The Yankees Lose! Theeee Yaaannnkeees Lose!

Seriously, is John Sterling's victory call the most annoying sound in sports radio (other than "Welcome to the Herd")? But I digress.

File me in with the several million other pundits who got the Detroit-New York series completely wrong. The Tigers dug deep, pitched their brains out, and chewed up a surprisingly mediocre Yankees pitching staff long before Mariano Rivera could become a factor. Those who noted similarities to the 2002 Angels were perhaps not off base - the Tigers forced the Yankees to make plays in the field, and Giambi, Sheffield and company were simply not up to the task. Then again, if $198M buys you Jaret Wright as your Game 4 starter, you may need to look into re-allocating some of those funds. My guess is that Cashman comes back and so does Torre for one last hurrah, but A-Rod is gone for whatever the Yankees can get for him. If they don't pick up Sheffield's option - and with Abreu on board, there's no good reason to - that's a little financial flexibility, at least by Yankee standards, which could make things interesting next year.

Memo to Jim Tracy - Marlon Anderson is not now, nor has he ever been, a left fielder. You could chalk up roughly half the Mets' offense tonight to Marlon treating left field like it was his personal snooker table and he was a ball. And for whatever it's worth, I'm inclined to discount those fuzzy-warm stories about Andre Ethier and how his arrival was a triumph for Old School Baseballery if the kid loses his job to Marlon at the drop of a Nationals hat. I mean, we are talking a middle infielder who washed out of Philadelphia here, not the second coming of Dale Murphy.

Memo to Bill Plaschke - Ned Colletti is looking up at Paul DePodesta in the playoff win category, 1 to nothing. Five bucks says Plaschke tries to blame this on the Paul LoDuca trade, conveniently forgetting that without Brad Penny (i.e. "the crap the Dodgers got back"), the Dodgers would have finished somewhere behind the Diamondbacks.

Has Chris Young become the anti-Clemens? Maybe the Pads should only pitch him on the road. If they stop pitching to Pujols, the Padres might have a chance - a game 5 at Petco looks pretty even to me. Then again, hanging your hat on Woody Williams isn't exactly a cause for optimism.

Noted by the wife when Jonathan Broxton came in to pitch: "That man eats pie!"

Memo to the folks bemoaning the fact that Francisco Liriano's injury forced the Twins to rely on a rookie starting pitcher - Liriano was a rookie, too. Oh, and the Mets and Tigers might note that the rookie thing - sometimes, it works out.