What he said
Yankees vs Red Sox
Riveria blew another save vs the Red Sox last night (12th blown save vs Boston in his career) when Jason Bay cranked a two-run homer in the ninth to tie things up. The Red Sox went on to win the game in 11 via a Youk HR. Boston has now won 8 in a row and are still only two games back of Toronto.
I’ll be liveblogging the 4pm match-up between the Yanks & Red Sox over at TheScore Liveblogs.
I’d do an in-depth rundown of the rivalry but Callum already did it for me yesterday. Hit his summary up and I’ll see you at 4pm (Jays don’t start until 7pm).
Jays keep on winning
Oh Yeah! This club just keeps on hitting and the pitching continues to step up. To use a sports cliché, this club is firing on all cylinders.
There are some cynical bastards out there saying “so what? They haven’t played anybody yet”.
Over the past couple of seasons the Jays haven’t taken care of the so-called easy games. Last season they went 17 – 19 vs the AL West. In 2007 they were only one game above .500 vs the AL Central & AL West. To compete in the stacked East this season the Jays will have to win these easy games that many pundits look down on. I personally don’t care where the wins come from, as long as the number in the W column keeps on rising.
2008 Jays vs AL Playoff teams 26-27
They always get up for games against the big boys. They seem to mail it in against the other also rans.
Look for Yankees pitchers to pound the inner half, going up and in most of the time on Ortiz. Ortiz was trying to cheat in his swing in his effort to catch up to the 92-93 mph fastball of Chamberlain on Friday night – and this was exposed whenever Chamberlain threw a breaking ball, because Ortiz’s timing would be off so badly. Large Papi struck out four times in the Boston victory, and his slugging percentage is down to .308.
Interesting fact: Youkilis is the first Red Sox hitter to slam a walk-off homer in extra innings against the Yankees since Jim Gosger in 1966, when Gosger mashed a 16th-inning homer.