At 7:10 p.m. on Tuesday night, Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain will take a big league mound for the first time as a starter. Whether he succeeds or fails at his new job may very well determine the fate of the Yankees’ season and Brian Cashman’s future with the club. Taking a dominant setup guy out of the back of the bullpen and putting him into the rotation is not a popular decision in some circles,......

For all the noise of this Yankees offseason, as far as the team on the field goes, all it amounted to was the status quo. Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera are all back -- and richer. Young pitchers Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy and center fielder Melky Cabrera didn't go to the Twins for Johan Santana. The 2008 Yankees will be a slightly older albeit considerably more expensive version of the 2007 team. And......

The big sports news of the day isn't the Super Bowl. It's the probable Johan Santana trade that the Mets and Twins agreed to yesterday. And from the reaction of the local papers and sportswriters, it seems like the Mets pulled a fast one on the rubes from Minnesota. If the Mets can sign Santana to a contract extension, it's likely that he will become the highest paid pitcher in baseball, surpassing Barry Zito......

A day after the NY Post served up a Thanksgiving day front page cover of Knicks president and coach Isiah Thomas as a turkey, the embattled Thomas proclaimed he would stay in his job, saying, "I don't foresee there being any changes this year." Which the Post calls "LOAD OF BULL?" But really, if there's one thing that the Post and Daily News must have been thankful for, it's having such a spectacularly poorly managed......

Joe Girardi made his first appearance in Yankee pinstripes as the new manager today. He chose the number 27 for his jersey, referring to more World Series wins in the Yankees' - and his, he hopes - future as the Yankees have 26 World Series championships. The former Yankees catcher said, "The team's expectation is always going to be to win the World Series. It's not going to change." He also mentioned that he......

All the rumors of an extension of Alex Rodriguez's contract with the Yankees are pointless. Why? Because A-Rod has decided to opt-out of his remaining three years with the Yankees. The announcement was made by Scott Boras during tonight's World Series game. He totally jumped that 10-day opt-out period. By opting-out, A-Rod passes on the remaining three-year $72 million portion of his contract and has likely played his last game as a New York Yankee.......

Fighting to keep his emotions in check, Joe Torre took the podium in Rye today and thanked George Steinbrenner for letting him run his ball club for 12 years. Torre went on to explain the events of the last 48 hours. Wednesday night Brian Cashman called Joe and conveyed the Yankees’ offer of one-year and $5-million with bonuses. Joe asked to meet with the group in Tampa and met for 20 minutes and when the......

Devils 5 Pittsburgh 4: New Jersey will benefit from this schedule when March rolls around. With the opening of the Prudential Center still over a week away, the Devils have played all their games so far on the road and with Wednesday’s 5-4 win over Pittsburgh, they have done so at .500. Aaron Asham scored the eventual game-winner with just under ten minutes remaining in the third period and Travis Zajac scored two power-play......

The reports of George Steinbrenner’s demise may have been exaggerated. In an interview with Ian O'Connor, Steinbrenner showed the fire that longtime fans of the Yankees are used to. While it wasn’t punching out someone in an elevator, this was a classic motivational ploy from the Steinbrenner textbook - win or the manager is gone. Of course all of this ignores the fact that the Yankees are lucky to have even made the playoffs. Teams......

Does Joe Torre, manager of the Yankees, treat black and white players differently? According to former Yankees outfielder Gary Sheffield, he does. In an interview that is scheduled to air Tuesday on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumble. Sheffield makes some shocking allegations in the interview with Andrea Kremer, saying that he wasn't the only black player that had issues with Torre. A transcript made available to Newsday, details some of the statements that......

Yesterday was not a great day in the Rodriguez household: Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez left the game with a strained hamstring and his wife Cynthia was raked over the fiery NYC media coals after wearing a tank top with a swear-word on the back. Yankees manager Brian Cashman told reporters he had discussed the situation with Cynthia, "She's part of the family and obviously, we'll just keep that in-house." The Post believes C-Rod bought......

With his recent health woes, all George Steinbrenner does is issue statements through his spokesperson. Today, however, the AP has an interview the Yankee principal owner. In the interview, the 76 year-old Steinbrenner talks about manager Joe Torre, Brian Cashman, Roger Clemens, and Jason Giambi. It wasn't so long ago that Steinbrenner issued a statement saying that he believed in Torre and Cashman. While there has been speculation about the safety of Torre's job, The......

We certainly know how some Yankee fans feel about the baseball season so far, but what about The Boss? George Steinbrenner, the Yankees principal owner released a statement yesterday, supporting manager Joe Torre and general manager Brian Cashman. Steinbrenner's statement said:"The season is still very young, but up to now the results are clearly not acceptable to me or to Yankee fans. However, Brian Cashman, our general manager, Joe Torre, our manager, and our......

With the Yankees' win over the Red Sox yesterday that ended a 7-game losing streak, it seems that Yankees manager Joe Torre can breathe easily - for the moment. Torre answered questions about his job security before the game with aplomb, saying, "For me to say 'this,' 'this' or 'this,' I don't want to pawn it off and say it's not my fault. I'm in charge here. If you're going to enjoy the good......

What's going on in Yankee land? Alex Rodriguez is getting curtain calls and Derek Jeter has set a career high for errors at this point in the season. Through 12 games, Jeter has a whopping 6 errors. The Daily News did some digging into his career and, thanks to the Elias Sports Bureau, found that in his career Jeter, through 11 games, had never more than 2 errors. Even more insane is that he didn't......

Pavano gets sued and leaves camp: Carl is definitely keeping things interesting. Yesterday, Pavano was sued by the victim of his infamous car crash last August. As if that wasn’t enough, Carl left the team right before his scheduled start last night for “personal reasons”. Brian Cashman would not elaborate beyond that, but he did confirm that the lawsuit and Pavano’s absence were not related. Hopefully, whatever kept Carl out of camp can be resolved......

New York 99 Miami 93: Trying to figure out the Knicks will drive you insane. Off of a terrible loss against the Nets, the Knicks played a decent basketball game against a better team and won. They took care of the basketball, only 10 turnovers and had three scorers with 20 or more points. Eddy Curry had a very nice offensive game, going 9-17 from the field and adding 11 boards. He still doesn’t play......

Senator Charles Schumer is all over the city's skies. Regulating them, that is. In the wake of the Upper East Side plane crash, Senator Schumer is asking for the FAA to make more changes. His ideas? Make a "Trusted Flyer" program which would require pilots to register their planes and submit to background checks before flying in local airspace. Schumer said, "It's a little bit like E-ZPass, in a certain sense." Uh, yeah. He......

-Yankees 4 Tampa Bay 2: The Yankees played and won Sunday, but that was really a sideshow to their off-field activity. New York landed Bobby Abreu and Cory Lidle in a trade with the Phillies, solidifying their lineup and rotation and giving them the firepower they will need to last in a race with Boston, Chicago and Minnesota for a playoff spot. With Abreu in the fold, the Yankees will now turn their attention......

As the Mets commence with the second-half of their season, they have a twelve-game lead in the division and barring a miracle, should coast into the playoffs. That doesn’t mean that they can just sit back and wait until October. In order to contend in the fall, New York will need to make sure that Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine are rested and ready to go. If that means keeping Pedro on the DL indefinitely......

-Mets 5 Pirates 0: The game could have ended after the first inning when New York jumped all over Kip Wells for all of their scoring. Jose Reyes led off the game with a triple and scored on Paul LoDuca’s single. The Mets loaded the bases and Jose Valentin doubled home two runs. After a wild pitch scored another run, Endy Chavez singled home the fifth run of the inning. That was all El Duque......

Here’s a little piece of advice for Brian Cashman: make sure to build a real bench when you put together the 2007 Yankees. You would think that $190 million would mean you don’t need to rely on Kelly Stinnett or Miguel Cairo in key situations, but that is what the Yankees are about right now. Not that their missing players would have made much of a difference in New York’s 9-5 loss to Boston, but......

The dumbest streak in recent history is now finished, but not in the way the Yankees wanted. Hideki Matsui broke his wrist while diving to make a catch in the first inning of the Yankees’ 5-3 loss last night. Matsui will need surgery and will probably miss at least three months of the season. For the past three seasons the Yankees bent over backwards to put Matsui in the lineup even when it was......

Sunday, Mike Piazza agreed to a $2 million contract to return to the state where he began his Major League career, signing a one-year contract with the San Diego Padres. Staying in the National League, the 37-year old, joins the defending NL West champs and, according to his agent, was told that he could "catch as much as he wanted to." How much might that be? Reportedly about 90-100 games behind the plate as well......

With about two hours left before a contractual deadline, the Yankees and Hideki Matsui inked a four-year, $52 million deal for the outfielder to remain in pinstripes. The contract makes Matsui the highest played Japanese player in the Majors, with a yearly salary that is $2 million more than Ichiro Suzuki has with the Seattle Mariners. Arn Tellem, Matsui's agent, was pleased that a deal was reached and that 31 year-old Matsui "hopes to retire......

You hear the complaints about him, the stories of his machinations, but when it comes down to it everyone seems willing to put up with George Steinbrenner as long as they get plenty of money for doing so. Brian Cashman signed a three-year deal on Thursday for more than five million dollars to remain the GM of the Yankees. Cashman claims that things have changed and he will be in charge, but anyone who......

No matter how many new faces are playing for the 2006 Yankees the manager will be the same. Joe Torre has decided to return to the Yankees for another year. “If I sensed that they were thinking something different than I was, then we were going to have to find a way to split up,” he said on Tuesday. The fact that Torre actually contemplated walking away from 13 million dollars and the last two......

Most baseball teams would love to be tied for the wild card lead and three and a half games out on August 24th. The Yankees found themselves in that position before Wednesday’s 9-2 loss to Toronto, but of course, the Yankees are not most baseball teams. They have played inconsistently all season, and given the status of their pitching staff, there is no reason to think the season’s last five weeks will see the Yankees......

The Yankees can’t wait to escape from California. They may have the dumbest name in baseball, but the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim can play baseball and on Saturday night they thumped the Yankees for the third straight game, this time winning 8-6. The Yankees actually had a 3-1 lead in this game courtesy of an RBI single from Alex Rodriguez and back-to-back homeruns by Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano, but with Kevin Brown on......

Most fans believed that the best remedy for the Yankee losing streak was a series with the Royals. After all, Kansas City was twenty-four games under .500 and possessed the worst record in baseball. Things were so bad that their manager had quit one month into the season. Unfortunately for the Yankees, the Royals got a new manager on Tuesday and he skippered his team to a 5-3 victory. Not to be outdone, the Yankees......