On Deck (Game 64): ARI @ NYY

The Yanks look to sweep the rattlesnakes this afternoon.

I used to love weekday day games when I worked the overnight shift back in the day. Sit in the sun, catch a game. Those were the days. Anyway, today, I’m going to be shuffling from meeting to meeting and I’m probably going to miss most of the game on the radio. Thus, I’ll be TiVo’ing it (I don’t actually have a TiVo anymore, I have a piece of crap DirecTV DVR, but the verb lives on. DVR’ing just doesn’t have the same ring to it).

Doug Davis is the third starter the Diamondbacks will trot out against the Yanks with a sub-4.00 ERA. The first two (Brandon Webb and Livan Hernandez) have combined to pitch 11 innings and given up 10 earned runs. You’d think that one of the numbers geeks over at ESPN would come up with some kind of ratio to translate a National League ERA into real numbers. Something like “NL ERA x 1.5 = AL ERA”. Actually, that would probably do it.

I read that A-Rod will DH today, which means either Chris Basak will get his first ML start at third, or Miguel Cairo will play over there and Josh Phelps will slide in at first. Or, Miguel Cairo will play over there and Johnny Damon will make his debut at first. Or, it’ll be Phelps at third and Basak at third. Whichever way you slice it, Melky is probably going to be out of the lineup again. I hope this isn’t the case, but Joe will probably try to get Phelps some ABs against the lefty. Hopefully, he’ll rest Damon’s old legs instead of Melky.

In other news:

• The Selig witchhunt seems to be coming to a head.
• The Yanks are over .500 for the first time since Donnie Baseball’s birthday.

D-Backs blog-of-the-day: AZ Snakepit