Suspension of Disbelief

The Yanks took two of three from the Indians, losing Randy Johnson for five games, on a suspension for throwing at his archenemy, Eddie Perez. Five games means that, so long as Randy times making and dropping an appeal correctly, he'll get an extra day's rest between starts. Joe Torre gets a one-day suspension, which will be nice, because he never really gets to enjoy Manhattan during the summertime.

Nothing like a dose of cynicism to start the day.

In other news, I covered one of the games of the Twins-Red Sox games for Game of the Week. This was the Schilling-Santana matchup which lead off the series, which the Twins swept, catapulting the Yanks into first place. Here's a taste of the Game of the Week:

Coming into this game, Minnesota was 11th in the league in runs scored, and a look at this lineup gives you an inkling why: aside from Joe Mauer and Mike Cuddyer, this lineups brutal. Lets put it another way. Mauers WARP this season is 4.1; the rest of the Twins lineup, put together, is 4.7. And this may well be the Twins best lineup. If youre looking for a reason that the Twins are under .500, this is one big reason, the other being a ridiculously high batting average on balls in play (nattily abbreviated BABIP) of .341. The next highest figure in the AL is .319, so we might have to consider that the Twins have been unlucky in the number of hits theyve allowed so far this year, and perhaps expect their pitching to improve as the year goes on.

On the other hand, in some circles, the fall of the Red Sox from the offensive catbird seat is a surprise. Coming into the game, they were sixth in the league in runs, having flip-flopped with the Rangers over the weekend. As you can see above, the Red Sox feature two different lineupsfive batters which still have the