Debbie Wong-USA Today Sports
The New York Yankees are off to a hot start considering they were supposed to give up on the season before it began.
Their recent home stand concludes this weekend against the Oakland Athletics who area team that has cooled off a little bit as of late but still boasts some dangerous bats and young pitching.
Taking the hill for the Bronx Bombers is left handed ace C.C. Sabathia who hasn’t put up the dominating individual numbers that he has in the past, yet he still won his fourth April game last week—the first time in his career he’s achieved that.
Ask Yankee manager Joe Girardi and he’ll tell you that wins are the most important statistic of all. “The way he competes when he doesn’t have his (best) stuff is probably as impressive as anything,” Girardi said via ESPN after Sabathia’s last start. “That’s how you become a 20-game winner.”
That doesn’t bode well for the A’s who are 4-6 in their last 10 games and not playing their best ball while living out of suitcases. They have not had a lot of recent success against the Yankees’ ace either.
A’s slugger Yoenis Cespedes, who has hit a couple of moon shots since his return from the DL, does not have a hit off Sabathia so it’ll be fun to see if he can break that slump on Friday night.
The Yankees have kept pace with the Boston Red Sox, another team in the AL East that was supposed to be rebuilding and not this good so soon. They, like New York, have gotten great pitching from their veterans.
If the A’s are to make up any ground on the Texas Rangers in the west then they will have to steal a couple of games in the Bronx. Not an easy task, especially after the possibility of getting their hopes crushed again by Sabathia.
Kenny Bristow is a Los Angeles Dodgers writer for www.RantSports.com.
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