5 BOROUGH SPORTS

Wow, don’t look now but Opening Day in Baseball is a week from today.

The Yankees will start their season with the Tigers at the new ballpark in the Bronx at 1:05pm, aired nationally on ESPN.

Expect to see a CC Sabathia vs. Justin Verlander matchup in this one.

The Mets will start their season on Friday at 7pm in South Florida against the Marlins. The Fish could be an interesting team this year, I wouldn’t be shocked to see them in Wild Card Contention.

Although I do have faith the Mets won’t be completely horrible, here is a favorite clip of mine regarding the crosstown foes…

On to the Yanks…

The rotation should be…

1. CC Sabathia

2. Phil Hughes

3. AJ Burnett

4. Ivan Nova

5. Freddy Garcia

Bartolo Colon has exceeded expectations and might make the team as a long man or spot starter, or perhaps be sent to AAA as insurance.

The opening day lineup sounds like it might look something like this…

1. Brett Gardner LF

2. Derek Jeter SS

3. Mark Teixeira 1B

4. Alex Rodriguez 3B

5. Robinson Cano 2B

6. Jorge Posada C

7. Curtis Granderson CF

8. Nick Swisher RF

9. Russell Martin C

On the bench I hope to see Eric Chavez, Andruw Jones, Jesus Montero and either Eduardo Nunez or Ramiro Pena…

In the pen we see…

Mariano Rivera

Rafael Soriano

David Robertson

Joba Chamberlain

Pedro Feliciano

Boone Logan

and probably one more long guy, like Bartolo Colon, Romulo Sanchez, or Sergio Mitre.

Overall, the roster looks decent right now…I really like everything on the batting side of things, and the bullpen has the look of one of the very best. The problem is in the rotation, simply put, it could be horrible. If Hughes, Burnett, Nova and Garcia pitch to their capabilities then the season could go fine, but they also all have the potential to really stink, especially Burnett, Nova and Garcia/Colon. The Yankees will have to bring in another quality starter during the season via trade to give them a shot in the playoffs. The pen is great, but it could wear down if they are leaned on too much throughout the season.

This is one of the best times of the year for sports, with the NCAA tournament, Baseball starting, the NBA and NHL closing out their seasons, and of course, a tradition unlike any other, The Masters coming up in a couple weeks. Its a great time to be a sports fan, so enjoy the spring!

This entry was posted on March 24, 2011 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Mets, Yankees. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.