AL East

Now, that’s more like it.

This is the Rays that folks are used to seeing. They won with great pitching and timely hitting this entire season.  After failing to do that for the first two games of the playoffs, they found their formula in staving off elimination Saturday afternoon.

The Rays received a great starting pitching performance by Matt Garza, and they got the hits to tie the game late and then take the lead. Joaquin Benoit and Rafael Soriano did the rest by closing it out.

There is all this talk about Yankees skipper Joe Girardi walking away after the season and taking the job as the next Cubs manager.

But if the Bombers win a consecutive championship, they have to keep him, right?

I know that many Yankees fans have questioned Girardi's managerial skills. Heck, if you check with most fans they will point to one reason or another why they do not like their manager.

Entering the MLB postseason, analysts and other fans of the sports seemed to be skeptical of the New York Yankees chances to repeat their World Championship run from last year. Much of this skepticism centered around the lack of quality pitching following CC Sabathia in the rotation.

However, in the Yankees sweep of the Minnesota Twins Sabathia's win ended up being the weakest performance, as Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes pulled strung together very strong performance in their respective wins.

In 2009, Davis enjoyed a taste of the bigs with a September call up.  In 2010, Davis is getting more than a taste, as the Rays turn to their 25-year-old rookie right hander to keep their playoff hopes alive.  Davis will make his postseason debut against one of the most fearsome offenses in baseball.  Oh yeah, there's this teeny tiny bit of pressure about a must-win game if the Rays season isn't to end.

The New York Yankees are the first team to advance in the postseason this year with their 6-1 win over the Minnesota Twins, who will spend another long, cold winter trying to figure out what went wrong again.

The Yankees dominated the Twins in all aspects of the game and appear poised to retain their title as World Series Champions.

Congratulations to the New York Yankees for sweeping the Minnesota Twins and moving on to the American League Championship series.

Throughout the 2010 season, the New York Yankees had many pitching issues.  Like with A.J. Burnett, he was about as frustrating a pitcher you can come across.  What about Andy Pettitte, going down with an injury mid-season and forcing a spot-starter to go in his place.

And then there's Javier Vasquez.  After starting the season much like Chien Ming-Wang did last year, Vasquez had a stretch when he was as good as anyone pitching on a mound.

Mariano Rivera is a 16-year Major League veteran, and at 40 years old he is still dominating hitters in their 20s, but the question is how long can this continue.

Take a look at Rivera's career, and it's easy to tell this is a future Hall of Famer on the mound. What he has been able to do while seemingly only throwing one pitch has been incredible. Rivera has a career ERA of 2.23 which accompanies his 559 career saves. 

Purity of the game means passion and joy when on the field. It means players would be there competing even if there was no money involved.  Purists dream baseball, and live baseball when they are not near a field.   Baseball is who they are.  

Leadership is a word that gets tossed around in sports.

When a player does well in a game, it’s described as leadership. When a player talks to the media often, people perceive it as leadership

The definition of leadership in sports terms should be a player who takes his team to the postseason not to mention leading them to postseason victories.