Off-Day Musings

by Lenora X

Checking in on 55-25, General Assessments, Pet Peeves, Etc.

When the Yankees were 40-42, I put 95 wins as a number that, should the Yankees make, they would qualify for the playoffs without having to worry about any other team.

I see no reason to change that assessment. Boston will win 95+ but they're the only team in the AL that will.

Cleveland and Detroit and Seattle? Hardly an imposing group. 95 is a solid playoff number. I'm tempted to even lower the bar a bit but I won't just yet.

So, at 40-42, the Yankees needed to finish 55-25 to get to 95 wins. 23 games later, the Yankees are at 56-49, having gone 16-7 (.696). Nice, but it's only a hair above the pace the Yankees need to keep to. So while it's a nice chunk in the right direction, much hard work remains.

The schedule, soon, turns more difficult than it's been recently. But if a team is playing well, who they're playing doesn't matter much. And the "difficult games" in September . . . well, it's way too early to talk about those. Suppose by September we are comfortably behind Boston and comfortably ahead in the wild card. Will either team approach those September games with a scorched-earth mentality? It's all relative. Will teams that one expects to play tough, now, still be playing tough in September with their seasons wilted? Today's game is the most difficult one. Until tomorrow's game.

Of course it's not all hot dogs and cotton candy in Yankee-land. The team, as I've written about a couple of times now, is bad at picking up "free" runs. There are no stats on it but the Yankees must lead MLB in "bad swings in hitter's counts." I have never seen a team so consistently have terrible swings at 2-0 and 3-1. And for the number of veteran and talented hitters on this team, they have a disproportionate number of bad at-bats.

The starting pitching is iffy. Wang has not looked the ace several times when we've needed him to. Pettitte looks like an old 35 lately, and Roger, well, looks his age, often. Mussina was a nibbler with questionable heart when he was throwing 90 . . . throwing 85 has made those traits worse. Igawa, thankfully, is now a $46 million Scranton Yankee. Hughes has to be an upgrade.

The bullpen remains a concern. I do think that F-Word punched his ticket out of town yesterday, and I think we will eat as much of his salary as we need to make him disappear. At least I hope we do. Karstens and Chamberlain to the rescue? At this point it's worth a shot. We've seen how Vizcaino responds to being used too much.

The offense remains horribly streaky. For games at a time the entire lineup seems clueless. As always we are vulnerable to control pitchers with average fastballs. Giambi theoretically will be back semi-soon, although I'm on record as not wanting Giambi's return to put Melky back on the bench (if Joe went the Giambi DH/ Damon in the field route). We'll see what happens there, but this team just works better with Melky in the lineup.

And on the lineup, one pet peeve: Can Joe please stop shoe-horning Abreu back into the #3 spot every time he gets a couple of hits? The lineup that really seemed to work well was the Damon-Melky-Jeter 1-2-3 lineup, with Abreu hitting down a ways. Since Joe puts big importance on the right-left stuff, it could go: Damon Melky Jeter Matsui A Rod Posada Abreu Phillips Cano (L-S-R-L-R-S-L-R-L) (or Abreu-Posada 6-7)

Some random observations.

This one from iris: Despite his claim that he likes DHing, doesn't Damon seem to hit better when he plays the field? If this is really the case, I think perhaps Joe should go with the Damon in LF/ Matsui DH plan more, since Damon seems to like it out there in left and Matsui doesn't seem to mind DHing

It seems as though when Abreu goes bad at the plate is when he tries to walk, as opposed to just "getting walks." I am not sure if this is a chicken-egg thing -- meaning -- does he start to feel bad about his hitting, and therefore take pitched like crazy? Or does he get hung up on his eye/patience and that causes him to take way too many pitches and then not hit as well? Additionally, I think hitting #3 is extra pressure that Abreu would do better without.

I think that Bruney to Scranton and Britton to New York is a move it's time to make. I would say "Villone or Burney to Scranton" but I know that's not happening -- somehow Villone has worked his way up to "Joe's Guy" status, although I'm not sure exactly how. (Of course said status is not all it's cracked up to be . . . see Sturtze, T., and Quantrill, P.)