AL East

After Alex Rodriguez left the game yesterday with a tight groin muscle, everyone feared the worse because it was a muscle near the same area where he had hip surgery.

So, A-Rod went back to see Dr. Ahmad, the doctor that operated on his hip today, and he got good news : tendinitis in his hip flexor, not in the area he had surgery.

As you may have noticed, it’s Draft Madness Week here at Burly’s Baseball Musings.  However, no matter how much die-hard baseball fans get into the Draft (and I do every year), it’s a whole different ballgame selecting amateur talent in MLB than it is in the NBA or NFL.

To give you some idea of how difficult it is to choose the studs from the duds, here’s a list of the seven starting pitchers who won their ballgames tonight and where they were drafted.

Trevor Cahill, selected in the 2nd round, 66th overall, by the A’s in 2006.

If you haven’t noticed yet I have been running posts on each of the players the Yankees drafted this week. There are 50 of them and I’m going to try to do as many as I can. I might start doing them out of order at some point too. So far we have the first eight draft picks up and I have at least four more on deck for today.

The common thing about these players are that they are young. The Yankees drafted 20 high schoolers in total which is a lot for a draft.

Robinson Cano doesn’t get the publicity of Yankee teammates Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Mark Teixeira, but he is having the best season of any Yankee position player in 2010.

He is currently leading the majors in hitting with a .376 average and is fourth in the majors in runs batted in with 46 with only Miguel Cabrera, Vladimir Guerrero, and Evan Longoria ahead of him.

This morning, I passed along a rumor that the NY Post reported today.  According to the Post, the Mariners were scouting Yankee minor leaguers in anticipation of dealing LHP Cliff Lee to the Bronx.

I wrote this story reluctantly because the Yankees boast a full five-man rotation. They  really don't need another starter.

From George A. King III :

The Mariners are scouting the Yankees’ organization thoroughly.

They had two scouts recently in Charleston (Single-A). Last night they had two scouts watching Trenton play Reading, one of whom was former Yankees minor league coach Bill Masse.

They are slated to have at least one scout check on SWB shortly.

Don't expect the New York Yankees to publicly admit to wanting both or either of these players.

According to MLBTradeRumors.com, George A. King III of the New York Post says the Yankees are likely to be interested in both Mariners starting pitcher Cliff Lee and Astros first baseman Lance Berkman.

The Yankees have five quality starters on the team at this point, so many may think pursuing Lee would be pointless. In all reality, adding Lee would be more of a move for next season.