Manchester United have been handed a huge favour by rivals Man City, with Pep Guardiola's FA Cup win saving the Red Devils from a summer of fixture chaos.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's side finished sixth in the Premier League and would have faced a Europa League qualifier on July 25 and Aug. 1 if City had lost to Watford at Wembley on Saturday. But City cruised to a 6-0 victory with goals from David Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, Gabriel Jesus (2) and Raheem Sterling (2).

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The early start to the season would have played havoc with a preseason schedule that was already in place, including friendlies in Australia, Singapore, China and Cardiff.

But now United will go direct to the group-stage draw (the place reserved for the FA Cup winners, which City do not need). Instead it will be Wolves who start their season in July, with the berth in the Europa League second qualifying going to seventh in the Premier League.

Wolves will now have to play on six consecutive Thursdays -- in the second qualifying round, third qualifying round and playoff round -- to make it into the draw for the group stage on Aug. 30. The Premier League season begins on the weekend on Aug. 10.

Wolves have already confirmed their participation in the Asia Trophy, and will play two games in China on July 17 and 20. However, as yet they have no fixtures in place after these dates so would be clear for the Europa League qualifiers.

United play Tottenham in Shanghai on July 25 -- the same day as the Europa League second qualifying round first leg -- and AC Milan in Cardiff on Aug. 3.

Both these games would have been under threat had United had to play in the Europa League that week. But sources told ESPN FC that contingency plans were in place with options including fulfilling friendlies with a reserve team or moving the dates and venues of games.

Sources have also told ESPN FC that United have also agreed a deal with Kristiansund -- Solskjaer's hometown team -- to play an additional friendly in Oslo on July 30. However, the club had been forced to delay the announcement until after their Europa League schedule was clear.

The squad are due to report back at Carrington for the start of preseason training on July 1 before flying to Australia on July 7. They are due to play Perth Glory in Perth on July 13 before a game against Leeds United, also in Perth, on July 17. From there, United fly to Singapore to play Inter Milan on July 20.

Paris Saint-Germain's Kylian Mbappe has called his future with the French champions into question after he won the National Union of Professional Footballers' (UNFP) Ligue 1 Player and Young Player of the Year awards on Sunday.

The France international has 32 goals and six assists from 28 matches this season and still has one final Championnat match left to prevent Barcelona's Lionel Messi from winning the Golden Shoe by overcoming a four-goal deficit.

Mbappe, still just 20, beat off competition from the likes of teammates Neymar, who was absent from the ceremony, for the senior prize -- he then made an even greater stir during his acceptance speech.

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"I think that it is a very important moment for me as I feel that I am approaching a first, or second, turning point in my career," said the former Monaco man. "I have discovered a lot of things here and I feel that it is perhaps time for greater responsibility.

"I hope that it will be with PSG, which would be with great pleasure, or maybe elsewhere with a new project. However, I would like to say thank you."

Mbappe followed that up by explaining in a mixed zone for the award winners that he knew exactly what he was doing and intended to send "a message."

"I said what I had to say," he said. "When you are at such an important event, you can send messages -- I think that I sent mine.

"If I say more, it will become too much. It will not be the same and that is not the message that I want to send."

Mbappe also added that he felt that it was the right moment for him to say what he said just after his double-prize success.

"If I say more, I think that it will be going too far," he said. "I said what I had to say at the ceremony.

? #TrophéesUNFP
?? Kylian Mbappé est le meilleur espoir et le meilleur joueur de la saison !
? "C'est peut-être le moment d'avoir plus de responsabilités, ce sera peut-être au PSG, avec grand plaisir, ou peut-être ailleurs, avec un nouveau projet" pic.twitter.com/C7fJiGJM9d

— beIN SPORTS (@beinsports_FR) May 19, 2019

"No, there was no hesitation -- I think that it was the right moment for me to say it. I am somebody committed, so when I say something, I believe it. It was the right moment, so I said it."

Mbappe is one of the youngest players to win the Player of the Year award, while his young player title is his third consecutive in that category.

The Frenchman also made it into the best XI for the season alongside teammates Neymar, Angel Di Maria, Marco Verratti, Thiago Silva and Marquinhos.

Elsewhere, PSG coach Thomas Tuchel was beaten to Coach of the Year by Lille's Christophe Galtier, as LOSC's Parisien-raised Mike Maignan also came out on top of Alphonse Areola in the goalkeeper field.

Lille's Loic Remy took Goal of the Season, while Real Madrid's Karim Benzema was voted best Frenchman playing abroad.

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. -- His place in PGA Championship history finally secure, Brooks Koepka draped both arms around the top of the Wanamaker Trophy and let out a deep sigh.

The stress was more than he wanted. The satisfaction was more than he imagined.

Koepka lost all but one shot of his record seven-shot lead on Sunday. Then he lost the brutal Long Island crowd, which began chants of "D.J.! D.J.!" as Koepka was on his way to a fourth straight bogey that allowed Dustin Johnson to pull within one shot.

"It's New York," Koepka said. "What do you expect when you're half-choking it away?"

He responded like a player capable of piling up major championships faster than anyone since Tiger Woods.

Motivated by the crowd turning on him, Koepka delivered the key shots over the closing stretch as Johnson faded with two straight bogeys. Koepka closed with a 4-over 74 for a two-shot victory and joined Woods as the only back-to-back winners of the PGA Championship since it went to stroke play in 1958.

That gives him four wins in the past eight majors he has played in and makes him the first player to hold two back-to-back majors at the same time. He won his second straight U.S. Open last summer 60 miles down the road at Shinnecock Hills in front of a far less rowdy crowd.

When his 6-foot par putt fell on the last hole on Sunday, Koepka thrust his muscular right arm in the air and hugged his caddie hard.

"Today was definitely the most satisfying out of all of them for how stressful that round was -- how stressful D.J. made that," Koepka said. "I know for a fact that was the most excited I've ever been in my life there on 18."

Koepka said at the start of the week that majors are sometimes the easiest to win.

This one should have been.

It wasn't.

And it didn't help that a raging wind that gusted up to 25 mph turned Bethpage Black into a beast, with Johnson (69) the only player out of the last 12 groups to shoot par or better. Koepka's 74 was the highest final round by a PGA champion since Vijay Singh (4-over 76) won in a playoff at Whistling Straits in 2004.

"I'm just glad I don't have to play any more holes," Koepka said. "That was a stressful round of golf. I'm glad to have this thing back in my hands."

Koepka appeared to wrap it up with a gap wedge from 156 yards to 2 feet on the 10th hole for a birdie, as Johnson made his first bogey of the round up ahead on the 11th. That restored the lead to six shots, and the coronation was on.

Then it all changed in a New York minute.

Four holes later, Koepka walked off the 15th tee with a one-shot lead. He looked over to his left to see Johnson facing a 7-foot par putt on the 16th hole -- the most difficult hole at Bethpage Black on Sunday because it was into the wind -- to stay within one shot. The groan of the crowd told him Johnson had missed.

"I felt like as long as I had the lead, I was fine," Koepka said. "As long as I put it in the fairway, I was going to be all right."

Koepka, who finished at 8-under 272, returned to No. 1 in the world with a performance that defines his dominance in golf's biggest events.

He was the first wire-to-wire winner in the PGA Championship since Hal Sutton at Riviera in 1983. It was his third straight year winning a major, a feat achieved by only seven others since the Masters began in 1934 -- Woods, Phil Mickelson, Tom Watson, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Peter Thomson and Ralph Guldahl.

Winning four of his past eight majors is a stretch not seen since Woods won seven out of 11 when he captured the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black.

This was Koepka's fourth win in a major before turning 30. In the Masters era (since 1934), only two golfers have had more major wins before turning 30 -- Woods and Nicklaus, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.

Koepka also is the first player to earn $7 million in a span of five majors.

Next up is the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, where Koepka already is the betting favorite as he defends his title for the second time. No one has won the U.S. Open three straight years since Willie Anderson in 1905.

And no one will doubt whether Koepka is capable the way he is playing.

Johnson knew he was a long shot going into the final round -- no one had ever lost a seven-shot lead in a major -- and he still managed to make Koepka work for it.

Koepka came undone with a shot he thought would be perfect -- a 5-iron from 194 yards, dead into the wind on the 16. It one-hopped over the green into thick rough.

"Hit the shot I wanted to right at the flag," Johnson said. "I don't know how it flew 200 yards into the wind like that."

Johnson now has runner-up finishes in all four of the majors, the wrong kind of career Grand Slam.

"I gave it a run," Johnson said. "That's all you can ask for."

It was more than anyone expected, especially when Koepka was six shots ahead with eight holes to play.

The crowd sensed a collapse and began chanting Johnson's nickname on the par-3 14th as Koepka went long and was headed for a fourth straight bogey.

Koepka is a 29-year-old Floridian with an imposing figure, power off the tee and out of the rough, no obvious weakness in his game and the kind of mental fortitude that majors require. He needed all of it to win this one.

"I wasn't nervous," he said. "I was in shock of what was going on."

Bethpage has a reputation for being over the top, and it irritated Harold Varner III, who shot 81 playing in the final group.

"I thought it was pretty weird how they were telling Brooks to choke," Varner said about the 14th hole. "That's not my cup of tea. I was pulling for him after that."

Koepka held it together at the most crucial moment. He piped his driver down the 15th fairway and two-putted for par. And he drilled another one into the 16th for another par. He kept it interesting to the end, three-putting the 17th as the lead went back to two shots, then pulling his driver on the 18th into fescue so thick it left him little choice but to lay up and scramble for par. Once his medium lob wedge settled 6 feet away, he could relax.

Finally.

Woods won the Wanamaker Trophy in consecutive years twice, in 1999 and 2000 and again in 2006 and 2007. Koepka was starting to draw comparisons with Woods for the way he obliterated the competition, much like Woods in his 12-shot victory in the 1997 Masters and 15-shot victory in the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.

Koepka tied the PGA Championship record by opening with a 63. He broke the major championship record for 36 holes at 128. He set another PGA Championship record with his seven-shot lead.

In the end, just having his name on the heaviest championship trophy in golf was all that mattered.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

The Houston Rockets and coach Mike D'Antoni have had preliminary discussions on the framework of a contract extension that would keep the two-time NBA Coach of the Year from entering the final year of his deal.

"I've let [general manager] Daryl [Morey] and [team owner] Tilman [Fertitta] know that I'm energized to keep coaching --- and believe that I can continue to do this at a high level for at least another three years," D'Antoni, 68, told ESPN on Sunday night.

"I want to be a part of a championship here."

It is unclear how significant of a commitment the Rockets are willing to make to D'Antoni, who told ESPN he prefers to avoid entering the final year of his original four-year contract in 2019-20 without an extension.

Fertitta called the Rockets' loss in the Western Conference semifinals to the Golden State Warriors earlier this month "unacceptable." Top assistant Jeff Bzdelik -- who was talked out of retirement in November to address the team's defense -- was informed by management on Sunday he wouldn't be offered a new contract. The Rockets' defense excelled under Bzdelik. More changes could be made to D'Antoni's staff, league sources said.

D'Antoni has averaged 58 victories in his three seasons with the Rockets, including four playoff series victories and a trip to Game 7 of the 2018 Western Conference finals. The Golden State Warriors eliminated the Rockets in each of the past two seasons, including a six-game victory in the most recent conference semifinals.

"He's not a lame duck to me." Fertitta told the Houston Chronicle last week. "That's just a media term. We're more concerned with making our team better next year. Mike will be here. I like Mike. I think he's a very good coach. Players like playing for him."

"I keep being told free agents want to know who the owner is and they want to know who the coach is," Fertitta said. "Mike and I do well together. Hopefully, we'll continue to win and Mike will be here for a long time."

The New York Mets just had the worst weekend of the season. Not the worst weekend for the Mets, the worst weekend of any team in the majors.

They went into Miami with a 20-22 record, facing the worst team in the majors, a team riding a seven-game losing streak and a loser of 14 of its past 16. The Marlins had scored just eight runs in those seven defeats without hitting a single home run. This wasn't just a bad team with a bad offense, but a bad team with a historically awful offense. The Mets had Jacob deGrom starting on Friday and Noah Syndergaard on Sunday. It was a golden opportunity to win three in a row and climb back over .500.

This is why Vegas always wins in the end.

Friday: The Marlins win 8-6 as they score seven runs -- including a home run -- off deGrom in five innings. "Tonight's on me. I did a terrible job out there," deGrom said, saying he's not able to throw the ball where he wants to right now. At one point, Robinson Cano failed to run out an inning-ending 1-6-3 double play, later saying he thought there were two outs.

Saturday: The Marlins win 2-0 as Pablo Lopez and two relievers combine for the one-hit shutout, the only hit being Jeff McNeil's double on the first pitch of the game. "I do believe we have talent in there," Mets manager Mickey Callaway said after the loss. "We have to start making it happen, somehow, some way."

Sunday: It didn't happen. The Marlins shut out the Mets 3-0 behind Sandy Alcantara 's two-hit, 89-pitch complete game in a contest that lasted 1 hour, 59 minutes. It was like the Mets couldn't wait to get out of there. The low point came when Cano didn't run after hitting a little trickler that hit behind the plate but then rolled a few feet fair. He stood at home plate arguing the call as the Marlins completed a 2-6-3 double play.

"I understand that everybody is disappointed -- the fans, the ownership, myself, the team -- because this is not who we are," Callaway said.

Or maybe it is. Years ago, Bob Klapisch and John Harper wrote a book, "The Worst Team Money Could Buy," about the Mets in the early '90s. Maybe the 2019 Mets are merely The Most Mediocre Team Some Money Could Buy.

As you can imagine, Twitter had a field day, with rampant speculation about Callaway's future now in full "Game of Thrones" mode. There appears to be only one solution for the Mets:

Not worried about the Mets. This is all just the beginning of the movie, the part before Yoenis comes back in August hits 74 home runs in 2 months and leads the Mets to the World Series.

— Cespedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) May 19, 2019

Aside from that miracle happening, here are five players the Mets need to see improve:

1 and 2. DeGrom and Syndergaard: Look, this team was built around the idea that these two would be aces. But now deGrom is 3-5 with a 3.98 ERA and Syndergaard is 3-4 with a 4.50 ERA. It's not that they've been bad; they just haven't been as good as they were in 2018. Though deGrom is still 10th in the majors in strikeout rate, Syndergaard is just 36th and he's allowing home runs, never a problem with him before. Of course, deGrom had the rocky stretch in April when he had the sore elbow. Some teams can overcome the loss or the mediocre season of a star, and even if these two aren't the vocal leaders in the clubhouse, it's never a good feeling when your axis is a little off center. Of all the Mets' issues, this is probably the one I'm least concerned about, aside from the usual worry about their health.

3. Cano: Brodie Van Wagenen's deal for Cano and Edwin Diaz was certainly a risky type of challenge trade, giving up two excellent prospects for Diaz and assuming a large chunk of Cano's contract. Cano is hitting .245/.293/.374 with three home runs. The big red flag: His strikeout rate is at 20 percent, which is below the MLB average but a big increase for him. His swing-and-miss rate is up and his chase rate is up. We can't ignore that Cano had the performance-enhancing drug suspension last year, but he hit better after he returned from the suspension. I wonder if Cano is going down the same road as Joey Votto, where the bat speed suddenly ages overnight. He's 36. I'd be worried.

4. Amed Rosario: I've never been high on Rosario, but he comes with a lot of prospect pedigree and he's still only 23 years old. But, man, he has been a disaster in the field, error-prone and not showing the range you expect from a quality major league shortstop. He's just not good. The defensive metrics back that up, as he's been charged with minus-13 defensive runs saved, the worst of any player at any position (and Rosario was bad last year). There are potential backup options -- Adeiny Hechavarria started on Sunday and Jed Lowrie, if he ever gets healthy, is a possibility -- but this is a big concern.

5. Brandon Nimmo: I was very high on Nimmo coming into the season after he posted a .404 OBP last year and hit 17 home runs in 433 at-bats. He looked like he'd be one of the best leadoff hitters in the league, even a candidate to lead the league in runs scored if he played every day. Instead, he has gone backward. He's still drawing walks, but his strikeout rate was prodigious at the start of the season and he's not driving the ball, so his average has dropped from .263 to 200. A hitter who looked like a potential .400 OBP guy with 20 to 25 home runs is instead hitting .200/.344/.323. It's also worth noting that 10 of his home runs last year came in a 24-game stretch in May and June. The good sign is he at least has cut down some on the swing-and-miss the past couple of weeks, so maybe he'll head into a hot streak.

This is surely coincidence, but after beating the Phillies 9-0 on April 23, the Mets were 13-10 and FanGraphs gave them 20.1 percent odds of winning the division and 48 percent to make the playoffs. That 9-0 win was also the game Jacob Rhame threw at Rhys Hoskins in the ninth inning. Those odds are now down to 6.8 percent and 16.4 percent.

Maybe the baseball gods have spoken.

Alcantara's gem: Let's not skip over Alcantara's shutout, because it was a terrific outing. It was the third "Maddux" of 2019 -- a complete game in under 100 pitches, the third of 2019 (after just two in 2018) -- and offers a glimpse of the upside the Marlins saw when they got him as part of the Marcell Ozuna trade with the Cardinals.

SANDY ALCANTARA

89-PITCH

COMPLETE-GAME

SHUTOUT. #JuntosMiami pic.twitter.com/UttjW55XNG

— Miami Marlins (@Marlins) May 19, 2019

He's just the fifth pitcher in the past five years to throw a complete game in under 90 pitches:

Kyle Hendricks: 5/3/19 (81 pitches)
Rick Porcello: 8/3/18 (86 pitches)
Rick Porcello: 9/19/16 (89 pitches)
Jeff Samardzija: 9/21/15 (88 pitches)

By the way, Maddux's fewest pitches in a nine-inning complete game was 77 -- 63 of them for strikes. He had seven sub-90 pitches complete games in his career (oddly, six of them were shutouts, but the 77-pitch game was not).

Bieber's game: Alcantara's start, however, wasn't the best pitching line of the day. That belonged to Shane Bieber with this game in a 10-0 victory over the Orioles: 9 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 15 SO, 107 pitches.

ESPN Stats & Info reports that Bieber is the fourth pitcher 23 or younger to throw a shutout with 15 strikeouts and no walks. The exclusive club: Dwight Gooden (19 years, 301 days), Kerry Wood (20 years, 324 days), Vince Velasquez (23 years, 312 days), Bieber (23 years, 353 days). Since 1908, it's only the 15th shutout with at least 15 K's and no walks (Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez each have two).

Ryu, 31 and counting: Or maybe Hyun-Jin Ryu had the most impressive start, considering it was his third straight scoreless start, running his scoreless streak to 31 innings in a row.

Before today's game: 1.72 ERA
After today's game: 1.52 ERA@HyunJinRyu99's so hot right now. pic.twitter.com/Y4oKuoxIaM

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) May 19, 2019

Get ready for a Harper hot streak: After belting a 466-foot home run on Saturday, Bryce Harper went yard again on Sunday with another long blast in a 7-5 victory over the Rockies:

Nice, Bryce! #RingTheBell pic.twitter.com/h24wiYu4yj

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) May 19, 2019

Harper has six RBIs his past three games, following an eight-game stretch in which he hit .148 with no RBIs. "We all knew this moment was coming," Phillies manager Gabe Kapler said. "When he's on, he's so captivating and charismatic."

Harper's weekend was good news for the Phillies, but Kyle Freeland continues to be bad news for the Rockies. He was pulled in the second inning of this game, laboring through 65 pitches and seeing his ERA climb to 6.05. Freeland was a clear regression candidate after posting a 2.85 ERA last year, but I still expected a sub-4.00 ERA and a good season. Last year, he was the master of soft contact, but his hard-hit rate has increased from 29.1 percent to 39.2.

Get ready for a Vladdy Jr. hot streak: Wait, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. may already be on one. He homered for the fourth time this week on Sunday in a 5-2 win over the White Sox:

Many underestimated you. Most of them are offline now. #PLAKATA ? | #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/vWqAaGgqYv

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) May 19, 2019

Guerrero's week: .333/.417/.905, 4 HR, 9 RBI, 3 BB, 1 SO.

Welcome to The Show, kid.

NEW YORK -- This coming week has the potential to be the most important of the New York Yankees ' schedule. Feel free to consider that hyperbole. But it's not.

If by late September the American League East race and/or the wild-card chase end up coming down to the regular season's final seven days, and the Yankees are in the thick of the action, just remember this story and this week. And if the Yankees go on a tear this week that they ride the rest of the year to a comfortable AL East lead, remember this story and this week.

(And, of course, if none of that happens, go on and burn this piece from your memory.)

Because of this weekend's series win over the Tampa Bay Rays -- punctuated by Sunday's 13-5 thumping by the Yankees -- the Bronx Bombers are now in first place in the AL East. They're also in prime position to stay there for quite some time, thanks in large part to what they have ahead of them on the near horizon.

Behold, the Bombers' upcoming schedule: they go to Baltimore, then Kansas City, then come back home to face San Diego. That's seven games against teams that already have a combined 60 losses, finishing up with three at home against a club that finished Sunday a game under .500.

What a time to be wearing pinstripes.

"We're playing a team that we should get some wins against, and our team is in a good position right now," center fielder Aaron Hicks said, referring to the four-game set the Yankees have at Baltimore starting Monday. "It's where we want to be."

The Yankees are already 5-0 against the Orioles, a team that was a real bugaboo last year. Despite being the worst team in baseball, the 2018 Orioles nevertheless took seven of 19 from the 2018 Yankees. Five of those seven wins came before the All-Star break. And much as with the Orioles, this year's Yankees have had early-season success versus Kansas City, too. The Yankees took three of four from the Royals in the Bronx last month.

"We've played Baltimore already, we've played Kansas City already, we know what we're getting into," outfielder Brett Gardner said. "Feels like it'll be a good matchup for us. We'll just take things one day at a time, and we'll keep playing good baseball."

Good baseball is precisely what the Yankees have been playing for the past month. Since April 19, they are 20-7, earning the best record in the big leagues across that span. As has been mentioned often since then, the Yankees have notched that record while a bevy of key players have languished on the injured list. In all, 17 Yankees have landed on the IL this season.

"It just proves the fight that our team has, and that we really are doing the next man up," Hicks said. "Guys are performing and doing what they can to help this team win."

Virtually all of those wins this past month have featured a different hero -- one of any of a half-dozen players hardly anyone could have foreseen contributing back in spring training.

One of the overnight replacement stars, third baseman Gio Urshela, had his own understudy factor into Sunday's big win. It was after he fouled a ball off the plate and into a sensitive area of his body that Urshela came out of the game in the sixth inning, replaced by pinch hitter Thairo Estrada. Urshela is expected to be OK.

The 23-year-old Estrada, who overcame a gunshot wound last year that stemmed from a robbery attempt in his native Venezuela, has been one of the most unlikely weapons on the Yankees' early-season roster. And with the bases loaded and two outs, Estrada hammered a 2-1 sinker, turning on the 94 mph pitch and sending it down the third-base line. At the end of the bases-clearing double, the Yankees had pushed their lead to 10-5, effectively putting the game out of Tampa Bay's reach.

"Thairo, to me, has been one of the faces of what we're doing right now," manager Aaron Boone said. "Missing a lot of last year, this guy's a prospect, in a lot of ways. We kind of rushed him up here and threw him into the fire, and he's handled every situation perfectly.

"Every time we're in a situation middle of the game, or we're thinking through a possible move, he's thinking along with the game, he's prepared, he goes out there and plays with a calm and a poise."

It's almost as if he plays as if he knows he's going to succeed.

According to Gardner -- who had a 3-for-5 afternoon that included a homer, two runs scored and three RBIs while hitting eighth instead of his customary leadoff -- Estrada isn't the only one playing that way.

"We show up here every day and we expect to win," Gardner said. "It doesn't matter who's hitting first, who's hitting third or fifth. It doesn't matter who's pitching. It doesn't matter who we're playing. We expect to win every single day.

"Obviously, it might not quite be realistic, and we have our ups and our downs, but when we come to work every day, our expectation doesn't change. It doesn't matter what you did the rest of the day, or the last couple of days. Everybody has done a real good job this year of knowing what their role is, stepping up and doing their job, and we've played pretty well."

Estrada's double was one of two batted balls in the Yankees' seven-run sixth that made it past the infield. Other Yankees reached base that inning via a pair of infield singles and five walks, including one that was intentional. It was an exhibition in patience and winning with grinding small ball.

"That's a great example of, you control the strike zone, you can have an inning like that," Boone said. "And if you're playing against a team like Tampa Bay, you better control the strike zone, or they're going to make you look bad. That was a classic example there of making it really difficult on them, especially when they had [relievers Diego] Castillo and [Ryne] Stanek in that game. Those are really tough customers."

While the Yankees can help themselves and expand their AL East lead by beating up on some of MLB's worst teams this week, they could also get some help from the teams that play the Rays and the rival Boston Red Sox.

In Boston's case, trips to Toronto and Houston are on their upcoming schedule. As the Astros proved in taking two of three from this weekend's trip to Fenway Park, it won't be easy getting past them in another weekend series.

As for the Rays, the days ahead include a two-game series at home against the National League West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers, and a visit to Cleveland.

What a time to be wearing pinstripes, indeed.

With so many factors in their favor at this point of May, the Yankees are suddenly staring at the most important week of their schedule. Will they take advantage of it?