And this is exactly what I hoped wouldn't happen so that I wouldn't have to write this as my Game 5 preview. The personal commitments I alluded to yesterday are a wedding that I'm in this Saturday. And while that's a beautiful thing and an honor to be a part of and all of that stuff, it still royally screws up my plans to watch and write about the most important thing in the world every October, Yankee playoff baseball. Rehearsal and rehearsal dinner is tonight, and the wedding itself is its typical all day/all night affair on Saturday, so at best I'm going to get to watch the first half of tonight's game, miss the end, and if the Yankees do advance I'll also miss Game 1 of the ALCS.
As for that whole "advancing" thing, what do you really say about this team? If you would have said before Game 1 that the Yankee starters would combine to allow just 8 ER in 30.2 combined IP, that should have worked out to a slam dunk 3-1 series victory. And if anybody in the lineup not named Derek Jeter or Mark Teixeira would have shown up in this series that's exactly what would have happened. But the station-to-station problems and RISP Fail that plagued the offense all season has been kind enough to stick around for the playoffs, and now it all comes down to tonight.
Updated Starting Lineups (2:30PM)-
NYY: 1)
Jeter- SS, 2) Ichiro- LF, 3) Cano- 2B, 4) Teix- 1B, 5) Ibanez- DH, 6) Swish- RF, 7) C-Grand- CF, 8) Martin- C, 9) Chavez- 3B
BAL: 1)
McLouth- LF, 2) Hardy- SS, 3) Jones- CF, 4) Davis- RF, 5) Wieters- C, 6) Machado- 3B, 7) Mark Reynolds- 1B, 8) Ford- DH, 9) Andino- 2B
Pitching
Matchup-
CC Sabathia (8.2 IP, 2 ER, 1 BB, 7 K in Game 1) vs.
Jason Hammel (5.2 IP, 2 ER, 4 BB, 5 K in Game 1)
Aaron Judge and the center field problem
1 hour ago