YANKS WILL WIN/YANKS WILL LOSE

The Yankees will win tonight because:

• Indians manager Eric Wedge stupidly used all his good relievers last night with a huge lead. He effectively neutered his own bullpen for tonight's game in order to protect a huge lead. Thus the Yankees will likely have to face a much weaker Cleveland pen tonight, and we all know what the Yankee offense does to mediocre pitching.

The Yankees will lose the series because:

• Do you know how many times in 2007 C.C. Sabathia has pitched as badly as he did last night? Basically never, but he had a couple games where he allowed more runs in more innings pitched, so charitably, twice. If you care, here and here. Basically, its pretty unlikely to happen again so the Yankees squandered their chance to beat Sabathia. If you accept that the Yankees will lose to Sabathia again (which, of course, isn't any type of sure thing, but go with it for now) then they have to win every other non-Sabathia-pitched game to win the series.
  

• Joe Torre did something stupid with his bullpen too. With the game already over in the seventh inning, Torre turned to Phil Hughes. Hughes is likely the Yankees third best starter behind Wang and Pettitte, and is a very valuable chip out of the bullpen as a spot starter should one of the Yankees starters fail.
  
  In fact, one could make a good case that Torre erred twice here. Once by not using Hughes in the early innings for an obviously struggling Wang, and once by using him in the late innings with the game's outcome already decided. If Pettitte fails out of the gate tonight, the Yankees will have nobody to turn to.
  

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In other news, did anyone see Labron "The Frontrunner" James sitting in the front row of the Indians/Yankees game wearing a Yankees hat last night? He was interviewed on TBS and basically said that despite growing up in Akron, Oh (Indians or Reds territory), he roots for the Yankees. It also came out in the interview that he roots for the Bulls (though probably less so since joining the NBA), and Cowboys too! Sheesh... I bet he also roots for Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Manchester United, IBM, USA, The Republican Party, the Red Wings, and Brazil (men's) and Germany (women's) in soccer.