How far did Brian Bruney fall?

A year ago, he pitched in three of the four ALDS games. Yesterday, the Yankees told him to go home, opting to not include the right-handed reliever around like they did with Ross Ohlendorf, Chris Britton and Jose Veras. (sic)

“I was shocked,” Bruney said.

Never mind the sentence in that quote that isn’t English. That’s The New York Post for ya.

Instead let’s focus on the good news: After six months of trying, we finally got the Yankees to recognize that Chris Britton is better than Brian Bruney!

Inexplicably, Brian Bruney threw 50.0 innings for the Yanks this year. His 4.68 ERA isn’t terrible unti you consider the 10.61 ERA he’s sported since the beginning of August. He was sent down to the minors to work on his command and still managed to sport a K:BB ratio of nearly 1:1 this season. He didn’t show a willingness to work on his pitching but did sport a nifty bad attitude.

Meanwhile, while Jose Veras (5.79, 1:1 K:BB, 9.1 IP) didn’t show much, he seems to be one of Joe Torre’s Guys. Britton threw 12.2 innings with a 3.55 ERA, and Ohlendorf, very impressive in 6.1 innings, struck out 9 and threw strikes.

So as information about the postseason roster trickles out, at least we won’t be subjected to Brian Bruney in the postseason. No word yet on Ron “I let all my inherited runners score” Villone yet.

Sean Henn drew the short straw for today’s game, and as Yankee fans, who cares? Sure, it would be nice for Robinson Cano to drive in 3 runs on Sunday and for Bobby Abreu to get that elusive 100th RBI, but in the grand scheme of baseball, the Yanks’ next meaningful game isn’t until Thursday.

That day, the Yanks will play their first postseason game in Cleveland since the 1998 ALCS. From those two teams, only Kenny Lofton, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera remain (or have returned to) the same teams they were on then. Unbeknownst to me, Ron Villone threw a few innings on the 1998 Indians but wasn’t on the playoff roster. (Hear that, Joe? He was not on the playoff roster. Take a lesson.)

The Yanks got a bit lucky with the playoff schedule as Boston picked the long series. While this may limit Joba Chamberlain’s availability and otherwise tax a weak Yankee bullpen, by playing the short series, they won’t have to face C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona twice each. Sabathia would go twice only if the series runs to five games.

The schedule and pitching match-ups follow with game times to be determined:

Thursday: Cleveland - Wang vs. Sabathia
Friday: Cleveland - Pettitte vs. Carmona
Sunday: New York - Clemens vs. Westbrook
Monday: New York (if necessary) - Mussina/Hughes vs. Byrd
Tuesday: Cleveland (if necessary) - Wang vs. Sabathia

Let the fun begin, and feel free to discuss today’s game here once 1:35 p.m. rolls around.

Yesterday afternoon, I received an interesting e-mail from a reader that I wanted to share with the group:

I was online Tuesday morning with all my account numbers and Ticketmaster accounts with credit card info saved and in place. In short I was ready to pull the trigger as soon as the tickets went on sale and I was able to get 2 games.

What i wanted to mention though is that when i clicked on “best available” at like 1 second after 10 a.m. I was able to get Tier Res. 34. I thought those were kind of weak tickets for such an early response. You think if I took the time to chose Main Reserve or something I could have done better? Just curious … it seemed like the system was set up to give you worst available than best?

This is an interesting question, and one I get asked a few times every season. TR 34 doesn’t quite seem like the “best” available at any point during the season. Yet, many people who try to get the playoff tickets get shafted. Why?

In short, the answer lies in the season ticket holders. All of the Yanks’ season ticket plans come with playoff preferences. Since a vast majority of season ticket holders hold seats for flex plans, they can’t all get what they would consider their own seats for the playoffs, but they do get early access to seats in the Stadium.

By the time the team releases the tickets to the general public, most of the seats - and all of the good seats - are already sold. That’s why people logging in at 10 a.m. get stuck with TR 34.

Had our reader opted for Main Reserve instead, he would have received equally as bad seats but would have been charged more for them. So pick your poison.

Today is going to be the longest day off of the season. When all we want is more baseball, when all we want is for the Yanks to keep on going with this miraculous run, the schedule throws an off-day our way.

The Yanks, sitting pretty just 1.5 games behind the Red Sox for the East and 5.5 games up in the Wild Card race, have a date with the dance in October all but sewn up. Yet, we have to wait today. We have to wait for a team that we shouldn’t underestimate, a team that just swept Boston and throws some seriously good pitchers at us this weekend, to come to town.

So as we while away the time with a caption contest that will return later this morning, let’s reset our favorite picture: The race for the AL East title. The Yanks are just one out game out in that ever-important loss column. What do they need to go to tie for the division lead which would technically hand them the division crown?

And this is what I call a pennant race.

Let’s reset yesterday’s look at what it will take to win the division. With a Yankee win yesterday and a Boston loss, as Joe discussed this morning, the Yankees find themselves just 2.5 games out of first place (2 on the loss side).

As Cool Standings tells me that the Yanks win the division 22.8 percent of the time - the highest its been since the start of May - let’s take a look at what it will take for the Yanks to win the division. Remember: All they have to do is tie the Red Sox, and the AL East crown is theirs.

It’s possible, if a bit improbable right now, for the Yanks to capture that crown. They just have to keep winning. And I’m trying not to think too hard about the Devil Rays’ blowing those two games against Boston last week. Oh, the “What If’s” of baseball.

When the Yanks take the field tonight, they will be just 3.5 games behind Boston and 3 out on the loss side. They haven’t been this close to the division lead since April, but it won’t be easy to catch that crown (and those games Tampa Bay blew last week loom large).

But the Yankees do hold something of a trump card if the improbable happens. With their victory on Sunday, the Yanks clinched the season series against the Red Sox. A tie atop the AL East hands the division title - and home field advantage should those teams meet again - to the Yankees.

Now, with two weeks left in the season, the Red Sox have 11 games left: 2 @ Toronto; 3 @ Tampa Bay; 2 vs. Oakland; 4 vs. Minnesota. The Yankees have 12 games left: 2 vs. Baltimore; 4 vs. Toronto; 3 @ Tampa Bay; 3 @ Baltimore. What needs to happen for the Yanks to tie?

Right now, on paper, it’s not impossible. The Red Sox face better teams than the Yanks do. But these better teams have struggled lately, and the Yanks aren’t the greatest against their three division opponents.

But things are looking up for the Yanks. Yesterday, CoolStandings had the Yanks winning the division 6.5 percent of the time. Today, it shot up to 12 percent. As we all know, in baseball, anything can happen. It sure would be great to catch the Red Sox even if it would take a minor miracle. Or at least a major slump.

For the division:

For the Wild Card:

So, with everything else being equal (though it never is), the Yanks have as good a shot of missing the playoffs as they do of winning the AL East. I like those odds.

Well, it is officially on. As you can see by the lovely ESPN map reproduced above — and if you want a better view, just click on it — the rest of the country doubts the Yankees. In state after state, from Maine to Alaska, the only people who think the Yanks will make the playoffs are those of us who live in New York and New Jersey.

It’s time to show the everyone else. It’s time to show to the 80 percent of delusional Red Sox fans who don’t think the Yankees will make the playoffs that they are flat-out wrong. Roger Clemens, who had a no-hitter going until David Ortiz met the Upper Deck, did his part tonight while Kyle Farnsworth made us all wish that the Joba Rules, which shouldn’t be lifted, weren’t in place.

Alex Rodriguez, on his march toward a showdown with the Yanks over his contract, did his job. He delivered a home run off Josh Beckett that cleared the fence and gave the Yanks the breathing room they needed. Mariano Rivera did his job plus one more out, bailing out Kyle Farnsworth for the umpteeth time. He made the Red Sox look bad. Three of the four outs were dribblers that didn’t even make it past the mound. The other out was a routine groundball to A-Rod.

So now the Yanks are six not-insurmountable games out against the Red Sox. But the Sox play the Tampa Bay Bad News Bears a few times too many this month while the Yanks play the Orioles, their 2007 bugaboo who have yet to win with Dave Trombley in as their permanent manager.

The nation doubts us even the Wild Card of which we share in the lead right now. They doubt us a playoff spot in October. They doubt the hottest team since June and the best franchise of all time. We’ll show them.

And hey, we can always take solace in the graph below the nifty new more tag (Hint: It doesn’t load a new page) the jump (We disabled the problematic More tag for now). We Yankee fans may be the most obnoxious, but the Red Sox are quickly gaining ground. To vote, head to this terrible Jim Caple column, but don’t read it. It’s really bad.

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I won’t front like I watched yesterday’s game. After Matsui drove in the game’s initial run, I was disconnected, not to reconnect until 8 p.m. when I saw the ticker display a 9-3 win for the Yanks. Coupled by a 3-1 Boston loss to Anaheim, and we’re all the sudden back in good shape. Not that we were ever in bad shape; five games (now four) behind a suddenly inconsistent team is nothing to fret about. All we have to do is gain one game over the next seven and we can tie the division at home against Boston. Strangely, that’s not how I’d like it to go.

You may think I’m crazy, but there’s nothing I’d love more than to finish the day on August 30 one game behind Boston. That means we need to gain three games over the next two weeks — though that’s much tougher than it seems. I want Boston to leave the city knowing that we’re literally right on their heels. One slip up and we take first. However, I don’t want that slip-up to happen quite yet.

Over the two weeks following the Red Sox trip to the Stadium, the Yanks play Tampa Bay, Seattle, Kansas City, and Toronto. I’d like to gain one game during that stretch, tying the division as we head up to Fenway for a weekend series on September 14th. And that, like last year, is where I want to see the death blow dealt. Sweeping them and putting them three games behind with just two weeks left in the season would be the ultimate fist-pump moment.

It won’t be an easy ride to the end, not with two series against Baltimore following the Boston set. But by that point, I’d think the Yanks would be on enough of a roll to sustain a three-game lead.

All of this, of course, is just my ideal scenario; I’ll take the division any way we can get it. It’s just that I’d like to twist the Boston knife as much as possible. They were all so smug early in the season, with their constant response of “14 games” whenever you tried to talk to one of them about baseball. It’s all coming back to them now, and I’d like it to be as painful as possible.

And if we’re going to win the division this year, is it too much to as for Seattle to overtake Boston in the process? Or am I just getting greedy here?

What about you guys? What’s your ideal scenario for overtaking Boston?

Well, beat the drum and hold the phone - the sun came out today!
We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field.

The Yanks were dead in the water in May. With Chase Wright, Darrell Rasner, Jeff Karstens, Kei Igawa and Tyler Clippard coming through the revolving door of the Yankee rotation, the Yanks quickly this year found themselves 14 games out of first place and in last place in the AL East. People were writing off this year while looking forward to next year.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to October: The Yankees started winning, and once again, baseball managed to become a great surprise. Going to games - something that seemed onerous on cold May nights - became a real pleasure as the mercury soared in July. As John Fogarty once sang, the Yanks were indeed born again. And what a run it’s been.

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