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If the New York Yankees‘ starting rotation were an ’80s sitcom, it’d be titled Who’s the Ace? And while Masahiro Tanaka might seem like the obvious answer—the Tony Danza character, if you will—Nathan Eovaldi is making his case.

Eovaldi has pitched into the sixth inning or later in 11 of his last 13 starts and allowed two earned runs or fewer in eight of them. The Yankees, uncoincidentally, have gone 11-2 in those games, and Eovaldi has gone 9-0 if pitching wins mean anything to you.

In short, he’s pitched like an ace.

Things didn’t start so swimmingly for the hard-throwing 25-year-old righty, who came over from the Miami Marlins in a trade in a trade this winter.

In his first 13 starts in pinstripes, Eovaldi posted a 5.12 ERA and coughed up 97 hits in 70.1 innings, an ominous sign considering he led the National League in hits allowed last season with 223.

So what clicked? What caused Eovaldi to flip a switch and go from liability to a credible rotation anchor?

It could be his slider, which Eovaldi has been throwing with increasing effectiveness, according to catcher Brian McCann.

“It gets him off his other pitches,” McCann said, per Wallace Matthews of ESPN. “He locates it well. He elevates it when he needs to. It’s changed the way he pitches, and he’s only going to get better and better.”

Add a fastball that touches triple digits and a plus splitter, and you’ve got the makings of a legitimate power arm, the type of pitcher a team can ride into the postseason.

Speaking of which, if the season ended today, New York would host the Texas Rangers in a one-game wild-card playoff.

Obviously the Yankees are still hoping to catch the Toronto Blue Jays, win the AL East and vault straight into the division series. 

But if they end up in a do-or-die scenario, with the whole season riding on a single contest, would Eovaldi get the ball? 

It’s no sure thing. Tanaka still has the pedigree, both from his dominant (if injury-marred) rookie campaign in 2014 and his years of excellence with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.

And it’s not as if Tanaka is stinking up the joint. His 3.73 ERA is tops among Yankees pitchers with 10 starts or more, and he’s fanned 115 in 128 innings. 

Right now, though, a case can be made that Eovaldi is New York’s top arm, a notion that would have seemed absurd just a couple of months ago.

In fact, after looking like an Achilles’ heel for much of the season, the Yanks’ rotation is suddenly a potential asset, as Joel Sherman of the New York Post recently pointed out:

Suddenly the best part of the team looks like a rotation front four of Eovaldi, Luis Severino, Michael Pineda and Masahiro Tanaka. They are going to need that quartet either to outdo the Blue Jays or simply make the playoffs.

Tanaka is the oldest of the foursome at 26. Obviously, health is an issue with all pitchers, and the frailty of Pineda and Tanaka is particularly worrisome. But this is potentially a strong top four.

Sherman also said New York might not “open the coffers this offseason to sign a big-time starter such as David Price or Johnny Cueto.” That makes Eovaldi—who won’t hit the market until after the 2017 season—an even more important piece going forward.

Whether he pitches in a playoff elimination game, assuming the Yankees get to that point, remains to be seen. But if he does, he’ll have the confidence of the Yankees faithful—along with that radar gun-singeing heater—behind him.

So did we answer our original ’80s sitcom question? Let’s put it this way: If Eovaldi‘s not Tony Danza yet, he’s certainly on his way.

All statistics current as of Sept. 3 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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First baseman Mark Teixeira has been a driving force behind the New York Yankees‘ high-powered offense this season, but the American League All-Star is now banged up at a critical time.

Continue for updates.

Teixeira Out at Least Two More Weeks 

Tuesday, Sept. 1

Teixeira’s resurgent season has coincided with his ability to remain healthy; however, that is now in doubt as a bruised right shin has hindered his ability to stay on the field, according to the YES Network’s Jack Curry.  

The first baseman hasn’t been in the Yankees’ lineup since Aug. 26, and manager Joe Girardi indicated the slugger won’t be returning anytime soon. 

According to Newsday‘s Erik Boland, Girardi told reporters the MRI showed “more than we thought” and reiterated that Teixeira will be on crutches for “a few days.”      

Tex entered 2015 having missed 225 games over the previous three seasons, including all but 15 contests in 2013. Expectations for his contributions were tempered because of the notion that he had become injury-prone, but he has been fantastic to this point.

He was named to his third career All-Star team and first since 2009 after an excellent first half that saw him hit 22 home runs and 62 RBI with a .240 batting average and .350 on-base percentage.

Coincidentally, his home run and RBI totals at the break matched his output from the entire 2014 season, according to Jeff Quagliata of YES Network:

The 35-year-old slugger has always had that type of power and run production in him as an eight-time 30-homer and 100-RBI guy over the course of his career entering the season. Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t approached those numbers since 2011 because of constant injuries.

Chief among them was a wrist issue, which was responsible for him missing almost the entire 2013 campaign. While his wrist is something that is likely to bother him to some degree for the rest of his career, it hasn’t been much of a problem in 2015.

In fact, Teixeira was thrilled with the state of his wrist at the midway point of the season, per Mike Vorkunov of NJ Advance Media: “It’s as good as I could ever imagine. I think so. It’s super strong. I haven’t had any issues with it. I ice it after every game because that’s just a maintenance thing for me. I’m very happy with where it is.”

Despite Teixeira’s optimism regarding his health this season, he has been bitten by the injury bug yet again. If that results in him missing a significant amount of time, then it is a huge blow for the Yanks since he is such a force as a switch-hitter in the middle of the lineup.

The Bronx Bombers have a strong offensive core that also includes Brian McCann, Alex Rodriguez, Brett Gardner and Jacoby Ellsbury, but it can be argued that Teixeira is the key component because of his ability to drive in everyone else.

He also provides fantastic defense at first base, which makes him one of the most important cogs in the Yankees’ overall attack.

If New York is going to be a true World Series threat this season, then it will need a healthy Tex moving forward.

Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter.

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BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — Down here in the Atlantic League, the players hear the stories of what Shane Spencer did.

He came out of nowhere and became an instant star. He walked out of the minor leagues and into the World Series.

He never played here, but leagues like this are full of guys with dreams of doing what Spencer did in 1998 with the New York Yankees. He can tell them what it was like, and as the third-year hitting coach with the Somerset Patriots, perhaps he could even set them on the way to doing it themselves.

But there’s more to his story, and Spencer wants to make sure his players hear that, too.

“They’ll ask me, ‘When was the last time you played in the big leagues?'” Spencer said one day last week.

And he can only warn them not to do what he did six years later.

“I say, ‘When I got a DUI.’ It wakes them up real quick. It’s like a reality check for them.”

It was one bad night, one dumb mistake, one night in Florida when he was rehabbing an injury and trying to get back to the New York Mets. Instead, the Mets released him, and a major league career that began with one magical month of September was effectively over.

He was one of the best September call-ups ever, the guy who joined a Yankees team headed for 114 wins and became the talk of the town. He homered seven times in nine days and eight times in the month, still the most ever by a Yankee rookie in September.

He was “the reincarnation of Babe Ruth,” in the words of Will Clark, and he had his own John Sterling home run call (“Shane Spencer, the home run dispenser”). He won a spot on the postseason roster and a chance to start a World Series game in his hometown when the Yankees played the San Diego Padres.

“I remember watching the playoffs on television and seeing Shane’s picture come up on the screen,” said Tim Schmidt, the Yankees scout who signed Spencer as a 28th-round draft pick. “I’ll never forget, they were promo-ing the next game, and they said, ‘The New York Yankees, led by Shane Spencer.'”

The next spring, he was back in the minor leagues.

Spencer has World Series rings from 1998, 1999 and 2000, and he was in right field for the Yankees when Luis Gonzalez got the hit that won the 2001 World Series for the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was Spencer’s throw earlier in that postseason that led to Derek Jeter’s famous flip play in Oakland.

It was a nice career, but when it ended, Spencer had never played as many as 100 games for one team in one season. He never had another month like that September of 1998, and when he came back to the Yankees on a minor league deal late in the 2004 season, the New York Times called him “the troubled outfielder” and not the guy who was once a surprise September star.

He had knee trouble and shoulder trouble, and even an irregular heartbeat that sent him to the hospital in 1999. He sliced his heel in a bar so seriously that he needed stitches and went to the disabled list (and to Florida, where he was charged with driving under the influence after he was caught going 98 mph).

By 2005, Spencer was in Japan playing for the Hanshin Tigers. By 2008, his playing career was over, and Spencer had a job as a hitting coach at Class A Lake Elsinore in the Padres organization.

Spencer has grown into coaching, earning a reputation as someone who not only helps hitters, but also reads the entire game. Joe Klein, the former major league general manager who is the executive director of the Atlantic League, says he could see Spencer as a manager someday.

For now, Spencer says he’s happy to be where he is, working with Somerset manager Brett Jodie, his minor league teammate from the Yankees organization.

“We’ve just had a blast,” Spencer said. “I’ve got a pretty good gig here.”

He was meant to be a coach, he figures, and even the off-field trouble was part of it. The way Spencer sees it, he can relate to what players go through because he has been through so much himself.

“I knew I gave it all I had,” he said.

“Of course, I made mistakes off the field.”

He still gets recognized for that magical month in 1998. He still has a special feel for this time of year, and he still likes to look at all of the September call-ups, “to see what the young guys are going to do.”

None of them ever do what Spencer did in 1998.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball. 

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NEW YORK — The best team ever didn’t win.

No, that’s not right. By definition, the best team ever is one that won.

However, the “BEST TEAM EVER!” didn’t.

It was the 2011 Boston Red Sox, and we know it now as the team that collapsed in a mess of beer and fried chicken. But the day before Opening Day, we knew it as the team the Boston Herald called the “BEST TEAM EVER!”

“I thought we were good,” Terry Francona said Thursday. “And we were good, until the middle of September. We were on pace to win 100 games.”

They didn’t win, and it cost Francona his job as manager (and allowed him to move on to Cleveland, where he still looks much happier than he did in Boston). They didn’t win, because in baseball, the team we’re all sure is going to win often doesn’t.

Ask the Washington Nationals.

Bryce Harper got all the attention on the first day of spring training this year by asking, “Where’s my ring?” But the truth is most of us saw the Nationals as a superteam with an unbelievable rotation back then. Now we see them as a group that has been anything but super for four-and-a-half months and spent a day under .500 just this week.

Or ask the Detroit Tigers.

When they added David Price to a rotation that already included Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander last July, we couldn’t stop talking about how a team with three Cy Young winners was going to be unstoppable in October. Then they got to the playoffs and didn’t win a single game.

What is it about baseball? How do these superteams always end up proving themselves so un-super?

One thing is it’s not easy to win a World Series, even if you put together an incredible team.

“It’s really not,” CC Sabathia agreed.

And his superteam won.

They were the 2009 New York Yankees, and the year before, they had closed the old Yankee Stadium by missing the playoffs for the first time since 1993. Determined not to let that happen again in the first year in the new park, they spent $161 million on Sabathia, $180 million on Mark Teixeira and $82.5 million on A.J. Burnett.

They were the kings of the winter…and then they were the kings of the summer and fall, too.

“That team was really close for a team considered a superteam,” Sabathia said. “I don’t know if that was all according to plan, but sometimes you just get lucky. [General manager Brian Cashman] did a good job of [finding] pretty good guys, along with good talent.”

Sabathia has been on other talented teams in his 15-year career, and he has played with a lot of other groups of pretty good guys. That 2009 group is the only one that won a World Series, though.

Sometimes, you’ve got to get lucky.

We never like to say that, because we always want to think that the best team wins. We always want to think that if a superteam doesn’t win, it’s because of some fault it had or because it wasn’t so super in the first place.

Year after year, we’re asking the questions, because year after year, a superteam falls short of super.

Take the 2011 Philadelphia Phillies.

The Phillies won the 2008 World Series and made it back to the World Series with the team that lost to Sabathia’s Yankees in 2009. A year later, they won a free-agent battle with the Yankees over Cliff Lee, adding him to a rotation that already included Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels. Then they traded for Roy Oswalt to give them four aces.

How do you lose with four aces? The Phillies did.

They won 102 games in the regular season, but Halladay lost 1-0 to Chris Carpenter in Game 5 of the Division Series, and the St. Louis Cardinals went on to win the World Series. The Phillies thought they were pretty super in 2010, too, but they lost that year’s National League Championship Series to the San Francisco Giants, who won the World Series.

The Giants won the World Series that year, and won it again in 2012 and in 2014. They didn’t make the list of superteams, because they’ve never been a team we’ve thought of as super in April or July.

They’re a team we only think of as super in October, and when you think about it, that’s a lot more important.

The 2012 Los Angeles Angels never got there.

The Angels went to the playoffs six times in eight years from 2002-2009, but when they missed in back-to-back seasons, owner Arte Moreno went to the free-agent market for Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson. The Angels also added Mike Trout, who was the Rookie of the Year and almost the Most Valuable Player. They traded for Zack Greinke at midseason.

They didn’t even make the playoffs, winning 89 games and finishing third in the American League West. They got off to a bad start, in part because they had a terrible bullpen, and even after they added Ernesto Frieri in a midseason trade, they watched Frieri turn back-to-back brilliant Greinke starts into losses in September.

At least they were in a pennant race. The 2013 Toronto Blue Jays never even got that far.

The Blue Jays, determined to end a postseason drought that had extended since 1993, made two huge trades in the winter. They got Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson from the Miami Marlins, and they got Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey from the New York Mets.

On Opening Day in Toronto, the excitement was back. It didn’t last. The super Blue Jays never spent a day in first place. They finished 14 games under .500 at 74-88.

“In baseball, you can set up your roster in April, but if you have pitchers go down, it’s tough,” said Francona, whose 2015 Indians were never considered super and have had a disappointing season. “You’ve not only got to be good, but you’ve got to be situated to deal with things.”

The 2011 Red Sox were good, but they certainly couldn’t deal with everything that came their way. They did have pitching injuries to go along with the beer and fried chicken, and by the end of September the Boston Herald was saluting them with a very different cover, caught here on Twitter:

Not every best team ever goes down so spectacularly, but recent history has shown us that not many of them win, either.

Sabathia is right. Even when you’re super, it’s not easy to win it all.

It’s really not.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball. 

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Alex Rodriguez padded his record for most grand slams in MLB history Tuesday night when he crushed the ball just right of center field for a go-ahead blast.

It was the 25th grand slam of his career and gave the New York Yankees a 5-4 lead over the Minnesota Twins in the seventh inning of an 8-4 win. Rodriguez is now two grand slams ahead of Lou Gehrig, who ranks second all-time with 23.

And in case you missed it, #BAEROD is now definitely a thing:

[MLB]

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New York Yankees pitcher Bryan Mitchell was in the middle of a scary scene Monday, when a line drive off the bat of the Minnesota Twins‘ Eduardo Nunez struck him in the face. 

He has been diagnosed with a “small nasal fracture,” according to Mike Berardino of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. 

Continue for updates.

Mitchell Leaves Game Under Own Power

Monday, Aug. 17

Mitchell took the liner off his face in the second inning of Monday’s 8-7, 10-inning win. Bryan Hoch of MLB.com described the scene:         

MLB.com provided video of the injury:

Jack Curry of the YES Network added a terrifying caveat to the play:

Mitchell was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital for further evaluation right after the injury, per Hoch. 

Nunez commented on the play after the game, per Brendan Kuty of the Star-Ledger:

Entering play Monday, Mitchell had a 3.72 ERA and 1.35 WHIP in nine appearances for the Yankees. He lost his only start of the season prior to Monday against the Chicago White Sox on Aug. 1, but his versatility and ability to serve as a spot starter will be valuable if he’s healthy, as the campaign enters the stretch run.

New York is in the midst of a stretch of 16 games in 16 days and is not off again until Aug. 27. Mitchell joined the staff so the Yankees would have six starters during this period, but the fact that he left in the second inning could prove taxing for the relief corps.

Fortunately for the Yankees, Masahiro Tanaka pitched a complete game Saturday, so at least the bullpen was well-rested coming into Monday’s contest. That won’t be the case after it pitched nearly an entire game following Mitchell’s exit.

New York is in a battle for the American League East crown with the Toronto Blue Jays and needs all the pitching it can get with less than two months remaining in the season. The potential loss of Mitchell will put even more stress on the remaining arms as the year progresses.

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The New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays opened a three-game series Friday with everything on the line, and they finished it Sunday with nothing settled.

That’s how it’s going to be in the American League East: back and forth, tit for tat, right down to the wire. Simply put, we’re watching the best division battle in baseball unfold.

For a while, it looked like the Jays might fly away with it.

Toronto went all-in at the trade deadline, acquiring All-Star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and ace left-hander David Price, and they ripped off an 11-game winning streak that included a three-game sweep of New York at Yankee Stadium.

Suddenly, there was a new juggernaut in town. And it was worth wondering if the Yankees would ever recover.

Over the weekend, the boys in Pinstripes gave us their answer.

New York took the first two games at Rogers Centre, including a thrilling 4-3 comeback Friday, to reclaim first place.

Then, on Sunday, they sent touted rookie Luis Severino to the hill with a chance to return the sweeping favor and deliver a staggering blow.

Toronto, however, had an answer of its own. Backed by a two-run homer off the bat of Jose Bautista and a solid outing by right-hander Drew Hutchison, the Blue Jays notched a 3-1 win and trimmed the Yankees’ lead to half a game.

Just how close is this race? FanGraphs puts the chances of the Yankees winning it at 47.8 percent. The Jays? They’re sitting at 48.0 percent.

So it’s a statistical dead heat, a veritable coin toss—back and forth, tit for tat.

The Jays can mash, but so can the Yankees; the two squads rank first and second in MLB in runs scored, respectively.

The Jays added Price to bolster their rotation. The Yankees boast a shutdown bullpen headlined by Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances. 

If you’re looking for a tipping pint, it could be that the Yankees are leaning—hard—on veterans with injury histories like Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran to make the offense hum. And their starting five is counting on continued health from Masahiro Tanaka, he of the ticking-time-bomb elbow.

Skipper Joe Girardi, though, has made a point to give his aging core a breather whenever possible.

“Joe has done a real good job with everyone here being able to find some days to give us a break, keep everyone fresh,” Beltran said, per Billy Witz of the New York Times. “This time of the year, you have to come ready to play. It doesn’t matter the situation. I know everyone’s banged up, a little sore, but we cannot be thinking about that.”

On the flip side, the Jays are no wide-eyed neophytes, as manager John Gibbons explained to SportsNet.ca’s Shi Davidi.

“We don’t have a bunch of young kids riding that emotional roller-coaster,” Gibbons told Davidi. “These guys have all been through it before.”

As a franchise, however, Toronto hasn’t been through it for a long time.

In this case, “it” is a postseason berth, something the Blue Jays haven’t secured since 1993, the longest such drought in North American professional sports.

Even if many of Toronto’s top players—guys like Russell Martin, Josh Donaldson and Price—have playoff experience, there’s no denying the added pressure the Jays must feel to bust their ignoble streak.

As ESPN.com’s Wallace Matthews noted, while the Yankees’ once-comfortable division lead has evaporated, “the edge is still there, the team is still in first place.”

For how long? Time and, more to the point, the seven remaining games between Toronto and New York will tell.

The two squads tangle in a four-game series beginning Sept. 10 in the Bronx, followed by a three-game set beginning Sept. 21 north of the border.

That flurry of head-to-head action could resolve the matter, but here’s betting it’ll drag on till the end.

This is how A-Rod summed things up to Witz: “Keep working hard. Five, six-hundred at-bats, you’re going to go through ups and downs. Like the stock market.”

Only in this case, the situation’s even more volatile—and the future’s even harder to predict.

All statistics and standings current as of Aug. 16 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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Momentum is such a fickle thing in Major League Baseball.

While the narrative and storyline that comes along with it feed the public’s interest and make for good radio, column and bar-stool fodder, the truth is momentum in that sport shifts from day to day, inning to inning and even batter to batter. All the momentum in the world—negative and positive—can be altered by one misplaced pitch, a swat of a hanging breaking ball or the twirling of a gorgeous complete game.

The Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees and all their fans now know that after Masahiro Tanaka delivered his outing of the season in a complete-game, one-run, five-hit, eight-strikeout gem Saturday. With that 4-1 victory at Rogers Center—again in a playoff-like atmosphere—the Yankees have proved the runaway train that was once the Blue Jays will not disappear into the distance with the American League East title.

And if Tanaka can return to the pitcher who resembled a budding ace in 2014, he would suddenly give the Yankees a front man for their rotation and someone who can match up with Toronto ace David Price. Tanaka also provides New York with desperately needed depth in a rotation that seemed to be in flux entering this critical weekend series.

“He was great,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons told reporters of Tanaka. “He was on, he was hitting his spots.”

“My mindset was I wanted to go as deep into the game as possible,” Tanaka told reporters through a translator. “I’m just really satisfied that I was able to do that.”

This was the best outing of Tanaka’s season. The 26-year-old Japanese right-hander had shown only flashes this year of what made him the Yankees’ $155 million import and future ace. He lived up to the billing last season by posting a 2.77 ERA and 3.04 FIP in 20 starts before a partial UCL tear shelved him for the final 65 games. 

In Tanaka’s previous 16 starts this season, he had a 3.79 ERA and 4.18 FIP. His strikeouts were down, his strikeout-to-walk ratio was down, and his 102 adjusted ERA showed he was an average pitcher. That mediocrity is part of what made the non-waiver trade deadline such a disappointment for Yankees fans, and it is the reason the team had to call up top pitching prospect Luis Severino when Michael Pineda went on the disabled list earlier this month.

While that was happening with the Yankees, the Blue Jays went out and landed Price, bullpen help and shortstop Troy Tulowitzki at the deadline, which made them look like the most complete team in the American League for a span of 15-plus games. It would have been 16 had Blue Jays reliever Aaron Sanchez not served up a go-ahead home run to Carlos Beltran on Friday, spoiling a great outing by Price.

But that momentum is such a fleeting beast.

The Blue Jays rode that two-week stretch to the top of the AL East, erasing an eight-game deficit in 14 games to go up a half-game in the division. At that point, the narrative suggested the Blue Jays were world-beaters and the Yankees were suckers for not nabbing a front-line starter in July.

Going into this weekend in Toronto, the series winner would have the advantage entering the season’s final seven weeks, although it’s still a long schedule when you play almost daily. But if the Yankees did not want to be bombarded with questions about what their problems were and if they could envision themselves catching a team as hot as the Blue Jays, they had to do something.

“Up to this point, I think today was one of the most important games that I’ve pitched in,” Tanaka told reporters.

And he delivered his best of the year, giving the Yankees hope that this is the Tanaka they can expect through this playoff push and once they get to the postseason.

Masahiro Tanaka: first NYY pitcher to throw CG of 9 innings at Rogers Centre since Andy Pettitte on April 22, 1998 pic.twitter.com/zUWBhJmxG9

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) August 15, 2015

Pineda, who went on the DL with a strained forearm, is expected back at some point this month so long as no setbacks happen. Severino has been impressive in two starts on a relatively short leash. And Ivan Nova is a wild card the Yankees can hardly afford to play with all the chips in the middle of the table.

This is why it’s so significant that Tanaka again looks like the ace of the rotation. When he is right, he undoubtedly gives New York the kind of arm that can go pitch for pitch with the likes of Price, Johnny Cueto and Dallas Keuchel, the other aces of the league.

The Yankees might not have pulled off a blockbuster trade for a starting pitcher, and they might have lost one to the DL for a brief time. But if Tanaka becomes as dominant as he was in 2014, that return to form is as valuable as any ace on the market would have been.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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The New York Yankees have had trouble finding consistency at second base all season.

There have been small sparks of offensive production and defensive flair from both Stephen Drew and Brendan Ryan here and there, but overall, second base has been the biggest flaw in New York’s starting lineup this year.

While an infield upgrade would be nice for the Yankees, bringing in Chase Utley in 2015 is not the answer.

It’s been quite the whirlwind month for the Yankees. These games are finally beginning to really matter.

The Bombers woke up on July 29 with a seven-game lead over the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East. By Wednesday, Aug. 12, they were a half-game back.

That lead has since been rectified after the Yankees beat the Jays 4-3 on Friday night in what could only be described as a playoff-atmosphere game being played in August.

The 11-game winning streak that Toronto put together since signing David Price and Troy Tulowitzki led to some fans wondering why the Yankees remained mostly dormant during the trade deadline. New York’s only acquisition was reeling in Dustin Ackley, who played in just two games before landing on the disabled list.

With glaring holes in the starting rotation and trouble finding consistency at second base, it was a little surprising to some that the Yankees remained quiet. However, there’s still a little time to bring in a player or two.

General manager Brian Cashman helped out the pitching situation by calling up Luis Severino from Triple-A and stating that the 21-year-old has no innings limit to Ryan Hatch of NJ.com. Severino has had two solid starts so far in the big leagues against the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians, in which he gave up one and two earned runs, respectively.

However, second base still remains a problem.

Stephen Drew belted a home run and scored a career-high four times in an 8-6 win against Cleveland on Thursday, but is still batting just .195 with a .263 OBP in 97 games this season.

He does have 15 home runs, which is more than the likes of Evan Longoria, Matt Kemp and the last superstar to play second base in New York, Robinson Cano. However, production has been lacking in between each home run.

Brendan Ryan hasn’t fared much better, batting .237 in his last 12 games.

So, by name alone, you would think Chase Utley would be a great pickup to help bring some life back to New York’s middle infield. And you wouldn’t be wrong—if it were seven years ago.

When the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series in 2008, Utley hit .292 that season with 104 RBI. He didn’t slow down the following year, belting more than 30 home runs for the third time in four seasons and leading Philly back to the Fall Classic.

Oh, he had five home runs in that World Series defeat against the Yankees, though Utley is just 6-for-24 at Yankee Stadium during the regular season.

If New York were going to get that Utley, there would be no question to try to bring him in. Of course, that Utley most likely would be staying in Philadelphia.

Instead, the current Utley is a shell of his former self, hitting just .196 in 70 games before Friday. He had more home runs in that ’09 World Series than he does now and is looking at career lows in just about every category since his rookie season.

Utley is and will forever be a beloved player in Philadelphia. His number will be retired and a street will probably be named after him. However, the Yankees have had their fair share of nostalgia while dealing with players from the past several years—they need production now.

Because of Utley’s past, the Phillies might try to bring in a big-name prospect in return for him, but New York has stood firm when it comes to its younger players.

Philly could certainly try to improve its case for a decent return after Utley went 4-for-5 on Friday night to push his average over .200. He now has 11 hits in 22 at-bats since returning from the disabled list last Friday. Funny how that can happen when a player is on the trading block.

Before being traded, Utley has the final say of which team he can be dealt to because of his 10-5 no-trade rights, which come after playing 10 years in the big leagues and five straight years with the same club.

The 36-year-old has also made it clear that he only wants to play for teams who will guarantee him playing time, as ESPN’s Buster Olney noted:

But as far as playing time is concerned, Cashman made it clear that he’s all-in on Drew at second base. Since he would remain on the team, there would be no place for Utley, according to MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch:

Because of that, the Yankees’ best option appears to be in riding things out, much as they did during the trade deadline. Once the roster expands in September, New York can call back second base prospect Rob Refsnyder, who’s batting .275 in Triple-A.

As for Utley, the Los Angeles Angels, Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants seem to be the top three suitors. According to the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Bruce Jenkins, the Giants have even made an offer:

But according to USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale, Utley has narrowed his choices down to two:

It can be argued that Utley was one of the best second basemen of his generation. Now, the argument is if he has anything left in the tank to help out a ball club. For the Yankees, the answer is no.

All stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

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The New York Yankees were held scoreless by the Toronto Blue Jays pitching staff Saturday and Sunday, marking the first time in an MLB-record 2,665 games that the Bronx Bombers have been shut out in consecutive contests, per MLB Stat of the Day.

Blue Jays pitcher David Price tossed seven scoreless innings during Saturday’s 6-0 victory, then fellow Blue Jays pitcher Marco Estrada pitched 6.1 scoreless innings during Sunday’s 2-0 win.

The Jays also won the first game of the series Friday night, beating the Yankees 2-1 in 10 innings.

The Yankees have now gone 26 innings without scoring, as their only run during the three-game sweep came on first baseman Mark Teixeira’s home run in the second inning of Friday’s game.

Per ESPN Stats & Info, the Bombers previously hadn’t been shut out in consecutive games since May 1999, though they did go on to win 98 games and the World Series that season.

This weekend’s showing was far more harmful to the franchise, as the Blue Jays pulled within 1.5 games of the Yankees at the top of the American League East standings.

While the Blue Jays are clearly the primary threat, the Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays are also within striking range at five and six games back, respectively.

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