A couple of interesting things about the Yankees lineup. Lofton is batting 9th, with Wilson 8th. I remember seeing a study using hidden Markov models that said you shouldn't bat your worst hitter ninth. I believe the rational is that although you are giving extra plate appearances to a poor hitter, you are setting up your number 3 hitter for more RBI. I wonder if the Yankees have seen that study.

What I don't understand is Matsui batting 2nd. Although he was a great on-base guy in Japan, he really didn't do a great job of getting on base last year. Given his stats, he would be much more useful in an RBI slot.

Of course, Matsui lines a picture perfect double into the right-center gap, and scores on an opposite field HR by Jason Giambi. Didn't look like the weight loss has hurt Giambi's strength any.