Tribe Will Pitch Past Aging, Over Paid, Over Hyped Spankees

Who is this man, and why will Yankees fans soon hate him?

Every Yankee hater (that’d be every baseball fan who has a heart and a soul) can take a deep breath and relax, because the Cleveland Indians are about send the Kings of the Inflated Payroll to the golf course for the winter. Here’s why.

It’s all about the starting pitching. Every year the long, 162 game regular season seems to erase our collective memory of how to win playoff baseball. Good pitching beats good hitting in the playoffs. This formula works every year, almost without fail. Trust me; I saw plenty of Tribe teams in the 90′s with superior offense and mediocre pitching fade away in the playoffs after fantastic regular seasons. The Indians’ 1-2 punch of C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona will be devastating in a 5 game series. C.C. is the Cy Young front runner, and has finally developed into the ace the Indians thought they were getting when they drafted him out of high school. The big lefty has always had the arm, but could never put it all together for a dominant season. Well, now he has. Unless the Spankees go with the Little League strategy of bunting every at-bat against the big fella, runs are going to be hard to come by tonight. Did I mention that it’s a contract year for C.C.? After C.C., the Tribe will roll out Fausto Carmona. Every time I read a recap of a Tribe game this season, the opposing teams’ quotations looked something like this: “It’s not normal,” Torii Hunter said of Carmona’s go-to pitch. “He’s not even human. It was so scary, I thought I was hung over.” That quotation came after Carmona out pitched Johan Santana early in the season. Good luck Yanks. After the two aces, the Tribe will count on Jake Westbrook and Paul Byrd to try to close it out in the Bronx, with the insurance that C.C. will be there for game 5 in Cleve-town if it gets to that. Westbrook and Byrd don’t dominate like C.C. and Fausto, but Westbrook has lowered his ERA from a disastrous 7.90 to a respectable 4.32 since coming of the DL in June. He is capable of shutting down any line-up. Paul Byrd is better than whatever garbage the Yanks will be sending out in game 4.

As for the Yankees rotation, Chien-Ming Wang is legit. He’s won 19 games each of the past two years, but I wouldn’t call him dominating. After that it’s a bunch of guys like Jake Taylor in “Major League.” “I wish we had him 2 years ago.” “We did.” “Five years ago then.” The best the Spanks can hope for is that they start Philip Hughes in game 4 and he returns to his pitching phenom/pre-injury form.

My Yankees fan friends have harassed me about the Indians’ ‘mediocre’ offense this week. An offense that ranked 8th in all of baseball in runs scored with 811. An offense with five 20 homer guys, 3 legit superstars (Martinez, Sizemore, and Hafner), and one guy that nobody’s ever heard of but has sparked the Indians offense since being called up on August 8th. That guy is Mitch Cumstain, my college roommate. No, it’s actual Asdrubal Cabrera. He’s the sort of guy you feel comfortable pitching to if you’re an opposing team’s fan(a rookie 2nd baseman with no power), until he rips your heart out and starts a huge rally. In fact I can’t wait for the slew of “Who the hell is Asdrubal Cabrera” phone calls I’ll be getting this weekend.

While the Tribe did commit 4 more errors than the Spanks this year, they have an identical .985 fielding percentage. We’ll call the defense a wash.

The only ray of hope the Yankees have is in the bullpen. But, the Yanks advantage in the pen does not start in middle relief with Joba the Hut like everyone thinks. While Joba is completely terrifying, the Tribe has a couple of lights out set-up men as well. Cue up the Rafael brothers, Bentacourt and Perez, and their respective 1.47 and 1.78 ERAs. The Tribe is doing just fine until the ninth inning. Need I even mention rookie sensation Jensen Lewis or lefty specialist Aaron Fultz who both have ERAs in the twos?

The closer situation is a little dicey. I would take the 91 year old Mariano Rivera over the Polish Jose Mesa every day of the week and twice on Sundays. But, despite Mr. Borowski’s flair for the dramatic, he did lead the AL in saves this year with 45 and was second in all of baseball to Arizona’s Jose Valverde and his 47 saves. That’s gotta count for something, right?

Oh yeah, there’s one more reason that the Tribe will dominate the Yankees. It’s because Derek Jeter is an overrated, no talent ass-clown. Actually, I can’t back that up, Jeter is the man. But, if there’s one certain way to get under a Yankees fans skin it’s by talking trash about their captain. Never fails, Yankees fans hate it!

So, there you have it Legend faithful, I’ve shown you the roadmap to the demise of the Yankees for one more year, and I didn’t even have to mention what a huge choke artist A-Rod is while I did it. Isn’t it nice when the forces of good triumph over pure evil?