The LoHud Yankees Blog

YANKEES (1-2)
Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Lance Berkman DH
Brett Gardner LF
Francisco Cervelli C

RHP A.J. Burnett (first postseason start)
Burnett vs. Rangers

RANGERS (1-1)
Elvis Andrus SS
Michael Young 3B
Josh Hamilton CF
Vlad Guerrero DH
Nelson Cruz RF
Ian Kinsler 2B
David Murphy LF
Bengie Molina C
Mitch Moreland 1B

RHP Tommy Hunter (0-1, 4.50)
Hunter vs. Yankees

TIME/TV: 8:07 p.m. ET / TBS

UMPIRES: HP Angel Hernandez, 1B Fieldin Culbreth, 2B Brian Gorman, 3B Gerry Davis, LF Tony Randazzo, RF Jim Reynolds

WEATHER: Temperatures in the 50s again, but it feels colder than last night. The flags at the top of the stadium suggest a pretty solid breeze blowing out to left field.

THE SCORE IN FOUR: The Yankees have played in 11 ALCS Game 4s. They’ve won eight of them. The Rangers have played in Game 4s in franchise history — both in the division series — and they lost both of them.

JETER STANDS ALONE: Last night was Derek Jeter’s 50th ALCS game, moving him past Manny Ramirez for the most League Championship games of all time. Jeter is five hits away from tying Ramirez for the most ALCS hits of all time.

BOUNCING BACK: Since the start of the 2008 season, the Yankees are 17-4 in games immediately following a shutout… The Yankees have trailed two games to one in an ALCS two other times and came back to win each one (1977 and 1998).

ONE EXCEPTION: The Yankees are 8-2 in playoffs games at the new Yankee Stadium. Both losses came against Cliff Lee.

UPDATE, 8:11 p.m.: Some empty seats near the field, but this place is loud, and Yankee Stadium loved that 1-2-3 first inning from Burnett. His stuff looks good. It’s a matter of sustaining it. I would hate to be Tommy Hunter right now. This can’t be a comfortable place to pitch in this situation.

UPDATE, 9:01 p.m.: The postseason, not exactly a great time to have my regular computer completely shutdown, only to be replaced with an old one that sometimes refuses to connect to the Internet. While I’ve been trying to get online, the Yankees have 1. Taken a lead on a controversial home run call. 2. Had another controversial home run call reversed. 3. Lost the lead without allowing the ball out of the infield. A.J. Burnett has allow only an infield single, but a walk and a hit batter have helped the Rangers pull ahead 2-1.

UPDATE, 9:05 p.m.: Derek Jeter with a two-out triple. The Yankees would certainly like to get this run. #expertanalysis

UPDATE, 9:08 p.m.: Curtis Granderson – that no-good addition by that no-good Brian Cashman! — comes through with the RBI single and it’s a 2-2 game.

UPDATE, 9:48 p.m.: Brett Gardner’s bat went the same way of Marcus Thames’ bat in Game 1. It died a hero. That would have been an infield single for Gardner, but a great play let the Rangers get the out at third base. Regardless, the go-ahead run scored for a 3-2 Yankees lead in the fourth. Hunter is already out of the game.

UPDATE, 10:06 p.m.: Gardner was going to catch that ball. If that Hamilton at-bat ended with anything other than an out, there would have been a Yankees fan moving to Idaho and changing his name.

UPDATE, 10:16 p.m.: That’s got to be a pulled hamstring. Not good news at all. Here’s Marcus Thames to pinch run for Teixeira. I have to think he’ll go to right field, Nick Swisher will take first base.

UPDATE, 10:51 p.m.: As my computer continues to drive me insane… Burnett was one pitch away from a standing ovation and was instead booed off the mound on Molina’s go-ahead home run. Boone Logan came in to face Josh Hamilton and allowed Hamilton’s third home run of this series. It’s 6-3 Rangers in the top of the seventh. Amazing the change that’s happened in this ballpark.

UPDATE, 11:30 p.m.: It’s official, my computer is a disaster on the worst night possible. Anyway, it’s now 7-3 Rangers in the bottom of the eighth. Teixeira has a strained hamstring and the Yankees are six outs away from needing three straight wins to stay alive.

Tonight’s game isn’t quite do-or-die, but it’s close. A win evens the series with CC Sabathia pitching at home tomorrow. A loss leaves the Yankees needing three in a row, two of them in Texas, one of them against Cliff Lee.

“We only have two (games) in a row and then we have a day off,” Joe Girardi said. “So you could manage it a little bit different, but this is an extremely important game. You have to manage it to win, and you have to manage it hard.”

In last year’s ALCS, A.J. Burnett started Game 5 and allowed four runs in the first inning. The Yankees stuck with him into the seventh, and he rewarded that confidence with five scoreless innings. Can’t say for sure, but it seems safe to assume Burnett won’t be working with such a long leash this time.

“I think you go more on the way the guy is throwing the baseball,” Girardi said. “I mean, you can give up some runs by not getting hit hard. That’s the bottom line. And then you know, you give up two infield hits and then you give up a home run. Well, he wasn’t really hit too hard and it’s kind of a bad break. I think you look more at what the outs are like, and that’s what you look at.”

Burnett said he’s aware of the speculation that Girardi might not actually use him in this game. He said he’s heard it, but hasn’t paid attention. Fans he’s come across in his day-to-day life have been nothing but positive. He’s as hard on himself as anyone, and he’s been waiting for this opportunity. It’s a big game for the Yankees, and it’s a big game for Burnett.

“From the work I’ve been doing, I’m in a pretty good groove,” Burnett said. “I haven’t pitched in a long time, so I haven’t struggled in a long time. I don’t worry about what’s happened. From my sim game to the work I’ve done to where I am, I’m where I need to be.”

The Yankees certainly hope so.

• Girardi said he told his agent that he had no desire to discuss the Cubs managerial opening during the season. He never spot to the Cubs, and said he was happy for Mike Quade getting the opportunity. “None of us knows what life holds for us next year, so I try to concentrate on what’s going on and what’s at hand,” Girardi said. “My faith allows me to do that. When I was a 12-year-old kid, the way I would have drew it up is probably not the way it’s went. I don’t really have complaints about the way my life’s went. It’s been good. I feel that I’m extremely blessed.”

• Girardi on Cliff Lee’s stained hat: “You have a lot of guys that have a resin residue. It’s just the way he does it. Every pitcher usually has a little thing that he does. It doesn’t strike me as really odd.” Girardi said he would have asked the umpires to check Lee’s hat if he thought there was anything fishy going on.

• How good was Lee last night? “I didn’t see Doc Halladay’s no-hitter and I didn’t see Don Larsen’s no-hitter,” Girardi said. “That’s as good as I’ve seen.

• How much of Lee’s dominance was caused by the Yankees struggling offense? “He may have had four or five pitches in the middle of the plate the whole night. He lived on the edges. It was a brilliant performance. You go through it enough during the course of the season where you’re not scoring runs for a little bit, then you bust out. You have to stay (even-keel) in this game.”

• Girardi said he told Jorge Posada last night that Cervelli would be catching tonight’s game. “He was OK,” Girardi said. “He said he’d be ready.”

• CC Sabathia said he doesn’t plan to let Andy Pettitte walk away without a fight this offseason. “I’ll be calling him and begging him this offseason to come back,” Sabathia said. “He’s meant a lot to me. Two years that I’ve known him, coming here from day one in spring training, just welcomed me with open arms and any questions I ever had about the organization, about the city or pitching against these guys in the AL East. He’s been more than happy to help me, and I think he’s been a big reason why I’ve had success here so far.”

RANGERS
Elvis Andrus SS
Michael Young 3B
Josh Hamilton CF
Vladimir Guerrero DH
Nelson Cruz RF
Ian Kinsler 2B
David Murphy LF
Bengie Molina C
Mitch Moreland 1B

Associated Press photos of Burnett, and Derek Jeter with David Wells who’s here for some TV work

When the Yankees broke from spring training, Jorge Posada was catching A.J. Burnett. Posada caught Burnett’s first four starts, and those starts went pretty well. The Yankees won three of them, Burnett had a 3.20 ERA and Posada was hitting .316 with five home runs in his first 15 games.

Then Posada was hit by a pitch in Baltimore. The next day, Posada was available in an emergency only, and so Francisco Cervelli caught Burnett’s eight scoreless innings against the Baltimore. In so many ways, that was the first step that led the Yankees to tonight’s game.

“It was a day to give Jorge off,” Joe Girardi said. “I think Jorge was hurt a couple of days, and we went with Cervi, and we stuck with Cervi. It was just a day to give him off. It seemed to work out pretty well. We had a rotation, and I just stayed with it.”

Since April 23, Posada has caught Burnett four times. There were back-to-back starts in June when Burnett didn’t pitch beyond the fourth. There was August 2, when Burnett allowed eight runs in 4.2 innings. And there was September 17 when Posada came off the bench to catch Burnett for one inning, and Burnett promptly allowed a home run.

“Maybe Cervi has a better idea, in a sense, what to do in a certain situation,” Girardi said. “I’m a big believer in the catcher-pitcher relationship because I went through it. It’s one thing that I understand. I don’t understand the relationship between a shortstop and second baseman, or a second baseman and first baseman, or the outfielders. But I do understand that (catcher-pitcher) relationship, and I think it’s important to have consistency.”

Sticking with a catching rotation made some sense in the regular season. Posada was banged up so often in the early months, it made sense to give him regular days off, and it made sense to make those regular days off line up with the same pitchers. Last postseason, it made sense to stick with that catcher-pitcher matchup because Burnett and Jose Molina clearly found a rhythm together.

This year, it hasn’t mattered which catcher has been behind the plate. Burnett hasn’t found consistency with anyone. Girardi said his decision would not have been different even if Posada were hitting in the playoffs.

“I don’t think so because the focus is always preventing runs,” Girardi said. “If you shut a team down, you can win a game 1-0. That’s not anything against Jorge, but these two have been together a lot more and I want to keep that together.”

Associated Press photo

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Lance Berkman DH
Brett Gardner LF
Francisco Cervelli C

The Chicago Cubs have hired a manager, and it’s not the guy currently leading the Yankees.

Mike Quade, the Cubs interim manager, has been given the full-time job with a two-year deal. The Cubs were long rumored to be interested in Joe Girardi — a natural fit given his ties to the organization and the area — but they made their decision before Girardi’s season came to an end.

Three other minor notes with some connection to the Yankees.

• The Braves have released Melky Cabrera. Given the disappointments of both Cabrera and Javier Vazquez, it might be time to refer to this winter’s deal with Atlanta as The Boone Logan Trade.

• The Nationals would like to re-sign Chien-Ming Wang. This story has been out there for a few days. Wang was never healthy enough to pitch for the Nationals this season, but he’s been pitching in instructional ball this fall.

• Yu Darvish wants to stay in Japan. Considered one of the top pitchers on the international market, Darvish was linked to various teams with plenty of speculation that he would be come to the States this winter, quite possibly with the Yankees. (thanks to MLBTradeRumors for the heads up)

5:00 p.m. Gates open to the public

5:30-6:30 p.m. Yankees batting practice

6:30-7:20 p.m. Rangers batting practice

7:53 p.m. Presentation of Colors: United States Marines 6th Motor Transport Battalion Color Guard

7:54 p.m. National Anthem: Keni Thomas

7:58 p.m. Ceremonial first pitch: Bernie Williams

8:02 p.m. Umpires and Managers to home plate

8:05 p.m. Yankees take the field

8:07 p.m. First pitch

* Patrick Wilson will perform God Bless America during the seventh-inning stretch.

Cliff Lee is building a postseason legacy. Andy Pettitte’s is established.

Baseball’s all-time leader in postseason wins gave a vintage performance last night. He missed with a cutter to Josh Hamilton, but he was otherwise as good as ever through seven strong innings, keeping the Yankees within shouting distance before the bullpen let things get out of control.

“I was running on fumes,” Pettitte said. “But I was able to give us a decent chance.”

There’s no sense denying the possibility this might have been Pettitte’s final start. It might have been his final start in playoffs, his final start at Yankee Stadium, his final start period.

“When I’m out of the game, sitting in the clubhouse, you kind of think about that,” Pettitte said. “But then there’s a lot of baseball to be played, left. I feel real good about our team and about the club that we have, and we plan on coming out here and winning, you know, the ballgame tomorrow here, and hopefully we can do that.

“Like I said earlier, we didn’t think this was going to be an easy series. We knew these guys were good. They are tough. They can pitch. And when they can pitch, it makes for a hard series. They are an all-around good team. Hopefully we’ll have a few more starts besides this one.”

Associated Press photo

After every game, the Yankees — or any team, really — hand out a list of postgame notes. Most are odds and ends, touching on several random stats and such. This time, the Cliff Lee stats filled roughly half of the page.

• Lee has won six straight postseason starts. The record for the most consecutive postseason starts with a win is held by Bob Gibson who won seven straight from 1964 to 1968. All of Gibson’s starts came in the World Series.

• Lee has won all seven of his postseason decisions, tied with Orel Hershiser for the second-most playoff wins before taking a loss. The longest such streak belongs to Orlando Hernandez who won eight straight decisions to start his postseason career with the Yankees.

• Before he walked Mark Teixeira in the fourth inning, Lee had gone 21 straight postseason innings without a walk.

• Lee’s 13 strikeouts gave him six double-digit strikeout games in eight postseason starts and set a new career postseason high. He is the first pitcher in big league history to reach double digit strikeouts in three consecutive games in a single postseason. Gibson did it in three straight postseason games, but they were spread across two postseasons.

• Gibson and Lee are the only pitchers in postseason history to strikeout 10 batters in five of their first eight postseason starts. Gibson walked at least one batter in each of his five games. Lee had a total of one start in all five combined.

• There have been 31 games in postseason history in which a pitcher has struck out at least 10 batters and walked no more than one. Lee has pitched five of those games. No other pitcher has thrown more than two.

• Lee has pitched 24 innings this postseason, 22 of them scoreless.

• From the Mark-Feinsand-point-this-out file: Lee has a 1.26 ERA in eight career postseason starts. That’s the fourth-lowest postseason ERA of any pitcher with at least 50 innings. The three ahead of him: Mariano Rivera, Sandy Koufax and Christy Mathewson.

Associated Press photo

If not for one huge inning in the opener, the Yankees would have lost each of the first three games this series and scored just three runs in the process. That’s not to hypothetically say the Yankees are lucky to be down two games to one, it’s to say the Yankees offense hasn’t only struggled against Cliff Lee.

“I know Cliff Lee is good, but he is human,” Joe Girardi said. “He has given up a run before. I know he’s a great pitcher — we have seen it time and time again — but this is a ballpark that you can give up some home runs (in) from time to time, and it only takes one guy to get on and a good swing of the bat.”

Problem is, those good swings of the bat never came. Jorge Posada singled, Brett Gardner singled and Mark Teixeira walked. That was the extent of the Yankees offense. Gardner stealing his way to second base was by far the Yankees biggest offensive moment. When Nick Swisher battled through that 11-pitch at-bat, the Yankees seemed to be putting up a fight, but they never made the leap from putting up a fight to winning a fight.

“Bottom line,” Alex Rodriguez said. “Two hits and one walk is not good enough for our offense.”

Of course, the Yankees have to give Lee plenty of credit. “I haven’t seen many games thrown like that at Yankee Stadium,” Andy Pettitte said. After almost a week of hype, Lee lived up to and exceeded every expectation.

“I think that people always say that Cliff just throws strikes, strikes, strikes,” Rangers third baseman Michael Young said. “It’s really not that easy. He’s not firing balls down the middle of the plate. He’s throwing quality strike after quality strike, and there’s a big difference. He’s forcing the action which is something our team has done really well recently. We want to make sure that we are being aggressive in our game but Cliff makes it happen. He forces the action and makes hitters make decisions.”

The Yankees never had a chance against him tonight. He’s the third straight Rangers starter who kept this offense quiet, and that’s the reason the Yankees are in a hole going into Game 4.

• Andy Pettitte gave the Yankees every chance in the world. This was another vintage Pettitte start, one mistake away from being a scoreless game heading into the eighth. “Andy, you’re never surprised by anything he does,” Derek Jeter said. “He threw the ball well, but it’s hard to win if you don’t score runs.”

• Pettitte on the Josh Hamilton home run: “It was just a bad pitch by me. I hung a cutter, left it on the inner half. I was trying to get it down and away, and, you know, he hit it out. And at the time you don’t think that’s going to win the ballgame.”

• Hamilton on the home run: “I could lie and say I was looking for that pitch and just got the barrel on it.
I was not looking out for that pitch. Andy did a good job of painting, but he would come inside once in a while. One of those things, I caught it on the barrel, caught it up front, and it went.”

• The ninth inning was a mess. “Our bullpen had been really, really good up until that point,” Girardi said. “Boone had done his job. Robby had done his job. We were down 2-0 and if you bring in Mo, you may not have him available for multiple innings tomorrow if you want to use him, so we went with guys that were throwing well in a situation where we were down.”

• Robertson on the ninth: “It’s frustrating. I’m trying to find a way to get out of that jam, minimize the damage, and I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t get it done today.”

• Still no word on who’s catching tomorrow.

• Hamilton’s home run was the sixth left-handed homer ever hit off Pettitte in the postseason. It was the third left-handed homer off Pettitte this year, the first two were both by Carlos Pena.

• Lee was going to go back out for the ninth if the Rangers didn’t blow the game open. “Basically when I came in, (Ron Washington) said, ‘How do you feel?’ I said, ‘I feel good.’ That was it,” Lee said. “It was a five-second conversation”

• The Yankees have played 360 postseason games. This was their 21st shutout. It was the most lopsided shutout in franchise history, topping a 6-0 loss to the Tigers in 2006.

• This was the third postseason start in Pettitte’s career in which he pitched at least seven innings, allowed two earned runs or less and did not get the win. He has 11 wins under those circumstances.

• We’ll give the final word to the Captain: “He shut us down,” Jeter said. “This was one of those games where you try to forget about it as soon as possible.”

Associated Press photos of Rodriguez, Pettitte and Jeter

Down two games to one, the Yankees will not change their rotation plans.

Both Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi have said the Yankees will stick with A.J. Burnett as tomorrow’s Game 4 starter.