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Yankees and Cubs rained out tonight; will play doubleheader tomorrow and call up Scott Sizemore

Get ready for Pineda/Tanaka day tomorrow.

By Andrew Mearns
Mike Stobe

The weather forecast for tonight's scheduled Yankees/Cubs game was foreboding, to say the least.

...yeah. Due to the weather, the Yankees have already announced that tonight's game will be rained out and that they will play a doubleheader tomorrow against the Cubs:

Hopefully they will be able to get it in since the Cubs won't visit Yankee Stadium again this year. The forecast seems to be sunny for tomorrow though, so they should be fine unless the bees invade Yankee Stadium. Tonight's ceremonies honoring Nelson Mandela will also be postponed to tomorrow. The pitching matchups for tomorrow will be Jason Hammel vs. Masahiro Tanaka and Travis Wood vs. Michael Pineda. The Yankees' two most exciting pitchers taking the mound in one day? I'll sign up for that.

In other news, the Yankees will make some call-ups to address the Francisco Cervelli injury and add bench depth:

Jason reported the Murphy move last night, so that's no surprise. It's good that they're giving Murphy, the more legitimate catching prospect over Austin Romine, time in the major leagues as Brian McCann's backup catcher. It's not going to stunt his development to hang around in the pros for a little while until Cervelli's hopeful return in 4-6 weeks. He's already proved himself to be a capable hitter and receiver at Triple-A, so it seems like he's ready for a new challenge anyway. He was off to a slow 5-for-26 start in Scranton this year, though he's hit three doubles and been better since starting the year 0-for-10. He'll probably start one of the game tomorrow since it's a doubleheader and McCann really doesn't need to play 18 innings behind the plate in one day.

The Yankees previously had pitcher Shane Greene up from Scranton to provide bullpen relief, but he wasn't needed in his week in the Bronx. It's kind of a bummer that he never got to make his MLB debut; hopefully he can find his way back to the pros. The Yankees were rolling with a 13-man bullpen, and that was a luxury they couldn't afford with Cervelli going down and Brian Roberts limited by an injury. Sizemore can't play first base, but Joe Girardi said after Mark Teixeira's injury that Dean Anna or Yangervis Solarte could be used there if needed. He just chose to use Cervelli as his first base backup. If Kelly Johnson gets hurt, needs a day off, or Girardi wants to use him away from first base, expect to see Anna or Solarte there.

Hell, they've played a mere combined five professional games at first, so it wouldn't be surprising to hear that Sizemore is taking grounders there, too. Sizemore, who was quite good for Oakland and Detroit in 2011 before getting hurt with ACL tears the last two years, was hitting .344/.436/.500 in his first 10 games in Scranton, an excellent start. Since he had an opt-out clause for May 1st, it's not a shocker to see him called up too. Even though he's not experienced at first base like Russ Canzler is, Teixeira should be ready to return before the end of April, so it would have been kind of silly to call Canzler up only to possibly DFA him in just a couple weeks. If Sizemore looks like he could be a legitimate bench option, then the Yankees could always send Anna or Solarte down once Teixeira returns. To get him on the 40-man roster, they will likely move Brendan Ryan to the 60-day DL due to his nasty spine injury, which will probably keep him away from the majors until the end of May at the earliest move Cervelli to the 60-day DL. It's kind of strange that Ryan isn't going, but the Yankees' front office has a much better idea of how long it will take Cervelli to recover than me.

One dumb note to report is that the Yankees won't be able to add a 26th man to their doubleheader roster due to this idiotic rule:

Way to plan for evening rainouts and next-day doubleheaders, MLB.

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