New York Yankees

Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated is a lot of things, but this is a great take on the upcoming contract negotiations with Derek Jeter.

Take a read:

WhatIfSports.com utilizes its award-winning baseball simulation engine to present the most comprehensive and unbiased ranking possible of all 30 teams in baseball each Monday during the regular season. To come up with the rankings—using only their statistical performance to date this season—each team is simulated against every other team 100 times (50 at home and 50 away) so that all five pitchers in the current rotation start ten times at each location.

Yahoo Sports and ESPN are reporting that there are six teams that are taking looks at Japanese star Yu Darvish. It is not a 100% decision by Darvish to make the move to the United States, but the teams are already lining up.

The system used to sign him would be very much like the Daisuke Matsuzaka system where there is a bidding war.  It takes up quite a bit of money as learned by the Red Sox, but it could all payoff. 

There has never been a more successful quartet of players than Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and Jorge Posada who have won a combined 19 World Series together.

I guess none of us should be surprised that the Boston Red Sox hype machine/cheerleading squad out of Bristol has published yet another piece claiming that Derek Jeter is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

That group of tools lost any sense of objectivity on the matter many, many years ago.

Alex Rodriguez locked in on a Brian Matusz offering Monday and unleashed the instantly-recognizable swing that has always seemed too easy and too effortless, to do any real damage.

But we know better by now. Rodriguez cocked his head to follow the flight of the ball then flashed his trademark "Trust me, I'm awesome" glance into his own dugout: always his sign that he knows he got all of it.

Via Craig Calcaterra of Hardball Talk:

Via the NY Post:

Maybe it is not a mirror image, but Buck Showalter admits becoming manager of the Orioles feels a bit like when he once became manager of the Yankees.