AL East

Via the Journal News:

The New York Yankees have released their 25-man roster for the American League Division Series which begins Wednesday in Minnesota. While most of the roster is as expected, there were some decisions manager Joe Girardi needed to make.

Girardi has chosen a three-man starting pitching rotation for this series. CC Sabathia will start Game One on Wednesday, followed by Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes. Hughes gets the home start in Game Three on Saturday in Yankee Stadium.

WDAE’s drive-time show host Steve Duemig has a Facebook page for fans to talk sports in the Tampa Bay area.

Looking at his Facebook page, there are many vociferous Joe Maddon critics that post about the Rays manager’s decisions in a game.

This has been going on for the last few years. Many people think Maddon tends to outsmart himself by fielding different lineups or using different relievers to get an out.

So a couple of weeks back, Yahoo Sports writer Jeff Passan wrote a column called Think you know baseball? No, you don’t.

It was a good article that gave 25 facts about baseball that weren’t typical common knowledge. I liked it and in the back of my mind I thought that I wanted to do something similar about the Yankees at the end of the year.

Via the NY Post:

A wise-ruling emperor will step down from his throne if it is better for his royal subjects to be governed by a more respected successor.  On the contrary, a stubborn emperor will be forced out.

The Yankees, to me, fall into the stubborn emperor category: they are the long-time personification of the Evil Empire in the Empire State.

The 2010 edition of the Toronto Blue Jays was full of surprises, and provided many promising glimpses into the team's future. Whether or not anyone besides Blue Jays fans noticed is another matter entirely.

The Jays were widely expected to finish at the bottom of baseball's toughest, deepest division, the mighty AL East. They only wound up one spot above the basement, but they also went 85-77, the kind of thing that can only happen in the AL East.

Each October, eight teams compete to prove who is the best baseball team in North America.

This year, the New York Yankees, Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers, Minnesota Twins, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds, San Francisco Giants, and the Atlanta Braves will try to prove their mettle in the postseason.

It's not necessarily the best regular season team that will win: whichever team is best built for the playoffs will come out victorious.

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There have been a lot of people that have been pretty down on the Yankees lately. It’s hard to blame them—down the stretch the Yankees managed a pathetic 9-17 record.

Fortunately, there are reasons to be optimistic. Just compare the recent slide to the 2000 Yankees who won the World Series, and it’s easy to see why.

Those Yankees started the season 82-58 before tanking down the stretch to a 5-16 record that raised giant red flags. Things were bad—real bad.

Well, it's official: the 2010 MLB playoff schedule is all set.

When the Braves and Giants won their games on Sunday, they clinched the final two postseason spots still up for grabs. 

Now, the real work begins. Regular season success is one thing; winning in the postseason is something decidedly different. Who has what it takes to win it all in 2010?

We're breaking down every matchup of the four division series, telling you not just who will win each game, but why. Let's begin with Wednesday's games.