Get it while you can!

No one said this would be easy.

No one can be too surprised that things turned out as they did tonight.

When you throw a contact pitcher against the biggest bashers in the league – surprise – they make contact.

Jake Westbrook was going to need to shoot the ball through a pin head in order to escape tonight’s outing without giving up three-to-five runs. His control was decent, but it needed to be perfect against this team.

But you do have to ask two things:

Why did Westbrook go back out for the sixth?

Why does Aaron Fultz ever the see field in this series?

You can not manage a five-game series like the regular season. Sure the Tribe has two more tomorrows. But tomorrow comes quickly.

We’ve seen Betancourt for one inning so far. The same was true of Jensen Lewis at the time Westbrook departed.

You can’t say Fultz is unproven. He’s proven since coming back from injury that he’s pretty much useless.

Westbrook needed to be yanked. But you have to put somebody out there who has shown something.

No one in the pen, except maybe Raffie Perez, has been overworked in this series. And save the lefty-righty crap. Lewis, Perez and Betancourt have been getting both out with regularity.

So tonight is water under the bridge. It’s time to look at tomorrow.

Paul Byrd is a contact pitcher if there ever was one. To say the least, or perhaps to put it kindly, he does not match up well against the Yankees.

Eric Wedge insists he will use Byrd Monday no matter what. That he will manage the team the way he has all year. But – again – this is not the regular season. There aren’t 159 more games to go. You can’t manage like its July. Loyalty or reward don’t enter into it. You play to win. Tonight!

There are several reasons why it might be iffy to start CC tomorrow on three days of rest. He pitched only five innings on Thursday, but they were a grueling five innings He threw 114 pitches. many in tough situations.

If you start Sabathia tomorrow - even if he’s on, and even if there’s an umpire with an actual strike zone out there to give him what he deserves - you may still get only six innings out of him

If you save him for game five, you can have CC start and Fausto backing him up if necessary.

If Byrd should pull off the improbable you’d have both CC and Fausto ready for lots of action in the next series.

But, in the playoffs you can’t worry about the next series, or you might be watching it on TV.

You can’t give the guy the ball just because he won his share of games in the regular season. If his stuff doesn’t match up, he sits. Period. Especially if he’s a hittable righty against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.

There's one final thing to think about. Whether Chien-Ming Wang pitches tomorrow or not you are staring at Pettitte on Wednesday.

Give yourself two good shots instead of one.

You have to go with CC.

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Just one other thing.

Thank God Joba got hit a little bit in the eighth. If not we would be hearing more than ever how Chamberlain’s Sunday outing was proof that Friday was a bug-induced fluke.

Maybe the difference between Chamberlain tonight and Friday was the scoreboard. He had only one run to work with on Friday and five tonight. The collar of his jersey was much looser tonight

Or maybe tonight’s outing confirms what may have been the case Friday. He’s great for an inning but has difficulty pitching two. He did it only once or twice during the season as they Yankees babied their big 230-pound youngster.