The one thing we're not short on is

irony.

Readers of this blog last season might remember that I did a little Dr. Seus memorial to the mid-season Yankees who kept losing player after player to injury (Sheffield, Matsui, Jeter, Damon, Posada, Pavano, Rivera etc) and yet kept winning. It was the high point of the season.

This year the Yankees rotation is crumbling all around them (Wang, Pavano, Mussina,, a missed start for Pettite) and yet the performance of the starting pitching has been excellent since the walls began to fall (3 consecutive high quality starts in Minnesota, two brilliant starts and a good one in Oakland) and yet the yankees have only gone 500 in that stretch and have still lost more than they won over the season. Today was a killer; you just don't lose up 2 with 2 outs and 2 strikes and Mo on the mound. Still they would have won the game for sure had Jeter not given away a run in the fiorst inning with his 6th error of the season. I'll tell you what if he was AROD, hell would have no fury like the (entirely justified) wrath of Yankees' fans. Jeter is being paid over 21,000,000 dollars this year, and the girl who plays shortstop on my softball team is playing much better. Nobody is saying anything, but it has a profoundly demoralizing effect when game after game your Gold Glove shortstop commits errors for which Goob in Meet the Robinsons would get beat up by his teammates. And with 60% of their rotation on the DL and series coming up with Cleveland and Boston (and then Boston again), the Yankees have to worry about falling out of the race early.

At one level, they just seem snakebit and you have to acknowledge that there are some circumstances you have to play through but may not be able to overcome. On the other, one wonders what can be done to improve prospects in the near-term. The rearrangement of the bullpen recommended earlier would be a start. I would also say that they should let Matsui come back as a DH as soon as his 15 days are up. Don't mollycoddle him, he doesn't want it. Let giambi play first until Matsui is all better and see if G's hitting improves any. Right now he is the hole in the center of the line-up that AROD was last year. If his hitting doesn't improve, then I think you have to drop him to eighth. Bat Matsui in the 5 hole, Cano sixth, Posada seventh. As for the starting pitching, I don't know why Cashman won't take the hint fate is giving him and bring Hughes up? Wright is clearly a second or even a third choice. I will never understand why the Yankees, when injured, insist on playing as undermanned as they can possibly be. Hopefully Karstens is just about ready, but they probably are unwilling to let him throw until he hasn't been injured for at least 2 weeks.

Final note: When they re-acquired Pettite, I said he was a true Yankee, and he has quietly been more dominant so far than anyone could have expected. His era, in case anyone has failed to notice, is lower than Dice-K's, lower than Beckett's, lower than Schilling's. That he doesn't post a win today is more than a shame.