THIRTY TWO AND COUNTING

I know it's Roy Halladay and all, but he has lost 6 times this year, and the degree of Yankee futility on offense is just staggering--just two hits. What is more they wasted another good start (3 runs over 6.2 innings). The starting pitching over the last couple of weeks has been nothing short of stellar and somehow the Yankees have wasted a good deal of it. It won't last of course. Even though the Yanks' pitching is not as bad as advertised, it isn't this good either. By the time the bats wake up, if they wake up, the team will be finding another way to lose half their games.

The Rays are in collapse; the Red Sox aren't that great; the division is really there for the taking. but at this point, I'd say the Orioles are as likely an upstart candidate as the Yankees. Cashman's cure: Richie Sexton. Just what we need: another guy who can't make contact to save his life and sgtays in the league on the strength of the odd home run.

What we do need is a new GM.

DO I HEAR THIRTY ONE?

Another game lost on offense--once more against a non-descript lefthander-- and to one of the sorriest teams in MLB. Actually the Yankees managed to lose the series to the Pirates this year--after sweeping them each of the last two. Only 2 runs scored, and you have to put part of this loss on Giardi. He seems to think that just putting nine players out there in pinstripes is sufficient to score and win. Given that you have neither Damon nor Matsui, can someone tell me why the single most productive bat in the lineup, Giambi, is sitting on the bench. I have in the past railed against the offensive futility of Jose Molina, complaingin that the crater sized hole in his bat disqualifies him as a viable back-up catcher. Can someone tell me when and why he became the Yan kees' number one catcher. Game after game Posada either DH's or plays first base, while Molina weakens the bottom of the order. Bad enough. But without the Dh, when playing no way Jose means sitting Giambi or Posada, when it means a bottom third that reads Christian, Molina, Mussina (who had one more hit than Molina by the way), then I don't see why Giardi dopesn't put Posada behind the plate. What's the worst that can happen? He commits a throwing error? Well Molina had one of those as well. Tonight the Yankees' failure to break the two run barrier (which should have a catchy name like the Mendoza line) was less about choking with RISP than fielding a really weak lineup.

Having said that, the weak line-up does put added pressure on the one superstar uniquely unable to handle it. I refer of course to AROD (Reggie had a candy bar named after him; I suggest Alex go with an ice cream treat: Mr. Softy. The last time I lambasted Mr. Softy, Anonymous complained that Abreu had failed just as badly in the same clutch situation. Since then, Abreu has hit a game winning double yesterday and driven in the only two runs tonight while AROD has done...nothing (Mussina had one more hit than he did too). In fact, once Abreu had tied the game in the seventh tonight, AROD cam up with two out and two on and a chance tto get the Yankees the lead or even bust the game open. He bounced out to raise his left on base number for the evening to four. He's just not the kind of superstar that lifts all boats, which is why you cannot surround him with a subpar line-up and expect him to deliver victories.
With the Rays losing again, the Yanks had a chance to get them selves right back in the East division race, and they blew it against a AAA level club. There are no real solutions here, easy or otherwise, but they really need right handed bats.

Last point: it didn't matter tonight, but when Giardi hhas noone to hit after the number six guy, he should bat Cano fifth and Posada sixth. Cano runs well enough to score on a Posada hit, Posada will still be out there on the bases after a Cano hit, waiting for the likes of Molina to push him home.

THAT'S THIRTY GAMES

scoring 2 runs or less, while the pitching keeps getting better. The improvement points to the importance of Dave Eyland. We who complained about the incompetence of Mel Stottlemeyer may have been slow to recognize how much better the pitching coach is because Kennedy and Hughes started so slow and then injured themselves. But I think the manifest improvement in middle and set up relief, the salvaging of Moose and Sidney Ponson, the continued development of Joba all indicate that Eyland's promotion to the major league club is paying dividends. The hitting coach...not so much.

A PAIR OF SURPRISING STATS

While the pudits continue to wring their hands over the Yankees pitching, the staff has quietly compiled nine shutouts already this season, as compared with five all of last year. They are not as bad as people think, and the new Joe is clearly superior to the old in one respect, his handling of the bullpen. He even has the big F looking decent. On the other hand the Yankees have already gone 29 games scoring 2 or fewer, as compared with 33 all of last year, testimony to the weak-mindedness of the lineup with men on base. As the trade deadline approaches, maybe the Yankees could use a big righthanded bat==see Matt Holiday--even more than a starting pitcher.

THAT'S TWO

late inning, game-winning RBI's for Gardner on successive days. Does anyone on the team have that many for the entire season. Maybe Giambi. Certainly not AROD.

LOL

A nice win yesterday, almost undone by Mike Lowell. His RBI liner against Mo in the ninth was an utterly representative at bat for him. He is at this moment one of the five most important bats, as far as winning games is concerned, in the entire American League. And we could have had him. Well at least we have Brett Gardner to produce the game winning Ribbies.

UNHEIMLICH

It was uncanny that the day after I called for Hank to fire somebody or send people down, he gave the team a tonguelashing and a warning that players would be sent down soon. It worked for exactly one game, before the Yankees turned in perhaps their worst performance all year on Thursday night. Once again the failure to field (big error by Jeter) and the failure to hit in big spots did them in. Thew same thing today. And as always the poster child for the category of superstar loser is AROD. With the Yankees up 12-7 Wednesday night, AROD launches one of his typically pointless 3 run homers to pull him within one of Mickey Mantle, one fo the greatest clutch players in the history of the game. Last night, with the Yanks having given up 2 in the first on the Jeter error, AROD comes up with runners on first and third, one out. It is the type of situation in which you have to produce a run--to close the gap, to put pressure on Lester, to make him throw more pitches. Instead, Mr. Overrated gets impatient and swings at a ball eight inches wide of the strike zone for a K. It sets off a contagion of impatience on the Yankees part--they start swinging at every first pitch. Today, AROD comes up with the bases loaded, 2 outs, bottom of the seventh. The Yankees have chased Beckett, but thanks to a mike Lowell home run they trail 6-3. AROD proceeds to bounce out, killing the rally and consolidating the Yankees spot as the worst hitting team with the bases loaded in all of baseball.

This is no coincedence. With AROD's lifetime contract in place, the Yankees are his team and they have increasingly taken on his personality, or I should say gag reflex. No sooner is he installed as the permanent "man" on the team than their RISP numbers, never great, go through the floor. He is Mr. Unheimlich--in the sense of Mr. Uncanny, a superstar who not only doesn't make the players around him better but actually makes them worse--and in the sense of Mr. Unheimlich Maneuver, the man who just can't stop choking.

When AROD tried to do the Yankees the same favor slow Joe did by opting out of his contract, I said right off let him go and then overpay significantly to get Mike Lowell--knowing of course that even an obscene overpayment would still be dwarfed by the AROD contract. Well, I was right. Not only is Lowell much cheaper, not only is he one of the great clubhouse presences in all of baseball, not only is he a proven winner to AROD's proven loser, he is a better all-around baseball player than AROD: a better glove at third, a better arm at third, a much better hitter in big situations with men on base.

For whatever reason, the fans at the stadium have stopped making AROD's life miserable. Have they bought into the pundit's excoriation of their lack of taste or baseball knowledge, have they just gotten tired, have they been discouraged by the 10 year contract? I wish they would start again, because it is only by tormenting him that we can ever get rid of him. I've given up on the idea that he will ever be a winner as well as a superstar.
And frankly I don't see how his recent move from common whores to celebrity skanks can help.

IT'S TIME FOR HANK

rto fire somebody. Frankly, I don't care who it is. But somebody needs to go to show this team theis bair current level of play is not acceptable. And if the firing doesn't work, it's time to send some superstars down to double A and make them ride buses for awhile.

This is a team that supposedly has pitching problems holding down the best offense in baseball. And for the third consecutive game and the sixth time in recent memory, the Yanks offense wastes good to great pitching and loses a game that was there for the taking. Probably they'll wind up getting swept at home by a mediocre team, the second time that has happened this year. Why? Start with the familiar. They cannot hit with men on base. They left 15 this game. If you took the Yankees WHGP (walks and hits per game) and divided it by their RPG, I'm sure the number, the WQ or Wastage Quotient, would be higher than any team in the league. If you did the same division for just the 7th through 9th innings, it would be astronomically higher than any other team. Is this Giardi's fault? Not Really. But he can't be sitting important components--in this game Jeter and Matsui--when the team is misfiring this badly. Stop babying these guys. Let them play hurt once in a while, and let it be known, the more the team loses the less you give a damn about individual aches and pains.

I had really hoped that the hiring of Giardi would mean an end to the mollycoddling of Mama Joe. But in this, as in other areas discussed here, Giardi has been much less of a change agent than advertised. This team should be ashamed of itself, and the manager and owner, as well as the fans, should let them know it.

One more thing. Why doesn't Giardi understand at this point that you simply do not pitch Rivera in a tie game. Look at the stats: without a lead to protect, Rivera is not great, not good, not even average; he stinks, as his ERA, 4.oo, proves beyond doubt. In a tie game you are actually better off with Farnsworth.