ALDS: Yankees v. Tigers; Games 1-3

While I was on vacation this weekend, I did a lot of baseball-watching on the hotel television and zero baseball-blogging on this website. There's a lot of things we need to go over.

ALDS Game 1: Tigers 3, Yankees 9
W: Ivan Nova (1-0), L: Doug Fister (0-1)
HR: NYY - Robinson Cano (1), DET - Delmon Young (1)

This game started on Friday evening and concluded on Saturday night around midnight due to a rain delay that deeply angered Yankees radio announcer, John Sterling. According to Sterling, the weather this year has been the worst of any season since he began broadcasting 30 years ago. I just read on his Wikipedia page that he has announced every Yankees game since 1989. That's crazy.

C.C. Sabathia and Justin Verlander gave up one run each before the game was postponed in the middle of the second inning.

Ivan Nova and Doug Fister picked up where they left off on Saturday evening. They're kind of like Sabathia and Verlander's little brothers.


Robinson Cano hit a grand slam in the sixth inning with two outs. I was watching the game in a "tavern" in Manchester, Vermont with some Vermont-y Red Sox fans, some people who were there to watch college football and a drunk girl playing foosball in a Tigers hat. The one other Yankees fan in the bar gave Alex and I a nod as we were leaving. Vermont is a nice state. Why are they Red Sox fans?

Gooooooo Yankeeeeeeees! (Then this happened....)

ALDS Game 2: Detroit 5, Yankees 3
Series tied at 1
W: Max Scherzer (1-0), L: Freddy Garcia (0-1)
HR: DET - M. Cabrera (1), NYY - C. Granderson (1), N. Swisher (1)

ALDS Game 3: Yankees 4, Detroit 5
Detroit leads 2-1
W: Justin Verlander (1-0), L: C.C. Sabathia (0-1)
S: Valverde (1)
HR: DET - D. Young (2)

Justin Verlander, MVP?

The Yankees need to win tonight's game to stay alive, so they're pitching A.J. Burnett. Scary! Maybe they should steal a move from the Red Sox's desperation playbook and call Bruce Chen. What's he doing...golfing?

Go Tigers! Hosmer Walk-off. Cycling Pandoval.

Last night, the Tigers won their division title for the first time since 1987. Congratulations Tigers! Clinching pitcher Doug Fister is on both of my Fantasy teams. He's cute, right? I've been on the fence for months, but I think I'll go ahead and call this one now: he's cute. He's at least as cute as Clayton Kershaw was before he became more horse-y than boy-ish. Doug Fister, may you follow in Clayton's career footsteps without losing your human good looks.

Miggy has a hand tattoo?

Eric Hosmer hit a walk-off double against the White Sox last night. I hope become a great team because I love Eric Hosmer and I love their uniforms.


Pablo Sandoval hit for the cycle two nights ago. Can you believe he hit a triple?

I'm already starting to have baseball separation anxiety. Go away, football. Baseball, don't go!

KKKKKKKKKKKKKK's for C.C. and Other Fantasy News

I went to the Mariners-Yankees game last night and watched C.C. Sabathia strike out 14 batters. I also watched the grounds crew roll out their giant silver rain tarp twice.

C.C. was perfect through six. Then, Brendan Ryan singled in the seventh inning. You can see the bizarre mustache he's wearing in his scoreboard mugshot from across the stadium.

I was pretty sure it was a computer generated practical joke until I saw this photograph this morning:

So, the mustache is real hair. That doesn't mean it's not a joke. When I heard Ryan announced in the seventh inning, I yelled "Who is that? He's not even famous!" Did I jinx C.C.'s perfect game? We learned about this during our Greek Tragedy unit in high school. The Yankees still won, so I guess the universe wasn't that offended by my comment.

In other happy news, Doug Fister didn't get shelled. Three runs and five strikeouts in seven innings. He's also not bad looking. All three of these sentences are relevant to my Dynasty Keeper Fantasy Team, which has been clinging to an ever shrinking first place lead for a few weeks now (in points, not attractiveness).

Given the tenuousness of my position, I agreed to a major trade this weekend, sending Elvis Andrus to another Chelsea-based Fantasy Baseball team. I never really wanted Andrus, but got stuck with him when I overestimated his value during our draft. In fact, aside from B.J. Upton and Jonathan Papelbon, I can't think of many players that I like less. Good riddance, Elvis Andrus.

Luckily, I have this guy Derek Jeter at SS. He'll be worth the
$30+ I spent on him for the next ten years, right?

Here's who I got in return:

Aaron Hill from the Blue Jays

Houston Street from the Rockies

Heath Bell from the Padres (for now)

Heath Bell famously lost 25-pounds by playing Wii Fit in the off season. You can read more about that here and here.