New York Yankees (107-47) v Pittsburgh Pirates (93-61)
Best-of-seven, Pirates with the home-field advantage.
NEW YORK YANKEES S+ PAGE
PITTSBURGH PIRATES S+ PAGE
The broad consensus here – one that even I am forced to admit has plenty of merit and basis in fact – is that this Series is merely ceremonial, with us having reached the moment when the inexorable realities of baseball and finance have converged to facilitate a simple handing-over from the reigning to the rightful.
With both Pennants having been locked down for some time now, I have had plenty of opportunity to formulate a plan of forestalling this occurrence. And yet, when it comes to a strategy for how we can beat this Yankees unit, especially without Josh Gibson and Hank Leiber, I have come up empty.
But, you know what, I’m OK with that.
The way I see it, there is absolutely no need for us to go out there and try to
beat them, for in the end this will as likely as not result in us beating
ourselves instead. A much better strategy in my eyes is to go out there and play the way we play, and just take it from there and see how things go.
There’s no doubt in my mind that pretty much everything will need to fall our way for us to even push them. Which means we have to try and make this our first goal. We need to take every chance we get, keep advancing runners, play the tightest D we can and make our mistakes on as small a scale as possible.
From there, particularly in a short series, anything can happen.
At worst, even if we end up getting swept, what this group has achieved this season in light of the adversity faced has been monumental. Our official mantra for the remainder is
Expect the Unexpected. Unofficially, it is
Let’s Make Weird S**t Happen.
We've decided to go with O'Dea and Padgett as our catchers - meaning Tresh unfortunately misses out - because I want to carry ten pitchers. Ruffing will work from the pen, at least to begin with.