The Yankees Report Brought To You By Band-Aids

The Yankees' muscles, bones, and ligaments are getting more hits than the Yankees these days. The Yankees got another great effort from Bartolo Colon Saturday in helping to win their second straight game, 4-0 over Cleveland, but lost Colon in the process due to a hamstring strain. A trip to the DL is inevitable. This could prove to be the biggest injury the Yankees have been hit with season, since aside from CC Sabathia, Colon has been the Yankees best starter.

Let's take stock now. Feliciano and Soriano may never be seen again this season. Chamberlain is done with Tommy John surgery coming up this week. Chavez has been out a month with a broken bone (he might be able to resume baseball activities soon). Martin has missed a bunch of games with a bad back, which has exposed Cervelli's bad throwing ability. Apparently, Sanit joined the walking wounded after his last outing with elbow problems (that's what happens when you throw 500 pitches in an inning).

Phil Hughes is expected to do a rehab stint at Trenton this week and then the Yankees will have to determine if one is enough before he replaces Colon in the rotation (Nova with a big sigh of relief). If Hughes needs more time, Joe Girardi could plug in Hector Noesi, who will be recalled for today's game or the Yankees could give Carlos Silva a shot (I shudder at the thought).

Sore hips and tempers flared up in yesterday's game as well. After Alex Rodriguez homered earlier in the game, Curtis Granderson took Indians starter Mitch Talbot deep in the 6th inning. The next hitter Mark Teixeira nearly missed making it back to back blasts with a deep fly to right-center. That brought up A-Rod again, who promptly got plunked in the left hip for the second time this week. Home plate umpire Dan Iassogna immediately tossed Talbot, who claimed he slipped. Replays didn't really verify that claim though. Whether he did or not Iassogna did a better job than Dale Scott on Friday, who should have immediately tossed Fausto Carmona after he nailed Teixeira in the back following a Granderson home run.

The Yankees need to do something either today or tomorrow to retaliate for A-Rod. The Yankees are being hit by opposing pitchers disproportionately to hitting opposing batters (except maybe when Burnett has one of his "Bad A.J." days).

Notes

With just five games left on the homestand, it's going to be very hard for Derek Jeter to get the nine hits to reach 3,000 while at Yankees Stadium. For sure, he needs a couple of multi-hit games, like now. Jeter's OPS (.656) is even worse in the five games he's DH'ed (.546).

Since asking out of the lineup May 14 with a mysterious back ailment, Jorge Posada has gone 17-52 (.327) and is 9-15 (.600) on the current homestand. He's also had multi-hit games in four of his last five games and has gone 3-4 from the right side after an 0-27 slide to start the season. Of course, he's still making base running mistakes and was picked off second yesterday on a failed bunt attempt.

Curtis Granderson enters Sunday's play tied with Jose Bautista for the AL lead with 20 home runs. Bautista has gone 13 games without a home run, his longest stretch of the season.