And now, a follow up.

Well, that sucked.

Rabbi here, pulling a Manny Mota again for Jay on the "Yankee Post-season" Blog. Okay, I'll man up, I thought Cliff Lee would be a little bit vulnerable tonight. Ready for the game but making one big mistake. He was not vulnerable. In fact, Lee is just getting better and better. As much as Andy pitched a game that may have been as good as any of the matchups that he had won since coming back to the Yankees in 2007, he was outdueled. The breaking ball mistake that he made against Josh Hamilton was a killer.

The pessimist in you may think "game over" after that pitch, but guess what? The pessimist is a realist, and the pessimist is right. The Yankees weren't even close after that, not even by a inch. They got single digit balls out of the infield. It was a bloodbath that proved both how good the Ranger pitching has been this ALCS and how bad the Yankee hitting has come. Now, Lee can reach epic proportions, being one of the only pitchers to make the World Series for two teams in two years.

Now, Joe Girardi pays for an bad mistake (starting Hughes for Pettitte in Game 2 now looks like a terrible move, cause Pettitte wouldn't have had a Hughes start), by being forced to make another one, do they stay with AJ Burnett in Game 4? If they fail tomorrow night, a 3-1 defecit with 2 games in Texas, and a Game 7 start by Cliff Lee loom.

I will, for the sake of jinxing it, will not make a prediction on the game. What I will say is this, I think AJ pitches to keep the rotation in tow. If CC would god forbid lose a Game 4, everyone starts on 3 days rest again and they are toast. The only way for the Yanks to win this series, in my honest opinion, is to win games 4 and 5, and force the Rangers to start Lee in Game 6. The Yankees, are gonna have to slug their way to a World Series.

In this year of the pitcher, and the way the Yankees are going this postseason, that's becoming less likely of actually happening. The Quest for 28 has hit a roadblock.