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.

The return of the Moose

One month ago Mike Mussina was falling apart, and people (myself included) were at a loss for what the solution might be. By pulling him from the rotation, though, it seems the Yankees have stumbled upon the answer; Moose just needed some rest. In retrospect, its actually kind of obvious that a 38 year old man might benefit from some time off.

Anyway, where his first start after rejoining the rotation was merely good, last night's was excellent. His fastball was up to a respectable 90mph with good life, and his curve had some excellent snap to it. Like his pitches, Moose seemed to have some extra life in him, making five plays in the field, including a great reaction play on a line drive at his head. Granted, neither the Orioles or the Blue Jays will ever be mistaken for Murderer's Row, so we should temper our excitement. That said, as long as he pitches well in his next start, I think he's locked up his spot in the postseason rotation.

That, of course, assumes that the Yankees are going to need a postseason rotation, and things are looking good on that front. Both Detroit and Boston have lost their last two games, putting the Yankees four and a half games up on the wild card and two and a half back for the division title. Even better, the magic number has shrunk to seven with only eleven games remaining. All the Yankees have to do now is not collapse and they're playoff bound. So, I don't think it's premature to start talking about the playoff roster, which I'll be doing on the off day tomorrow.

Makin' Me Sweat

Never let it be said that I'm not man enough to admit when I'm wrong, even when no one would know. I didn't get around to writing it before the game, but I didn't think Roger Clemens should have started tonight's game. I simply did not believe that his elbow could stand up to the Red Sox offense. Granted, Clemens said he could pitch, but I'm pretty sure he'd say the same thing if he were run over by the bus. He's just that kind of Texas son of a gun. The Rocket, however, was pretty sharp, pitching an efficient six innings, allowing only one unearned run, while striking out four and allowing only six men to get on base. While he had only thrown 87 pitches at that point, Joe Torre wisely decided that he didn't want to push Clemens' elbow to hard and turned things over to the Joba Chamberlain.

Unfortunately, Curt Schilling was just as sharp, if not more so. He only needed 69 pitches to get through seven innings, giving up only one run off a solo homerun by Robinson Cano in the 5th. Considering that Chamberlain was available for two innings, and Mariano Rivera was pretty well rested too, it seemed like we might be in for a long night, waiting for someone to scratch out a run against these dominating pitchers. Derek Jeter, perhaps having plans for the rest of the night, had other ideas.

After Melky Cabrera struck out to start the eighth inning, Doug Mientkiewicz managed to get on with a single. It was then that Joe Torre made a gutsy, brilliant call. Rather than have Jose Molina try to sacrifice Mientkiewicz into scoring position, Torre sent in Jason Giambi to pitch hit. What made this decision so surprising was that the only catcher who could replace Molina, Jorge Posada. For those who don't know, when you have a DH take over for a player in the field, the pitcher has to take over for that player at the plate. Torre, however, saw his chance to get a run and took it, deciding to worry about the pitcher's at bat when it came.

The gamble worked out beautifully, as Giambi singled and Damon grounded into what would have been the third out had Torre used Molina to sacrifice. Since Torre didn't, though, the Captain had the opportunity to come through in the clutch, and he did so in style, knocking a home run over the Green Monster to put the Yankees ahead 4-1. That would be all the offense the Yankees' needed, though the bullpen would make it close.

In the bottom of the 8th, Chamberlain gave up the first earned run of his short career when Mike Lowell took him deep for a solo home run. The 21 year old remained poised, as he came right back against J.D. Drew. Joba the Hutt struck him out with a breaking ball that Drew watched go by like he was frozen in carbonite.

The real nailbiting came in the botton ninth, which Mariano Rivera started by walking Jason Varitek. A Julio Lugo double would score him, and a hit batter followed by another walk would load the bases with two outs for David Ortiz. It's funny how Yankees/Red Sox games always seem to come down to big moments like these, where the game is on the line and each team has exactly who they want on the mound and at the plate. This time the moment was Mo's, as he got Ortiz to Big Papi out to shortstop with the classic cutter inside. The perfect ending to a game that was everything this rivalry is supposed to be.

Even though the Yanks won the series, without the sweep they're too far back to have a realistic shot at the pennant. However, by winning five of their last six against Boston, they've proven that they're more than ready to meet them in October. As far as getting to October, they remain two and a half games ahead of Detroit for the Wild Card, and their magic number drops to 10.

The State That I Am In

Bonus points for anyone who gets the reference from the title.

An off day is a good time to step back and take a look at the big picture of where the Yankees are. The team's record currently stands at 71-56, good enough for 2nd place in both the AL East and the AL Wild Card races. Lets take a look at what it'll take to make it to first.

The Red Sox are 5 games up on the Yankees in the pennant race at 76-51. At that pace they'll end the season with 97 wins. To match that, the Yankees would have to win 26 of their remaining 35, a ludicrous .743 pace. The Yankees have been the best team in the majors since the All-Star break, and even then they've been playing at a .683 clip, and if they keep it up through the end of the season, they'll be at 95 wins. Simply put, the Yankees aren't going to win the pennant without some help from the Red Sox. The teams face off against each other six more times this season, and if the Yankees don't win at least four of those games, they can forget about the pennant.

Of course if they can't overtake the Red Sox, there's still the far more attainable Wild Card berth. Seattle, at 71-53 is only a game and a half ahead of the Yankees, and are on a pace to win 93 games. To match that, the Yankees would have to go 22-13.

As fate would have it, the Yankees are scheduled to play 22 games against losing teams and 13 games against winning teams (actually, to be completely accurate, Toronto is sitting at .500, but its close enough). Thus, the path to the playoffs is pretty clear. If they can beat up on the bad teams, even .500 ball against the good ones ought to be enough. Its not a bad spot to be in.