AL East

The play Yankees manager Joe Girardi is discussing is Greg Golson‘s catch in the ninth inning of Game One of the ALDS that should have ended the game, but instead was ruled a trap.

Via ESPN:

The Yankees beat the Twins 5-2 last night and the play that everyone seems to be talking about is the Lance Berkman at-bat in the the seventh that ended up being an RBI double.

It’s become an infamous play because it looked like Carl Pavano had him struck out just the pitch before. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire was ejected following the double.

Let’s take a look at the Pitch Fx graph via Brooks Baseball:

The Yankees entered Game 2 on Thursday looking to continue their momentum from defeating the Twins in Game 1 the night before.

On the mound for New York was Andy Pettitte, looking to brush aside the rust and any side effects of a groin injury that kept him on the disabled list for two months. For the Twins, it was Carl Pavano, pitching against his former team and looking to try and split the series going back to New York.

This is not what the Rays envisioned in the second season.

They did not anticipate striking out a lot. They did not anticipate leaving many men on base. They did not think their ace would fail when it mattered. They did not think they would be in danger of being eliminated by the Rangers.

This is exactly what happened. This fine season has gone ugly in the span of two days.

The Rays will be heading to Arlington down by two games, and they will be lucky if this series goes back to Tropicana Field.

Two games into both American League Division Series match-ups and it seems that the Yankees made the right decision by winning the Wild Card.

We’ve seen this movie before haven’t we? The Minnesota Twins jump out to a lead, the New York Yankees come back, the Twins get tight, and then Mariano Rivera comes in to close the door.

After a successful debut in 2009 with the Blue Jays, starting pitcher Ricky Romero improved in almost every conceivable way in 2010. With two full seasons under his belt at the big league level and still just twenty-five years old, Romero has established himself as one of the game's best young starters.

The Tampa Bay Rays have been among the league's best defensive teams for the past three years. This year they rank third in team Defensive Efficiency according to Baseball Prospectus. Ben Zobrist was solidly above average with the glove at four defensive positions. James Shields, for the fourth straight year, was a good hurler when it came to stopping the running game.

The Tampa Bay Rays took home their second division title in just the past three seasons last week with a Yankees loss to the Red Sox.

This came after not making the playoffs in their first 10 years of existence.

They did so with great draft strategies and good systematic development of talent to create big-league-ready ball players.

James Shields takes the mound for the Tampa Bay Rays today with his team already down 1-0 in their American League Division Series against the Texas Rangers.