With a pretty f'in big (but not quite huge) win against the Angels last night, the Yanks secured a return to the playoffs. Our absence in '08 is now exorcised, reduced to benign memory. Let's hit the asterisks.
What Happened:
*Yankees won 6-5, going ahead for good on A-Rod's sacrifice fly in the 9th.
*Chad Gaudin made a strong, possibly irrefutable case for the 4th starter's spot in the playoff rotation. And really, he wasn't that good. (You can't spell ALCS without "lacs," which is French for "lakes," which are formed or sustained or something, maybe, by rain, and are definitely at least uniform in substance, and the point I'm trying to make here, through good science, is that I hope it rains at an opportune moment in the ALCS if the Yankees are involved, because then we don't have to start Chad fucking Gaudin in an actual meaningful game.)
*Boston lost again to the KC Royals feat. Zach Greinke. (2.08 ERA, anyone? In the American League, that's absolutely unbelievable/absurd/breathtaking, and maybe the greatest individual accomplishment this year. If he doesn't take second place in the Cy Young voting, there's no justice in the world.) I almost came into work ready to declare their divisional hopes dead, but I want just one more neutral result tonight. We're 5 games up in the loss column, so a theoretical Boston sweep this weekend only brings them within two. If we maintain that margin going into Friday, I'll be ready to call it.
What Didn't Happen:
*Run production using any method other than the long ball. I only watched through the fifth, but in each inning before the Sandman (the creepy mythical one, not Mariano) took me to his magical realm, the Yankees had either a) a runner on 2nd and no outs, or b) a runner on 3rd and 1 out. And aside from the two jacks in the third and the solo shot by Matsui in the fifth, we did not push those runs across.
Your current thought: "you are being really fucking picky." Fair enough, but consider the fact that a good baseball team scores at least one run in the aforementioned situations, and consider that in the first five innings, we left three of those runs on the table. Sure, we got 5 via the home run, but those plucky Angels came a-stormin' back and drew even before we actually did manufacture a run in the 9th. Come the playoffs, and now I'm quoting the late French philosopher Albert Camus, that LOB shit will not cut the mustard.
But we won, yes. And I'm grateful. I'm just saying.
Today's game kicks off at 4, with AJ on the mound doing his best to earn me an improbable tie in the horrible bet I made with the office mail dude.
Also, today marks the official end of Yankee west coast baseball for the year (until the playoffs, maybe, but even then I'm pretty sure they do something like an 8pm east coast start time to snatch the NYC ratings).
Ye shan't be mourned, Pacific Daylight Time.
Irrelevant Bonus: The second paragraph of this 'news' story is possibly the most hilarious thing I've ever read. Or at least in the top ten thousand. Good day.
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