The Yankees' rotation, CC Sabathia's WAR and the 2011 schedule

A.J. Burnett spent a good amount of time - about 30 minutes - in Joe Girardi's office today. Was he being dropped from the Yankees' rotation? Was he injured?

Nope. As far as we know, it was just a conversation between the manager and his enigmatic pitcher. Burnett will start Friday in Baltimore, CC Sabathia Saturday and Andy Pettitte Sunday, which means that Javier Vazquez is once again out of the starting rotation. Vazquez will start Sunday if Pettitte is physically unable to do so.

As always, we have to wait to see how the season finishes out. But at this point, would you even put Vazquez on your postseason roster? As a long reliever/emergency starter? Or would you just take Ivan Nova and Dustin Moseley for that purpose and send Vazquez to work on his arm strength in Tampa, in case there's a string of injuries and you need Vazquez to start in the later rounds?

--Very interesting post from Baseball Reference concerning new WAR leaders, featuring updated ballpark factors. Now including this year's information, B-R has concluded that CC Sabathia deserves more credit because he pitches so many games in hitter-friendly Yankee Stadium, while Felix Hernandez deserves less credit because he pitches so many games in pitcher-friendly Safeco Field.

Sabathia's WAR now stands at an AL-leading 5.4, followed by Francisco Liriano (5.0) and then Hernandez and Carl "American Idle" Pavano, each at 4.9. 

This becomes the first stat, besides the useless "wins," in which Sabathia leads Hernandez. Interestingly, in FanGraphs' calcuation of WAR, you can see the AL leaders here. Hernandez ranks third, at 5.9, while Sabathia ranks eighth, at 4.3.

Each voter will use his or her selected methodology to select the Cy Young Award. But there's at least one sabermetric measure now that features Sabathia.

--Carl Crawford defended his decision to, it turned out, run into the last out last night. At this point, we're almost piling on Crawford, who really is a terrific player, but it's worth noting that Tampa Bay people wonder how he'll function in a larger market, when dealing with the aftermath of such plays (both good and bad) comes with the territory.

 --The Phillies' return on the Cliff Lee trade has been horrible so far, Todd Zolecki writes. For the first and almost certainly last time, I will refer to a scouting analysis that I made on my own, that of Philippe Aumont here. His mechanics were just so weird. But, as Ruben Amaro Jr. pointed out, Aumont and the other two players are still very young.

The Phillies deserve credit for essentially acknowledging their mistake (on the Lee trade) by acquiring Roy Oswalt and as we stand here now, it looks as though they'll come out ahead on the four huge transactions they made in a year's time _ getting Lee, trading Lee and getting Roy Halladay in a three-way deal and then getting Oswalt _ involving front-line starting pitchers. But we'll have to take stock a few years down the line to see how all of the youngsters worked out.

--I found this item on Twitter.

--This one, too: With the 2011 schedules out, Kevin Kaduk detailed which interleague matchups still haven't occurred in specific cities. It is preposterous, of course, that next year will mark the 15th year of interleague play and yet they still haven't arranged for all of the matchups.

Notice that Boston and the Yankees have played in every National League city, and that is of course no coincidence. If there were an NL team not getting those two teams every now and then, the respective owner would raise holy hell.

Which shows why the interleague schedule lacks integrity, completely: It's driven wholly by revenue and not at all by any scheduling formula.

--Have a great night.