"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

A few years ago I played softball with a guy who successfully did the whole, “Don’t tell me the score, I’m DVR-ing the game and am watching it later” thing. I had brief stints with this practice, but most of the time the potential for complete unawareness was thwarted by not-so-cryptic texts about what was going on in the game. Even from people who knew I was saving the taped game til after I got home from work and could watch it in its entirety: (“All I’m gonna say is that anyone whose tapeworm-like arm is letting 2 runs scores bc I have Nerf Crossbows with more power….shouldn’t be playing center field.”)

But after a few episodes of me exploding over these spoilers, the risk of them subsided. It WAS indeed difficult to turn a blind eye to the internet, while being in that weird realm of being ignorant to something everyone else knows about. (Yes, in my head, every eye in the world is watching baseball every minute of every game.)

With the last few weeks of work (and the upcoming ones, too) eating up my primetime hours like they’re the leftover catering sandwiches after a client meeting that become available to the rest of the office…I decided to try and give the DVR another shot.

And then while in the cab ride home, I made the mistake of logging onto Facebook. And remembered that it will probably be impossible for me to be oblivious to anything, much less a baseball game, while status updates are still governing the cyber-world.

It turned out it didn’t matter because the memory on my DVR was so full that the game was erased shortly after it finished taping.

And so for me, it was like it never even happened.

It was weird, I didn’t get score updates on my phone, didn’t watch the stilted pitch counts on MLB Gameday. The only evidence that the game even happened was the final box score.

Similarly, the only evidence that CC pitched the way he’s paid to was the little 8Ks alongside his name. The 10 hits in the Yankees corner belied their paltry 2-run total. The fact that besides for Posada (0-1) and Damon (0-4) everyone hit safely, masked the fact that none of them slugged more than a single except for Cano who continued to waste his strikingly fiery .380 BA on another lost cause.

The one number that really popped out?

20.

Which was not only the number of hits + SOs. But more gutwrenching was the fact that that’s how many times someone was left on base.

Another painful one: 1-9.

The number of hits with runners in scoring position.

And the icing on the cake?

The Yankees currently are sporting the 2^nd most hits in the league.

3^rd in total bases.

3^rd in HRs.

4^th in batting average (.276 compared to Toronto’s first place .289)

...And yet, barely hitting the's league average in RBIs.

Lastly, and this one is not for the faint of heart:

With bases loaded, the Yankees are batting .071.

While much has been made of the RISP stat, I don’t trust it because it fails to reflect key factors such as the variance between whether a new pitcher is brought in or not. (If there are RISP, then the pitcher’s been throwing meatballs or wild ones. Batting against him will inflate your RISP, batting against a fresh reliever…different story.)

But the fact remains that the Yankees line-up needs to be reworked. There’s nothing wrong with a roster boasting the 2^nd most hits in the entire league. But, indeed, timing is everything.

And to that point, I will continue to remind my self of the bigger pitcher timing. That it’s April. And that I trust my team. Like Santiago said, “Have faith in the Yankees…” (And look at Santiage, he won in the end.)

And I have a feeling, and not even a blind hope/forced optimism one, that in 6 months, I'm going to go back and read all the insidious chants of glee currently flying off the tongues of haters...and I'll laugh.