Boy, am I glad to see the Yankees get out of Dodge the Bronx. Yes, they won one of the three games against the Astros – by a hair – but the offense went back into a slumber and the pitching, with the exception of Evo, never woke up. Pineda and Nova didn’t have it, which would be worrisome enough but now with CC out indefinitely it’s extra worrisome. Capuano was DFA-ed for the 100th time and Adam Warren hasn’t been the same since he was shuttled back and forth between the starting rotation and the bullpen. That leaves the kid with the fractured nose. I hate to keep saying it, but it would have been nice to have acquired a veteran arm (a good one).
What to make of the slumping offense? Girardi talks about how everybody’s “banged up” at this time of the year, and I don’t doubt it. Not having a healthy Teixeira in the lineup has made a difference. Ellsbury hasn’t caught fire since coming back from the DL. Didi was bound to taper off at some point. A-Rod couldn’t possibly stay hot through the entire season. Beltran has been surprisingly resilient and McCann’s had some pivotal hits. But now we’re down in the standings again to the Blue Jays and I liked it better when we weren’t.
I do have to say it was fun watching Brendan Ryan pitch a couple of innings in that blow-out game. He was good!
Will the series against the Braves bring everybody back to life? It happened once before after Girardi had a tizzy on the field in Atlanta and got tossed. I think there was a team meeting down there too. We need some kind of shove to get going again.
It’s been tough, Jane, no doubt about it. But that 1 – 0 victory was such an exciting game to watch. If we’d lost that one too, it would have been horrible. Evo was incredible. But the bats do have to wake up – no question. The pitching hasn’t been as solid and consistent as we’d like, but its really the bats that have to win the games at the end of the regular season. We’re 2 games out of first and Toronto has been amazing. Let’s hope for the best. GO YANKEES!!!
The bats definitely have to wake up, Diane. The trouble is, A-Rod won’t be playing in Atlanta without the DH and Ellsbury, our spark plug, has a bad hip and Tex, our most reliable RBI guy, is still hurting though available. It all comes down to health yet again.
At different times of the year our offense has been hot while our pitching has been questionable and vice versa. We need for it to all some together in September (earlier, preferably) and hope the Blue Jays hit a long overdue slump. We still have a comfortable lead for the Wild Card but clearly that is not ideal. We want first place in the east and we want it soon!
I’m concerned that the older guys are tired/banged up and the younger guys aren’t ready to carry this. Look at Chris Young, for ex. Remember how hot a hitter he was? Not anymore. A-Rod? Ditto. Tex? Hard to tell if he’ll bounce back. Same with Ellsbury. And the pitching? Does DFA-ing Capuano for the fourth time and calling him up again make any sense to anybody? I hope they can pull it together enough for a nice September run, but the Wild Card would be treacherous for them.