FanHouse AJBurnett

In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down the playoffs from a scouting perspective.

The approach was there, the execution was there, but Pedro Martinez's stuff was just short of allowing him to completely shut down the New York Yankees. All in all, the Phillies have to be more than pleased with just a few runs in six innings for their veteran right-hander. At least for a little while, he had the Yankees eating out of the palm of his hand.

It can't be said enough: The best way to stop New York's lineup is often by allowing their patient approach to work against them. Martinez has the type of command and moxie to pull off such an approach. By letting Martinez consistently get ahead 0-1 and 0-2, you give him multiple pitches to play with and different ways of getting you out.

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In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down the playoffs from a scouting perspective.

Was it the pitching or the offense's inability to produce? It's the question we always want the answer to when pitching shuts down a lineup over an extended period. In Game 2 of the ALCS, we watched two teams scratch and claw through extra innings to push runs across. Of course, there can never be a completely definitive answer, but Saturday night there were some instances where there were some answers.

In Joe Saunders, the Yankees faced a pitcher that generally thrives on throwing first-pitch strikes and changing speeds. And in A.J. Burnett, the Angels faced a pitcher that must be forced out of the strike zone to get him out of his groove. One could argue that both lineups could have done a better job with their approach against these pitchers.

In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down the playoffs from a scouting perspective.

Pitch selection, execution of those pitches, and the situation those pitches are thrown in is never more scrutinized than it is in the playoffs. Time and time again, one pitch in a given situation drastically swung the momentum of Game 2 between the Yankees and Twins Friday night in the Bronx. The game may have ended with home run heroics, but the tone was set by the pitchers throughout, whether it was in a positive or negative fashion.

First, there were the two starters who in their own ways came up big. Nick Blackburn took a strategy to the mound that has proved again and again to be the most successful against the New York lineup.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Even though Randy Johnson was the one who was pitching, catcher Dave Valle still woke up the next day with a sore left shoulder.

Valle, the Mariners' primary catcher in the early '90s, was the man who had to handle Johnson when he was more Wild Thing than Big Unit.

"The fastball would soar up and away (to righties) and if you'd catch it at the wrong angle, it would feel like your arm is going to be pulled out of the socket," Valle told FanHouse. "Then he'd throw that slider down at the back foot. So that was a lot of territory to cover for a catcher ...

"He was a rough day at the office for a catcher. He was throwing 100 mph and didn't have a real good idea where it was going."

BALTIMORE -- Good news was not in short supply for the scuffling New York Yankees Friday night. Alex Rodriguez got the oohs and aahs, the adulation and the jeers, at Camden Yards, homering on the first pitch he saw from Jeremy Guthrie to give his team a lead it wouldn't relinquish in a 4-0 win over the Orioles.

It was CC Sabathia who made that edge stand up, though. A-Rod or not, that might be the best news of all for the Yankees.

"He wants to be the guy who's the stopper," manager Joe Girardi said of Sabathia. "That's exactly what he was."

Need I remind you that a dreaded Boston Red Sox jersey, bearing the name and number of David Ortiz, was buried in concrete inside the new Yankee Stadium? And that construction workers last spring had to use jackhammers to remove it, lest the poison linger like salmonella in a service corridor at one of the ballpark's many chi-chi restaurants?

I can't help but think a curse was effectively planted. Because since the Yankees moved into their $1.5-billion pinstriped palace, they've been haunted by non-stop reminders of their greed, arrogance, bad karma and spending foolishness.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

Matt Garza is one of those talented pitchers that novice owners probably lost patience with quickly. And if they did, they were watching Thursday's spectacular performance kicking themselves. Garza, who had struggled with his command through his first four starts, took a perfect game bid into the seventh inning against the Red Sox and finished with a line worthy of adulation: 7 2/3 innings, 10 strikeouts, 1 hit, 1 walk, no runs. Has he turned the corner that quickly?

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

After a terrible first week, Texas first baseman Chris Davis was one of the hot topics of concern in fantasy baseball circles. My colleague Matt Snyder recently tried to put those fears to rest in Slump or Suck, and right on cue, Davis went ahead and smashed them with his bat.

From the Windup is FanHouse's extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

While there is still time left in the Hot Stove season, and there are a few high quality players left on the market -- Ben Sheets, anyone? -- the Yankees have been the team who has made the biggest splash in all of baseball thus far. That splash was seemingly a reaction to missing the playoffs for the first time since the strike-shortened 1994.