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Last week's three-game series between the Yankees and the Rays in Tampa Bay featured three rather thrilling one-run contests played in an electrifying, playoff-like atmosphere. Given the apparent tension of the seesaw battles, one could be forgiven for thinking that the games were do-or-die, with their outcomes having a strong bearing on which team would play into October and which would be consigned to an early start to hunting season.

One look at Baseball Prospectus' Playoff Odds would have told you otherwise. The Yankees, who entered the series with a half-game lead in the American League East standings, held a 97.9 percent shot at reaching the playoffs. The Rays, by dint of a much easier schedule down the stretch, held a 99.3 percent shot. Playing the part of vanquished foes at an undisclosed location were the Red Sox, 7 1/2 games out of first place and with just a 2.1 percent chance; lacking Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Mike Cameron—all done for the year due to injuries—their odds were probably even lower than that.

So in the grand scheme of things, it would be tough to pretend that a September Yanks-Rays series actually mattered much; barring either team repeating the 2000 Yankees' stretch-drive imitation of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, both teams will reach the postseason, and both those games and this week's four-game series in the Bronx represent nothing more than jockeying for position. Players and managers from both clubs have dutifully said otherwise, that their goal is the division title and home-field advantage through the first two rounds of the playoffs rather than the backdoor invitation via the wild card, but watching the way Yankees manager Joe Girardi ran his bullpen in the opener of last week's series—a taut pitchers' duel between David Price and CC Sabathia which remained scoreless through the first 10 innings—reveals otherwise.

While the Yanks had come in off a rough stretch of having been swept in three grueling games in the Texas heat, Girardi was clearly more concerned with making sure his pitchers were rested. After using Kerry Wood and Boone Logan—two pitchers who've been the key to the Yankees bullpen's second-half resurgence—following Sabathia's eight stellar innings, Girardi passed up the opportunity to use Joba Chamberlain, David Robertson, and Mariano Rivera, all with at least a day's rest under their belts, in a tie ballgame on the road. Instead he went with mop-up men Chad Gaudin and Sergio Mitre; the latter yielded a game-ending home run to Reid Brignac, the first hitter he faced. "Maybe you have to lose the battle to win the war," lamented pitching coach Dave Eilland of the A-listers' unavailability. Meanwhile, the Yankees' lineup for that series was without Brett Gardner and Nick Swisher, both of whom received cortisone shots, where they might have played under more meaningful circumstances or with 25-man rosters instead of larger ones padded by September call-ups.

Given the persistence of home-field advantage throughout the regular season—home teams win at about a 54 percent clip—you'd think it would more matter in the postseason, particularly with the AL's four likely invitees holding stellar records at home; the Yankees and Twins both shared 49-25 records at home through Sunday, while the Rangers were 48-26 and the Rays 46-29. In fact, the tale of the tape is a mixed bag. According to Joe Sheehan, since 1998, when Major League Baseball began seeding playoff teams instead of using a pre-set rotation, teams with the home field advantage have won 45 of 84 series (a .536 winning percentage). That figure suggests an even larger HFA, since the math on a four percent HFA comes out to a 51.3 percent chance of the home team winning a Game Seven. On the other hand, home teams are just 9-10 since 1998 in the small sample of decisive Games Five and Seven. More damningly, as many wild-card winners—who don't have home-field advantage in either of the first two rounds—have gone on to reach the World Series as have No. 1 one seeds in that time span, with eight apiece.

Whether or not home-field advantage for the playoffs was on the line, Monday night's matchup in the Bronx was elevated into a gala affair, as the Yankees had chosen the first night of their final regular-season homestand to unveil a monument to deceased principal owner George Steinbrenner, who passed away on July 13. Following the introduction of Steinbrenner's four children and several grandchildren to the crowd of 47,437 came a video tribute that bore a suspicious resemblance to the one which played during the team's July 16 pre-game tribute to the Boss (also a game against the Rays, one won in emotional fashion by a Swisher walk-off homer).

Next came a procession of current Yankees players and coaches, the Steinbrenner family, commissioner Bud Selig, and a cavalcade of pinstriped alumni, including not only Yogi Berra and Reggie Jackson but also Roy White, Lee Mazzilli, Tino Martinez, David Wells, and even more notably, Joe Torre and Don Mattingly. Three days after the announcement of the latter as the successor to the former's position as Dodgers' manager, both took advantage of the team's off day to fly in for their first visit to Yankee Stadium since their unseemly 2007 departures; prior to the game general manager Brian Cashman met privately to mend fences with Torre, as the two hadn't spoken since then. Both returning heroes were greeted with the warmest ovations of the night from the near-capacity crowd.

After much ceremony, a massive plaque—seven feet by five feet, weighing in at 760 pounds—was unveiled; the thing easily dwarfed the headstone-like monuments to Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle, to say nothing of the lesser lights whose smaller plaques adorn the back wall of the dark, dusty and colorless excuse for a forgotten garage which the Yankees have turned Monument Park into in their new stadium. The team stood silently as the plaque's inscription was read then Frank Sinatra's "My Way" played during the family photo ops (son Frank Jr. would sing "God Bless America" in the seventh inning). The final scene of the festivities was a poignant one, as the lone figure of Mariano Rivera still gazed reverently at the monument before the participants dispersed.

As for the game itself, the night's matchup featured Matt Garza on the hill for the Rays and Ivan Nova for the Yankees, a rematch of the one game the Yanks won down in St. Petersburg last week. The Yanks had battered Garza for nine hits, two homers and six runs in 4 2/3 innings, the second time this season they'd roughed him up; for the year he'd allowed 10 runs and four homers in 11 2/3 frames against them. The rookie Nova had been unable to hold the 6-0 lead to which he'd been staked; in his attempt to net the kid a "W," Girardi fiddled while Nova burned away the entire lead in the fifth inning, abetted by a complicit bullpen.

The first five innings whizzed by, though Garza had far from his best stuff; his velocity was down a tick or two, his command spotty. He served up a two-run homer to Curtis Granderson in the third inning, the 28th he'd allowed of the season, third in the AL behind teammate James Shields and the Yankees' Javier Vazquez. Furthermore, Garza failed to notch not only a single strikeout but a single swing-and-miss through the first four innings. He finally got both after Mark Teixeira took a checked swing just a little too far in the fifth, but by then he'd almost lost the plot entirely, loading the bases with no outs thanks to a Ben Zobrist error, a ground-rule double down the right-field line by Derek Jeter, and a walk to Granderson. The Yankees added another run via an Alex Rodriguez sacrifice fly to left field, and Garza then intentionally walked Robinson Cano to reload the bases, a move which backfired when Swisher worked a five-pitch walk to plate the Yankees' fourth run. Garza finally escaped his mess by getting Lance Berkman to pop up.

Meanwhile, Nova, who's enjoyed something of a breakout season thanks to added velocity, continued to stake his case for a post-season start by yielding just one hit and one walk over the first five frames while striking out four, all of them on curveballs (three swinging, one looking). Alas, he got into trouble during the sixth inning, just as the Rays' lineup turned over for the second time. That's a continued problem for Nova, who's held hitters to a .225/.259/.392 showing in their first two plate appearances and a .391/.517/.435 showing in their third time up—an indication that his stuff may only go so far at the major-league level. "I've been doing the same thing I'm not supposed to do and I've got to figure it out," he'd say sheepishly after the game.

Like Garza just half an inning earlier, Nova loaded the bases with no outs in the sixth via singles by Jason Bartlett and Ben Zobrist sandwiched around a walk of John Jaso. The Rays scored their first run when Francisco Cervelli's mitt got in the way of Carl Crawford's swing; what looked initially like a swinging bunt and an out turned into a catcher's interference call by home-plate umpire Tim McClelland. They added another on an Evan Longoria grounder, but it came via an around-the-horn double play whose completion ended Nova's night. The starter had another run charged to his room when Logan—who after weeks of strong work has begun pitching as though he's suddenly remembered he's just Boone Logan—surrendered a dying quail to Dan Johnson, then walked Matt Joyce. The bases were reloaded when Teixeira misplayed Carlos Pena's dribbler down the first baseline into an error.

So, with a 4-3 lead with two outs and the bases loaded in the sixth inning, Girardi again demonstrated his disregard for this particular battle's importance by calling upon Gaudin and his 5.28 ERA rather than Chamberlain (who'd thrown just 11 total pitches in two appearances on Saturday and Sunday, his only work since September 15), Robertson (23 pitches on Sunday) or the bullpen-exiled Vazquez (no activity since September 10 in Texas). To absolutely nobody's surprise, Gaudin walked B.J. Upton to force in the tying run before retiring Jason Bartlett on a fly ball. If it was an audition for a post-season role it was an inauspicious one, though to be fair, that was also the first inherited runner Gaudin has allowed to score (out of eight) since his nightmarish return to pinstripes back on May 27. "I liked the matchup. Liked his stuff against Upton and Bartlett," Giriardi would say after the game while acknowledging Chamberlain's unavailability.

Surprisingly, even with the league's best bullpen waiting in the wings, Rays manager Joe Maddon elected to return Garza to the hill for the bottom of the sixth despite his loss of the strike zone; he'd thrown 45 balls and 39 strikes to that point. The Yanks seized the opportunity, as Gardner legged out an infield single to short and then Cervelli scooted a ball through the left-side hole once Bartlett broke to cover second base. Jeter followed with an RBI single up the middle, taking second when Upton unsuccessfully tried to nab Cervelli at third base. That was it for the increasingly hapless Garza, and on came the normally reliable Grant Balfour, who didn't fare much better. He fell behind 2-1 to Granderson, then surrendered a towering three-run homer off the right field foul pole, thus restoring the Yankees' four-run lead. It was Granderson's second homer of the night and 11th since retooling his swing in mid-August; he's hitting .273/.372/.578.

The Rays kept trying to claw their way back into the game. With Roberston on in relief of Gaudin, both Jaso and Zobrist singled, the latter with a smash off Jeter's outstretched glove as he leapt into the air. Cano made a nifty spin play on Crawford for a force out, but Longoria scored Jaso via a sac fly. Robertson departed in favor of Wood, who closed out the seventh and pitched a 1-2-3 eighth before handing over to Rivera, who'd blown the save the day before in Baltimore and wasn't exactly in top form on this night. After shattering Jaso's bat on a ground out, Mo yielded a run via a Zobrist ground-rule double and a Longoria blooper then hit Johnson with a pitch to put the tying run on base with two outs. But Rivera ultimately nailed the door shut, giving the Yankees a  1 ½-game lead in the AL East standings and a 62-38 edge in the chances of taking the division.

Ultimately, however, the big beneficiary of these not-tremendously-meaningful September matchups between the Yankees and the Rays may be the Twins. They are a major league-best 44-18 since the All-Star break and now have 90 wins, one less than New York but one more than Tampa Bay. As the AL East's two heavyweights tenderize each other with body blow after body blow, the soon-to-be-crowned AL Central champs may be the ones having the last laugh—until October, of course.

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achaik
9/21
Tampa should come up with some ceremony next time NY comes to town, how many times are the Rays going to have their starter sitting on ice in Yankee Stadium waiting for the game to start?

Next we'll have Ronan Tynan's 45 minute renditions of God Bless America back to keep visiting pitchers lounging around in the dugout instead of warming up.
jjaffe
9/21
Or maybe Yankee Stadium could install a series of catwalks above the field to replicate the absurdity of playing under Tropicana Field's arcane ground rules. Home field advantage cuts both ways, and if I'm not mistaken it was actually the Rays who had one of the highest HFAs of any team when he studied the matter a year ago, higher than the Yankees.

Also, Ronan Tynan is persona non grata at Yankee Stadium following a flap over an antisemitic joke he told in public.
achaik
9/21
Oh, I know. I just didn't really get the purpose of inflicting the long waits on the Rays for both Steinbrenner ceremonies (the first, obviously, the timing couldn't be helped, but this one it could have). The Trop's quirks are structural, the Yankees' are theatrical.

I know Tynan is gone- but that just always irked me.
jjaffe
9/21
Come now, you're selling yourself short when you say you didn't get the purpose of their using a particular tic of HFA against their current top rivals. On one level, it seems pretty obvious why they'd do it against the Rays rather than the Orioles or Royals, right?

dcj207
9/21
Steinbrenner gets a monument bigger than those of Ruth, Gherig, DiMaggio and Mantle...combined.

Vanity thy name is George.
jerrykenny
9/21
Yeah, have to agree on that point.
brownsugar
9/22
Unless that monument was commissioned over a year ago, I'm pretty sure George didn't have a whole lot to do with the size of it.

I'm not sure when it happened, but my opinion on Steinbrenner softened up over the years. Not sure if it was the Seinfeld parody, watching him finally back off and let Cashman do his job, or watching the Nuttings and the Lorias of MLB take revenue sharing money and stuff it in their pockets instead of improving their ballclub. Whatever it was, I'll remember him more for his passion for winning than I'll remember his passion for hiring and firing Billy Martin.
jerrykenny
9/21
Frank Jr. sang the national anthem. I believe it was one of Steinbrenner's granddaughters who sang in the 7th inning.
jjaffe
9/22
Ah, you know, I got those two reversed in my mind. You are correct.
sbnirish77
9/22
"one could be forgiven for thinking that the games were do-or-die, with their outcomes having a strong bearing on which team would play into October and which would be consigned to an early start to hunting season."

I agree the games aren't do or die but aren't as quick to dismiss that their outcomes won't go a long way to determining who plays deep into October.

1. The Twins are about 5-20 in their last 25 games at Yankee Stadium including the horrors of last year's playoffs.

2. The Rays have lost 10 of their last 13 games at Yankee Stadium.

3. The Yankees would love to pitch Sabathia and Pettitte in the first two games of a playoff series at home.

4. The Yankees would love to keep Hughes out of Yankee Stadium for game 3 as he has given up 20 of his 25 HRs at Yankee Stadium.

5. As you corerctly pointed out, both the Rays and Twins are two of the best home teams in baseball.

Those are all strong trends that are hard to dismiss.

While I wouldn't mess with my starting rotation to prevent Sabathia, Price, or Liriano starting in game 1, I wouldn't be tanking high leverage extra inning games by pitching Chad Gaudin (right after he blew a similar game last week) to protect Joba and Robertson.

In 2007 BP had a number of articles discussing whether winning the AL East was worth the effort. Every article I recall suggested that both the Red Sox and Yankees shut it down. The Red Sox signed onto the program and the Yankees accommodated them by doing the same.

By winning the AL East, the Red sox got several benefits that ultimately lead to their championship.

1. They got to feel good about themselves not blowing yet another 10 game lead to the Yankees.

2. They got to play the first round of playoffs at home against a teram (LA Angels) they had abused in Fenway over the years both in the regular season and playoffs.

3. They got to play the Indians (who had the best overall record) in a seven game series instead of a five game seires.

The difference of those two additional games?

While both the Yankees and Red Sox were both down 3-1 to the Indians, the Yankees went home and the Red Sox got the opportunity to stage their comeback.

The Red Sox then went on to win the World Series after the hottest team in baseball history, the Colorado Rockies, were put on ice for nealry a week due to the ridiculous scheduling of MLB baseball.

One could debate whether the outcome would have been the same if the Yankees had won the division, but what can't be debated is that the Red Sox got some great benefits by winning the AL east that ultimately helped them get their championship.

And the Yankees were left to deal with the once-in-a-lifetime occurance of the midgies in Cleveland in a short 5-game series.

jjaffe
9/22
Many very good points in there, particularly on your first list, though pointing to the midges as a hazard of punting the division is a stretch.
sbnirish77
9/23
Chad Gaudin gives up 2 HRs in the 7th of a one-run game after the Yankees were able to survive Mr. Moseley. No word if Joba and Robertson went home after the rain delay to get a good night's rest.

jjaffe
9/23
I didn't see the game, but I do know that Robertson was unavailable due to back spasms.
jjaffe
9/23
Also, Chamberlain threw 26 pitches and 1.2 innings (tying his season high) the night before while getting the save and covering for Mariano Rivera. The Yanks have only pitched him in back-to-back games after throwing more than 20 pitches once this season. I'm not saying they couldn't have pushed it, but resting him was consistent with the way Girardi had managed all year.
sbnirish77
9/23
Isn't the easiest way to rest your entire team beating the Rays the last two games and go up by 4 1/2 games with 9 to play?

The Yankees blew that chance because they didn't want to play hard and put their best out there for the last three innings tonight. With the rain delay I'm OK with Gaudin OR Mosley, but after getting past one of them and to the 7th in a one-run game, its time to go for the putaway.

With Sabathia going tomorrow night, many of those relievers won't be needed anyways.

Just not a very good use of your resources in the most leveraged situation.
cdt719
9/23
"According to Joe Sheehan, since 1998, when Major League Baseball began seeding playoff teams instead of using a pre-set rotation, teams with the home field advantage have won 45 of 84 series (a .536 winning percentage). That figure suggests an even larger HFA, since the math on a four percent HFA comes out to a 51.3 percent chance of the home team winning a Game Seven."

Except that the team with home field advantage is often the team with the better record (excepting cases where the wild card has a better record but can't have HFA) so we'd expect them to win slightly more series than if the two teams were equal (the 51.3% figure.) Also, 84 total postseason series is a small enough sample size there could be a percent or two of error in there. So I don't think we can really draw any conclusions about increased HFA in the postseason.
jjaffe
9/23
Yes, and if you look at the sentence surrounding the excerpt you'll see that I acknowledge the inconclusiveness of the data. "In fact, the tale of the tape is a mixed bag..."
sbnirish77
9/24
No need to worry .... the Yanks took care of this tonight. Makes that game last night even more important.

The Rays are only 1/2 game behind. Since they took the season serires by winning the last two games the Yanks have to finish 1 game ahead ... which really makes them 1/2 game behind right now.

The Rays get 3 games vs SEA (without Felix), Balt, and close with 4 vs KC.

The Yanks have 6 with Boston (prob 2 Bucholz starts) and 3 with TOR.

They will not have as a highly leveraged situation to win the division as they did the last 2 nights.

Kudos to Crawford, Longoria, and Price who came up big the last 2 nights and esentially won the division. The bottom of the 5th with the Yanks ahead 3-1 and bases loaded, 1 out, with the heart of the Yankee order will haunt them through October.

The Yanks will have to do it the hard way ... playing at Minnesota with the best overall record,best second half record and nearly the best home record, while the Rays will get TEX at home still wondering if Josh Hamilton will be healthy facing a TEX pitching staff with nearly as many Sept questions as their own.

The Yanks will be left to decide if they flip Hughes and Pettitte to keep Hughes out of Yankee Stadium (and taking Pettitte out of his trsted #2 playoff rotation spot).

Are they good enough to overcome all of this? Perehaps but they gave away an awful lot in the last two days to make the job a lot more difficult.