Ugly Times Call for....

Well, that statement seems like it can't be finished right now. I don't think Joe Girardi knows what to do to fix the problems that have befallen this team, and I don't think there is going to be any near-distant solution. The Yankees currently look flat-out terrible, from top to bottom.

Most people will point to injuries as the reason. Then there are those people that will say that injuries are simply just an excuse. I think both stances at this point in baseball are cliched and over-used. You can't point to just injuries, and yet you have to come up with various reasons for why a team with great expectations would perform so miserably at times this year.

For one, there's the obvious problem of the starting rotation. A night after Andy Pettitte did not provide the shut-down, deep-inning performance needed to wash away all the dark clouds that currently hover over the name Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy continued to be inconsistent, and maddeningly inconsistent at that. In some innings, hell even in some parts of innings, he looks like he knows what he's doing and has the game in control.

At other moments, such as the tail-end of the top of the 3rd, he loses all control, stops locating his pitches and turns into a batting practice pitcher. He clearly has the ability to get people out in the major leagues, but he also is far too inconsistent within his starts to be relied upon to get his team into the 6th or 7th inning.

Now that Hughes is gone until God knows when, Kennedy should see that he has an opportunity to guarantee himself a spot in the big-league rotation for the entire season. Since the rotation has thinned out minus Hughes, he has to literally pitch his way out of the picture, rather than being pushed out. I think the positive moments of his last 2 starts are what he needs to build on, meaning just throwing quality strikes and not letting innings get away from him when things start going bad.

I was at the game on Wednesday night, and the fact that tonight (Thursday) was a mirror-image is extremely dispiriting. Mostly due to how utterly dead both the Stadium and the team were on Wednesday night.

What amazes me is how this team can greatly resemble the blase, lackadasical team that started showing up a little too often in the later Joe Torre years. How did Joe Girardi earn that "win every day", intense focus, on his team at all turns, reputation? His team looks as flat right now as they've looked in the past 4 futile years under Torre.

The crowd all bailed on Wednesday once the Tigers tacked on a run off Kyle Farnsworth, which happened along with a hilarious series of events where I was sitting:

A guy in a Babe Ruth jersey stood up and started booing voiceferously as soon as Farnsworth was announced. This led to a guy, seated a few rows back, riding the booing fan for being a bad fan and booing before the guy even threw a pitch. They had a slightly heated debate about Farnsworth's value and the unwritten rules of Yankee fan-dom, but then things settled down...until Kyle served one up to Placido "Chokes up on Half the Bat" Polanco, who absolutely destroyed Yankee pitching during the series. This led to the previously-booing fan and his friend standing up and taunting the other fan, while everyone left in the stadium proceeded to either boo, groan, or head for the exits. Lovely.

Another comedic moment came when, at one point, the stadium's scoreboard announced that none other than Carl Pavano was warming up in the Yankees' bullpen. This led to some laughs from the crowd and a quick correction by the Stadium staff. Oh to dream, that a guy earning 11 million dollars to do nothing all year might actually get up in the bullpen on a cold April night.

Yeah, the Stadium was completley empty by the 9th inning (mostly). This seemed surprising to me, but then I realized that this is no longer the Yankees squad of old that might actually be capable of a late-inning, last gasp rally. This team, on the other hand, is incapable of staging any sort of rally, late inning or not. They had Jeremy Bonderman (and Nate Robertson a night later) completely on the ropes in the early innings, yet can not deliver anything close to a knockout punch.

People will chalk this up to the absence of A-Rod and Posada from the middle of the lineup. However, it's a problem that stretches from the top of the lineup to the bottom. People like Jason Giambi and Robinson Cano would still be looked upon to deliver with men on base if A-Rod and Posada were in the lineup; now that they're gone, the onus shifts, and the likelihood of their succeeding appears to be dwindling. Perhaps now that the other 2 big bats are subtracted, Cano and Giambi are overexposed. Or, perhaps Giambi is completely washed up, and Cano is too impatient to work his way out of a slump without looking completely lost.

No way can this team hope to do anything without their lineup becoming more consistent, more balanced, even with key cogs missing. People that are not expected to deliver, need to deliver nonetheless, or else it will be a long, dark summer in The Bronx.