Joba To The 15-Day DL With An Oblique Strain

Throw another log on the injury fire, folks, 'cause this DL party ain't over yet!

The Yankees announced earlier today that Joba Chamberlain has been put on the DL with a strained right oblique.  According to Cash, he felt something when he was warming up on Tuesday night and got an MRI this morning that showed the strain.  No replacement for Joba has been announced yet, although Cash did name drop Mark Montgomery, Sam Demel, and Preston Claiborne as three possibilities.  The strain is reportedly just a "mild" one, but as we saw with D-Rob last year, even a mild oblique strain can take a while to fully heal.

Oh, and speaking of D-Rob, he's being called day-to-day right now with a left hamstring issue suffered when he caught a spike and landed awkwardly throwing his pitch last night.  No DL needed for him, but I doubt he'll be available for the next few games.  Gonna need some length out of the starters this weekend.

AB4AR "Best Of The Month" Awards: April 2013

There's no other way to describe the Yankees' opening month of the 2013 season than to call it a rousing success.  Despite missing almost the entirety of the middle of their batting order and their Hall of Fame starting shortstop, they finished with a 16-10 record and found themselves 2nd in what was supposed to be a very competitive AL East.  There were a bounty of big moments and great performances in April, but it wasn't all that hard to pick out the biggest and the best.  After the jump, check out the award winners for the April 2013 AB4AR "Best of the Month" awards.

Yanks Acquire IF Chris Nelson From Colorado

(Courtesy of Getty Images)

This story came out yesterday, but in case you missed it and AB4AR is your number one source of Yankee news, here's the deal.  The Yankees acquired utility infielder Chris Nelson from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for either cash or a PTBNL yesterday.  Nelson, 28, is a former top prospect who had been on the Yankees' radar before.  The present situation in the infield made another righty utility guy a necessity, and that's what Nelson will be brought in to be for at least the next couple weeks.

Mike Eder of IIATMS/TYA broke down Nelson's game in great detail on Monday, but the long and short of it is Nelson is an OK hitter at best (.279/.322/.416 career slash in 664 PA) and a below-average fielder at best.  As is the standard with most former Rockies, Nelson has a pretty big home/road split and defensive metrics have never rated him positively as a shortstop, second, or third baseman.  It is that positional versatility and right-handedness that made this trade happen more than anything Nelson has actually done.  With Youkilis on the DL and Nix and Nunez not doing much, the Yankees are painfully thin on the infield right now and even thinner at right-handed bench bats.  They called up Corban Joseph initially to replace Youkilis, but his lack of skill at third forced the Yanks to look elsewhere.

As far as roster moves go, Francisco Cervelli was put on the 60-day DL to open up a 40-man roster spot, and it would make sense for CoJo to get sent back down to SWB so he can continue to play every day and get ABs.  It's not a flashy move, or one that will return too many dividends.  It's simply the Yanks putting a bandage on their infield wound for the time being.

Game 27 Wrap-Up: NYY 5 HOU 4

(Courtesy of the AP)

I'll say one thing about this series, it was a lot more hard fought than I expected it to be.  After getting walloped on Monday and holding onto a relatively close win on Tuesday, the Yankees came into last night's series finale against Houston with a chance to salvage a series victory.  It looked like it was going to be a breeze out of the gate as they went up 4-0 early, but give Houston the credit it's due.  They fought back, made the game close again, and made the Yankees earn their victory.

Game Notes:

- Ichiro Suzuki, leading off for Brett Gardner again, hit a triple to start things in the bottom of the 1st and scored on Jayson Nix's follow-up RBI single.  Erik Bedard walked the bases loaded in the 2nd and the Yanks got another run out of that.

- After playing the "manufacturing" and "patience" cards in the first 2 innings, New York went back to the power in the 3rd.  Robinson Cano and Ben Francisco each hit solo HR to make it 4-0 and it was looking ugly.

- Yanks' starter David Phelps cruised through the first 3 innings with no runs and 7 outs on the ground, but damn near lost it in the top of the 4th after giving up 3 straight hits and 2 HBPs.  Phelps would get it together to get out of the frame, but not before Houston had tied the game at 4.

- Eduardo Nunez led off the bottom of the 6th with a double, and in another one of those weird, "scrappy" plays came around to score on an inning-ending DP thanks to Lyle Overbay's heads-up baserunning to get caught in a rundown long enough to allow Nunez to cross the plate.

- Once they had the lead, the bullpen didn't let it go.  Boone Logan closed out the 6th and handled the 7th, and D-Rob and Mo needed a combined 19 pitches to close the 8th and 9th out in order.