The Pittsburgh Pirates and NY Yankees are playing their interleague series on Saturday afternoon at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx after the game on Friday was postponed for rain and the game starts at 4 pm ET and will be streaming online from the MLB.com website and now this is the third NL series for the Yanks and it will have David Phelps and Edinson Volquez on the mound.
The Yankees now have won two straight games after losing to the Mets and one of those was a complete game shutout for Masahiro Tanaka and now the team needs him and Phelps to step up with CC Sabathia and Ivan Nova injured and on top of that Michael Pineda is on his way back from an injury. Pineda is closer to coming back than Sabathia, while Nova is done for the year with Tommy John surgery. The Yankees come into the game after the postponement and now there will be a doubleheader with two games on Sunday and the weather is much better and Hiroki Kuroda will be on the mound on Sunday.
The Yankees come into the game at 21-19 on the season and they are second in the American League East and that division is close at the top and they have been playing well on offense this season despite some up and down stretches. The team is ranked 13th in runs scored, but they are third in batting average in the league and eighth in on base percentage and the team is also ninth in slugging percentage and they have the chance to continue this strong play into the weekend. The pitching has been very mediocre this season with all the injuries and the team is ranked 24th in ERA and quality starts, while they are 13th in WHIP and 21st in BAA this season.
Sabathia is going to be on the mend for quite a while and that may force the Yankees to make a trade, while Jacoby Ellsbury is out of the lineup for the game against the Pirates. Yangervis Solarte at Third Base has been the most consistent player for the team and he is among the leaders in hitting this season and he has made the loss of Alex Rodriguez bearable. The Yankees are playing the doubleheader on Sunday because of the Saturday game on
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