Their lineup is dangerous. Ours is dangerous as well. Their rotation? Well Cliff Lee is awesome but we have hit him well. Cole Hamels ain’t Cole Hamels circa 2008. Not too worried about their bullpen. If our hitters wake up with RISP, our pitchers keep doing what they do we are going to apply A LOT of pressure on the Phillies. With that said, don’t expect this team to make the mental errors of the Twins or Angels. They won it all last year and won’t make those mistakes.

I can’t think that Stairs is even half the player he used to be since he’s been relegated to a pinch hitting role. Honestly, there’s no way the Phillies have a lineup advantage over the Yanks. Ibanez has been horrible since the ASB, Feliz & Ruiz are ok at best. Howard scares me, as does Utley. Most of the time it’s b/c of their ballpark, but Yankee Stadium is just as much a hitter-friendly park as Citizens Bank.
I think the Phils will pitch Lee-Pedro-Hamels. I can’t see Cole pitching away when his home/road ERA splits are so divisive (home ERA being great, road being terrible).

I just want to keep objective here and point out how COLOSSAL game 1 is. Let’s be honest. As Yanks fans we’ve come to expect a W from Sabathia. He has been lights out. I think the Phillies are the same with Cliff Lee. Game 1 sets such a HUGE TONE for this series. Think about if we lose game 1 at home with Sabathia.

It’d be 0-1 and it’d be probably Burnett v. Hamels. Say what you want about Hamels but he has a much better track record than Burnett. I think the Yanks have more to lose in Game 1.

This Phillies team is MUCH better offensively than either team we’ve faced in the playoffs and maybe better than any we could expect to face. Howard and Utley are tremendous. Werth had a great year, and they are deep.

I STILL say Yanks in 6 or 7 only because of Rivera compared to Lidge/Madson and the home field advantange…thank you Bud Selig and the rest of the AL! Also, check out some awesome Yankees Memorabilia from my client, Steiner Sports. It’s some great stuff as we head back to the World Series.

It’ll be fun to watch. I expect a great series.

has been more important to me than what happened in the regular season.

Now, some of it might be that the Yanks faced much better pitchers in the Angels than they will with the Phils, whereas the Phils faced much worse pitchers than they will with the Yanks.

Offensively, I give the Yanks a weak advantage at C and a stronger advantage at SS and 3B. CF might be a push and DH is a push (Matsui looks finished right now). But the corners, 1B and 2B (Howard and Werth are having MUCH better post-seasons than Tex and Swish offensively), I give to the Phils. So 4-3-2 in favor of the Phils.

Starting pitching on the other hand, I think we have a big advantage. Even bigger in the bullpen. The question is whether we can keep the Phils down enough and capitalize on the weaker pitching, considering our horrible performance with RISP and the disappearance of the HR, which was our calling card.

so many people are picking Howard over Tex at first. Tim Brown at Yahoo and John Kruk on ESPN to name just two. I’d rather have Tex in a heartbeat, though I can accept a push.