I really hope Girardi gets off his ass and pinch hits A-Rod for whatever lefty can't hit lefties today.

four game winning streak begins today

[1] Yeah, and hopefully Girardi also hogties Leyland and throws sleeping gas in the Tiger bullpen so they can't bring in a righty to totally counteract that move.

I still want Granderson in there instead of Swisher. Swish could PH against a lefty, but I don't like the start. I cannot watch that man roll around on the grass anymore.

And I agree about pinch-hitting A-Rod at the first credible opportunity.

i'll be teaching from 4-7, while the game is going on. i have a short break after that and i'll check on the game. really hoping to win; i wanna watch Andy pitch tomorrow night!

GO CC!!! GO YANKS!!!

Game starts at 1pm, my time.

Do I take a late lunch and catch the 1st few innings?

Just follow the game on my phone at work?

Avoid all sports news and watch a replay once I get home?

What to do, what to do ...

[6] start drinking now.

Screw Alex. Let's hope the Yankees freakin' WIN.

[8] I guess what happens tonight will reflect, and perhaps reveal, the truth behind all the argle-bargle on the back pages the last couple of days.

If the Yankees really are ready to wash their hands of the guy, then yeah - screw him.

But if they have any intention of keeping him as a member of this team, ending the season this way will be a sore stays open for six months. They can give the man a shot at at least partial redemption in a spot that makes strategic sense.

Do the Tigers counter by making a switch on the mound? Swell, then Coke (or whoever) is burned and A-Rod has had an impact even before he sees a pitch.

Might like to see a little shuffle so the Chavez (A-Rod) spot has a righty "protecting" it in the order.

[3] As bad as A-Rod has been, which righty in Detroit's bullpen is there to fear? Valverde? Dotel? Alburquerque? Benoit? Porcello?

And, of course, once Coke is out, Leyland's only other lefty is Drew Smyly, who is more of a long guy than a short reliever.

A-Rod didn't hit .000/.000/.000 against righties. He just didn't hit them well.

The Tigers bullpen is awful. The faster Girardi can get Leyland to expose it, the better for the Yankees.

[4] Sorry. Granderson has been demoted. The Yankees are currently looking to trade Grandy and Cano to the Tigers for AJax. Or course, we will have to pay 1/2 of their salaries.

[10] Agreed. Going forward, I take A-rod vs Benoit over Ibanez vs Coke. A-rod vs righties this year is 717 OPS. Very bad indeed. But still better than Ibanez' 492 OPS! vs lefties.

I can't fault Girardi for trying the hot Ibanez against Coke in the last game. But now you can't make that mistake again. Coke got him on a slider almost in the dirt. Ibanez was thoroughly fooled.

[11] How come the Yanks never have players like Austin Jackson? :)

[10] Seems like in [1] you were referring to Ibanez vs Coke in game 3. I'd rather have that matchup than Arod vs any righty left in the playoffs.

However, I am not opposed to seeing Arod hit against a righty again this year. I hope he does something special with whatever chance he gets.

Let's GO YANK-EES!

[15] Clap - clap - clapclapclap!

[14] Me, too.

I didn't mind leaving in Ibanez to face Coke.

I was actually referring to Girardi's not pinch hitting A-Rod for either Ichiro! or Cano in Game 3. IMHO, both were great opportunities to do so.

If Leyland brought in a righthander, Girardi could counter with Swisher and - most importantly, given who was coming up next (Tex/Cano/Ibanez or Ibanez) - the lefty Coke was out of the game. If Leyland stayed with Coke, A-Rod had an incredibly favorable matchup and Swisher was still available to pinch hit.

Doesn't matter now so . . .

Bright sun shiny day in Detroit. Let's go Yankees! You need on more out, CC! Do it. Delmon young is despicable.

game over. Tigers up 1-0.

Man, I'm starting to hate that drunken anti-semite.

Well, that was sub-optimal.

[19] There were plenty of reasons to hate him before the series.

So far, this looks like more of the same.

it'll all be over soon...it'll all be over soon...

[23] Tell me about the rabbits, George, tell me about the rabbits!

I've been watching this team 30+ years and I can't remember the last time the whole offense shut down like this for such a protracted period of time.

This whole organizations needs to be nuked from orbit.

It ain't over til it's over.

[25] I've got 48 years with these guys.
They look utterly defeated.
CC didn't help with this start.

[26] or just the hitting coach.

at least I will save money on my World Series tix.

[29] No. This fish is rotting from the head.

[19] [21] Not exactly how I was thinking of it, but yeah.

Long should be hypnotizing the bats: "When you go to the plate, its the 9th inning . . ."

[31] They always do.

Maybe if the starting pitching is bad for the first time all postseason, the bats will come alive?

40 pitches through 2. Meh.

WHY DO YOU SLIDE???????

http://youtu.be/vMcdYPFhIZk

Atta boy, Brett. Watch 2 fastballs for strikes and then weekly ground out on an off speed pitch that would have been a ball. sigh.
Oh, Fielder with the E. Let the floodgates OPEN!

He slid and slowed down for 3 feet before he touched the bag!!!! Fire all the coaches (except the pitching coach)

The Yankees are a dumb baseball team. Chavez doesn't charge a grounder and it costs him. Gardner slides into first base on a close play. Where are the smarts?

[35] ? What happened? Gardner slide into first?

[35] Never mind. Sigh.

LEGS!!!

At least we've broken up the perfect game.

if anything, in this series we've seen that yes Eduardo Nunez can indeed be semi-useful

[44] He's totally a cromulent option ... on the offensive side of things.

C'mon Cornflake, you over-caffinated squirrel!

Swisher's going to k.

Sigh.

Thank goodness we have Nick Swisher in the lineup. Who else would have been able to actually take two pitches for balls on the way to striking out?

Well, hey, getting a runner into scoring position has to count as a moral victory, and that's a kind of victory, right?

I'm over Nick Swisher

In a sane world the TBS producers would realize that pitches shown outside their stupid fucking strike tracker are balls routinely called strikes and vice versa. What a joke. Just like the Yankee's offensive offense.

Should Max get credit for a no hitter if it's against this team?

Man, this team is awful. Instead of just blocking the ball with a slow runner at the plate, Tex tries to make some kind of backhand pickup.

Embarrassing. Now if they would just get Verlander off the mike.

[19] Are you referring to Delmon Young?

We watch, because we support the team. We kvetch because we support the franchise. We let it go and forget, because life moves on. This has been a tough year for fandom, yet the Yankees had 95 regular season wins and held off a Baltimore team that surged all year. The post season exposed the weaknesses of the team, that we all realized earlier. We all believed that this team would have trouble in the post season. But I never thought Cano would hit a wall like this. The others (Arod, Swisher, Granderson) showed the tendencies.

Maybe the Yankees will steal this one, and we'll get to see Andy one more time.

[55] Seeing your team lose when they don't play well enough to win doesn't bug me. But two things do:

Knowing the batters we saw through the last two weeks of the regular season would probably have swept Baltimore and be at least even in this series.

Knowing the Yankees are about to finish completely wasting an incredible, should-have-been-history-making run of playoff pitching performances.

Jeez Louise.

Dammit, now what? (Gamecast)

[52] That box is a POS. You're right about balls outside (especially on our right side) the box are strikes, and balls on the inside strike area are called balls. I'm surprised the umpires union hasn't complained.

[56] Yeah, Cano was batting like .700 the last two weeks of the season.

Jesus Fucking Christ on a pogo stick. Nice throw, Nuney.

Of course. Snakebit

[56] And the pitching in the PS has been stellar.

Adding insult to injury I have to listen to the Yankee radio broadcast now that my streaming tv feed got killed. So I barely know what's going on since Sterling and Waldman are fans more than commentators.

take back that Nunez comment

[60] Law of averages caught up to him. He's probably at .350 if you combine the hot and cold streaks.

Well, that's REALLY that.

I've got work I could be doing.

72 pitches through 3. This game is a disaster already. What a shocker.

Sabathia should have that ball. It was an easy comebacker. That's three infield misplays in one inning.

That was a good play by Nunez. Did you see how far he ranged for that? Jeter doesn't even go after it.

This is all A-Rod's fault.

Let's turn this game and series around.

Classy of Girardi to let Kevin Long take out the lineup card today. (In what could be Long's last game with the Yanks)

Its seem like every time I hit refresh when Cano is at the plate, the count goes from 0-0 to 0-2. Is he just conceding the first two strikes?

If this series ends today, as bad as its been watching this debacle unfold, the long offseason with this as the last taste in our mouths might be worse.

[71] I blame Ibanez. If it wasn't for his heroics we would have been out of our misery by now.

[74] True. But I really wanted to beat the Orioles. I had a few friends who were Os fans. They were getting a bit insufferable.

TAKE. OFF. AND. NUKE. IT. FROM. ORBIT.

It's the only way to be sure.

Jeter is fortunate not to have to witness this and get wrapped up in all the controversies.

There is a lot of blame to go around, but you can't blame the pitching. Remember what a rally looked like? I wonder if the players remember what it felt like.

Nap time.

Oh boy.

Dagger in, season over.

This sucks.

Alex Rodriguez did have a ball delivered to two female fans in the Yankee Stadium crowd during Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, and it was witnessed by New York Yankees

"It's true," the team source said. "It was witnessed in the dugout. The whole thing is true." When

OMG!!!!!!!!!
IT'S TRUE!
ARod had a message delived to a babe in the stands.
The guy is a puusy hound!!!

What in the world will Jeter think?!?!?

And there goes the season.

If this continues to form, then I want Detroit to face the Giants and the Giants win the WS.

[77] Now we can blame the pitching. (Unfair but true).

I ask again: might a crappy starting pitching performance wake the bats?

Silver lining - we don't have to watch these TBS assholes anymore.

Frankly, the season went when Jeter went down.

And now comes the Winter of our discontent. I have a feeling things are going to get much uglier before they get better, to borrow from Dean Wormer, "Old, Shitty and Expensive" is no way to go though life ...

Oof.

Terrible job by Sabathia. Why is he still in?

This is a really shitty way to end the season.

[86] No. I don't think Jeter's presence would have helped that much. It's not like his replacements have hurt the Yanks. Nunez hit the homer in Game 3 off Verlander.

I will not get mad at CC, I fucking refuse

[86] And the slumping Yanks were slumping with Jeter in the lineup in all the games vs Baltimore and Game 1 & 2 vs Tigers.

So, for anyone wondering which thing that was bound to happen would happen first - the amazing run of starting pitching would end or the bats would wake up - now we know.

Cripes.

[91] Me neither but yikes, this was not a good performance.

Didn't realize was an early start for Game 4..oh well. Was a great regular season at least.

A real #1 Ace does what Verlander did in game 3 -- shut out the team despite not having the best stuff. Verlander only struck out 3 guys but still kept the team in the game.

Sabathia is an ace when he has his stuff but without it, he isn't. Fortunately, he is on more often than not. But he needs to learn how to get it done without A stuff. Otherwise that contract will be an albatross as he gets older and his stuff diminishes.

Some ideas:

1. I think it would be fun to make Arod pitch the rest of this game. Why the hell not?

2. It's time to unload the following players whether it's through not resigning, trading, releasing, etc., even if we eat large portions of the contracts of the guys still signed: Arod, Chavez, Granderson and Swisher.

3. I tend to view Cano's post-season as an aberration largely because he crushed coming down the stretch.

4. I'll repeat myself from the other day: FIRE KEVIN LONG. I don't care who they replace him with. I don't care about how many homers we hit in the regular season, I care that our players have an awful approach at the plate in the post-season and that's partially on him. If it's not on him, why do we even need a hitting coach?

5. I tend to want to see Girardi gone too. I don't know what he's supposed to do to make guys not go into long slumps, but it seems like guys like Leyland get more out of their guys. Is there another Leyland out there? I have no clue.

6. I move Jeter to 3rd and get a SS. I keep Ichiro. I keep the other guys that I perceive to actually be trying (Teix, Gardner, Ibanez and most of the pitchers.

7. Bring back Andy. Bring back Kuroda. Keep Rothchild.

Well, I've been watching the Yankees play for about 40 years now, and this is the worst--by far the worst--I've seen a Yankee team play in the postseason. The first three games was mostly the hitting, though Swisher did not help things defensively in Game One, but this game has been a complete and utter breakdown in every way through the first four innings.

I hope the players feel embarrassed. They should be. And if I hear one guy say after the game, "Well, you gotta tip your cap to the Tigers," I will... well, I don't what I will do.

And if Arod refuses to waive his no-trade clause, I basically tell him that's fine, you can sit on the end of the bench for 5 more years and wish you were chasing the home run record.

[97] #5, Leyland gets crushed by the local sports radio callers here in Toledo. It's comical.