Tired Yankee bats and slumping Mariner sticks should keep tonight's New York-Seattle game on the low-scoring side.
The Yankees come off a grueling 5- game series in four days at Fenway Park. Now they travel cross-country and change three time zones while playing with no rest.
The result in this scenario on most occasions is lazy bats. Yankee starting pitcher Jaret Wright has pitched respectable on the road posting a 3.74 ERA in 12 starts. He will be facing a Mariners team that is in a midst of a major tailspin and has scored just 11 runs in their last five games.
As bad as Gil Meche has pitched in recent games he still maintains a decent 3.84 ERA in 11 starts at home. Meche has also seen seven of his last nine starts versus the Yankees go under the total.
These two teams have season their last five meetings go under the total.
Following their emotional 5-game sweep over the Red Sox in Boston, look for the Yankees to have a letdown tonight in Seattle.
The Yankees just finished pulling off the second Boston Massacre yesterday as they took the series finale over the Red Sox by a 2-1 count. Before their 5-game series with Boston started, I'm sure any of the Yankees would have told you they would have been thrilled winning just two games and allowing the Red Sox to only pull one game closer to them in the AL East.
It's unfathomable to think they actually went into Fenway and beat the Red Sox 5-straight times in their own house. You just don't do that during a tight pennant race. You're not allowed to go into another teams back yard and humiliate them in front of their own fans.
That being said, the Yanks pulled it off and now have to fly to the other end of the country to take on a Seattle club that has lost 11 in a row. Talk about playing through opposite
extremes. I don't foresee the Yankees having much interest in playing let alone competing in tonight's game.
They have to be mentally fatigued, and they're throwing a kid making his first career MLB start. The M's haven't won a divisional game in over a month, so thankfully their stretch of AL West games is over for now. Gil Meche beat the Yankees at The Stadium earlier this year, so look for another solid outing from him this evening. He's also pitched much better at Safeco
going 6-4 with a 3.84 ERA, giving up 61 hits in 70 innings of work while striking out 67 and walking 25.
The M's are desperate for a win right now and tonight's as good as its going to get to finally break their streak.
if Seattle is gonna win a game against the Yankees in this series it should be tonight IMO
the Yankees have a rookie pitchers going tonight, not to mention that jet lag to the west coast after they just swept there arch rival the Boston red sox in 5 straight games.