Five Things We Learned From O's-Yankees

by Eric Meyer

The Yankees move to 2-0 all-time vs the O's in
Postseason play and will begin the ALCS on Saturday.

It has been an amazing first round of the postseason, with all four divisional series going the distance.  That being said, not all series are created equal, and the most compelling series was clearly the matchup between the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees.  The Yankees took the series, but there was much more to see in this series beyond the general outcome.   Here are five things we learned from this series:

1. Joe Girardi is one of the best managers in baseball.
Coming into the postseason, I saw Joe Girardi as a class act and a pretty good manager.  He obviously has a good record in New York and the approval of his veteran ball club.  That being said, I was unsure of how gutsy Girardi was.  I figured he would play it safe too often, which would get the Yankees in trouble.  All of that changed in the bottom of the 9th inning when Girardi pulled slumping star Alex Rodriguez in favor of veteran lefty Raul Ibanez.  Ibanez subsequently hit the game tying home run, and later the walk-off winner in the 12th.  Had Girardi left A-Rod out there, the Yankees would likely have been going home after 4 games, but Girardi's decision to pull the league's highest paid player in favor of a 40 year old veteran shows that he's willing to make the moves that might not sit right with other people, which is what distinguishes the men from the boys when managing a winning baseball club.

2. The Orioles can pitch, too.
Coming into this series, we saw the Orioles as an offensive team that relied on home runs and a strong bullpen to make up for their weak starting pitching.  The biggest worry of this series was that the Yankees would get on top of the O's early and not allow Baltimore's vaunted bullpen to finish out close games.  The O's starters held their own, though.  They pitched as well as their Yankee counterparts, and are ultimately the reason this series was as tight as it was.  The loss hurts for Baltimore, but the fans can go home knowing that the franchise is in good hands with some very good young pitching.

3. The Yankees still struggle to hit in the clutch.
For most of the season, the Yankees used the long ball to power them to the best record in the American League.  Hitting with runners in scoring position was not their strongest asset, but the power in their lineup more than made up for that.  The Yankees may have won this series, but they still have major issues when hitting in the clutch.  They struggled to score runs all series despite multiple opportunities, and they will need to step their game up if they expect to beat the Tigers and win the AL Pennant.

4. The Orioles are young and talented, but lack discipline at the plate.
Something that I noticed all season with these Orioles is that they can hit, but they swing at too many pitches and fail to work the counts.  There was an abundance of this throughout this series.  The Orioles missed many opportunities because of poor offensive approaches that resulted in unproductive outs and allowed the Yankees starters to throw at least 8 innings in 4 out of their 5 games.  As the Orioles gain experience, you will likely see better at-bats from them, but poor plate approaches doomed them in this series as the long ball was nowhere to be found to bail them out.

5. A-Rod is in the doghouse.
Rodriguez struggling in the postseason isn't news.  He has spent the majority of his career failing in big moments.  Those struggles finally caught up with him in this series.  A-Rod was twice pulled in favor of savvy veterans during this series, and in the decisive game 5, he wasn't even in the starting lineup.  Normally this wouldn't be a crisis, but the Yankees have a bigger problem: Rodriguez is theirs for another 5 seasons, and there's nothing they can do about it.  Girardi sent a strong message by pulling the Yankees' biggest investment, and it will be interesting to see how Rodriguez's relationship with Girardi and the Yankees organization changes.