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The Yankees and Mets enter tonight's Subway Series opener both sitting in first place in their respective divisions. It took a sweep of the Rays and taking three games in Detroit for the Yankees to claw their way into a tie atop the AL East while the Mets are winners of their last 11 in a row. It's too early in the season to be talking about a lot being on the line, but being able to cool off their crosstown rivals would go a long way toward sending April out on a positive note.
Each team sends one of their best pitchers to the mound in the first game of the weekend series. Michael Pineda gets the start for the Yankees opposite Jacob deGrom, who has gotten off to a fantastic start so far in 2015. Playing the series at Yankee Stadium means that we'll be spared having to watch Alex Rodriguez sit the bench in favor of enduring helpless pitcher at-bats. It is always too early in the season to deal with that.
I answered some questions for Amazin' Avenue, our SB Nation sister site dedicated to all things Mets. You can check out my answers by clicking here.
Here's tonight's lineup:
Tonight's lineup: Ellsbury 8 Gardner 7 ARod DH Teixeira 3 McCann 2 Beltran 9 Headley 5 Drew 4 Gregorius 6 Pineda 1
— Erik Boland (@eboland11) April 24, 2015
Seems like Joe Girardi might be finally realizing that Carlos Beltran should be far away from the top of the lineup. It's pretty much a waste for Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner to get on base if Beltran is rolling up as an automatic out right behind them. The rest of the lineup is as you would expect. Unfortunately, the Yankees hottest hitter in Chris Young is not in the lineup tonight. That's the penalty of playing Beltran, I guess. Hopefully they are in the mood to score some runs tonight.
The game starts at 7:05 pm. You can watch on YES, MLB Network, or your MLB.tv machines.
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