Raul Ibanez is A True Yankee

True Yankee

 I wrote a post back in mid-September I wrote a post about how the Yankees needed to stop playing Raul Ibanez and play Chris Dickerson instead and at the time it wasn't without reason as Ibanez was doing nothing at the plate. Then of course Ibanez saved the Yankee stadium the first time by homering to tie the game in the 13th against Oakland. If you recall it was pretty huge as the Yankees had been down four runs thanks to Freddy Garcia and Justin Thomas. Then the Yankees were down to the corpse that was the 2012 Boston Red Sox in the 9th and he hit a two run home run to tie the game at three before hitting the walk off single in the 12th inning. If the Yankees had lost either of these games they would have fallen into second place behind the Orioles but Raul stepped up and clobbered the Yankees to wins in both of those games.
Then last night all seemed lost as the Yankees were down by one to the Orioles with only two more outs to go and Raul Ibanez pinch hit for Alex Rodriguez and on the second pitch hit a game tying home run off Jim Johnson, who should be noted has now given up two home runs in this series after giving up three all season. But the Yankees failed to score a run and the game was over because it went into extra innings and the Orioles can't lose in extra innings just like they don't lose close games....oh wait but they did. In the 12th inning Raul Ibanez took the first pitch into the second deck on a trademark Ibanez Moonshot. The best part for that was the fact that it was off Brian Matusz who just so happens to pitch left handed and Raul hasn't hit lefties all season but right now the only way to retire Raul is if you have destroyed all the Horcruxes and clearly the Orioles missed a few (because he looks like Voldermort). I don't know if anybody has had a bigger two at bats in one game in Yankee history. I mean the Game tying and game winning home run after pinch hitting in the 9th? I think this night may have bought Raul Ibanez a new contract in 2012, maybe not from the Yankees but from somebody.

Sabathia, Martin defeat the Orioles in the 9th.

Everyone knew it was gone (Rob Carr/Getty)

Despite the final score of 7-2 this was a nail bitter for 8 innings and I don't think anybody thought that the Yankees were gonna hang 5 runs on Jim Johnson, but they did. If it had gone to extras you know they never would have shut up about the Orioles record in extra innings.
CC Sabathia was ridiculous last night and was so close to a Complete game but it probably was responsible of Girardi to take him out after Ford's hit because he was at 120 pitches. Either way CC pitched a fantastic game, got the win and preserved the bullpen. His stuff was nasty all night with the exception of the bad slider he threw to Nate McClouth that scored two runs. After last nights game CC owns a 3.36 ERA in 69.2 innings in the postseason as a Yankee. The Yankees have also won nine of his eleven playoff starts now, with the two exceptions being Game One of the 2009 World Series (offense got Cliff Lee’d) and Game Three of the 2011 ALDS, in which he left in a tie game. As good as he was he does owe alot to his Catcher, Russel Martin who not only hit the go ahead home run but had a great game behind the plate in terms of blocking pitches and pitch framing. He made a great play in the fifth to get the out at first on Lew Ford and look at how good he was at pitch framing last night:

Speaking of Russel Martin, how subdued were the TBS announcing crew on Russel Martins home run? I knew it was going out, so did McClouth and everybody in that park and they act like there is nothing interesting about the flyball whatsoever. I know the crew featured Cal Ripken jr, but seriously at least try to pretend your not rooting for the Orioles.

The Yankees did not have the best four innings on the base paths as Ichiro for some reason decided to try and steal third and got gunned down by Matt Wieters. Then Mark Teixeira got thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double against Chris Davis, you shouldn't do that he has a cannon. But despite missing some great opportunities the offense made up for it by saving the best for last and sucking the life out of Camden Yards in the 9th. Now the Yankees need to win the game tonight as they send out Andy Pettitte to take on the gassed Wei-Yin Chen before heading to the Bronx.

Yankees will face the Orioles in the ALDS

This happened in 1996, apparently nobody in Baltimore has had anything better to think about

Baseball is an amazing thing as that bizarre Cardinals v. Braves game happened Well the Texas Rangers officially choked away their season on Friday and lost to the Baltimore Orioles. Now the Yankees will face off against the Orioles in games one and two in Baltimore and stop this "miracle team" in its tracks. Game One will start 6:15pm ET on Sunday while Game Two will begin at 8:07pm ET on Monday. Games Three though Five (in necessary) will be played Wednesday through Friday of next week with start times yet to be announced. The number of times that Jeffery Maier is going to be mentioned is absurd as is the number of times they mention the Orioles record in one run games and extra inning games. Also infield fly rule, its gonna happen.

not the infield

The six-man umpiring crew will include Brian Gorman, Mark Carlson, Fieldin Culbreth, Mike Everitt, Angel Hernandez, and Tony Randazzo. Games Three though Five (in necessary) will be played Wednesday through Friday of next week with start times yet to be announced. 
Today enjoy the A's-Tigers match up as it is  Parker vs Verlander and Cueto vs Cain in the Reds-Giants game.

10/4 A True Yankee Podcast

Playoffs baby! Yankees are in the playoffs and Chris and I say who is going to win each series and the regular season awards. We also talk about the Yankees vs Red Sox series and the return of Brett Gardner and Mark Teixeira

Yankees win the AL East

The Yankees have won the AL East by sweeping the Boston Red Sox in three games and defeating them 9-2 behind a great start from Hiroki Kuroda and an amazing offensive game from Robinson Cano. In fact Cano and Granderson's four home runs broke the franchise record for home runs with 245 Home runs. It ended up not mattering because the Orioles lost to the Tampa bay Rays whose offense showed once again that is extremely dependent on Evan Longoria, who had a three home run game. Despite all their injuries and all the hate from the media in late August and early September they won the AL East by two games while the Texas Rangers choked on the last day of the season and lost to CCSU Alumni Evan Scribner and the Oakland Athletics. We were all a little freaked out after the Yankees blew that 10 game lead but they were never out of first place at any point since June.  Its time for the Playoffs, but we will have to wait for Sunday to see the Yankees face the winner of Fridays wild card game.

Evan Scribner wins the AL West for the Oakland A's

While some may say credit is due to the Oakland Athletics offense who put up 12 runs on Texas pitching, but i'm going to give it to CCSU alumni and Connecticut native Evan Scribner who took over for AJ Griffin, after he had given up five runs in 2.2 innings, and shut down the best offense in baseball for three innings to earn his second career win. He also struck out Josh Hamilton and Mike Napoli and left to a standing ovation after his three innings.
I wrote about Scribner here and in fact this blog sponsors his Baseball refrence page which you can view here. After today the Blue Davil alumni finishes his season with 35.1 innings pitched and a 2.55 ERA and nice bounce back year in Oakland after his last few outings for San Diego tarnished what had been a decent season last year. Check out Evan Scribner's twitter page or Facebook fan group and give him your congratulations.

Banuelos will undergo Tommy John surgery

Via Josh Norris, left-hander and top pitching prospect Manny Banuelos will have Tommy John surgery on Thursday. Brian Cashman confirmed the news and said it’s a new injury. “If we knew he’d needed (surgery) a year ago, he’d have had it done a year ago,” said the GM.

Banuelos, 21, missed essentially all of 2012 with what the team called a “bone bruise” in his elbow, so this news is crummy but not completely unexpected. The worst part is that between this year and next, he’ll have lost two consecutive years of development due to injury. Billy Connors recently firing suddenly starts to make sense given this news. He was working with the team’s rehabbing pitchers this year. On the bright side Banuelos is still very young and can come back from this.