Game Thread: New York Yankees vs. Toronto Blue Jays 9/5

Here we go ladies and gentleman as the New York Yankees return home to play host to one of their most bitter AL East rivals in the Toronto Blue Jays. In this Labor Day special the Yankees will send Masahiro Tanaka to the mound to square off with the knuckle ball pitcher RA Dickey of the Blue Jays. The game will be played at 1:05 pm ET inside Yankee Stadium and can be seen on the YES Network and MLB TV.

Get your Yankees Tickets for the remainder of this season right here on the blog at a steep discount. Click the Yankees Tickets link at the top of the blog to secure your seats now as the Yankees make their playoff push. If you can't make it live then follow along with us by either liking our page on Facebook or by giving out Twitter handle @GreedyStripes a follow.

Happy Tanaka Day ladies and gentleman. Go Yankees!

Weekly Prospects Check In: Brady Lail

So normally this Monday morning slot is reserved for Clint Frazier but a pesky hamstring injury is keeping us from doing that in good conscience leaving us with an opportunity to check in with another key Yankees prospect. With Bryan Mitchell likely coming up this week to take Chad Green's rotation spot the Triple-A Scranton RailRiders will have to rely on the right arm of Brady Lail as they head towards the playoffs and beyond.

Let's see what Lail has been up to this season thus far across three MiLB levels:

Year	Age	Tm	W	L	ERA	G	GS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	WHIP	H9	HR9	BB9	SO9
2016	22	3 Teams	8	8	4.62	24	24	126.2	133	74	65	13	42	75	1.382	9.4	0.9	3.0	5.3
2016	22	Yankees West	0	0	0.00	1	1	2.2	3	2	0	0	0	0	1.125	10.1	0.0	0.0	0.0
2016	22	Trenton	1	2	3.69	6	6	31.2	33	15	13	2	12	17	1.421	9.4	0.6	3.4	4.8
2016	22	Scranton/Wilkes-Barre	7	6	5.07	17	17	92.1	97	57	52	11	30	58	1.375	9.5	1.1	2.9	5.7

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Game Preview: New York Yankees vs. Toronto Blue Jays 9/5

Good morning Yankees family and once again a Happy Labor Day holiday to all of you reading this on this beautiful Monday morning. As we start to kick off our Labor Day festivities one must remember that there is also a game on today and it's the most important game of the season for the Yankees, until tomorrow anyway. In the contest the Yankees return home from a disappointing series in Baltimore to play host to the AL East leading Toronto Blue Jays in a three game set. In the first contest the Yankees will send Masahiro Tanaka to the mound, Happy Tanaka Day by the way, to square off with RA Dickey for Toronto.

Tanaka took a no-decision in his last start due to a rain delay that limited him to just 71 pitches. Tanaka is 4-0 in his last five starts including the rain delayed game and has posted a 1.93 ERA with 34 K's in 32.2 innings during that span.


Dickey will be making his third start of the season against New York today and that might not be a good thing for the Toronto righty. Dickey has allowed five runs in 11.2 innings of work against the Bronx Bombers with 13 K's and six walks in 2016.


The game will be played at 1:05 pm ET inside Yankee Stadium and can be seen on the YES Network and MLB TV. It's about time the MLB schedule makers got it right and had arguably the most popular MLB team at home for a major U.S. holiday like Labor Day. There is nothing more American than the Yankees hosting an afternoon game in the Bronx on a United States holiday. Pay attention, more of this please. Go Yankees!

Happy Labor Day from The Greedy Pinstripes

Happy Labor Day from The Greedy Pinstripes. What is Labor Day? Is it simply an excuse to not go to work and get paid for it? Is it an excuse to day drink on a Monday and grill out with the family and friends? Well kinda, yeah. Labor Day is considered to be the official end of summer and it was a day given to the American worker that kept the American economy and such going.

So thank you to everyone who makes Labor Day possible and thank you to everyone for your continued support of this blog and everything it does. It is truly appreciated. Now stop reading and go start day drinking and grilling out and all that jazz. We'll still be here when you get back.

This Day In New York Yankees History 9/5: Bob Sheppard Works His Final Game

Unknown to the Yankees, their fans, and Bob Sheppard at the time the "Voice of God" worked his last game as the team's P.A. announcer at Yankee Stadium in 2007. This was Sheppard's 4,500th time since taking over the job in 1951. Jim Hall and Paul Olden would replace Sheppard when the team moves to the new Yankee Stadium in 2009.

During the game Alex Rodriguez became only the fourth player in Yankees history to hit a home run twice in the same inning. What made this 10-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners even more spectacular was the fact that A Rod had gone to the hospital to have his sore right ankle examined and had to talk his way into the lineup before the game.

Also on this day in 1989 Deion Sanders, the Yankees rookie, hit a home run as the Yankees routed the Seattle Mariners 12-2. Five days later the rookie Atlanta Falcons player would make his NFL debut and would return a punt 68 yards for a touchdown. #Athlete.

The Weekend Isn't Over!!!! Open Thread

It's Sunday but hey, the weekend isn't over yet!!! Tomorrow is Labor Day and for all you hard working individuals out there it's a day for you. I can only speak for myself but I work my ass off, truth be told I probably work too hard for what I get paid, and this day is a God send to me. I need it. The laziness starts now as I leave you with an open thread for the evening like I do every Sunday night. Enjoy and talk about whatever. Just please keep it respectful. Please!

Also I embed a video of Tim Tebow's workout for 28 MLB teams including the New York Yankees. Will the Bronx Bombers sign him? Who knows, stay tuned and watch the video. Let me know what you think. I wasn't overly impressed. I can probably hit a batting practice fastball out of the park and Tebow's arm was just "meh" to me. The guys is a role model and inspiration and an absolute athlete though so I'm not counting him out, just saying I wasn't impressed with this particular video.

Enjoy and we'll be back tomorrow.

Yanks Avoid Sweep, Outlast O's 5-2

In what manager Joe Girardi referred to in the pregame as "the most important game of the year", the Yankees delivered with a game three victory over the Baltimore Orioles in the final game of the weekend series. Michael Pineda started for New York and got himself in and out of trouble all day long. although not pitching deep enough to qualify for a decision. Acquired from the Seattle Mariners in a deal at the deadline, Wade Miley and his subpar 2016 continued as the lefty got knocked around early and often, falling to 8-12 with his loss on a beautiful Sunday afternoon at Camden Yards.

The Yankees jumped on Miley early as they finally put some runs on the scoreboard in this series. Miley started the game by walking the first two hitters he faced, Brett Gardner and Rob Refsnyder. After getting back to back strikeouts of Gary Sanchez and Starlin Castro, Chase Headley muscled a fly ball into left field for a single that scored Gardner to put the Yankees up by one. Miley then hurled a wild pitch into the dirt that got passed the catcher during Austin Romine's at bat, advancing both Refsnyder and Headley up to second and third. The Miley miscue proved costly as Romine lined a single through the left side of the infield that scored both runners to give the Bombers a first inning three run lead.

The Yanks scored another run against Miley in the top of the third as the left-hander's starting woes continued this afternoon. Refsnyder reached base for the second time with a sharp single to left, advancing to second on a Gary Sanchez walk. After Starlin Castro grounded into a double play that advanced Refsnyder to third, Chase Headley hit a slow ground ball to third base and beat out the throw for an infield single, scoring Refsnyder to widen the Yankee lead to four.

After holding the O's scoreless through the first three frames, Pineda found himself in some trouble in the bottom of the fourth. Mark Trumbo began the fourth with a leadoff walk, advancing to third on a solid single by Chris Davis. Steve Pearce then grounded into a fielder's choice, scoring Trumbo from third to make it a 4-1 ballgame. But Big Mike wiggled out of danger as he got J.J. Hardy to ground out to short to end the threat.

Pineda's struggles continued in the bottom of the fifth as he was taken out of the ballgame. Adam Jones led off the inning with a single, scoring from first when the next batter Pedro Alvarez lined a double to left to pull the Birds back to within two. Girardi then pulled Pineda for Luis Severino, who promptly struck out the Yankee-killer Manny Machado and walked the MLB homerun leader Mark Trumbo. After a one-out walk to Chris Davis that loaded the bases, Severino struck out Pearce and got Matt Wieters to ground out to second to end the frame, preserving the Yankees lead as they headed into the sixth.

A combination of Severino, Layne, Warren, Clippard and Betances tossed three shutout innings of one-hit ball, with the one hit being an eighth inning single by Chris Davis literally off Tyler Clippard, a line drive that glanced off of the righty that allowed Davis to reach.

After the Yanks added an insurance run on a Gardner sac fly in the top of the ninth, Betances absolutely dominated by retiring the Orioles in order in the bottom of the ninth, striking out two in route to their win in the final game of the series by a score of 5-2.

The Yanks get to with in 3.5 games of the second Wild Card spot as they head home, preparing to welcome in the AL East leading Toronto Blue Jays for a crucial three-game set. Tomorrow's Labor Day afternoon affair is set to begin at 1:05 PM/EST.

Playoff Teams Beat Teams They Are Supposed to Beat

The series with the Baltimore Orioles is all but over but while beating up or losing to a team like Baltimore is huge either way it hurts or affects you even more if you don't beat the teams you are "supposed" to beat. The teams you are supposed to beat are the teams with lower records than you, the teams that have nothing left to play for this season other than to play spoiler for the teams still fighting for a playoff spot. It seems like every year if you really look at the head-to-head schedules of the teams who make the postseason and the teams that don't you can see the teams that didn't had stretches or certain teams that ultimately doomed them. You can't win a division after sweeping a lesser team in April and May but you can lose a division if you're swept by that same team in April or May. Let's see if the Yankees have beaten the teams they are supposed to beat and analyze whether they have a true shot at winning the Wild Card this season.

The teams on this list with a losing record this season are the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Chicago Whitesox, the Colorado Rockies, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the Minnesota Twins, the Oakland Athletics, the San Diego Padres and the Tampa Bay Rays. As you can see by the list out of these eight teams the Yankees have losing records against or tied their season series with five of those teams. Only the Angels, Twins and Athletics have fallen on the Yankees sword more times than not this season which is not great if you're a team searching for the postseason.

This is especially compounded when you have lost so frequently to the Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles. Again, like many of these stats I bring you, all this and a buck gets you a Coke because this is a different team in the second half than it was in the first half and even the worst team could beat the best team on any given day in Major League Baseball but in the immortal words of manager Joe Girardi "it's not what you want" either.

Game Thread: New York Yankees @ Baltimore Orioles 9/4

Here we go ladies and gentleman one more time as the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles finish off their three game set this week in Camden Yards. Earlier today we honored Cal Ripken Jr. who tied a Yankees legend Lou Gehrig here in this same stadium against the Yankees and today maybe could be the beginning of something else historic and special. Hey, you never know. Anyway, the Yankees will send Michael Pineda to the mound this afternoon to finish off the series for the Yankees while the Orioles counter with Wade Miley. The game will be played at 1:35 pm ET inside Oriole Park and Camden Yards and can be seen on the YES Network and MLB TV.

Follow along during the game and for the rest of the season, however long that may be, by liking our page on Facebook and by liking out page on Twitter @GreedyStripes. Wade Miley and Michael Pineda, let's do it. Go Yankees!

Taking the Time to Honor Cal Ripken Jr.

I know we usually run a "This Day in Yankees History" post every morning and I know this didn't technically happen until tomorrow, September 5th, but since we're set to face the Baltimore Orioles in a couple of hours I figured what the hell. Let's go for it and let's honor the great Cal Ripken Jr. here on the blog this morning.

It was 20 years ago today that Cal Ripken Jr. went out onto the field in Oriole Park at Camden Yards against the New York Yankees like he had for the better part of over 2,000 games. Ripken had played in 2,129 consecutive games in his career before heading out for the bottom of the fifth inning. When Ripken went out to take his position the game became official, his 2,130th consecutive game. This is significant because Cal would tie the Yankees legend and "Iron Horse" Lou Gehrig.

Ripken received a standing ovation for over five minutes from the sellout crowd when he tied the record. Love or hate the Orioles but you just can't hate Cal Ripken Jr. Have a good Sunday afternoon Yankees family and a nice, long weekend.