The Yanks and A’s will try again tonight after yesterday evening’s affair was washed out. It’s not looking so hot at the moment: the view from my Queens apartment is looking rather dreary. But the weather forecast calls only for showers this evening (at a 50% chance, which is a total meteorological cop out), which is nothing compared to last night. This is all a long way of saying “I hope they get this one in, because a double header tomorrow would be brutal.”
Tonight’s match-up features two lefties. Dana Eveland takes the hill for Oakland. He came over, along with a ton of other prospects, in the Dan Haren trade last off-season. He has started just one game against the Yankees in his career, last year, in which he tossed six innings, allowing just two runs on four hits, walking a whopping six. The Yanks won that game, with Chien-Ming Wang using just 83 pitches through 7.1 innings. It was his last before suffering the foot injury in Hoston. Oh, how we long for the days of that Chien-Ming.
Andy Pettitte has quite the sample against the A’s over his career, accumulating 123.2 innings. In that span he has pitched to a 3.27 ERA, walking just 30 to 83 strikeouts. Many of those starts came way back in the day, against lineups which contain zero current A’s. Last year Pettitte faced the A’s twice and won both games, allowing just two runs over 16 innings, striking out 15 and walking just one. Now that’s the Pettitte we want to see. He’ll face a few new faces in the A’s lineup tonight, Jason Giambi and Matt Holliday included.
The lineup:
Jeter, SS
Damon, LF
Teixeira,, 1B
Posada, C
Cano, 2B
Swisher, RF
Matsui, DH
Ransom, 3B
Gardner, CF
And on the mound, number forty-six, Andy Pettitte.
RAB Notes: Ben will be on TV to talk stadium this evening sometime between 7 and 8 p.m. Check him out on NY Non Stop, WNBC’s local cable news station.