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

May 18-20, 2012

At least the Rangers won.

It was a rough weekend in NY, for no other reason than the allergy to wining that the Yankees seemed to have developed as of late. They dropped 2 of 3 to the Reds, and even though my sister says, "The Reds are good, though!" I think the Reds are one of those teams that everyone always picks as their preseason sleeper pick to win the WS, just because of the randomness of it.

I mean, even if the Yankees were stripped down to only rookies, and they were barely expected to win a handful of games all season, they STILL would never in a million years be considered a sleeper pick. The Red, on the other hand, are like the go-to prediction.

Regardless, I don't care how good they are. The Yankees need to start winning more games. I know that everyone keeps saying, "Oh, the Yankees always do this, they lose a million games in the first half of the season and then when the All-Star break comes around, etc etc..."

It doesn't make me any less aggravated. I don't know why. Usually I'm the one trying to talk people off the proverbial ledge when it comes to the Yankees struggling. But this year? Either I've grown more impatient (which isn't possible) or the Yankees' poor showing is discernibly different than the Yankees' poor showing in years past.

I can't put my finger on why, though.

I will say that Andy looks as good as ever. Great news for him, since now the horrrrrible game he pitched on Mother's Day, that was punctuated by all of 2 bad pitches, has been forgotten. Now he's just Andy Pettitte, the guy who gave us a win when others couldn't.

So... that was good.

After that game, I kind of saw the weekend going differently.

Instead, I shift my attention to the Yankee game after the Rangers manage to hold off the Devils, and it's a 6-2 game. Then 6-3. Then Cincy is warming up their relievers, and I said to my sister, "you know what's gonna happen? They're going to do that Yankee thing of making the game really close in the 9th inning, and thus screwing over my fantasy team when Sean Marshall gives up 8 hits or something."

Which is what happened, and this prediction was probably more of a certainty than anything else at that moment in time. Of course, in the back of my head, I saw the Yanks having a dramatic come-back walk-off. It would've been a good day for it, too.

Out of everything that happened in the game, the part that sticks out most in my head is Grandy coming up to bat with 2 outs and the tying run is 90 feet away, on third. And the count becomes 3-0.

I was more than a litle suprised to see him get the green light to swing.

Yes, Grandy has been a beast at the plate. But it was a baaaad pitch to swing at. I can understand it if there's a meatball going right the middle. And you can all but PROMISE that you'll clock it.

But it wasn't that. It was a bad pitch,. And it would've loaded the bases and given the Yanks another opportunity to get the tying run in. Who's giving him these instructions? Girardi? Or is the onus on the batters? I can't imagine that it's an individual's own choice to do something like that. So wtf? What's going on in the head of our manager?

And as for Sunday's game...well, that was just real disappointing. On many levels. Mostly on account of the fact that our lack of closer is disgustingly palpable. (PS that chapman guy. Why is he the setup man? He's the best reliever I've seen in baseballl.(other than you know who) in a long time. Apparently he holds the MLB record for fastest pitch at 105 mph. He's also some kind of a 13 inning streak of retiring the batters in order.

When you're consistently throwing 100 mph, that makes sense. That's probably pretty hard to hit. (Pause.) I get a bunch of texts from Hug, who's at the game, and he makes the frighteningly true observation that "it was the first time all year soriano came into a game with anyone on base and he's our effing closer. And he gave up a 2-run double."

He's not really bringing any added value to the Yankees. Seriously. He should be a lot better than this.

It's just wacko world in the Yankees' clubhouse these days. Sort of like this:


There's this ridiculous nonsense about Soriano's friend texting him, which makes the Yankees sound like 6th graders. There's the fact Tex for some reason can't stop coughing. Everyone is on the DL. Lard walked 5 BATTERS, the most he's walked in 2 years. (Didn't he have 4 in his last outing? So 9 batters in 2 games. Insane.)

I don't know what to make of everything. I just know that the AL East basement is now housing the Socks and the Yankees. And I hate any situation where I have to use the Yankees in the same breath as Boston.