The Boss is on the verge of exploding. Holed up in a Tampa bunker somewhere for the last week Steinbrenner has watched his Bronx boys play like little leaguers and drop six of seven to the Red Sox, including a sweep at Yankee Stadium, Boston's first since 1999. What a sweet two weeks of baseball it was to watch. I can't wait for the Yankee fallout -- King George style.
Everyone in the organization is masking it as no big deal because it's only April. But it is. When you dish out upwards of nearly $183 million in salaries you expect to win at least a SINGLE game of a home series - and hit better than .152 - against your rivals from Beantown. But the Yanks are playing like the Bad News Bears. Matsui lets a ball fall in left at Fenway. Yanks lose. Jeter does his best Billy Buckner imitation, has a rag arm throughout the series, is hitless in 25 at-bats and whiffs more times than a blind man swinging at a piñata. Yanks lose. Bubba slips on the outfield grass and Sheffield flubs a fly. Yanks lose. The Sox go 0-for-19 with runners in scoring position. Yanks still lose.
It's now in their head. Yankee players are wondering if they are really that bad. They're pressing and digging a bigger hole. It won't be getting easier anytime soon because Oakland arms Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito await. Not exactly how a team batting in the low .220s wants to attempt to break out of a slump.
So here it is. The Yankees will NOT make the playoffs this year. Their string of six straight division titles is over. Vegas oddsmakers set the over-under season win total for the New Yorkers at 101. It certainly seems a stretch now. They will probably end up with a win total in the low nineties and it won't be enough. The wild card will come out of the vastly improved AL West this year.
The offense was supposed to carry this team but NY is last is the American League in hitting. The bats are bound to come around but one look at the starting pitching and it doesn't take a genius to realize this is a piss poor rotation. Mussina has struggled, Brown has pitched well but has a history of injuries and annually hits the DL by July, Contreras is about to find himself on a boat back to Cuba soon if he doesn't shape up and Vazquez is probably wondered why he ever left pressure-free Canada where nobody watches every pitch.
Letting Pettitte, Clemens and Wells go were HUGE mistakes. The next to go: hitting coach Don Mattingly, GM Brian Cashman and, yes, Joe Torre, if he doesn't turn it around soon. Cashman says, "It just takes time. This is a Derby horse that's slow out of the gate."
Right now it looks like this preseason Derby favorite is ready for the glue factory.
