Yankees clinch AL Wild Card berth with 10000th win

The Yanks could clinch home-field advantage for the AL Wild Card Game with one more win or one Astros loss.

He picked up his first loss of the season, but Hill’s overall performance gives much hope to a struggling Red Sox rotation. This will be the Yankees’ 52nd postseason appearance and their first since 2012.

It’s a insane concept, given their $200-plus million payroll and their history.

Carlos Beltran, Greg Bird and Rob Refsnyder each hit solo homers to lead the way. Rookie catcher John Ryan Murphy and Betances did a little jumping, and the crowd — which seemed less than half the 40,033 tickets sold for the first night of October baseball — stood and applauded.

The Sox pulled a run back in the 5th, and CC ended the inning having thrown 96 pitches, which set off Joe Girardi’s pitch-count alarm, leading him to bring Warren in for the 6th, 7th and 8th.

The way the Yankees have been hitting lately, a fan who did not see the game and is reading this to find out what happened could be excused for wondering if the Yankees got at least 2 runs to get the win.

The 21-year-old tossed six scoreless innings in Sunday’s 6-1 win over the Chicago White Sox.

PHILADELPHIA – Jerad Eickhoff struck out 10 in seven innings and Darin Ruf hit a two-run homer as the Phillies beat the NL East champions to complete a three-game sweep. Girardi went to his bullpen and got three shutout innings from right-hander Adam Warren.

In mid-July the Red Sox were 14 games ahead of the Yankees, but over the next 11 weeks they stumbled, while the Yankees won 53 of their last 74 games to pull ahead. “That’s all I can say, really“.

The starter tonight C.C. Sabathia also talked after the game about why he believes in this team, “Cause I mean, nobody believed in us“.

“I will be happy if I get given the chance to come back here, ” said Chen, a client of agent Scott Boras, through a translator. (Yes, I’m old enough to remember 1994 was the Strike Year, so the Major League Baseball wild card wasn’t officially used until 1995). No one thought we would go anywhere this year. “Not for personal statistics, and that’s what I referred to about our DNA all year”. “These guys to me did it on a lot of just heart and hard work”.

If the Astros don’t pitch Keuchel, they could go with another southpaw, Scott Kazmir, who started Wednesday. That’s a far cry from the upside projections that led the Sox to sign him to a seven-year, $72.5 million deal, and it falls short of the sort of production that a team would want to see from a typical power spot like left field, where AL teams have amassed a collective.252/.313/.411 line. The Yankees also have a very good music playlist in the clubhouse, including “Fight For Your Right to Party” by the Beastie Boys.

This week, the Red Sox are getting an even closer encounter with Obama since they are staying in the same midtown Manhattan hotel as the leader of the free world attends the United Nations General Assembly.

After losing the first three games of the series, New York built a 2-0 lead in the second against former Yankee Rich Hill (2-1), who revived his career this summer during a stint with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League.