Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Are the Yankees uninspired or just overmatched? Today they wilted before arguably the best 1-2-3 punch in the AL - Santana, Neshek, and Nathan. It was tough to tell whether they were more immobilized by the pitching or their own apathy. I guess they've gotten by over the past five or so seasons with a good but not great staff and an outstanding lineup, and this year is no different, except they're losing. A couple years ago this game might have gone differently - Mussina and Santana would have battled to a 2-2 tie through 7, at which point Tom Gordon would have pitched a lights-out 8th and then in the bottom half they would have figured out a way to score.

More and more I feel like it's everyone else making the Yankees look bad. The pitching they faced today is pretty common in the AL right now. Look at A-Rod lighting up Joe Kennedy last week, and then going 0-for-19 in his last five games against Gaudin, Haren, Bonser, Silva, and Santana. Three out of five of those guys have ERAs under 3.00, and neither team is in contention right now. It only gets worse against the 45+ win teams.

It's pretty clear, actually, that A-Rod's sparkling numbers have come almost entirely from beating the shit out of bad NL staffs and the dredges of the AL, including Chicago and Texas. Of course everyone gets the same opportunities and everyone looks better against bad teams, but the vaunted Yankee offense is thus far consistently stagnant against the top AL teams. This is a new situation; I feel like the model on which their team is built has become obsolete.

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