Yankees advance to the ALCS after CC goes into Beast Mode

(Elsa/Getty)

CC Sabathia threw a complete game to defeat the Baltimore Orioles and the only hiccup was the 8th inning when CC allowed a run and had the bases loaded with one out but he struck out McLouth on four pitches, the slider that McLouth struck out on was nasty all night and the Orioles were flailing at it all night. Yankees escaped the jam one batter later as J.J. Hardy hit a soft hopper to Jeter that Hardy was unable to beat out and just like that the Inning was over. I was a little surprised that Girardi elected to stick with Sabathia for another inning, and he fired off a perfect ninth inning for the complete game, the first of his postseason career. The final line — 9 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 9 K —  doesn't do CC justice since he labored in exactly one inning. Outside of that eighth inning, the Orioles had two baserunners. Two. Sabathia buried hitters with his offspeed stuff, throwing just 62 four-seam fastballs out of 121 pitches, but that is how he has pitched lately. It was the first postseason complete game by a Yankee since Rodger Clemens in 2000. I fully expect that he will pitch in game three on short rest against Verlander, but that also will require Kuroda to pitch on short rest in Game Two. CC also set an ALDS record with 17.2 innings pitched beating the previous record of 16 innings, the previous record was 16, held by Justin Verlander (2012) and Cliff Lee (2010). The previous Yankees record was 15.2 by David Cone in the 1995 ALDS, Cone just so happend to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before the game.

The Play of this Series was Raul Ibanez's Home Run in game three, I really don't know which one I would call bigger but one of them. After that it has to be Mark Teixeira stealing second in the fifth, nobody thought that was gonna happen not with Weiters behind the plate. Granted the Orioles helped out as they weren't holding Tex on because they assumed the guy who doesn't have great speed wouldn't try and steal with a bad calf. They were wrong and it really cost them as Raul singled in Tex to give the Yankees a lead that they would never give up. The Yankees added two more runs on Granderson's solo home run and Ichiro's double off the wall that let Jeter score from first.

Now the Yankees face off against the Tigers in the ALCS and because of the stupid scheduling by the MLB that means Today. The Yankees who are the #1 seed get no break between the ALDS and the ALCS, but the Tigers who are the #3 get one that doesn't make much sense and now David Phelps might need to start game two because the Yankees need to play five in a row.  Tonight's match up will be Andy Pettitte and Doug Fister. Also the Yankees dropped Eduardo Nunez from the playoff roster in favor of Cody Epply. The Yankees won't likely need Nunez because of how right handed heavy the Tigers are and they probably wanted the extra pitcher because they do not know what will happen in game two.