The Padres sure love the Yankees cast-offs. They nabbed Scott Patterson when we placed him on waivers. They selected Ian Nova in the Rule 5 draft, someone no one thought a possibility. Now they’ve grabbed yet another Yankee reliever: Chris Britton. The Friars have inked the hefty righty to a minor league deal. As with Patterson, I wish Britton the best of luck and hope he doesn’t spend the year traveling between the majors and minors. That might not be much of an issue now, as he’s out of options.

PeteAbe notes that Chris Britton has been recalled for the umpteenth time this season, and is on his way to Texas to give the Yanks some much needed relief help. The kicker is figuring out who’s roster spot he’s going to take. Pete speculates that Joba may head to DL, which makes perfect sense, but part of me wonders if it would be more beneficial to ship Melky to AAA for 10 days as a wake up call. What do you guys think, could a four man outfield of Damon, Nady, Abreu & Christian hold it down for 10 days? It sure would be nice to have that extra arm out there with Ponson, Rasner & Giese tentatively holding down rotation spots, no?

It pains me to post this, since we’re going to a disliked source. But they’ve got the info, so they might as well get the credit. Joel Sherman reports that the Yanks will recall Chris Britton to fill the vacant spot on the 25-man roster. It wasn’t more than a week ago that Britton’s name was absent from the 40-man roster listing on Yankees.com. Looks like that was a glitch — though they still had 40 guys on the roster at the time. Not sure how that worked. In any case, Fats should be in the Bronx this evening.

Yankee fans witnessed a rare occurrence yesterday afternoon when Number 47 ambled out of the bullpen to throw the last two innings of a seemingly lost cause. For Chris Britton, it was just his third (!) appearance of this season, and it became increasingly clear that, for whatever reason, Britton is the very last man out of the pen. He didn’t pitch in Saturday’s extra-inning affair, and Scott Patterson got to make his Major League debut in a three-run game before Britton was called upon to pitch. At the end of last week, we learned that Yanks GM Brian Cashman doesn’t understand the Yanks’ manager’s reluctance in using Britton (second item). One day, perhaps, we’ll understand the origins of Britton-gate.