Pedro Beats Lincecum, Giants; Posada 7th Yankee With 20 Homers

Players of the Day for Thursday, September 3, 2009 American League Jorge Posada joined the Yankees' 20-homer club with a 9th inning 2-run blast to complete a 4-for-5 night at the plate in New York's 10-5 win over Toronto. Posada joined 6 other Bombers with 20 or more home runs this season, tying a major league record held by the 1996 Orioles, the 2000 Blue Jays and the 2005 Rangers. Posada also doubled and singled twice, driving in 4 runs and scoring one. The win kept the Yankees 7 1/2 ahead of the Red Sox in the division, a comfortable lead for the first week of September. New York can break the record if Derek Jeter hits three more homers this season, which would be 8 players with 20 or more. Jeter hasn't totaled 20 homers in a season since 2004. National League Pedro Martinez has been something special since joining the Phillies' rotation less than a month ago. With Thursday's 2-1 victory over the Giants, Pedro improved to 3-0 with a 3.52 ERA and a 1.09 WHIP as he outdueled Gaints' starter Tim Lincecum, who has only registed one win in his last 6 starts. Lincecum gave up both of the Phillies earned runs while striking out 11. Martinez fanned 9 in his 7 innings of work. Ryan Madsen pitched the 8th and Brad Lidge struggled, allowing a hit and a walk in the 9th, but managed to pick up his 28th save. The win helped the Phillies to an 8 1/2 game lead over both the Marlins and Braves in the NL East. The Giants remained 1 game behind Colorado in the wild card race, as the Rockies were losing, 8-2, to the Mets. Florida and Atlanta are both 4 back. NOTES: Weekend series to watch: Detroit visits Tampa Bay for three games, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Tigers are 5 games clear of Minnesota in the AL Central and can spoil Tampa Bay's post-season hopes by taking two of three or sweeping the Rays, who are already on the edge of elimination, 6 games behind Boston in the wild card race. Boston plays at the White Sox, another team fading fast, so the main beneficiary, should the Tigers tame the Rays, would be the Texas Rangers, who travel to Baltimore for 3 games. The Rangers have hit a very soft spot in the schedule. After the O's, they head to Cleveland for a 3-game set, then head home for a pair of 3-game series with the Mariners and A's before going head to head with the Angels September 18, 19 and 20. Texas remains 3 behind Boston in the wild card, but only 3 1/2 behind the Angels in the West.

Penny Stop Phils on 5 Hits; A-Rod Gets Hit #2500 in Yankee Win

Players of the Day for Wednesday, September 2, 2009 American League At first glance, with just 23 home runs, 75 RBI and a .274 batting average, it appears that Alex Rodriguez is not having one of his better years. Of course, the numbers are down mostly due to A-Rod having missed all of April and the first week of May due to hip surgery, so having played in just 99 games, he's not doing badly, especially considering that he collected his 2500th base hit in the fifth inning against the Orioles, extended his hitting streak to ten games with a 3-for-5 effort and drove in 4 runs as the Yankees won their 6th straight, beating Baltimore, 10-2. The 12-time all star is still 25 RBI from the century mark, a level he has achieved in 11 straight seasons. A-Rod will have to drive in an average of just about 0ne run per game the rest of the way to make it to 100. The numbers don't really seem to be on Rodriguez's mind, however, as the Yankees cruise toward another AL East title. Their win, coupled with Boston's 8-5 loss at Tampa Bay, pushed their lead to 7 1/2 games in the division and reduced the magic number to 23. With a 34-11 record since the all star break, the Yankees have been the hottest team in the major leagues. With 2502 hits, Rodriguez ranks 88th all-time on the hit parade and is 4th among Yankees, trailing Lou Gehrig (2721), Derek Jeter (2713) and Reggie Jackson (2584). The caveat is that Gehrig and Jeter got all their hits as Yankees, while Jackson and A-Rod acquired theirs with a number of teams. Still, the thought of both Jeter, who is 35, and Rodriguez, 33, both reaching the 3000-hit plateau, is stunning. Jeter and A-Rod could just be the best left side infielders to ever take the field together. National League Brad Penny didn't fare well in Boston. Like so many National League hurlers, he simply found the transition to the AL more demanding than expected, so, after going 7-8 with a 5.61 ERA in 25 starts with the Red Sox, he hitched on with the Giants and viola! he's back in the National League throwing 8 innings of shutout ball against the Phillies in a 4-0 San Francisco win. Penny seemed at ease and in complete control of all his pitches, limiting the hard-hitting Phillies to just 5 hits, walking one and striking out two. Penny threw 102 pitches, getting 14 batsmen on ground outs and 8 on fly balls. It was just the boost the Giants needed, as the Rockies remained one game ahead in the wild card race with a 5-2 win over the Mets. The Braves are 4 back and the Marlins 5 off the pace. With Penny, the Giants have solidified an already stellar pitching staff which includes Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum and Barry Zito. With 29 games left on the schedule, each of the top four starters could get 7 starts, a huge edge in a short period of time. NOTES: The Texas Rangers simply won't go away. They continue to dog both the wild card leader, Boston, and the AL West-leading Angels. Texas trails the Red Sox by just 2 1/2 after knocking off Toronto, 6-4, on Wednesday, and are just 3 1/2 behind the Angels. LA hasn't been able to quite put away the Rangers and they run the risk of losing their grip on the division as they face Texas 7 times in the final two weeks of the season. The two teams hook up at Arlington on September 18, 19 and 20, and then meet again in LA on the 28th, 29th, 30th and October 1. Those games should decide the division, especially since the Angels have, directly preceding the first series in Texas, a make-up game at the Yankees followed by a 3-game series in Boston. The Rangers could make the race a tight one.

Posada's Pair Knocks Down O's; Hamels 2-Hits Giants

Players of the Day for Tuesday, September 1, 2009 American League Jorge Posada cranked a pair of homers out of Camden Yards, drove in three runs and scored three times, to lead the Yankees to their 5th straight win and second in a row over Baltimore with a 9-6 conquest. Posada needs just one more homer to become the 7th Yankee to hit 20 or more this season, which would tie a record held by three teams: the 1996 Orioles, the 2000 Blue Jays and the 2005 Rangers. How many homers have the Yankees hit? 207. They have 30 games left. In order to break the AL and major league record of 264 held by the 1997 Seattle Mariners - a team which included A-Rod, Ken Griffey Jr., Jay Buhner and Edgar Martinez - they'll have to smack roughly two every game, but they have proven capable of doing that. The only Yankee starters who do not have 20 homers are leadoff man, Derek Jeter, who has 17, and #9 hitter Melky Cabrera (11). Jeter is capable of hitting three more in September, which, in addition to Posada, would be 8 players with 20 or more homers, a record that may not ever be broken. In terms of Jeter hitting 20, he's done it three times - in 1999, 2001 and 2004. The 17 he has thus far in 2009 are the most he's hit since 2005, when he had 19. With the Yankees now counting down magic numbers (currently 24) to the AL crown, Jeter may get some time off or be green-lighted to go yard. Extrapolated statistics are inconclusive. At his current pace - 17 homers in 126 games - if he plays all 30 remaining games (he won't), he'd hit 21. While Posada's a lock for 20, Jeter chances are very iffy. National League The Giants managed to sweep the Rockies over the weekend, earning them a tie for first in the wild card standings and a day off Monday as they traveled to Philadelphia. On Tuesday, they fell back to earth (and a game behind the Rockies, who won) as Cole Hamels suddenly regained his 2008 form and hurled a complete game, 2-hit shutout. Ryan Howard drove in Shane Victorino with the game's only run in the 4th inning for the 1-0 Philly win. Hamels (8-8), face two over the minimum, threw 80 of his 118 pitches for strikes, fanned 9 and issued only one walk. Both of the hits came leading off innings - in the second and ninth. In between, Hamels put down 21 straight batters, including 4 straight strikeouts in the 5th and 6th. The Giants' hitters were no match for the 6'3" lefty who seems to have found his game at precisely the right time of year. The Phillies have a 7 1/2 game lead over Atlanta in the NL East, a seemingly insurmountable bulge. The magic number for Philly fans is 25.

8 RBI for Toronto's Lind; Lee Powers Astros Past Cubs

Players of the Day for Monday, August 31, 2009 American League The Toronto Blue Jays got rid of high-priced Alex Rios earlier in the year, tried to unload Roy Halladay and a probably stuck with the multi-million-dollar-dud, Vernon Wells, but in Adam Lind, they have a keeper. Here's a guy who just comes out every day and plays hard, and plays well. Lind was off the charts in Monday's 18-10 hit parade over the Rangers as he drove in 8 runs - the most in the AL in two years and tied for the most in one game in the majors this season with Josh Willingham (July 27), who did it with two grand slams. Lind began his barrage in the 4th inning, extending the Blue Jays' 6-0 lead to 10-0 with a grand slam, his 26th home run of the year. The Rangers, however, fighting for their lives in the middle of the wild card race, cut the lead back to one, scoring 7 in the 5th, 2 in the 6th and 1 in the 7th while the Jays added just one. Looking for some insurance in the top of the ninth, Lind led off with homer #27, a solo shot, and, after his teammates had added a few more, finished off the Toronto scoring with a bases-clearing double which plated three runs. To go with the 27 dingers, Lind has 89 RBI and a .303 batting average. The loss dropped the Rangers 6 behind LA in the AL West and 4 back of idle Boston in the wild card. National League Carlos Lee is a guy who is having another in a series of solid seasons, but, playing in the relative obscurity of cellar-dwelling Houston, doesn't get much recognition. A .308 hitter, Lee also has 22 home runs and 85 RBI on the season, and Monday he may have put the final nail in the Cubs' post-season coffin, singling in two runs in the 3rd inning and knocking a ball over the center field ivy in the 5th for two more runs in the Astros' 5-3 win. The Astros have fallen out of contention for anything long ago, but they want to make sure the Cubs - still in second place in the Central division - don't make their way to any games in October. Just three games behind them in the division standings, the Astros probably wouldn't mind passing Chicago by as the season winds down. The Cubs are 6 games back of the Rockies and Giants in the wild card race and 10 1/2 behind the Cardinals.