State of the Yankees

There are many of us out there in the sports world, myself included, that have counted the Yankees out of the playoff race, thrown them under the bus and used that old Brooklyn Dodgers expression "Wait 'til next year." Then there are those optimists that see things in good light and say, "well, they have 28 games left, anything is possible." Well let's take a deeper look into it and see if it is actually a distinct possibility. These Yankees are not like all those Joe Torre teams; they do not have great starting pitching, they are an old line-up with many players in tremendous slumps (see Robinson Cano, Jason Giambi among others) and the injury bug has taken a huge chomp out of them as well. Alex Rodriguez is not anywhere close to the A-Rod of last year, as he is hitting a meager .246 with RISP and has grounded into 10 double plays this month (that ties a Yankee record). Cano has hit well below his career average of .303 and has not been consistently hitting all season (although since the all-star break he is hitting over .315). Jeter and Abreu have picked up their hitting and Xavier Nady has done nothing but hit since he came over from the Pirates. The injury bug has really hurt the Yankees (pun intended) the most this season, as Chien-Ming Wang, Phil Hughes, Jorge Posada, A-Rod (back in May), Hideki Matsui (although he came back last week) and Joba Chamberlain all are on the DL, with only Joba's return in sight. Wang's 38 wins the last two seasons is tops in the bigs and his loss looms very large because it has left the Yankees without a bonafide ace since the beginning of June (Moose does not count, despite 16 wins). So the debate of the DH can be held another time. Granted Moose is 16-7 this season, Pettitte has been erratic this season, I still don't understand why Darrell Rasner is on the major league roster, and the Yankees seem as if they cannot fill the huge void Wang left. I will say this though, Sidney Ponson has pitched pretty well since he came here (although his ERA since July 2 is 8.57 has really hurt) and Carl Pavano has pitched great since he has come off the DL (I probably just jinxed it though). The bullpen, for the first time in a long time has been a strength of the Yankees, but let's get back to the under performing offense. The Yankees, as of the end Thursday, are on pace to score 783 runs, a total that would have ranked them 8th in the AL in runs last season. Currently, they rank 8th in runs. So that is 783 runs, that is 185 runs less than last season. When you have a team that relies on offense like the Yankees do, that cannot happen and their consistent un-clutch hitting is killing their chances at any playoff run and killing their chances at a 14th consecutive playoff appearance. With 28 games left (not including today) the Yankees have put themselves in a deep hole that they might not be able to climb out of. However, that is up to them, as they still control their own destiny. My opinion (and I'll be as unbiased as possible seeing as I am a Yankees fan) is that these Yankees are not a deep enough team on the mound or consistent enough at the plate to make the playoffs, but if they do, they will not go very far. With 28 games to play though, we will see what happens. I guess the positive though is that the Steinbrenners are back, as Hank has promised "a lot of changes in the offseason" and he wants C.C. and Tex. Should be interesting.