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Yanks Gamers/Postmortems

Sabathia Seeks Sweet Sixteen Sweating South Side Sox: Yanks-Palehose Gamer

C.C. vs. Chicago, who send Jake Peavy to the mound at U.S. Cellular.  Jeter is out with a bruised finger; lineups follow, comment away.

NY Yankees
B. Gardner lf .278
C. Granderson cf .269
M. Teixeira 1b .249
R. Cano 2b .295
N. Swisher rf .270
E. Chavez 3b .277
J. Posada dh .235
E. Nunez ss .275
F. Cervelli c .235
C. Sabathia 2.56
 
Chi White Sox
J. Pierre lf .275
A. Ramirez ss .269
C. Quentin dh .261
A. Dunn 1b .165
A. Rios cf .207
A.J. Pierzynski c .283
G. Beckham 2b .248
B. Lillibridge rf .250
B. Morel 3b .253
J. Peavy 5.26

25 replies on “Sabathia Seeks Sweet Sixteen Sweating South Side Sox: Yanks-Palehose Gamer”

Some great D by the Bombers in this game so far…Cano just snagged a liner and dove back to 2nd to complete the DP.
CC is loving it like McD’s.

DE-FENSE!!!!!
Another sick DP…Eduardo Suave grabs a liner and tosses it to Cano.
They seem to have CC’s back tonight. Now we need MAD runs. Peavy is shaky.

Man, they are ripping doubles off CC…this game certainly feels like a loss waiting to happen. CC is hanging on by a thread and our offense is back to it’s garbage ways…

It isn’t our pitching that is going to kill us in the postseason…it’s this sorry offense. Throw even decent pitchers out on the mound and we blow. We aren’t going to get out of the ALDS…

I just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop with our pitchers…hasn’t yet. Weird.
Of course, Hughes will give up 8 runs tonight but there is NO WAY that dude touches the ball in October.

Yanks have been pretty solid as a team – no one (other than Granderson) has been a real standout all season long on offense (they still don’t have a single guy batting above .295) and no one (other than Posada)has been a season-long black hole. They have had very solid contributions up and down the line-up at different times of the year, with guys like Nunez, Gardner, or even Dickerson contributing at crucial moments just as guys like A-Rod or Teixeira have. They’ve been fun to watch because there really do seem to be different contributors every night and despite the overblown concerns with being HR-reliant, they’ve got a very nice mix of speed and power. I’ve been most pleased with Gardner and Granderson. If these are the guys we’ll have in CF and LF for years to come, swinging the bats and running the bases the way they do, I’ll be very happy (Yanks currently lead the majors in SBs largely thanks to them plus Nunez).
As for the pitching, I like seeing Nova put into competition with Hughes in the rotation. We’ll see if it spurs Hughes to new heights, but even if it doesn’t, I’m happy to have Nova slotted into the rotation. In the still-likely-scenario that Colon and/or Garcia break down, both Nova and Hughes will be busy. And if the old guys don’t break down, all the better. It is not a rotation that gives you huge confidence going into the post-season, but the starting rotations of the other AL powers don’t really concern me as much as they did at the start of the season.
More broadly, if you stack NY up against the other AL powerhouses of Texas and Boston, I don’t think they are clearly better than either, but they’re not clearly worse either, and that frankly surprises me a little as I thought coming into the season that Boston would be substantially better. Of course they still may separate themselves from the Yanks, but we’ll see.
Regardless, whether any of those three teams can win a Series vs. the starting rotations that will be thrown up by Philadephia, Atlanta, or San Francisco is a real question to me, but that prospect is far off anyway. For now I’m really enjoying watching the Yanks keep this close to a Sox team that just had its best July in team history while keeping the competition for the wild card pretty far back in the rearview mirror, for now.
Of course, it would be nice to actually win a game against Boston. Maybe even a series???

I preface my statement with: I haven’t looked super close at Beckett’s #’s and I haven’t seen too many of his starts first hand but…I can’t imagine anyone has been better while carrying more of a load/burden than CC has this season. Take their impressive numbers out of consideration (3rd lowest ERA in the AL) CC has to feel a very small margin for error. He’s been just amazing this year…in jams, he gets out of them. Need a K, he gets it. Need a W to stop a streak, he gets it. Maybe I am a homer, but CC needs to win the Cy Young if he can continue doing what he’s been doing.

Beckett hasn’t been as dominant as he was earlier in the season, but he’s still be really good. He’s been consistent, which is something Sox fans couldn’t say about him before, save maybe one other year. I haven’t heard of any blister problems with Beckett this entire year.
CC, has been incredible though. Even if you factor in the weaker teams he’s been facing lately, he’s just been on an amazing run. But he’s still short of Verlander or Jered Weaver (and neck-and-neck with Beckett).
Seriously, Justin Verlanders WHIP is .87. And he’s doing that while pitching a few more innings than CC has. He’s having a legendary season.

I’d agree that Verlander is ahead of CC for certain…(brain fart earlier). Every time he takes the mound he’s a walking no hitter waiting to happen, so I’d agree.
As for Weaver, he’s been really good, but he’s pitching in the West and he has help. That rotation is very good.
I’d go: Verlander, CC, Beckett, Weaver if you asked me to vote today.

Whaddaya know…a rain delay
Yeah, Weaver has the benefit of a weaker division. But an ERA under 2 and a WHIP under 1 is hard to overlook. I’d rather have CC on my team, though.

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