The Yankees head back from their successful weeklong road trip in Kansas City and Minnesota to the Bronx tonight to pursue continued dominance over the Oakland Athletics. In fact, the Yankees are 27-5 against the A's since the beginning of 2008.
Taking the mound for the Yankees is Bart(olo) Colon. Colon's unimpressive start against the Royals shouldn't be much of a concern (five innings, seven hits, two walks, five runs and four strikeouts) as he's been fairly consistent all year. One note on Colon is that he's up to 124.2 innings on the year and will likely throw another 40-50 in the regular season. Here's to hoping his arm won't lose the magic it's had all year long before the playoffs roll around.
Opposing Colon will be Brandon McCarthy. McCarthy is working on a very strong first season with Oakland despite a win/loss record of 6-6. His walk rate per nine innings is sitting pretty at 1.37 and, on average, he allows approximately one home run per two starts. McCarthy mixes his cutter well with his fastball and the occasional curveball. He has a slider and changeup, but rarely puts them to use. What's impressive is he's induced a career high number of ground balls this year (47.1%). Too bad Oakland is competing with Seattle to see who can score less runs this year in the American League.
Lineups:
Yankees - Jeter SS, Granderson CF, Teixeira 1B, Rodriguez 3B, Cano 2B, Swisher RF, Posada DH, Martin C, Gardner LF
A's - Weeks 2B, Crisp CF, Matsui DH, Willingham LF, Allen 1B, DeJesus RF, Pennington SS, Suzuki C, Sogard 3B