AL East

According to Jon Morosi of Fox Sports , the market for Blue Jays lefty reliever Scott Downs is heating up and the Yankees, along with the Red Sox, are said to be the favorites to land him. The Mets, Reds, and Twins are also said to be involved.

Depending on which reports you believe the Yankees were either very close to acquiring Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Dan Haren the other day or they weren’t close at all.

Either way one of the bigger obstacles the Yankees are facing internally is figuring out a way to add the $29 million Haren will be owed over the next two years and still finding a way to budget the $20 million or so per year that it would take to land Cliff Lee this offseason.

Nothing really happened between the Yankees and the Diamondbacks regrading RHP Dan Haren today. That hasn’t stopped the usual suspects from passing along information they’ve heard throughout the day.

Early morning reports

Buster Olney of ESPN tweeted :

It was a big night for the Yankees, who sat through about an hour and a half wait through a rain delay to beat the Royals 7-1 last night.

Here are some notes:

If the New York Yankees were to land Arizona's Dan Haren, they would be getting a top pitcher to add to their already impressive group of starters.

The Diamondbacks' hurler is currently having a difficult 2010 posting a 7-8 record with an ERA 4.60.  Haren though is only a year removed from a fantastic season where he went 14-10 with an ERA of 3.14, and 223 strikeouts.

I think of all the words that New York Yankee fans could use to describe Carl Pavano, workhorse would not be one of them.

While Pavano clearly wasn’t a workhorse in New York, he has been one in Minnesota, and in 2010, he has become one of the best pitchers in the American League.

Pavano tossed his second complete game in a row last night as he and the Minnesota Twins blanked the Baltimore Orioles 5-0. Pavano allowed just five hits, walked one, and whiffed four in the 102-pitch effort.

When Alex Rodriguez went from 499 homers to 500, it took him nine games and 28 at-bats to do it. Now that he’s at 599, let’s take a look at how long to expect it to take this time.

If it took him another nine games, that would set him up for No. 600 on July 31st in Tampa against the Rays. This time could be different, though.

It was an up and down night for the Yankees last night as they beat the Royals 10-4 , but not before making it interesting as they only blew open the game in the bottom of the eigth inning.

Here are some notes:

New York Yankees slugger-queen Alex Rodriguez is on the brink of a tremendous achievement.

The third baseman with the orange face and perfect hair is one homerun away from 600 for his career. Performance-enhancing drugs notwithstanding, he's a first-ballot Hall of Famer and every statistical milestone he surpasses simply cements that argument.

According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports , the Yankees have made improving the bench and bullpen their priority, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t been keeping tabs on starters Roy Oswalt , Dan Haren , and Jake Westbrook . One pitcher whom they aren’t interested in is former Yankee LHP Ted Lilly .