After last night’s game, I am ready to officially announce that I have no hope left for the Yankees putting together a streak of out-of-their-minds baseball that will vault them into the 2008 playoffs. It is not going to happen. I drew up a 5-point plan for making it happen eight days ago, and that plan has somewhat come to fruition: Melky got demoted, Matsui had a clean rehab and returned to the lineup. Hughes, however, did not excel at Scranton and may end up staying there through this weekend, so I was wrong about that one. Chamberlain is trying to come back, but it is extremely unclear when his return will happen, if at all.
The fifth point, though, is the problem:
“Jason Giambi, Robinson Cano and Derek Jeter's offensive games come alive, and with the re-insertion of Matsui, the lineup consistently performs to the level that they were expected to coming in to the season.”
Jeter and Cano’s bats have looked a little livelier of late, but The Big G is just an abomination. It has gotten to the point where he is literally only good for one of the three true outcomes in each of his at-bats: a walk, a strikeout or a homerun. Regardless of the statistical analysis camps that will claim that these types of players are useful and helpful for offenses, having this version of Jason Giambi as the #5 hitter in the lineup is doing absolutely nothing for the Yankees.
Last night’s game was lost by Johnny Damon’s inability to remember how to play center field. However, more games this season have been lost thanks to major failures by his buddy The Giambino in situations hitting with men on base. The fact that he has remained implanted in the lineup, consistently hitting right behind A-Rod no less, boggles my mind. Yes, there was one month of this season when Giambi was killing the ball to all fields—but those days have quickly vanished, replaced by his pull-happy “swing for the fences” mental approach to hitting. Kevin Long has been quoted before saying that he tells Jason all the time to hit to left field, but for whatever reason he just simply can’t do it.
Giambi is synonymous with the entire 2008 team. They both have had limited moments of success this year, but neither have come close to sustaining them. They have had a ton of opportunities to produce runs in ways that aren’t home runs, and yet they can never get it done on any type of consistent basis. Defensively neither has been very good, but the defense has not cost them as many games as the poor offense. Thankfully, they will no longer be around once the calendar hits October.
It’s funny, Giambi came to New York talking a big talk about wanting to win a championship, loving the Yankees tradition, etc. Yet he has never changed his game to win a championship. He couldn’t adjust to being a DH, even though he gets paid tens of millions (now twenties of millions) of dollars a year to basically do what the Yankees need him to do to help them. He brought the BALCO baggage with him but at least handled that media firestorm carefully and decently. As a result of his BALCO baggage, he has been on the DL or banged up or somehow incapacitated for most of his time in pinstripes.
And, of course, the team hasn’t won anything in the life of his 7 year deal. That World Series in 2003, the only one he (hopefully) will ever be a part of, he was mysteriously out of the lineup to start Game 5 with some type of phantom injury, even though it was oh, the WORLD SERIES and the Yankees were coming off a heartbreaking extra-inning loss in Game 4. Not to mention he was one of their biggest offensive players that year (that game somehow had Giambi AND Alfonso Soriano out of the lineup, by the way).
Of course, in that game he pinch hits and hits a meaningless home run in the 9th inning, so apparently he wasn’t hurt badly enough to not be able to jack a meaningless home run out of the park.
That kind of thing will be what I remember of The Jason Giambi Era—meaningless home runs that don’t provide much beyond letting Jason pose and still have the numbers that make him out to be a dangerous power hitter. Really, he is a selfish player who made zero adjustments or sacrifices for this team in his 7 years with the Yankees. This year the coaching staff put all their faith behind Giambi being able to stay healthy and play first and be a middle of the order hitter.
He’s stayed healthy, he’s played first…but he hasn’t rewarded the Yankees’ faith with any real production. All in all, a bad case of misplaced faith in The Great Giambino, a Yankee that will not be missed when he’s in another team’s uniform come 2009.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
There are a lot of words that come to mind when trying to describe what I just witnessed for the last two and a half hours. I’ll start with the pleasantries and build to the darker matters, because I like to lead with the good and finish with the bad, for no reason in particular.
It was a great pitchers’ duel, something I did not expect in the least if the Yankees were going to end up losing. To me, this was the type of game with a lopsided Yankees loss written all over it, more so than a gritty, nail-biting heartbreaker decided in the final inning. But Darrell Rasner outperformed any sane person’s expectations and threw an absolute gem. He got through 6.2 innings giving up only 3 hits and 1 run and departed with the game tied at 1, hoping his team would scratch something across against A.J. Burnett or the Jays’ bullpen.
Okay, so…other good news from this game:...
…..Hideki Matsui came back?
Where to begin on the negatives. Might as well start in inning #1: I figured that Johnny Damon’s defense would hurt the team when the merry-go-round on the basepaths began, and runners were going from 1st to 3rd and scoring from 2nd on singles to center. I did not worry about Johnny’s ability to catch the ball when hit his way. After all, he played center for his entire career leading up to this year. But in the first inning, he dropped a routine fly ball hit by Alex Rios that put runners on 2nd and 3rd with one out. Rasner amazingly got out of the jam, but the Yankees had just taken a lead on Burnett and gave their back of the rotation starter some breathing room. To immediately force him to unnecessarily work that hard in the 1st inning was a sure-fire bad sign.
From there on, it was the A.J. Burnett vs. Darrell Rasner Show. It is hard to tell the difference between the Yankees offense struggling and the opposing pitcher being on top of his game. Regardless, for some reason the rest of the league has been able to get to A.J. Burnett. The Yankees, however, can not touch the guy. Jason Giambi, A-Rod, Johnny Damon, they all looked completely overmatched in their at-bats against Burnett. Giambi has been particularly dreadful regardless of his grand slam against Kansas City. He got 1 hit in that entire series, which happened to be that homer, and tonight he struck out a whopping 4 times, including twice with runners in scoring position.
To be shut down again and again by one pitcher makes me question the Yankees’ hitters ability to adjust and determination to overcome adversity. Those are two things that this year’s team seems to completely lack. If a pitcher is said to “have their number” this year, he keeps that number and exploits the team’s hitters again and again. You can look to Josh Beckett, Burnett, Oliver Perez, and Daniel Cabrera for good examples of this. Yet, only one of those guys is what you would call a legitimate “ace” pitcher (Beckett).
Adversity, well that has sunk the Yankees’ chances in many games this year. Unless they are in complete control of a game this year, it has been near impossible for the team to suck it up and fight back, or deal with any random things that go wrong in the course of 9 innings or more.
Johnny Damon dropping an unfathomable second fly ball in the bottom of the 8th inning, costing his team a run, is some serious adversity. How does the team respond in the top of the 9th? By having a leadoff single by A-Rod turn into a 3-6 put-out while Alex was trying to turn a single into a double. The play was made by an outstanding Overbay hustle effort, but Alex could have played it safe and remained at first knowing that it meant the tying run would be on and some good hitters (allegedly) were following him.
Then again, Jason Giambi is no longer a “good hitter” following A-Rod. He predictably recorded his 4th strikeout, this one at least against B.J. Ryan (a night of pitchers with abbreviated first names for Toronto). The thinking is that A-Rod was trying to get something started in the 9th, and I understand that and fault him less than bring the play up to point out how everything possible has gone wrong this year for the Yankees. But you wouldn’t be so adamant about trying to get to 2nd base to lead off if you had more faith in the guy hitting behind you. That’s not to say that A-Rod thought that as he ran towards second, but the sense of urgency would be there because of the #5 man’s struggles.
All in all, a disaster. I am ready to give up hopes of the team finding a way to get red hot and make it into the playoffs, just because it seems as though this group of players can not find any magic to get them anywhere near hot. Playing decent baseball and winning the final games in Yankee Stadium will be enough at this point.
To put a cherry on top of a terribly disappointing night, this story about Carl Pavano pops up. It is completely mind-boggling that as soon as he becomes discussed as a possible option for the Yankees’ pitching staff, he again comes up with an injury. A stiff neck? A stiff neck is going to keep a pitcher who has been out for almost 2 full years from making his potential return to the major leagues? I’m going to probably be the first person writing about baseball to do this, but I’m going to have to go ahead and question Carl Pavano’s fire and desire to pitch for the Yankees.
Games 125-127
at Toronto Blue Jays
Pitching Match-ups
Tonight, Tuesday August 19
Darrell Rasner (5-9, 5.18) vs. A.J. Burnett (15-9, 4.67)
Wednesday, August 20
Andy Pettitte (12-9, 4.30) vs. David Purcey (2-3, 5.93)
Thursday, August 21
Sidney Ponson (7-3, 4.20) vs. Roy Halladay (14-9, 2.64)
Prognostications
Toronto features its two best starters in this series, who have both dominated the Yankees in their starts against them this season. The third guy, David Purcey, is a soft-tossing left hander that the Yankees have never faced before, which has meant that the offense got shut down and the guy had a career game, regardless of how bad his ERA was coming in. Looking at just the pitchers, you assume the Yankees are going to have a tough time in this series.
Then there is the fact that Toronto is red hot as a team, coming off a sweep of Boston in Fenway and a 3 out of 4 game swing through Detroit earlier last week. Alex Rios has been killing the ball, and he is a perpetual thorn in the Yankees’ side. Vernon Wells returned and has swung the bat well, and he too has a strong career track record of clobbering Yankees pitching.
And then you have the Yankees, puttering along after a terrible road trip and a mediocre yet effective enough 3-game homestand against Kansas City. Pessimism envelops the Yankees at this point based on the difficulty of their schedule and the depth of the hole they’ve dug themselves. The feeling is that they will finish behind Tampa and Boston, and could even finish behind Toronto considering the teams are now only separated by 2 games in the standings, and that could swing Toronto’s way by the end of the night on Thursday.
A.J. Burnett is 2-0 this year against the Yankees and has overpowering stuff, Halladay absolutely dominated them for a CG shutout the last time he faced their lineup, and they’ve never seen Purcey so he’s due for his best game in the majors. All this seems to add up to the Yankees being lucky to win one of the three games, with the potential for a Blue Jays sweep as evident as ever.
Do I believe any of this doom and gloom, and do I admit that this 2008 Yankees season will go out with a whimper in Toronto in late August?
No I don’t, not for one second. It’s all about the Yankees’ offense, and what a lot of people are saying is: “If the team hasn’t been able to hit for the first 124 games, why will they suddenly flip a switch and start now?”
I can’t answer that question directly, but I will say that it shouldn’t be a matter of flipping some type of hypothetical switch. The team has been putting itself in positions to succeed offensively all year long. If they begin to build up some consistency in delivering in those potentially productive situations starting tonight and carrying through the rest of this week, and actually win some tough games and show some resiliency and some determination, then it won’t be a matter of “the light bulb has gone on, the switch has been flipped”. It will be a team playing like a team, a team of highly talented individuals figuring out how it works to feed off each other and collaborate to win baseball games. Something that they were great at for the last 2 years they were together, but have inexplicably forgotten how to do this year.
I say that, considering the reputations and abilities of the players taking the field for the Yankees, it is not impossible that they will start playing winning baseball again. No, their offense will not reach those storied heights that pundits expected them to reach, there will be no 1,000 run season. But to say the offense can’t do enough to win games in the major leagues, to me, is silly.
Granted, it will be difficult to take these types of steps if the pitching struggles, which puts a lot of pressure on the shaky Darrell Rasner tonight. But winning this evening’s first game, no matter how ugly it is or what kind of effort it takes, would do a lot for this team. It means beating someone they haven’t been able to solve all year, and it means beginning to make the case that “Oh yeah, rest of the American League, we are the Yankees and we still do have all these big-name players. So maybe we’re not completely out of the race, just yet.”
I personally think tonight will go a long way towards deciding if the pennant race happens in New York this September or not. This is the type of game that needs to swing the Yankees’ way, because it simply has not all year long. I don’t know how it will happen or if it will actually happen, but I am certainly optimistic that it will. Call me crazy, call me unrealistic, call me a pinstripe glasses-wearing buffoon, but I think it is possible.
NOTE: Hideki Matsui has been activated from the 15-day disabled list. Justin Christian was optioned to Triple-A Scranton to open up the roster space for Godzilla. Japan's power hitter is in the lineup tonight, batting 7th and DHing.
Monday, August 18, 2008
That is a major question that looms over the team as they begin their road trip. It's going to get answered sooner or later, but let's look at the two primary candidates a little closer.
Phil Hughes had a chance to cement himself as the Yankees’ best option to try and fill the #5 slot in the rotation this past Sunday. However, he struggled with his command was knocked around in his start against the Lehigh Valley IronPigs (great name for a minor league baseball team). His line for the night was 3.2 IP 8 H 5 ER 0 BB 4 K. After the game he spoke to Chad Jennings who covers the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Yankees for their local paper, and Hughes attributed his struggles to leaving too many pitches over the plate and going through a bit of a dead arm period resulting in diminished velocity and life on his fastball.
The phrase dead arm sounds worse than it actually is: Hughes has been out of action since late April, so he was bound to hit a wall after resuming the regular every-5-days routine for a pitcher. It seems like there is little cause for concern in terms of Phil’s health, but his stuff was simply not as sharp Sunday as it had been during his earlier rehab starts.
The other strong candidate, according to this report on ESPN, is the much-maligned Carl Pavano. He also pitched on Sunday, though his start was at Double A Trenton. He fared much better than Hughes, as his line read: 6 IP 6 H 1 ER 1 BB 6 K. When you look at Pavano’s numbers and consider his major league track record (he’s done it for longer, won more games than Hughes), he would seem to distance himself as the best candidate for Saturday. However, Pavano is still only in his 3rd start back from Tommy John elbow ligament replacement surgery. So one assumes that he normally would be on a slower-paced rehab timetable based on his injury’s severity. However, this is Carl Pavano we’re talking about, the man that has done jack diddly to earn the almost $39.95 million the Yankees have paid him during his 3 years on the organization’s payroll.
Perhaps he gets the first call in this his final 2 months with the organization in an effort to get something, anything out of that wasted investment. Whenever he gets called up (it has to happen sooner or later, because he’s only on a 30-day rehab assignment, as he hasn’t been demoted to the minors), it will be a huge distraction in the Yankees’ clubhouse. That said, I don’t think that the team’s feelings will be part of the decision making process re: Saturday’s starter.
My final guess is that it will be Carl Pavano in Baltimore on Saturday, and it will be quite a weird day. I think that the team will want to try the veteran first, with the hope that he will not feel any added personal pressure joining a team chasing a playoff spot. It’s dually productive because it gives Hughes more time to try and get his arm in shape and build up personal confidence by being successful at AAA. Furthermore, if Pavano is a terrible flop in his, say, two starts, and Hughes pitches well at Scranton, then they can switch to Hughes for #5.
All in all, I think Pavano makes the most sense on a lot of fronts. I would rather watch Hughes pitch, but I will also gladly sign up for the high drama and trainwreck/bizarre hero potential of seeing Pavano on the mound for the Yankees. Honestly, whoever they pick out of Phil or Pavano, Saturday’s game will be a must-watch for Yankees fans.
Brian Bannister brought out the best in the Yankees’ offense. His line was pretty impressive:
1 IP 10 H 10 ER 3 BB 0 K 3 HR
Top to bottom, the offense did what many have been waiting for: exploded, and beat a team with a mediocre pitching staff to a pulp. Granted, something can be said for how bad the offense looked the first two games of the series against bona fide AL starters Gil Meche and Zack Greinke. However, even in those two low-scoring, hotly contested games, the Yankees had plenty of men on base and therefore had plenty of opportunities to push runs across.
Sunday could not have started worse for the struggling lineup, either: Mike Mussina immediately put the cold-swinging hitters at a 3-0 disadvantage as a result of a soft rally by the Royals that featured a lot of bleeders and bloops. A-Rod, however, turned the momentum around in the bottom of the 1st, when he launched a game-tying three-run home run off Bannister, the first of those three homers he would allow.
Mussina wouldn’t surrender another run on the day, and the Yankees pretty much kept their foot down on the gas offensively and bludgeoned Kansas City to earn an even split of the season series. As I said, top to bottom is how the production spread out. Be it Derek Jeter going 4-for-4 (they were all singles, though, so I guess he still stinks and can’t hit with any authority), or A-Rod’s 3-for-3, or Jason Giambi actually getting a big hit with numerous runners on base (a grand slam, no less). Brett Gardner had a 2-out RBI triple, Xavier Nady ended a small slump by going 2-for-4 and hitting the go-ahead longball in the bottom of the 1st, and even Cody Ransom blasted his first home run as a Yankee.
The team goes into the off day having gained 2 games on Boston in the Wild Card race this weekend after Josh Beckett had a disastrous 2.1 inning performance (8 hits, 8 runs) against Toronto in Fenway, as the Red Sox fell 15-4.
Those same Toronto Blue Jays are the next foe for the Yankees, as they start a 3-game set north of the border tomorrow night. The Yankees have drawn some tough pitching match-ups for the upcoming series, which I will spend more time in previewing tomorrow.
For now, though, yesterday was a good day in the Bronx. The Wild Card race will continue to include the Yankees as long as they continue to win series and perhaps begin to play some consistent offensive baseball. Help may or may not be on the way with Hideki Matsui set to return in Toronto, although it is unknown what his swing will look like and how he’ll perform after a lengthy time disabled, as well as how his knee will hold up.
Still, at least today is another day that the Yankees didn’t lose. Tomorrow may be a different story.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Professional sports always involves discussions of momentum. Baseball has a cliché to neutralize any speculation that a particular win can jumpstart a middling team: your momentum is only as good as the next days’ starting pitcher. In the Yankees’ case, at least Darrell Rasner is starting on Tuesday instead of this afternoon.
The team had a chance to win the series in Minnesota but the bats remained dormant in the third game of that series. They again have a chance to overcome two days of insipid performance with the bats in RBI situations with a strong showing this afternoon against soft-tossing Brian Bannister. At least Meche and Greinke can somewhat be attributed to the offense’s futility Friday and Saturday, although the “tip your hat to the pitcher” card as been played to ridiculous excesses this season. But if the bats aren’t swinging today, there are no excuses other than just not being capable of performing anymore this year.
After yesterday’s grueling almost 5-hour Chinese water torture session of stranding runners and pitching superbly keeping Kansas City scoreless for 11 innings, this afternoon is a sure-fire must win. Throwing around labels like “must win” on baseball games is never an exact science, but all the stars are aligned for the Yankees. They have to start this stretch of baseball against inferior teams with a 2-1 mark. Going to Toronto 1-2 against K.C. means the death knell has sounded.
Mike Mussina will be leaned on heavily to keep pitching like the reinvented maestro on the mound that he’s become—if he shows any signs of laying an egg today, it will be dually disastrous as the bullpen had to work a long long afternoon yesterday. They could use the rest, and the offense could use the assurance that they have their best performing up to his capabilities on the hill. Perhaps that will remind the hitters that they, too, should be performing up to their much-talked about but rarely seen “capabilities” this year.
Here are some other interesting notes to wrap up before today’s game:
Hideki Matsui has had 8 at-bats for the High-A Tampa Yankees over the last 2 days, and he also took part in a simulated game this morning in Tampa, according to Peter Abraham’s blog. Abraham also speculates that he could return to the lineup as early as Tuesday, if his knee holds up. I guessed that they might wait until Friday since they wouldn’t want him running on the artificial surface in Toronto, but a win today could increase the sense of urgency in terms of putting the best offensive foot forward for the stretch run. Either way, adding a professional hitter like Hideki into the #5 spot, which has been a black hole this year while he’s been disabled, could do wonders to help the lineup as a whole, as well as New York’s #1 head case who hits cleanup. Giambi looks like total dead weight at the plate, and Nady has gone into his first slump as a Yankee, so the spots in the lineup behind A-Rod could use some reinforcement.
Granted, though, a lot of this optimism needs to be taken with a grain of salt and also shrouded in the potential for a let-down. His knee is guaranteed to require surgery. Meaning he is not any healthier than he was when he first went on the DL, he’s only been able to get to the point where he can treat it, wear the right protective gear, and deal with the level of pain that comes with hitting and running the bases. However, if anything goes wrong, if there are any tweaks, or if it swells up again and just doesn’t respond to the grind of playing major league baseball, Matsui’s return will end up being very short-lived, and the lineup will go back to relying on Jason Giambi for big at-bats with men on base. Along that line…
Brett Gardner got the game-winning hit yesterday, but if Matsui returns his playing time most certainly will evaporate. Granted, Matsui won’t be able to play every day, but he will be in the lineup at DH as often as Girardi can swing it, meaning Damon will be in CF and Brett will be on the bench. It would be encouraging going forward, though, if Gardner could string together some good games at the plate until Matsui is ready to return. It gives him more confidence in his ability to hit at the big-league level, and it also makes the question of who will be starting in CF in 2009 a little harder to answer. Furthermore, if Matsui breaks down, there is already a backup plan in place, with Brett sliding back into center field and Damon mostly DHing and playing left. Also, looking ahead to 2009, a good stretch run for Brett may give him as much of a chance of winning a job in Spring Training as Melky or anybody else brought in from outside the organization. All in all, interesting consequences follow Brett’s at-bats at this point in the year.
Phil Hughes will make his 3rd start for Scranton today, with their game scheduled to begin at 5:35 pm. My hope is that if he pitches well, finishes strong and doesn’t fatigue once he gets up to around 100 pitches, he needs to make a start in Baltimore. He has too much ability and he could be too much of a stabilizer to their rotation to leave at AAA to continue to “work on some things”, as Girardi put it when probed about Phil starting on Tuesday in Toronto. At this point, a rotation of Mussina, Pettitte, Ponson, Rasner and Hughes is serviceable enough, and if Joba is ever able to return in September, their rotation looks a lot better, as Ponson and Hughes at the back end look extremely appealing. Still, though, Hughes will have a lot to prove upon his return this year—fans will not be accepting any guff about him having to work his way back into big-league form, as was the case last year when he returned in August. Coming off his putrid April and combined with his ceiling-free expectations in the eyes of the faithful, Hughes will be expected to step right in and contribute. It’s a lot to ask of a 22 year old starter that’s been inconsistent and injured most of his short career, but based on his handful of shining moments it is not out of the question for Phil to live up to those expectations.
That’s all for now, I’ll write again this evening to talk about this afternoon’s game and wrap up any other relevant pieces of information that pop up.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Last night’s game was one of the most frustrating regular season games I’ve ever watched. 9 innings of letting a pitcher off the hook has become the norm for this sad group of supposedly talented offensive players. The team has found more unique and mind-boggling ways to lose games this year than they ever have in the past. Any breaks that the Yankees used to be given from the hypothetical baseball gods have vanished and been replaced by a Murphy’s Law level of ineptitude. The loss doesn’t fall on the shoulders of pinch-runner Justin Christian getting picked off, but it was certainly a backbreaking error on the basepaths. Still, the team had so many other chances with all of their “best” run producers at the plate that one flop by Christian should not have killed their chances. In fact, it didn’t. When you get 2 rolling infield singles, a clean single, and a walk in the 9th inning of a one-run game and STILL can’t find a way to score, you have to know that this offense is completely done, completely in the tank and completely hopeless at this point in the season.
As I now check in on today’s game later into the action, I notice that nothing has changed miraculously overnight: the offense still squanders every opportunity to score runs that they’re presented with. Last night they were 3 for 13 with RISP and left 11 men on base. Now this afternoon, the 4th inning sees the Yankees load the bases with nobody out, and Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi coming up with ample opportunities to do damage. Predictably, A-Rod strikes out and Giambi hits into an inning-ending double play. Giambi last night made the final out with the bases loaded, and also struck out in a situation earlier in the game where a hit would have delivered a much-needed offensive lift.
To me, Giambi it the biggest culprit in terms of the year-long, team-wide epidemic of poor hitting with RISP. His season average is a putrid .212 with RISP, and a much-improved .224 with RISP and 2 outs. Sure, he has a good number of RBIs, but he could have produced so much more considering how many opportunities he gets while hitting out of the #5 spot in the lineup. And yet in spite of his futility, Joe Girardi NEVER takes him out of the slot in the lineup behind A-Rod.
It’s a stubbornness in both guys that is extremely frustrating: Giambi has done nothing to make adjustments with men on base, his swing remains long and home run-minded. Girardi has put blind faith in Jason’s ability to somehow turn it around in those situations, and has not backed off it all season long.
At this point, when the offense looks as awful as it does, why as a manager are you not just trying anything to try and shake things up? Demoting Melky Cabrera and playing Brett Gardner is doing nothing to get the offense turned around. The lineup hasn’t worked in months, so why keep running the same one out there day after day?
Honestly, it seems as though Girardi and his players have checked out. Today we’re about to be through 7 full innings, and the offense has yet to crack the scoreboard. Zack Greinke is a great young pitcher, but the Yankees have had enough opportunities once again—runners on 2nd to lead off the last two innings—and have yet to do anything productive. It is going to be a depressing stretch run, since the Yankees are already playing as though they’re ready for the offseason. Not the best way to say goodbye to Yankee Stadium.
