Saturday, April 24, 2004

It's official

The Yankees stink. Four hits in a 12-inning loss to the RedSax today. And the Red Sax were 0-20 with runners in scoring position. Jeter and Williams are awful, and yes I did predict that Williams would hit into a bases-loaded inning-ending double-play in the 7th today and thought the RedStiffs should've walked Lee intentionally to set it the twin-killing even before Williamson went 3-0 on Lee. Meanwhile, Matsui and Giambi are intermittent; the fill-in types like Wilson and Lee can't hit .200. That's 1-5 against the RedSux and the Yanks have scored 2 runs in four of those games. The defense is poor, clutch hitting worse, and the rotation is 3-deep. Simply stated, the Yanks are in trouble win or lose tomorrow. Eighteen games is not a real good sample, but the Yanks have won one series to date (the one-gamer against Tampa doesn't count) and have exceeded five runs just three times for a team expected to exceed six runs per.

The Red Sax changes have worked nicely: they have a no-doubt closer and have four frontline starters. The Yanks have three frontline starters and two question marks. Even assuming the Yanks win 60% of their remaining games, that means a 92-win season. The last three AL wild cards have won 102, 99 and 95 games. The Redsax are the better team right now, and that's true even though they don't have Nixon and Nomaaaaa.

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