The Yankees finally won a game, you guys. Maybe the season isn't over just yet. Tonight Masahiro Tanaka will make his much anticipated debut in America Canada against the Blue Jays. This should be fun.
The Yankees sent out their lineup for tonight and it's a little funky. Not sure how I feel about shaking up the lineup so much right out of the gate:
#Yankees lineup: Ellsbury 8, Gardner 7, Beltran DH, McCann 2, Teixeira 3, Johnson 5, Suzuki 9, Solarte 4, Anna 6, Tanaka 1.
— Jorge Castillo (@jorgeccastillo) April 4, 2014Jacoby Ellsbury is back in the lineup because he's healthy and yesterday was just an early-season off-day. I like the look of an Ellsbury/Gardner top of the lineup. It sounds kinetic! Carlos Beltran will DH and Brian McCann is back in the lineup to bump Mark Teixeira back to the 5th spot.
Dat backend tho: Johnson, Ichiro, Solarte, and Anna (making his major league debut!) does not give me much confidence. Yes, Ichiro and Solarte were great last night, but still. We'll see how it goes. Last night was a surprise, so maybe Dean Anna will hit a home run or something. At least it gets the struggling Alfonso Soriano out of the lineup for a day.
If you haven't been keeping up with the injuries around the league, the Nationals recently lost their starting catcher Wilson Ramos to a broken hand. With the Yankees' depth at catcher it seemed possible that Washington could take a look at any of Francisco Cervelli, Austin Romine, and John Ryan Murphy. They were even scouting last night's game. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear it was for Cervelli and they have no interest in either Triple-A catchers, preferring to replace Ramos with an internal option for the time being. That's disappointing. They really need to trade one of them at some point this season, but I guess no one is really adamant about making a trade in the first week of the season.