Royals would probably be pleasantly surprised to go 6-6 in 12 games vs. the Phillies, Dodgers, and Cardinals.


"Indeed, AL playoff berths have been won by beating up National League teams. Last year the four AL playoff teams (Yankees, Red Sox, Twins, Angels) played .581 baseball against AL teams but .653 baseball against NL teams."

Must I explain the flawed logic of this conclusion?

I promise you, the .581 winning percentage in 142 games was more important than the .653 winning percentage in 20 games.

Get an abacus and figure it out yourself.


"But get this: AL superiority is about to be diminished, or even wiped out altogether."

I wouldn't draw any grand conclusions based on the overall head-to-head results, anyway, but that's quite a bold prediction, I'll give him that.


"The NL has closed the talent gap on the AL and actually has a shot at winning interleague play, which begins tonight, for first time since 2003. Don't believe it?"

I believe the NL can win more than half the interleague games, yes.

I'm not so sure the NL has closed the talent gap.

Halladay transferred one really great pitcher.

Oh, and Melky Cabrera, of course. He is hitting almost .200 with 0 HRs.


"Guess which league has averaged more runs per game one-quarter of the way through this season? That's right, the league without the DH, the NL. The on-base and slugging percentages are nearly identical."

Maybe the NL has lousy pitchers and lousy fielders.


"In the NL, poor teams of recent years have shown significant improvement this year, especially the Nationals, Padres and Pirates."

Yeah, but ... maybe it's because they're playing lousy NL teams.

Utilizing basic principles of math and stuff, if one team is winning, another team is losing. If the Nationals, Padres, and Pirates are surprisingly good, it means they are beating somebody who's surprisingly bad (Brewers, Astros, and Rockies).

I can do the same thing with AL teams Please note that the Blue Jays are 7 games over .500, when I figured the Blue Jays would win about 40 games this season.



"Two other factors stand out: the declines of the DH and shortstop positions in the AL. DH production has been trending downward for five years. The league is littered with aging DHs who carry a below-average slugging percentage: Travis Hafner, Nick Johnson, Hideki Matsui, Eric Chavez, Pat Burrell (since cut from Tampa Bay) and Ken Griffey. The overall OPS out of the DH spot (.726) is below league average (.733). Think about that for a minute: the league gets to use an extra hitter who doesn't have to play defense, and it fills the spot with below-average hitting."

Fair enough observation on its own, I suppose.

I know that the DH won't even play in half the interleague games and, when the AL rules are used, I also know that the NL DH won't be a full-time DH. So you're comparing current AL players to former AL players instead of comparing current AL players to current NL players.

As for the AL shortstops, they may be declining vis a vis their glory days, but that still doesn't mean '83 Ripken is suiting up for the Mets anytime soon.

Is that the totality of the argument? Hanley Ramirez, who has been in the NL for five years, is better than, say, Alexei Ramirez?

Sold. The NL must be better.


"So go ahead with the usual jokes about the AL being the varsity and the NL being the junior varsity, or the NL teams being the homecoming teams on the AL schedules. But this year interleague play just might be more competitive."

Not for nothing, but is that really a usual joke?

Dog walks into a bar, sits down, and says to the bartender, "I'll have a ... (long pause) ... beer." Bartender says, "The AL is the varsity and the NL is the junior varsity."

Ba dum bum.

Joba is the M. Night Shyamalan of pitchers. A very fat M. Night Shyamalan. Like M. Night Shyamalan crossed with Orson Welles.

Joba just isn't that good anymore, but you think he's good because you're remembering how much you liked "The Sixth Sense":

"Remember when Joba Chamberlain was the darling of Yankee Stadium? When every move by the burly right-hander turned into an event marked by celebration from all parts of the House That Ruth Built?

That was three years ago when Chamberlain could do nothing wrong coming out of the bullpen with his high-octane fastball, filthy slider and the exuberance of a naive youngster."

Revisiting a clever metaphor.

With the Yankees stuck in second, the Mets have gone from first place in the NL East to last place in the NL East as fast as Jose Reyes.

Dallas Braden's Grandmother Unavailable For Comment.

Josh Beckett beat the Yankees in the 2003 World Series.

"The star of the Yankees' season isn't Robinson Cano, or CC Sabathia. The star of the Yankees' season isn't one of the Core Fore, Jeter or Rivera or Pettitte or Posada. It isn't A-Rod or Mark Teixeira, not yet, anyway.

The star of the Yankee season is Phil Hughes."

The star.

The Yankees only have one star and it is Phil Hughes.

I'll bet you didn't know that a team can only have one star, but this has been decreed in Lupica Land.


"He has been the best pitcher in town, the best pitcher on the Yankees, he has been the best pitcher in the American League, he has been as good pitching in the American League - and the American League East – as Roy Halladay has been for the Phillies."

Which is a roundabout way of saying Hughes has been the best pitcher in the American League.


"This doesn't mean that Hughes must now be designated as a future first-ballot Hall of Famer the way Joba Chamberlain was when he first starting coming through the bullpen doors a few years ago."

Very easy to ridicule all the people who put Joba in the Hall of Fame after 25 big-league innings.

But those people don't exist because it never happened.


"What it means is that Hughes has the chance, off what we have seen so far this season, especially what we saw last Friday night at Fenway Park and on Wednesday night at Comerica, to be the first power starting pitcher the Yankees have developed out of their own farm system since Ron Guidry, and the first elite starter they have developed on their own since Andy Pettitte."

I guess this is true; I haven't given it too much thought.

But how many elite starters exist in baseball since Andy Pettitte? How many were you expecting from the Yankee farm system?

There are not many elite starters in MLB in the past 15 years.

That's the definiton of elite.


"Three pitches, the last a fastball, up, against which Cabrera had no chance. It reminded you of a high fastball Josh Beckett threw past Derek Jeter in Jeter's last at-bat, Game 6 of the 2003 World Series, one Jeter still hasn't seen."

This guy. Still talking about the 2003 World Series.


It's like Game Six of the 2003 World Series was the first baseball game Lupica ever watched. It was the only time a pitcher pitched well in the World Series. It was the only time Jeter ever struck out on a fastball.

Now, every time a player strikes out, it reminds Lupica of his First Love, Josh Beckett, in Game Six of the 2003 World Series.

Everyone's favorite steroid cheat.

"It's easy to doubt him, especially if you spend more time looking at his birthdate (Nov. 27, 1971) than his batting average (.383, through Tuesday). It's easy to doubt him, if your main recent memory of Pudge is his lousy half-season with the Yankees a couple of years back, or even his so-so 2009 season split between the Astros and Rangers.

It's easy to doubt him, if you haven't watched him play this year.

'I'm 38,' Rodriguez said. 'I'm not old. Thirty-eight is not a lot, the way I take care of myself, work myself. I can play this game for a while.' "

Amazing that the word "steroids" isn't even mentioned until the comments section.

The best RHP / One Hit Wonder in the whole league.

Yankee pitching prospect Ivan Nova tries a second career.

The Yankees have a lot of young players.

In fact, I believe the Yankees are younger than they were last year.

Last year, when they won the World Series and stuff.

What's truly staggering is that Lupica goes into some big explanation of how the Yankees are getting older and brittle, and then he writes this:

"And ask yourself another question: If they are waiting on Crawford, and they brought in Granderson and gave away Austin Jackson (.369 through Wednesday's games, most hits in the American League, on-base percentage of .421) because they are built to win another World Series now, then why not keep Johnny Damon for one more year? Why run off Damon - and do their best to kill his market in the process – by asking him to take a cut from $13 million to $7 million after the year Damon had for them?"

Right on cue, Damon got injured yesterday, by the way.

Probably a minor injury, just like the Yankee injuries.


But I will answer Lupica's question.

The reason the Yankees ran off Damon is:

The

Yankees

Wanted

To

Get

Younger

And

Faster.


You see, you can't write an article explaining how old and brittle the Yankees are and then ... in the middle of that article ... insist that the Yankees should have kept Johnny Damon.

How many closers can one team have?

"More to the point, the unavailability of Rivera and the fact that it took Girardi five relievers to close out this game only further emphasized how valuable he is and how vulnerable the Yankees are without him."

Well, duh.

Joba is closer #2 and he was unavailable after two saves in a row.


"At the same time, games like Wednesday's should make them uneasy about what it's going to be like when the Core Four, and especially Rivera, aren't around anymore."

This is very true.

The Yankees will be worse without the greatest closer of all time.

If Yankee fans have no worries in the present, they can at least worry about the future.

Yankees are boring.

Quite the attention-grabber there.

If the Yankees are boring, and your column is about the Yankees, then why should I read your column?

And the Yankees should have traded Wang to the Mets last year.

"There's a perfect solution to the Javy Vazquez problem in the Bronx: trade him to the Mets and everyone comes away happy."

Who are the Mets trading?


"Think about it. For the Mets there's just no getting around the obvious - they're going to need another starter to parlay their hot couple of weeks into serious contention this season. They can't live with the inconsistencies of both John Maine and Oliver Perez over the long haul."

Okay.

Who are the Mets trading?


"And while Vazquez is a mess mentally trying to overcome his issues pitching with the Yankees, put him back in the National League and he'd likely go right back to being a dependable starter, if not the Cy Young contender he was last year."

Sold.

Well, not entirely sold.

Vazquez's fastball is shot and his issues seem to be more than mental.

But, for the sake of this discussion, let's say the Yankees offered Vazquez to the Mets.

Who are the Mets trading?


"Considering the Yankees would also be dumping Vazquez's $11.5 million salary, it shouldn't take more than a decent prospect to make it a fair swap."

The Mets are taking on the $11.5M salary of the guy whose ERA is 10.00?

The Mets can afford an additional $11.5M?

If the Mets can afford an additional $11.5M, why didn't they just spend it on a free agent?


"The problem in all of this, of course, is that it's hard to imagine Yankees' GM Brian Cashman considering such a trade, even if it would be beneficial to the state of the ballclub."

I don't think that's the only problem in all this.

Cashman would gladly swallow his pride if it would help the Yankees.


First, you'll have to propose something more concrete than "a decent prospect," and, most importantly, you'll have to explain why the Mets would be willing to pay Vazquez so much money.

It would probably be more reasonable for the Yankees to pay half his salary and get a couple of prospects back.

But if you're going to do that, you might as well keep Vazquez around, see if his arm snaps back.

Sample sizes and half-truths.

"So you know: Through Friday night's games Austin Jackson - the kid the Yankees traded away for - was hitting .350 for the and had two more hits for the season than Robinson Cano does.

At a time when Cano is supposed to be the hottest guy in the world and MVP of everything."

I didn't even know that Cano was "supposed to be" the MVP of everything, but Cano had a great April.


"And right behind Jackson in the Tigers order, Johnny Damon is hitting like Johnny Damon for the Tigers, not exactly a startling development, even though the Yankees decided he needed to take nearly a 50% paycut last winter. (Damon is now hitting .344 and hit a walk-off homer Saturday.)

So you have to say it's a good thing the Yankees are pitching the way they are, because somebody might be asking where they've improved from last year to this with the changes they made in their batting order."

Yes, it would appear that Cashman is a moron.

Except Melky Cabrera is hitting .195 and Marcus Thames is hitting .550.

So Cashman is a genius ... and anybody who judges trades after one month is a moron.


The Yankees are second in the league in runs and fifth in ERA.

I didn't dive too deeply into these statistics, but it's just 30 seconds' worth of research to test Lupica's assertion that the Yankee pitching is saving the Yankee offense.

Don't intentionally put the winning run on base.

A couple of years ago, Girardi was criticized for pitching to Manny.

Only reason I remember is because I defended the move because I wouldn't intentionally put the winning run on base.

Today, Girardi intentionally walked Quentin, who was batting .182, and Quentin scored the winning run:

"The White Sox rallied in the seventh. Paul Konerko doubled with one out and Carlos Quentin drew an intentional walk from David Robertson (0-2) with two outs. Damaso Marte relieved and Pierzynski met him with a double to deep left-center."

Also, Girardi pinch hit for Winn and lost the DH.

Also, Girardi pinch ran for ARod in the ninth inning.