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bulldawgillustrated.com Matt Linder After the month long wait, filled with bold predictions and tongue twisting bowl games, the main event is finally upon us.  In just two days, the top four teams in the nation (don’t ask Ohio State fans) will clash in the College Football Playoff’s semi-final games.  Let’s preview the matchups and predict the winners of this round and the National Championship. footballfanatics.com The first game on Monday (5:00pm) is a battle between two opposite styles.  The #2 Oklahoma Sooners have a high-powered aerial attack led by Heisman winner Baker Mayfield.  On the other side, the #3 Georgia Bulldogs are propelled by the two-headed beast in the backfield of Nick Chubb and Sony Michel.  Georgia’s game plan will be to run the football, eat up clock, control the time of possession and keep the Oklahoma offense off the field.  The Sooners rush defense is only ranked 41st in the country, allowing...

Robert Deutsch/USA Today Sports Matt Linder A little over a week ago, the Yankees made a huge splash, trading for the reigning NL MVP Giancarlo Stanton.  A few days later, the team traded Chase Headley and his $13M salary, along with Bryan Mitchell, to the Padres.  In return, the Yankees received outfielder Jabari Blash, who will likely never wear the pinstripes.  With the organization’s clear goal of getting under the $197M luxury tax limit in 2018, the deal is an obvious salary dump.  Even after re-signing CC Sabathia for one year and $10M, Brian Cashman has about $20M to play with and is still aggressively looking to add a young starting pitcher to the rotation.  Although trading Headley provides the team with more salary relief and flexibility, it also leaves an opening at third base.  Let’s take a look at some potential players who could replace Chase at the hot corner. Since top prospect Miguel Andujar should be the team’s in-ho...

Steve Mitchell/USA TODAY Sports Matt Linder Well, that was a quick rebuild!  The Yankees have agreed to a trade with the Marlins that sends Giancarlo Stanton to New York in exchange for Starlin Castro and two prospects.  The Yankees will also receive $30M if Stanton does not opt out of his contract after the 2020 season.  The deal has yet to be formerly announced by either team, but the only thing that could hold it up is a failed physical.  Let’s break down: how and why the trade happened, the players the Yankees gave up, the deal’s impact on the current roster and the team’s mission to get under the luxury tax threshold. The Marlins new ownership group, led by Derek Jeter, made it clear that their goal was to cut payroll in order to get the franchise’s finances under control.  Trading away the team’s most expensive player was the easiest and quickest way to accomplish that objective.  Back in 2014, Stanton signed a 13 year deal worth $325M w...

Al Behrman/AP Matt Linder After over five weeks of speculation, the Yankees have finally hired their new manager… Aaron Boone.  He will make the transition from the broadcast booth to the dugout.  Boone has no managerial experience, but he has been around the game of baseball his entire life.  In addition to enjoying his own twelve year career, he grew up in major league clubhouses with both his grandfather and father being major leaguers.  Boone beat out five other candidates to get the job: Hensley Muelens (Giants hitting coach), Eric Wedge (former MLB manager), Carlos Beltran (recently retired MLB star), Chris Woodward (Dodgers third base coach) and Rob Thomson (coach with the Yankees for 28 years, most recently the bench coach). Boone’s hire was not without controversy.  The fact that the position of Yankees manager was even available surprised a lot of people.  His predecessor, Joe Girardi, had a .562 winning percentage over his nine years as ...

printyourbrackets.com Matt Linder College Football’s conference championship weekend was largely a dud, but it was still able to generate some controversy.  On Sunday, the playoff committee selected and announced the four teams that will be competing for a national title: Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia and Alabama.  There were five major conference championship games this weekend, but only four had playoff implications (Sorry, PAC 12).  Let’s recap those games and see which teams punched their ticket to the final four. Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press In the first game of the day, Oklahoma dismantled TCU in the Big 12 championship game.  The Sooners got out to a big 17-0 lead after the first quarter, but the Horned Frogs managed to cut the deficit to a touchdown going into the second half.  However, Oklahoma quarterback and Heisman frontrunner, Baker Mayfield, was too much for the TCU defense.  The Sooners went on to w...

riveraveblues.com Matt Linder To conclude the final installment of my look back at the 2017 New York Yankees season, here is part two of the bullpen review.  In addition to the relief pitchers who spent all of 2017 in pinstripes, there were also important contributors who were members of the team for only part of the season.  Kathy Willens/AP Let’s start with one of the two guys who was on the Yankees opening day roster, but did not make it to the end of the season with the team: Tyler Clippard.  Coming into 2017, he was expected to be the team’s seventh inning guy.  Like his fellow late inning relievers, he put together a productive April and May.  Through the first two months, he had an ERA of 1.64 with 29 strikeouts in 22 innings.  However, you could see signs that his early-season success might be fluky.  In May, he walked seven batters in only 12.1 innings.  As an extreme fly...

Elsa/Getty Images Matt Linder Let’s close the 2017 Yankees Year in Review the same way the Yankees close their games… with the bullpen.  The relief pitching came into and ended the season as the team’s greatest strength.  However, there were rough patches along the way.  It took major trade deadline acquisitions to get the unit back on track.  In addition to the deadline moves, there were unexpected breakouts, game saving performances and heartbreaking meltdowns.  Since there were nine guys who appeared in a significant number of games, I am going to break up the bullpen review into two parts.  This first installment with look back at the performances of the relievers who spent the vast majority of 2017 in the Yankees ‘pen. nydailynews.com In keeping with the tradition of my previous posts, let’s begin the review with the bullpen’s best performer…Chad Green.  He was not only the Yankees best reliever, he was also o...