West Coast trips mean absurdly late nights, and holiday weekends mean a lot of parties, so there's a good chance you missed some of what happened with the Yankees in Seattle this weekend.
Have no fear, dear readers.
Our handy guide to the first weekend of the West Coast swing will tell you everything you need to know about the series with the Mariners so that Joe from accounting will be left speechless by your wisdom.
1. Call him selfish if you want (you'd be wrong), but CC Sabathia isn't into leaving things up to other people. He pitched eight innings on Sunday to make up for an exhausted bullpen and led the Yankees to a sweep avoiding 7-1 victory.
Sabathia went the distance in his last start and is starting to flash the workhorse nature that makes him so invaluable to the Yankees. While you don't want to see him overworked come the end of the season, we've never actually seen signs that such a thing is possible and the state of the Yankees staff is such that they really can't afford to take it too easy with Sabathia.
2. If you went to bed at a reasonable hour on Friday or Saturday, you woke up to some surprisingly bad news the next day. The Yankees blew leads in each of the first two games en route to losses on nights when their offense actually did decent work against Mariners starters Michael Pineda and Felix Hernandez.
The Saturday game was particularly maddening as the Yankees scored four on Hernandez and then couldn't penetrate the Mariners bullpen before Mariano Rivera gave up a run in the 12th. Rivera got hit a bit on Saturday, although not so much that it is a red flag of concern.
Local
3. Seattle doesn't need the WTO to be in town to show their penchant for public disobedience. Four fans sprinted on the field during Saturday's game, including one naked transgressor who won't soon be forgotten.
4. Miguel Olivo does a first-class faceplant. So does Eduardo Nunez.
5. There was actual positive news for Phil Hughes this weekend. He threw 20 pitches off the mound for the first time since going on the disabled list and none of them got sent into the stratosphere.
Granted, no one was hitting against him but baby steps are still steps.
6. Sunday was the 16th anniversary of Derek Jeter's big league debut which, fittingly, also took place in Seattle. There wasn't much thought about 3,000 hits on that day, but Jeter moved within 20 of the milestone in the win.
That means there's an off chance he'll get it done at the Stadium during the next homestand so buy (or sell) your tickets accordingly.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
