Changing Priorities

There was a lot to hate about last night's game. Like so many games this season, the Yankees managed to not just lose, but lose ugly, with mental mistakes and failures in big spots. With this loss, the Yankees fall back to a six game deficit in the wild-card race, and I'm about ready to declare their playoff hopes dead. In order to make the playoffs now, the Yankees would have to win their next two games, sweep Boston next month in Fenway, play one game better than the Red Sox in the other 26 games left, and erase the 3.5 game lead that the Twins have. It's a ridiculously tall order made even more ludicrous when you look at the teams' remaining schedules and see that the Yankees play only 15 of their final 31 games at home while the Red Sox play 21.

This is why I think it's time for the Yankees to shift their priorities from a futile attempt to make the playoffs this year to gearing up for next season. The Yankees are going to have a lot of decisions to make this offseason, and they can help themselves in making those decisions by using the next month to evaluate what they can expect from their prospects and young players. For example, this winter the team will need to decide whether to re-sign Bobby Abreu and continue to use an outfield of Nady-Damon-Abreu, or find a replacement. They can make this decision much easier by playing Brett Gardner regularly over the rest of the season, and letting themselves see if he's good enough to be the center fielder next year. If he is, then an outfield of Damon-Gardner-Nady becomes a very attractive option.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but the sooner the Yankees can accept their defeat in this season, the sooner they can start to work towards victory in the next.

Depending on the kindness of strangers

A little over a week ago I said that if the Yankees weren't able to sweep the Royals, they might be done for the season. Well, not only did they fail to sweep the Royals, but they proceeded to lose two out of three against the Blue Jays. So, does that mean that I think the Yankees have no chance of making the playoffs? Surprisingly enough, no.

Make no mistake, the Yankees are in a big hole. Six games is a huge amount of ground to make up with just 35 games remaining. Even worse is the fact that they trail not just the Red Sox, but the Twins by that margin. Thus, even the opportunity presented by playing six games against Boston won't be enough. If they're going to make the playoffs, it won't be enough for the Yankees to play excellent baseball. They're also going to need either the Twins or the White Sox (who currently lead the Twins by just a half a game in the Central Division) to stumble. Thankfully, the Yankees do have four games against Chicago which they can use to help themselves, but in the end they're going to be depending on the performance of others' as much as their own.

You Ain't Got No Alibi

There's no polite way of putting this; the Yankees sucked on this ten game road trip. It wasn't just that they lost seven games, but that they lost while playing some ugly baseball. They wasted opportunities at the plate, stranded baserunners, gave up leads on the mound, mishandled balls in the field, and made some maddeningly illogical managerial decisions. Never before have I been so jealous of people who go to sleep too early to watch games on the west coast.

All we can do now, though, is look to the future. The Yankees are now 64-57, putting them nine games behind Tampa Bay in the division, and six games behind Boston in the wild card race. When all is said and done, I think it'll take 98 wins to take the division title and 94 wins to take the wild card spot. With only 41 games left, that means the Yankees need to go 30-11 in order to make the playoffs, which is obviously a very tall order. Even worse, of those 41 games, 22 are on the road, and only 13 are against losing teams. I'm not quite ready to say the Yankees are done, but if they can't sweep this weekend's series against the royals, it'll probably be time to get the fork out.

Just Do It

We're less than six hours from the start of the Division Series, and Joe Torre has announced a roster that, surprisingly, contains three rookies who didn't join the team until after September callups; Jose Veras, Ross Ohlendorf and Bronson Sardinha. Normally, in order to be eligible for the playoff roster, a player has to have been either on the active roster or the disabled list on August 31st, which means that Ohlendorf and Sardinha wouldn't have been eligible (Veras was on the DL at the time). However, a team can substitute any player from their forty-man roster for any eligible player of the same position that's on the DL when the playoffs start (this is the rule that allowed Francisco Rodriguez to get five postseason wins for the Angels in 2002). Thus, Ohlendorf and Sardinha step in for Carl Pavano and Andy Phillips. Should Ohlendorf actually contribute I think it'll be most value the Yankees have gotten out of the Pavano contract.

Anyway, this leaves the Yankees with a pitching staff that features only one lefthander (Andy Pettitte), and a bullpen whose slowest fastball is in the 92-94mph range (Jose Vizcaino). It's safe to say that the Yankees have decided to go with talent over diversity and experience. It's a gutsy call, but it's also in line with the decisions that have brought the team back from their horrible start.

I'm not usually one to quote ads, but Nike's 80 foot tall billboard by Penn Station pretty much sums things up: