"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

"I was so locked in. I knew I was in a groove," the right-hander said. "I had a good tempo and I repeated myself well tonight."

That's a normal pitcher reaction to a good game. Last year, he gave us this, which just about sent me into arresting hysterics:

"But nothing compares to today. That was the funnest I've ever had on the baseball field."

For the O's, pitcher Matusz--who I feel like is a popular choice for sleeper-addicts--didn't pitch quite as well as AJ. Although Baltimore manager Trembley argues that he did pretty good, I kind of disagree. 9 hits in 6 innings isn't on the "good" half of the spectrum. I'll give you "average." But no, not good.

But Matusz silver lining-ed it up: "One positive thing I take away from this start is that I didn't walk any guys and I battled through a couple jams that I got myself into." Well, good on you, Brian! He's won 6 straight decisions since August 15. That doesn't really impress me too much though, because by the time August 15 had rolled around, the Nats were the only other team putting up a fight against the O's, in a cute little cross town rivalry for who can be DC's biggest failure.

Mo closed it out. Thank God. I was starting to tire of all the wisecracks in the league about how Mo will do nothing for my sister's previously save-less squad. My brief moment of relief is trampled on by the near-cycle-ness of Crawford's night. Not that I'm COMPLAINING, per se, as he is officially now on all 3 of my fantasy teams. The way it should be.

Of course, I also sat Adam LaRoche today (which I really should't be faulted for), who went 3-for-5 with 2 HRs. (Speaking of that game, cheers to Ian Kennedy, who gave up only 1 run in 7 IP. He did give up a salami in the 8th, but whatever, I like the kid. I especially like pitchers who go deep into the game.)

None of the O's offense did anything. So basically, this game, the way it played out etc, is the way I envisioned all 3 games going. I'm glad they're headig back to the Bronx now, and I appreciate their parting gift of validating my imagination.

On a final note, the Wall Street Journal informs us that the Yankees aren't even in the top 3 most hated MLB teams, in possibly the most ill-defined, uncontrolled, variable-riddled study I've ever heard of. Basically, in an effort to determine what team is igniting the most contempt so far in the 2010 season, they did some far-reaching scan of all the available online blogs and forums etc, quantifying the "negative and positive" comments.

This research method yielded the following inane results:

Yes, the Nationals and Yankees are neck and neck. I think they should have cut their losses whenever their calculations revealed the Reds are the 3rd most hated team.

I bet this was done by the same nimrods who retrofitted a bunch of statistical methods into their conclusion that Jeter was the worst SS in the game.

Well, this seemed like a very good use of Internet algorithms and trollings. Though the real takeaway of this article is the fact that clearly this genius brainchild of a research-gathering device, shouldn't be used in any situation that calls for accuracy in its results.