Orioles at Yankees

The New York Yankees will open a 3 game series with the Baltimore Orioles tonight at the stadium. Andy Pettitte will be on the mound against David Hernandez. Here are the pregame notes and lineup as always via Peter Abraham of the Journal News. The Yankees are one game behind Boston and have gone 16-5 in their last 21 games. Andy Pettitte has had a lot of success against the Birds going 25-6 with a 3.73 era in 35 career starts against them. He is 10-2 with a 2.76 era in the Bronx. This is the first time he is facing them since last Sept 21st when he won the last game ever played at the old stadium. The Yankees pitching for the last 3 games has gone 27 innings with 20 hits allowed, 5 earned runs, 12 walks and 24 strikeouts. MO has converted 38 straight save oppurtunities at home going back to 2007. He has thrown 13 1/3 scoreless innings in his last 13 appearances allowing 4 hits with one walk and 12 strikeouts. The Yankees are 17 games over 500, they have not been 18 games over since the final day of the 2007 season. A-rod has 5 homeruns in his last 6 games and one in each of the last 2 games. He has 19 for the season and rather amazingly only 20 players in baseball have more. He needs one more homerun to tie Harmon Killebrew on the alltime list which is 9th place. 10 of his 19 homeruns have tied the game or given the Yanks the lead. Phil Hughes has been filthy going 16 2/3 scoreless innings in his last 13 appearances with 9 hits, 3 walks and 21 strikeouts. The Yankees have gone 23-9 in their last 32 home games. Yankees lineup: Jeter(SS) Damon(LF) Tex(1B) A-rod(3B) Matsui(DH) Cano(2B) Hinske(RF) Cabrera(CF) Molina(C)