A Rant on the Rally

The injury to Swisher is probably the worst of all. He can only bat right handed, and the Yankees could use a left handed bat in the outfield. Jermaine Dye is just too terrible defensively and the Yankees have enough DHs. The Yankees could always go and trade for Eric Hinske or maybe Jim Edmonds. Maybe the recently demoted Alex Gordon could be had. I would just avoid Dye until all options are exhaust. Plus, the Yankees have a couple of players underperforming like DJ.

Scoring runs isn’t the problem. The defense has been terrible of late, and the bullpen have blown a couple of games.

It’ll only be another week-2 weeks before we have Swisher and Granderson back, which resolves the outfield for the time being. As for DH, Thames can hit lefties. What we may need is a lefty option at the position to platoon him with (preferably someone who can play a respectable corner OF also). I’m not sure who’s out there who fits that bill. I guess I’d give Miranda 100 plate appearances or so. If he isn’t any good, Carlos Delgado might be a fit, although neither of those guys can help out in the OF. Delgado won’t be game ready until June, but does anyone really think Nick Johnson’s coming back in July? I know I don’t.

way for Joba to stop sucking.

Thames’ error in the 9th was excusable—wind and rain blowing the ball around. But why in god’s name was Winn playing so shallow in LF? In a tie game?? Against a power hitter who likes to go the other way? The ball hit by Hemida landed on the grass. Ball was hit hard but it should have been an easy catch. Red Sox did their best to give this game away, but Yankees insisted on being more generous.

Juan Miranda, I think he should get more chances. No, its not because he hit a HR last night. He has been a productive hitter at AAA every year so far. I think if he gets more opportunities he can show his talent at MLB level. Hes still young. While NJ is out, DH spot is available for rotation. He is a lefty so he should DH against RHP, while Thames DH’s (ONLY DH, PLEASE, JOE!) against LHP. Plus he can give Tex a breather at 1B. I don’t thnk we need another DH via FA.

These things do actually happen. Not to the Yankees and not 3 games in a row, but it can actually happen that someone goes out and gives up a couple big hits in a close game. That being said, I think if the pen doesn’t do better tonight and tomorrow night, then we have a serious problem.
My solution to this (unpopular as it would be) would be to switchthe entire pen with SWB (Mo and Joba included) for a week/10 days. Hopefully the AAA pen would at least hold its own through the Mets series. Playing the Twins on the road could pose a problem, but (not knowing anything about our pitching in AAA) they certainly couldn’t do worse than blowing a 5-run lead! The Indians are a joke, so we might not even need good outings from the pen during that series.
Being at the AAA level for one or two full rotations would give the pen time to figure itself out without putting important games on the line at the Major League level. At the same time, we might discover some “diamonds in the rough” hiding out in the SWB pen that are even better than DRob, Marte, Logan.
All of this being said, our record would almost certainly suffer while the pen is “finding itself” in AAA, but it certainly couldn’t hurt us going into the rest of the season to have a fully-functional bullpen.

to make room for yet another pitcher from Scranton who won’t actually be used in a game? At this rate, the Yanks won’t even be able to field a team, unless CC volunteers to play left field.

Which means no right fielder (unless you really really want to count Thames as one) and the famous Thames – Miranda – Winn bottom of the lineup.

Burnett’s gonna have to pitch his tail off tonight.

Posada is getting an MRI for “precautionary reasons”, could have done that three days ago, I say?

First of all, you’re wrong about small ball. The whole idea of small ball is to move a guy to third so you can score a run without getting a hit. CLEARLY, there is logic behind it. HOWEVER, Girardi was wrong in THAT PARTICULAR situation to bunt Cervelli because Cervelli is an excellent contact hitter with a short swing who has been ON FIRE with RISP and is the perfect guy for just poking a single to right field…..not to mention we were relying on our bottom three after Cervelli (our bench essentially) to hit the ball out of the infield against Papelbon.

However, the bullpen is the one and only concern for this team. Granderson will be back and the ONLY offensive weakness will be our DH spot unless Jorge fills that. We still lack much depth outside of our starting lineup, but not much you can do now about that. Once again though, the bullpen is a major problem right now and unless there is a worthwhile reliever available (which there isn’t obviously), simply put, Joba and Robertson are going to HAVE TO, HAVE TO HAVE TO get their acts together and start pitching well consistently. How Joba loses 5-6MPH on his fastball in a week totally blows my mind. Mariano Rivera will be fine.