Just Change the Name of the Show

to Red sox Tonight and give over the pretense of being a national broadcast. After Ortiz's walk-off tonight, Kruk effused that he and the assembled shiteaters--Ravech, Olney and Phillips--were "praying that Loretta didn't hit into a DP" so that Ortiz could win the game for the Red Sox. In other words he openly proclaimed their rooting interest in seeing the Sox win and the rookie closer for the Indians blow up so that they would lose (yet again). You couldn't see greater chowderheadism if you were watching NESN. Do these schmos have any idea how unprofessional they have become? Is there any way of telling them?

Today's Trade

is not all bad. I was at Citizen's Bank Park, behind home plate, for Lidle's last start. He gave up just 2 runs in 8 innings en route to a victory. His fast ball was diving and his curve was under control. He's inconsistent to be sure, but that alone makes him better than Ponson, and when he's right, about half the time, he doesn't stress the bullpen, which Wright does all the time. I'd say he's worth 4 games over what they have now. Abreu I'm less excited about, but if he doesn't have to be the Man, as he did in Philly, he might be serviceable as a role player. His OBP and basestealing makes him a no. 2 candidate, with Jeter hitting 3.

Defense, People II

Wang needs the Yankees to play good D, in much the same way that Andy Pettitte did. In his case, the better the glovework, the more confident he is in pitching to contact. that is to say, he nibbles less, throws a higher proportion of strikes, gets behind fewer batters, gets into fewer jams and throws less pitches. When the defense is right, he is lkikey not only to pitch well and win, but to spare ther bullpen as he did last night. The Yankees always seem to be thinking offense, but as a result there is a greater upside, in terms of wins yielded, to better fielding.

Defense, People

Recent winning streak evinces the importance of solid fielding every bit as much as the earlier losses. While playing tight, the Yankees benefitted offensively from some shoddy play on the part of both the Rangers and the Rays. Here's a theorem: the less yoyu give away in the field, the greater pressure you keep the opposition under, and the more liable they become to miscues of their own. Hence, on a statistical basis, the better defense you play the worse defense your opponent is likely to display, even though there is no direct causal contact between the 2 performances. We'll call this the law of asynchronous interdependency.

Now They Tell Us

On SC, Steve Levy just marked the Yankees half game lead in the Wild Card with the words, "Remeber how this was the year the Yankees or the Red Sox would finish out of the playoffs, the year the wild card was definitley coming from the Central, well maybe not." Tell it to your dimwitted colleagues on Baseball Tonight Stevie, we've been saying maybe not since those delphic figures first started saying definitely.

Great Win/Torre's an Idiot

The Yanks pounded their way to a geat win, while torre was solidifying his position as the worst tactician in baseball. where was Farnsworth in the 8th? where was Meyers against Matthews or if not him against the consecutive lefties, Texiara and Blalock? How can he use Beam, just up from columbus, as his set of man of choice? The pressure he put the rook under, to preserve a dramatically reestablished 2 run lead against a formidable offense, was just ridiculous. Sticking with Proctor through 4 consecutive, killing hits (yes Chris he does stink), was almost as bad. The Yankees won this game twice and torre deserved to preside over neither.

In game blog

Win or Lose the yankees cannot field! 2-2 in the 4th and Phillips botches a grounder, Cairo covers for him, but wright fails to cover first. Texiera winds up scoring on a double by Blalock. A passedd ball by Fasano (he's no Kelly Stinett!) puts Blalock on 3rd where he scores on a sac fly (otherwise he's stranded). So they're down 4-2 solely on the weakness of their defense. When you're this shaky in the field behind the back of the rotation, it's hard to sweep a series on the road.

I can't believe I'm saying this but

Cashman's refusal to trade Scott Procter straight up for Bobby Abreu was a very good (non) move. Whatever Procter's shortcomings, and they are significant, the Yankees need someone to eat middle innings and Abreu would bring them nothing other than a possible malaise. I don't see trading PRocter for Bettamint either, though I hear that remains a possibility.

At this moment, the Yankees are % points in the Wild Card lead.

Is It the DH?

Much has been made of the AL's long reigh as the dominant league--in All Star Games, interleague play and, less decisvely, the World Series--and I was wondering whether an entirely ersatz innovation, the DH, was to some degree responsible. The Dh allows American League teams to stockpile quality players in a way the National League cannot do. to take one example, the White Sox eagerly picked up Jim Thome despite the continuing presence of Paul Konerko at !B, whereas the presence of Ryan Howard at 1B pretty much compelled the Phils into offloading Thome, who is too good a player to maroon on the bench. Over time and on a statistical basis, I wonder if this dynamic makes the AL better.

Which of these Names

is the genuine ersatz article
Vin Scully, Ernie Harwell, Harry Kallas, Marty Brennamen, Jack Buck, Curt Gowdy, Jon Sterling.
Why does the greatest franchise in the history of baseball feature a "voice" so inferior to the great announcers of other classic franchises?
Or try this: Mel Allen, Red Barber, Jerry Coleman, Jon Sterling
Why do the Yankees continue to employ a parody of their own announcing past?
And do even start with color commentators. Waldman may well be the most vacuous in history. she sets gender equity back to the Stone (err Phyllis George) Age.

A Tale of Two Aarons

Just wondering--is Aaron Guiel this year's Aaron Small?

In any event, it's nice to extract a win from Mussina against Texas. He never seems to pitch all that well against them.

Oh and by the way--tied in the loss column for the lead in the wild card that just had to come from the Central.

Say What You Want About AROD

and most of it's bound to be bad, at least he shows up to play. Johnny Delicate is missing his second game in a row from an injury sustained getting out of his fucking car. Nor is this the first spate of games he's missed this year for marginal ailments. I thought he was supposed to be old school; I thought he was such a gamer with Boston. but he comes here and immediately takes his place in the queue of the easily incapacitated. When 3 of your most important regulars are missing with legitimate injuries, and you're getting paid 13 mill, you play hurt; you certainly play with "tweaks." Baby Carl, meet baby Johnny, the invalid progeny of Momma Joe.

Platooning

Sometimes Torre seems to be drifting toward a platoon system for his role players, only to reverse field and go with his gut. All the stats show he should go with the system and ignore his intuition. Bernie should only DH against lefties (327) and sit against righties (250, 653 OPS). Phillips should only play 1st against righties (811 OPS) and sit against lefties (176). Guil should play in right against righties, Crosby against lefties (300). Giambi would then DH against righties, play 1st against lefties. Here again, the team qwould benefit both by the distribution of responsibility and specialization that facilitates success for each individual.

As the Deadline Approaches

BGW points out that Cashman has been involved in some of the worst deals in recent memory, including the signing of Pavano, the acquisition of Jeff Weaver, the sacrifice of conteras etc, and yet his reputation does not seem to suffer. That's probably because until this year people assumed he was more of a high class gopher than a true GM. Now we'll see. But you know Theo made a terrible deal in offing Renteria, a worse one in giving Marte for the (less than) Crisp and a major blunder in giving a no. 3 starter (Arroyo) for a no. 5 OF (Pena), and yet he retains the patina of boy genius over in Bristol. I'll go with Walt Jocketty thank you.

Harold Reynolds, RIP

Red Sox Network fired Harold Reynolds and they won't say why. Given that he is the only African-American on Basball Tonight, firing him at a time when baseball is openly worried about losing fans, and future players, in the African American community, I think they need to offer some kind of rationale. For my money, Reynolds was the best analyst on the show, which is the equivalent of being the best reliever in the Royals bullpen.

AROD II

We fans boo AROD for his failures under pressure. And in booing him, we engender just that sort of pressure in every game, at every at bat, which is why he has melted down. But because AROD is too great a talent to fail in perpetuity, he will in time produce under the pressure our carping has applied. And so the fans will have made him the clutch performer he could not become on his own. They will do so out of devotion to the team, to whose success they joyfully sacrifice the psychic comfort of the superstar. and when this comes to pass, the jock-apologists will claim the credit instead of going off, as they should, and fucking themselves.

And now for AROD

When listening to the media chorus reproaching NEW YORK for its unjust and counterproductive tratment of AROD, consider the source: a jockacracy (Morgan, reynolds) and their acolytes (Ravech, Olney) and Steve Phillips, who learned nothing about the City in his tenure as Mets GM except how to fail miserably in it. They all have reasons for concerning themselves with the welfare of the superstar himself rather than the Yankees franchise, which they don't particularly like anyway. But the booing is, however unconsciously, not only more justified but more strategic than theEmily Posts of baseball can conceive. Please see next post.

Conventional Wisdom II

A little over week after my post on wild card assumptions, the Yanks are breathing down the White sox necks, the Jays are not far behind and noone is talking about the inevitability of the wild card coming from the Central anymore. Neither are brain surgeons like Ravech and Phillips admitting that they ever did.

Still Hanging Around

Applies to both myself and the team I obsess over.

I have returned from travels that took me away from Internet access (boy that spam really piles up) but not from my daily dose of Yankee watching. Before the Yankees recent winning spell, they apparently had a meeting where they specifically discussed not trying to hit home runs, suggesting that they had finally committed to the injury-coerced reinvention prescribed for them here about two mon ths ago. And the results have been impressive, largely because the streategies solicits heroism from every player in the lineup instead of relying on the usual suspects, at least one of whom usually fails.

Still, the injuries have been more relentless than envisioned. We knew we'd be without the corner ofs but who thought that Cano would follow Pavano and Dotel onto a milk carton. Having already exceeded his expected time out of the line-up, he's still not even facing live pitching let alone contemplating a rehab assignment. At this rate hideki might beat him back to the lineup. And while the small ball approach has effectively indemnified the Yanks for their lost sluggers, Cano was supposed to play a crucial role in that strategy, so that his loss may well wind up being the biggest of all. The injuries have made the Yankees a good but not great offensive team with thin pitching and porous defense. (To his credit, slow Joe has made a lot more defensive minded decisions lately, though he doesn't seem to understand that Williams has no place in the field in any inning whatsoever.)

The problem the Yankees face is the variousness of their problems, which makes them vulnerable toa potentially season ending losing streak. If offensive weakness causes them to lose a game RJ pitches (3-2 against Seattle) or defensive miscues costs them one of Moose's starts (5-4 Toronto), or the bullpen costs them one of Wang's ( Farnsworth has gotten better; but Proctor still stinks and Dotel is gone for the season), then the backside of the rotation (wright and ponson) is prone to turn setback into disaster by pitching them out of two games in the first couple of innings. There is no silver bullet for this vulnerability on the trade market. Soriano an exciting player who would only make the Yankees that much worse defensively, whether he plays 2nd, where he's an incompetent, plays left, displacing Melky to right, where he has not fared well, or DH's. putting Giambi at first. From watching the Phillies, I can tell you Abreu is the anti-Paul O'Neill, a player who njever tries that hard, doesn't come through in the clutch, and seems to care only about his OBP. Carlos Lee may be worse than Soriano in the OF and, once again can only play Melky's position. The pitching on the market is dreadful. I mean people are interested in Cory Lidle, a sober, slimmed down version of Ponson. The answer? Follow through on the youth movement begun with Cano, continued with Cabrera. Bring up Phillip Hughes. Bring him up now. What is there to lose--the games Ponson would have lost anyway? Across town Pelfrey has shown it can be done. Hughes's success would make a fairly respectable no. 5 out of wright, instead of the poor no. 4 he is now. More importantly it has the possibility of combining the magic of anticipated potential with the magic of the unforeseen realization. Think Andy Pettite in 1996, Mel Stottlemyre in 1964 or (to change teams) Johnny Podres in 1955.

I have not spoken about Err-Rod (a coinage of mine that procededed E-Rod by about three weeks) but I'll save him for a post of his own.

Conventional Wisdom Strikes Again

Two days after the pundits spoke as one awarding the AL East to the Red Sox, their vulnerabilities, overrated starting pitching and an offense that is weaker than advertised, have revealed themselves, shrinking their lead to 1 in the loss column. This race will definitely go to the better of 2 lessers. I hope Torre took note of bubba's amazing, probably game-saving catch last night. They have to find ways to get his defense in there. I'd rather live with Giambi at first.

Did They Say

Sidney Ponson? Is this the mark of zero-degree desparation? No, I guess the unwillingness to pay anything in the way of trade compensation or, for all intents and purposes, salary, probably indicates your not all that desparate yet. On the other hand, just letting him pitch smacks of miracle-stalking. I thought one of Torre's few discernible virtues as a manager was his insistence on character guys for his team. Ponson divides his time between AA and Jenny Craig, failing at both. The next 12 steps he takes will be his first. He's the Bull Durham guy, with the 1,000,000 dollar arm and the ten cent head, the anti-Aaron Small. Are you feeling any hope?

Don't believe the hype

I have decided to use the all-star break to blog on one of my other sports passions, world cup soccer. I have myself visited a number of blogs devoted to the subject and read through the long lists of comments theyt attrace. All I can say is that there has never, and I mean never, been an ad campaign more deceptive than the one-worldism marketing ESPN ran to attract Americans low oin soccer interest but high on political idealism. We all know that international sport, like the Olympics, can be war by other means, but that is also to say that they are war in sublimation. If world cup managed to be that, I would think the ads about a ball closing shops, stopping wars, changing the world, were profoundly silly, but no more misleading than your average marketing device in favor of an innocuous commodity. What these blogs convinced me, however, was that if the tournament brings the world together in the sense of magnetizing global attention around a single spectacle, mutual animosity remains the deciver energy invested. As an Italian-American, I can't say I was the least bit surprised at the degree of slur-dripping animus directed at the Italian team and Italians generally. As an american, I was similarly unsurprised at the enmity expressed toward the French. After all Francophobia, even more than Muslim or Arab bashing, is our last fully legitimated prejudice in this country. But who knew so many people had such deep-seated hatred toward the Portugese? World Cup evidently doesn't really supply much in tghe way of sublimation of ethnic hostility, it seems to actualize some that are otherwise largely dormant.

All Star Blues

Despite an exciting ending, I couldn't help thinking that this exhibition lost its relevance in the transition from print to televisual culture, or at least from local affilate to national cable transmission. It is there to allow fans to see life on the other side, i.e. the stars from the league the hometown team doesn't play. But with Baseball Tonight and Sports Center, not to mention interleague play and the player mobility that comes with free agency, there is no "other" side in the plenary sense, and so this game seems not only contrived and anti-climactic, bathetic in sum. No?

A Logic

For all those bloggers who think France deserved to win the World Cup because they "dominate the game." Dessert in sports is determined strictly by fulfilling the object of the contest. dominating play is but a means to that object, which is scoring. Ergo, absent fraud or referee malfeasance, the team that wins is the team that deserved to win, which is not to say they were the "best" team (though inn this case they were). Since "real" americans hate soccer, you'd think soccer fans would be as intelligent than baseball fans. To judge from the aether, not at all.

a representative ending

The Yankees score 5 runs early, 4 on one blow by giambi, and then fail to score again. The bullpen gives the lead away, with Proctor gacking up the winning run like bad sushi. Fundamentals fail with the tying run in scoring position, as Jeter pops up a bunt and AROD (surprise!) strikes out. If there weren't already a K-ROD, he'd be it. But the Yanks lost their last game the same day Italy beat Germany and today the Azurri won the World Cup, and I'd be willing to pay any number of typical Yankee collapses for that quadrennial result. Forza Italia!

The Valente Principle

The first rule of ersatz knowledge, and this goes for politics as well as sports, is that the closer conventional wisdom comes to being universally accepted, the closer it comes to being proven bogus. Today's specimen is the idea, repeated ad nauseum on ESPN, NESN, YES, FOXSPORTS, local sports outlets etc. that this year the wild card is definitely coming out of the central division. As trhe Bosox preparfe to sweep Chicago and the Yanks prepare to sweep TB, the second place team in the east may trail the second place teram in the central by just three games in the loss column at the all star break. If you factor in the reality that the 3rd place team in the central, the Twins, is definitely for real, with Santana, Loriana, Radke, and Silva, while the Jays are pretenders at best, with no reliable, uninjured starting pitching past Halliday, then it looks like Chicago has a tougher road in the second half than the Yankees, especially when you consider that the 4th place team in the Central, Cleveland, is much better than their couterparts, the Orioles. In addition, Chicago is missing noone and doesn't look to get much better, whereas the return of Cano, the addition of Dotel, and the September return of Sheffield may improve the Yankees. all I'm saying at this opoint is that the wild card is categorically not what conventional wisdom says it is, a central division lock.

I hope Z remembers what I told him back in early May, that I wished the Yanks would replace Torre with Joe Girardi, because the latter would be an excellent manager. The Marlins are have in fact improved more dramatically over a shorter period than any team in memory.

In a very nice win tonight, it looked to me like AROD is backsliding. In the sixth, Torre lifted Giambi for a pinchrunner to gamble on small ball and a 1 run cushion. I salute his decision, the most creative he's made since he had Wang close against the Orioles. His idea was that with noone out, the faster Damon could advance to third on almost any kind of contact by AROD and go home on contact by Posada. The strikeout AROD delivered, his second of the game was particularly egregious because Torre's correct strategy had assigned his superstar such a limited task to perform properly and AROD failed in the most unproductive way. Fortunately, Torre was vindicated by Jorge's single up the middle with 1 out, a knock that scored Damon, but would never have scored the elephatine Giambi. Looking aty things more globally, the fact that the Yanks got 5 runs, with both Giambi (who reached on an error) and AROD taking the collar and Jeter and Jorge managing just 1 hit apiece, testifies to the tonic team chemistry generated by the small ball approach.No single player needs to contribute as big, but more need to contribute something. As a result their is a distribution and hence a diffusion of pressure while at the same timne there is a circulation, hence an enhancement of involvement, engagement, and attention. You absolutely need good starting pitching to pull it off though, and the Yankees are only 60% of the way there. When and if they hit 80%, they will have given themselves a chance, realistic but not assured, of making the playoffs, whether as division champs or as the wild card.

Aftertaste

As usual, the yanks responded well to the embarassment in cleveland, winning three in a row. The outstanding effect I have noticed in the ensuing games has been a change in baserunning strategy, which must have come from Torre himself. The Yankees seem at last unwilling to settle for station to station play. They've been take the extra base at every opportunity. I could be wrong but I think this reflects a change in overall attitude. They have played the last 3 games as if they didn't expect to win, which is also to say they didn't play to avoid losing. I don't necessarly believe much good will come of the latest Royal addition, Guil, but he does run the bases with the same sort of abandon as Crosby. Don't go buying Wright off tonight's performance, though, he's had some very good starts against T.B. in the past. It doesn't translate into sustained excellence. Still only 3 behind boston with no less than 4 starters missing is pretty fortunate.

Heard an interview with Cashman today. He is apparently the only man in america who doesn't question Pavano's mettle. On the plus side, he sounds quite categorical about keeping Phillip Hughes, though there doesn't seem much chance they'll bring him up this year. He was funniest about AROD, insisting that Yankee fan dissatisfaction with their pressure-challenged slugger issued entirely from the large salary he commanded and the regrettable human tendency to resent such good fortune. News flash to Cashman. you can't resent large salaries and be a yankees fan in the first place. I'm sure we'd all begald to see antoher zero added to the end of AROD's annuals if it meant more clutch hits and fewer clutch errors. why does noone who addresses this question (which is to say eveyone making a living from baseball and its discourse) acknowledge that people walk Giambi to get to AROD this year more often than prople walk AROD to get to Jorge?

Sour and Sweet

The good thng about a 19-1 drubbing is that it costs you no more than a 5-3 loss, but it provides the kind of clarity that only pain and devestation caqn bring. It makes obvious that this team has too many areas that need improvement for them to proceed in any kind of orthodox way. The Yankees have been unwilling to trade their 2 pitching prospects, Hughes and Cox, for veteran fixes, be they bats or arms. I have applauded this unwillingness and continue to do so. but the time has come to recognize that while you can get hitting for nothing, or nothing but money, you can't get pitching that way. The Yankees have to bring hughes into the starting rotation and Cox into the bullpen. They have to try and use their economic muscle to get a Soriano, an Abreau, or at least a Reggie Saunders. Chacon cannot be allowed to start again. Maybe he'd be better in the bullpen. Bean should be sent down since his pitches stay so stubbornly up.

One more thing. Anyone who fondly imagines that Torre is still a good manager, unfortunately hampered by injuries, should take a look at what the Chisox have managed to extract from Contreras through the simple stratagem of allowing him to pitch in his natural motion instead of trying, for no particular reason whatever, to throw overhand.

Typical (Squared)

Which one of the following items best characterizes Yankees losses this year. They score their only two runs on an early inning Giambi homer. They leave men in scoring position with less than 2 outs in multiple innings. They leave a man on 3rd with less than 2 outs by striking out not once but twice. They allow the go ahead runs to score on a bad defensive play. Their starter (not Mussina) insists on pitching away from contact, thus building his pitch count while staying behind the hitters. Joe Torre, having mismanaged his bench, and still waiting for Cashman to pick up some kind of past his prime professional hitter, sends up a rookie just up from Columbus in a crucial situation and just hopes for a miracle.

If you answered all of the above, you have accurately described the depressing performance the Yankees gave in Cleveland tronight, effectively killing whatever momentum they might have gathered (evidently not much) from their destruction of the Mets last night. A special tipm of the cap to Cabrera, who misjudged a victor Martinez flyball and allowed it to land for a double, even though it barely reached the warning track, and then just for good measure bobbled the ball twice while retrieving it, allowing the go ahead as well as tying runs to score.

With Williams in right--he runs almost as bad as he throws; did you see the pop up he let drop Sunday night--and Cabrera in left, the Yankees outfield is a toxic waste dump just waiting to poison the entire season. At this point, neither Cabrera nor Phillips are contributing enough offensively to justify the present configuration of the outfield. Either hold your nose, let Giambi play first, get Crosby in right and put williams, who is hitting, at DH, or sit Cabrera, put Damon in left, Crosby in center, and shade him as much as you dare into right to cover for Bernie.

Boston's version of the YES channel is running a show called What If, which features some sort of computer projection of what would have happened had Grady Little taken Pedro out in the 2002 ACLS. What's next computer projections of what would have happened had the Shea grounds crew watered the first base area a little more vigorously in 1986?
Congratulating the only Red Sox fan I actually like upon their success in 2004, I told him that the nice thing for chowderhead nation would be that they would find the epic traumas of the past--Bucky (bleeping) Dent (What If: Torres had intentionally walked him?), Bill (bleeping) Buckner, Aaron (bleeping) Boone (What If: Bob and wife had stopped after Brett?)--would be retroactively miniaturized into ruefully amusing setbacks preparing for and sweetening the breakthrough triumph. Evidently, my friend excepted, I had underestimated how truly pathetic chowderhead nation really is. Evidently Z was right when he said Sox fans are all about resentiment, so much so in fact that they continue to nurse it even after its enabling condition has vanished. Which is to say, Red Sox nation is for losers, whether the team itself is winning or not.

Louuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Z points out that AROD has at last had a good week, hitting homers in the clutch. While that overlooks the Err-Rod factor--he now has more fielding miscues than he did all last season--it is clearly a hopeful development for a struggling offense. And, surprise! it is one more sign that blow-Joe should not be managing this team. AROD himself attributes his turnaround to an hour long discussion he had with his old Mariners manager, Lou Piniella. It is not too much stretch to say that Lou has done as much for the on-field performanced of this team in 60 minutes as Joe has all year. Someone should remind Steinbrenner how long it is since he fired somebody. Get his blood ciruculating.

photo negative

I've been up here in New england for about a week, with a week to go, and it has given me the opportunity to see the Sox play on a daily basis. I am disturbed to reprt that they are just like the Yankees, only in reverse. Whereas the Yankees tend to score runs and then go into a shell when the opponent answers, the Sox are most dangerous the AB after they've given up runs. Whereas the Yankees are at their most futile with a runner on third and less than two outs, the Sox never, and I mean never, fail to get him across. Whereas you look at the combination of Yanks' hits and walks in the box score and wonder why they managed so few runs, you look at the same combination for the Sox and wonder how they managed to score so many. Whereas the Yankees' role players like Cabrera and Cairo always get a hit or two but rarely figure in the scoring, the Sox role players like Crisp, Loretta, Lowell and Gonzalezale always seem to get their hits when it matters. Whereas the Yanks are the worst RISP team in baseball, the sox are nearly the best.Whereas the Sox have the greatest clutch superstar in the game, the Yankees have the biggest superstar choke artist in the game.

In sum, whereas the Sox most closely resemble the Yankees of the twentieth century,the Yankees most closely resemble the Sox of the 20th century. That is the single most depressing thought about baseball I think I've ever had.

No Jack Kerouac

Being on the road has rather cramped my blogging stream of consciousness, for which I apologize to Z. While the Yankees have been showing alot of fight recently, comiong back to win games in the late innings or holding off teams in great pitchers duels, they have proven incapable of sweeping even the weak NL teams (Braves, Phils, Marlins) dropping a game in each series (let's not even talk about the Nats). The game they drop tends to be almost phoned in, as if they don't have the energy to sustain three games of hard play consecutively. Mad Dog seems to think this tendency goes to their age and decrepitude. But I believe another answer is possible. The truth is the Yankees have become a pretty weak offensive team. Their propensity for poor situational hitting has now worsened in the absence of Matsui and Sheffield rather than improved. Every game seems to turn on whether or not Giambi hitsa one out and how manyt men are on when he does. Despite his dramatic walk-off, AROD remains not just a poor clutch hitter but an unreliable factor at any time and in every phase of the game. Their recent spate of winning, while insufficient to keep pace with the Sox, who are beginning to look like a very good team, proves the value of starting pitching, in both a negative and positive sense. Johnson, Mussina, and Wang are now so good they give the Yanks a legitimate chance to win, even with fairly meagre run support. What the Yankees lack at this point, and the reason they can't sweep series, is a number four starter and any kind of relief. Wright has been ok as a no. 5. He scuffles for 5-6 innings, but gets decent results before he eats up you bullpen. With a no. 4 who could go 7 innings and a decent reliever to fill the role that Proctor is failing, the Yankees might have a shot at staying in the race until Sheffield gets back. Maybe Dotel will be that reliever, if he ever gets well--but then we're still waiting for Godot, er Pavano, to be that no. 4. Certainly it can't be Chacon. He's lost his curve, which set up his fastball. At 89 MPH, that heater isn't going to get batters out if they're sitting on it. Chacon compensates by throwing it off the plate, which gets him into deeper trouble and deeper pitch counts. As a result he eats the bullpen even faster than Wright, and you can't have 2 like that. Not when Scott Proctor is your go to guy in the 6th inning. I mean their most heroic victories have been all about climbing out of the hole he puts them in. I propose bringing up Phillip Hughes. What Lester, Papelbon, Clemens and Wang have all shown, albeit in different ways, is that your success at getting batters out in the minors, once it reaches a certain level, correlates with your success at getting them out in the majors. give Hughes a try. Maybe Chacon will be better ( and better than Proctor) in the bullpen.

HAving said all of that one intractable fact remains. If you look at the Sox rotation and the Sox bullpen, both strengths and weaknesses, each uncannily mirrors the Yankees situation. If you go around the diamond, the balance postion by position--with the exception of SS and LF--is similarly striking. The difference between these teams, and I fear it is growing wider, comes down to fundamentals. The Sox field their postions better and field better as a team; they hit better situationally; they know how to bunt and do it at opportune times; they hold runners on better, pick them off more, and throw them out stealing at a better clip. I saw the entire series against the Mets and they dismantled them with fundamentals. And I could only think what a thing of beauty I would find such play were the Yankees responsible.