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.

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.

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.

Yankees clinch Playoff berth

The Yankees clinched a playoff berth with a win today and an Angels loss, as did the Rangers and Orioles. It looked like the Yankees would be doomed to 2nd place as they trailed by four runs after five innings, but the Yankees showed grit and rallied to split the series in Toronto. The Orioles and Yankees remain tied for the division lead with the last series remaining and the Yankees have the clear advantage in facing the Red Sox in the Bronx, while the Orioles face the Rays at Tropicana field. Hopefully the games swing the right way and they will not have to use Hiroki Kuroda in Wednesdays game, otherwise he would have to pitch on three days rest in game two. The end result though is that the Yankees need to win these games so that they can avoid the one game playoff and on a side note, congratulations to the Baltimore Orioles fan base on your first playoff berth in 15 years.