Yankees @ Orioles lineups and game preview for September 9th

Look, I'm just gonna get this out of the way first thing: Nick Markakis is batting leadoff. I know, it's insane. I tried to find some reasoning for it, like Nick is hitting really well in his career about CC Sabathia, but it's not true. His career hitting line against him is .269/.301/.373. So we'll all have to keep scratching our heads on that one. Hopefully Nick gets four hits tonight and shuts us all up.

Here is the full lineup: Nick Markaks - RF, Manny Machado - 2B, Adam Jones - CF, Chris Davis - 1B, Danny Valencia - DH, J.J. Hardy - SS, Michael Morse - LF, Matt Wieters - C, Alexi Casilla - 2B

Casilla has been a missing person of late, but he is in the lineup because in 32 career plate appearances he has hit .516/.531/.613 against Sabathia. That includes Aprl 12th of this year when he went 2-for-3 against him.

Chris Tillman will try to outpitch Sabathia tonight, and in fact this season Tillman's ERA is over 1 run less than CC's. That's weird.

Here is the lineup for the Yankees: Brett Gardner - CF, Alex Rodriguez - 3B, Robinson Cano - 2B, Alfonso Soriano - LF, Curtis Granderson - DH, Eduardo Nunez - SS, Lyle Overbay - 1B, Ichiro Suzuki - RF, Austin Romine - C

The Yankees have lost three of the last four games but they scored about a hundred runs (actually 29) in them. The Orioles have won three of their last four games and they scored thirteen. I'm not sure what that means but it doesn't seem to bode well for the O's.