5 games behind the Rays? Ooooof. Its only May but this team is off to one of the best starts ever......theyre gonna be awfully tough to catch. Wildcard for us?
Maybe. The Yanks were playing pretty decent ball themselves for a while (and took a series from the Rays in Tampa). Let's see what happens if/when they get healthy again, and let's see if TB can stay healthy, too.
The last 10 games of so have been rocky. The pitching is the key. I cant blame the yankee offense for scoring 6+ runs on a regular basis and being behind the pitching has to step up.
Getting healthy and getting those injured back into a groove is another thing. Shit that could take until August.
Im sayin when teams start like the Rays have....and we're talking 25% of a season already so its a pretty good sample size, they usually win a LOT of games.......I think theyll win the division
Come on. You're kidding, right? Getting Posada or whomever back "into a groove" is a meaningless platitude. Having Granderson back in the lineup is a large and instant improvement over Winn, regardless of what kind of "groove" Granderson is in. And having Winn back on the bench is also an improvement for the team in terms of flexibility. The Yanks have been scoring some runs, but pitching rather poorly during this stretch. It happens over the course of a season. Every season. But it's really silly to judge a team's future promise based on how it's performed over the past 6-10 games when half of the opening day lineup is injured. May has probably been the Yanks' toughest stretch schedule-wise for the entire season, and they're going through it without some key players. That's unfortunate, but the good news is that it should change relatively soon. June and July are relatively soft months for the Yanks. Bottom line is this: A five game deficit in May is nowhere near insurmountable, and this two-game series isn't necessarily the best indicator of how the rest of the season is going to play out for these teams. I wouldn't be surprised if they did. I'm just not willing to write the Yanks off at this point just because of what you saw in these two games, played when the Yanks were at 70% or so. It's a long season. A lot depends on how the Yanks do when they get healthy and if the Rays manage to stay healthy themselves. So I hesitate to say they're going to be "really tough to catch." There's a lot of baseball to be played still. Don't overvalue the two games you just saw.
Just saw this. This is true, but only if the injury puts someone on the DL. I suppose they could have called up Golson in response to Posada going on the DL, and then called up Moeller in response to sending Melancon down; I was thinking of separate transactions, Moeller up for Posada, and Russo up for Melancon. But I guess it doesn't have to be that way. LoHud reported that Russo's versatility contributed to the move.
I was exaggerating about August...but just because the players are back on the field doesn't mean the Yanks are out of the woods yet. It's when the injured players are back AND contributing that the Yanks will be "in tact". I would think it's at least a 2 week fallout effect from getting back on the field to getting used to playing normally.
Forget players coming back. We still have no idea when Granderson will be back. He's not even doing rehab games until next week. He's at least two weeks off from returning. Nick Johnson is out until at least mid-July. I'm banking on him being done until at least August, at which point someone will have taken his job anyway. It was nice to have someone in right field who can actually play the position last night. Although Swisher dropped that ball that I thought he could have caught, he made a good recovery and made the out anyway. Unfortunately, our pitching is just awful. These past three games have been rough for our starters. Hopefully this was just a minor bump in the road for them. I don't like the complete lack of control they're all showing though. (Though ridiculous, ever-changing strike zones isn't helping any of them.) The bullpen makes me sick. From one day to the next we don't know who is going to pitch well and who is going to be complete crap. (Though we can always assume Chan Ho Suck is going to, well, suck.) While I don't think the Rays are uncatchable, they're going to be tough to beat. We're going to have to do what we did last year to the Sox if we want to win the division again. They really are young and exciting, huh? Well, on to the Mets. Vazquez was 1-1 with a 4.61 ERA against them last year. He's going to have to be better tonight.
I expect a battle till the end of the season. It's a long time from now until that last game of the regular season. Teams go on runs. The Yanks will have their run of wins and loses and so will the Rays. The AL East won't be decided until the last 2 weeks of the season. As long as one doesn't completly implode due to injuries. It's not panic time just yet.
Aren't you kind of just making up numbers, though? Granderson back is an instant upgrade, even if he's not in top form. I have a hard time seeing how anyone can disagree with this. And despite what Alio might want to believe, we'll see Granderson relatively soon. It's not like he's waaaaay off. They're talking about having him in rehab games next week. I think - if all goes well - you should see him in ten days or so. Beginning of June. Remember, the Yanks were doing very well with neither Granderson nor Johnson hitting particularly well. They've dropped maybe two games because of OF defense alone. Granderson's return instantly improves the defense by a lot. Aceves' return instantly deepens the bullpen. Swisher's return has already happened and should help the lineup. My point was never, "Oh wait til those guys are back and then everything will be perfect." My point is that everyone is upset about the recent stretch of games against some key rivals... but the Yanks played those games severely shorthanded. Don't make too much of these games in terms of the outlook for the rest of the season, but it's not a representative sample of their performance. June and July are relatively easy stretches for the Yanks. They should be able to beat up on the Clevelands and KCs with or without their injured players.
The Rays are going to fall back to the pack a little bit, I can't see them winning over 110 games, the yankees will compete, and the Red Sox are only 3.5 back and about to get their two starting OFs back after 2 months of AAAA players out there, this is going to be a dogfight all the way into the fall. I don't think the Jays have enough to stay in it, but they can certainly play spoilers by taking a series here an there from the other 3.
Yeah, the Rays are on pace right now to win 118-119 games. That's just sick. But I doubt it's sustainable. If it is, then you're talking about the best team of all time, which would be pretty crazy to see.
