I DON'T BLAME TORRE FOR THIS COLLAPSE,

I blame him for the losses to follow. With an already stressed and overworked bullpen, torre removes Pettite in the 7th inning despite the fact that he had just struck out a batter. With a 6-2 lead, slow Joe simply has to rely on Pettite to get him 8 innings. If you lose by that strategy, so be it, but you now have rested a bullpen that badly needs it, and tomorrow is, as Scarlet O'Hara has it, another day. What Joe did was rely on the overworked by overworking them further, and now there's noone left to go to when Karstens and Wright need help. Andy Pettite was the only starter in this series with the experience to go deep in Fenway. If he fails to do so, well fair enough. But he was succeeding. Why in the world would you yank him? For Meyers? Bulletin to status quo: Meyers can't get anyone out when it counts, including Ortiz. For Vizcaino? No he just threw 30 pitches yesterday and got lit up. For Mo? Yes, but only to start an inning. I don't know if Boston would have gotten to Pettite, but there were no other reasonable options, and even if they did we'd be better off than we are now with the bullpen taxed to the breaking point. With respects to BGW, this is more of Torre's sentimental tomfoolery. He tries to assure his starter's won't lose well pitched games by pulling them at the first opportunity. The result is that they, and the team, win less of their well pitched games than they should.

This was on any account a crushing defeat, particularly since this was the one matchup in the Yankees' favor. Pettite is a better pitcher than Schilling and with the Yanks line-up, they need to win games like this. But any projection of Yankees' success over the long term of the season was predicated on Mo being Mo. Yes, he's had slow starts before. But I cannot remember him ever having an 8.5 ERA, nor blowing 2 leads of this magnitude in this fashion twice in a row. It is reasonable to wonder if we are witnessing the beginning of the end of an era of late-inning dominance, which would mean a continuation of the Yanks time in the wilderness of losing.

Before the series, I thought the Yanks would lose 2 games to 1 , and that would be fine given the state of their rotation and the imminent return of Wang. But when you lose a game like this to the bats of Crisp, Varitek and Cora, a sweep seems the only rational expectation. Weak starters and a depleted bullpen strengthen that expectation. And if that happens, the Yankees might well be playing for their season next week at the stadium. If they are 5 or more back at that point, the likelihood of their securing Clemens diminishes dramatically, and the likelihood of Boston signing him increases proportionately. I really don't see any way of conceiving what Joe Torre did to this team tonight as anything other than disaster. If the Yankee fans want a target for the venom they have in reserves owing to AROD's resurgence, Torr is their man. Let's see if we can drive him from the game.