The Yanks are coming... Maybe...

The following piece is a column from one of our guest writers, Geoff, who runs the Bleeding Pinstripes. Visit his site and give him the TABC bump.

I’ve been promising my boy Reid a piece for a while now on the Yankees’ chances this year, and since I’m waiting for my iPhone to back up anyway, here goes.

First let’s get up to speed on where we are. My thought going into the recent brutal road trip, and even the few series’ before (Boston, Minnesota, Anaheim, Baltimore) was that the Yankees season would take shape by the time they got back.

Not good news.

And last week I was screaming for the Yankees to send Melky down to triple A, as I saw his usefulness solely as an outfielder and a pinch runner; two roles I felt Brett Gardiner was better suited for. And I was railing against starting Richie Sexson against lefties, preferring to see him strictly used as a pinch hitter. So what happens next? Melky gets demoted, Gardiner is recalled, and Sexson is waived.

Worse news.

I know. Sounds a bit off. I’m contradicting myself. But the truth is – what do I know? Nothing. I was the guy screaming for Tony Womack to get more playing time in ’05; that Robinson Cano was a useless rookie. I was the guy saying that Posada was going to fade last year and end up at .270. That David Archuleta was going to get voted off the second week of American Idol because he was such a drippy little wuss. I shouldn’t be right. This can’t be good...

So what are the Yanks’ chances? If you ask me, it always comes down to one key thing. Schedule. It’s huge before the season even starts. Look at the Yankees. Every year they play the Angels ten times. And always predominantly on the road. Like clockwork. It’s a marquee match-up, and the Angels are the one and only team that have had the Yankees’ number. You think MLB is going to pass that up? Since the days of the unbalanced schedule, there is only one team outside of their division that the Yankees have played ten times. Yup. And it happens almost every year. And it’s not just the Yankees. The schedule tells a lot of tales before the first pitch on the first Sunday night. Look at the Mets. Every year they play six brutal games against the Yankees. They lost the NL East to the Phillies on the last day of the season last year. Do you think the Phillies still would have pulled that off if they were forced to play the Yankees six times while the Mets got to kick around Baltimore and whoever else? How about the Blue Jays? They were way better than the Cardinals when the final out was called on the 2006 regular season. Better record, better team, you name it. They just had the misfortune of being fed to the Yankees and Red Sox 38 times. So the Jays don’t even approach the playoffs, and the Cardinals get a shot at upset glory. While we’re at it, the Red Sox might be the best example. Good enough to win two World Championships in four years, good enough to elicit whispers of “dynasty?” around the sports world. Imagine. They’ve only won their own division once in the last thirteen years. And even that was on the strength of exactly one swing game with the mighty Yankees. Point is, the schedule is huge. And it gets more huge as the games get ticked off and teams make moves to shore themselves up for the stretch run as we hit the last weeks of August.

So with that said, the theme for the last twenty-three Yankee games was to simply hang on. This looked to be their most difficult stretch of the season. Three at Boston, three against Minnesota, four against LA, three against Baltimore, four at Texas, three more at LA, and three in Minnesota to close it. Twenty-three brutal games. And as I said, it didn’t exactly go swimmingly. They were 10-7 in the first 17. Then they needed to grasp and clutch for some wins while Boston and Tampa played the Royals and Seattle, over and over. They didn’t. They lost 5 of 6, with the lone win coming in 12 innings. So now they’re a big pile of games behind Boston and a big pile of games behind Tampa.

So what’s next. Tampa is going to lose. Probably a lot. Tampa is not a good road team. They’ve been good lately, but that’s mostly because they’ve played the Royals, the Mariners, and the recently castrated A’s. They did a great job of seizing on a bizarre schedule that featured a lopsided number of early games at home. When they get back East they’re going to lose. They’re going to lose to the Yankees and they’re going to lose to the Red Sox. Especially since they’ve been riddled with injuries that aren’t going to get better. The problem is they’re so far out in front it might not matter. To the Yankees, anyway. I think the Red Sox are going to catch them. The Red Sox aren’t going to lose any ground. They don’t play well on the road either, but they’re a veteran team that has incredible resilience and knows how to win. They’re loaded with tough outs and they’re never out of a ballgame. But they’ve also been bitten by injuries, which is going to keep them from the World Series, but I think they win the East.

So can the Yankees catch the Rays and everyone else in front of them for the Wildcard? They could. But it’s going to be so difficult to make up all that ground. On paper they are more talented than anybody outside of the Red Sox and the Angels. And they, too, are a proud veteran team that always seems to find a gear to get there. I think they need to get Hughes back healthy (I’m not even going to mention Pavano, because that truly would be hilarious), and they need to get Joba back healthy. And if they get the Ferocious Lion, Hideki Matsui, back in any meaningful way, they could make a run. The schedule includes lots of Boston (always difficult but never scary for the Yankees this time of year), and three more against the Angels (0-3). Other than that there are a lot of winnable games against beatable teams.

Bottom line: unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely.

We’re probably looking at the Angels feeding on the hapless National League to give Mike Scoscia his second piece of Orange County hardware. Probably. But probably isn’t definitely. That’s why they play the games, as the old saying goes. What I can say definitely, is that my boys and I will be waving the flag in section 24 at the Stadium until the last pitch is thrown. Right until the end.

And we’ll be rooting like hell for the Yankees to win the World Series.

Thanks to Geoff. Again, visit his blog, the Bleeding Pinstripes.

Rocky Road (Bleeding Pinstripes) - August 12th, 2008