Season on the Brink

The 2008 New York Yankee season is on the verge of spiralling out of control. As they seemed to make all the right moves at the trade deadline and their opponents either stayed pat, the Rays, or got rid of their best hitter, the Red Sox, everyone was basically handing the Yankees one of the two possible entries to the playoffs. Their moves signaled a going for it this year attitude. But hold on not so fast, since Saturdays trade the Yankees have just two wins and five losses. Oh yeah and these losses are at home. With only about 20 home games left each one is very valuable and cannot be thrown away like last night. Two guys they count on have gotten rocked, Andy Pettitte and Mike Mussina, while they lost games that they should have won because of the efforts of their four and five starters, Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson. The office has reverted back to the first half where they can't hit with RISP or even in general.

They have shown all the signs of a bad team. When they score a lot of runs they get no pitching, like Tuesday night. And when they get good pitching they don't score at all, just like last night. They can't put it all together for more than one week.

It might be time to panic as the Yankees have eight games versus the best team in baseball, the LA Angels of Anaheim. They also embark on a day game road trip that has them going to Texas, Anaheim, and Minnesota. The losing could get out of control. As Texas has gone into a complete rebuilding mode and called up a bunch of new pitchers who the Yankees have never seen. Historically, they usually give the Yankees a lot of trouble. The team will have to return to the west coast a few weeks later as they go to Anaheim again and to Seattle. These are not trips that teams want to have at the end of year.

They must find a way to one of the next two games at home and get some of that good feeling back that they had at this time last week. Only time will tell if all the trades made sense or if they disrupted a good thing. When they return home from this upcoming road trip we will know a lot about what the Yankees are about and if they actually have a chance at making the playoffs or if Sept 21 will be in fact the final day the Yankees play at the House that Ruth Built.