More on the Yankees' postseason rotation, a tiebreaker and the Twins' postseason rotation

Joe Girardi, never one to show his hand before he has to, indicated today that the Yankees would likely go with a four-man starting rotation for the postseason. When a reporter followed up by asking whether Ivan Nova was most likely to be passed over - in other words, whether the rotation would feature CC Sabathia followed by (in an order to be determined) A.J. Burnett, Phil Hughes and Andy Pettitte - Girardi said of Nova, "He has the least amount of experience, and I'll leave it at that."

I still say, if the Yankees are losing the first round by two games to one, they're not going to risk losing their season with Sabathia watching from the dugout. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

--The Yankees-Rays season series is tied at 8-8, with tonight and tomorrow night the final two games. What if they split these two, and then they wind up with the same record at the end of the season? The next tiebreaker is the clubs' AL East record. As of now, the Yankees are 35-26 (.574) in the division with 11 games to go (six against Boston, three against Toronto and two against Tampa Bay). The Rays are 39-28 (.582) with five games to go (three against Baltimore and two against the Yankees).

--Francisco Rodriguez  was officially charged with second-degree contempt of court for violating his restraining order against his girlfriend.

--Francisco Liriano, Carl Pavano and Brian Duensing will start the Twins' first three playoff games, Ron Gardenhire announced. I'd opine, "Liriano gives the Twins the dominant, bat-missing ace they lacked in previous playoff runs, so maybe they can actually win a round this time," but then I'd be conveniently overlooking the fact that the Twins had Johan Santana in their rotation in 2003, 2004 and 2006 and couldn't win in the first round. 

--Finally, I mentioned in the live chat today that Mike Celizic has died. Mike was one of my first real mentors in my professional career, back at The Bergen Record, and he was just a special guy. I am so sad for his family.

This is pretty awesome: The website Fire Joe Morgan used to hammer Mike regularly for some of the stuff he wrote - suffice it to say that Mike and I wouldn't have seen eye to eye on our usage of statistics - but Mike was apparently a good sport about it. For as coincidence would have it, FJM registered its annual, one-day revivial on Deadspin today, and the FJM folks have offered to match all donations in Mike's name to cancer institutes.

--Have a great night.