Yankeetorial: Could this be Swish's career year?

Two winters ago, Nick Swisher got hitched, hired a trainer-health-guru, and planned to have his career year, the season that would vault him into true baseball stardom, the Pujols/Hamilton/Bautista kind, not the crapola stardom that simply comes from being a Yankee.

He almost did it. He started slow, rose from his slump, was getting his numbers and then hit an October when Betty White could get him out.

Last winter, Swisher moved in a different direction: He hired a shrink. A hypnotist. The idea is to avoid the psychological pit that mirrors a slump, and thus reach that career year that vaults him into blahblahblah, re-read what I said above.

Will it work? Who the F knows? But this is what we DO know:

We have a Yankee who is always trying to improve his game, who is not satisfied with what he did last year, and who challenges himself with new ideas. That's good. Swisher was always sort of nuts. He was a larger-than-lifer, super-high when hitting and a total downer when not. Apparently, he's been working on the one phase of his game that always held him back. That's good.

Last night, he totally saved our butts. In the context of a season, the Baltimore series was nothing. But for this month, it was amazingly and stupidly crucial. We didn't want to fall five out after five games. Swisher kept us afloat.

Maybe it's just another Swisher streak, which will descend into another Swisher slump. But more and more, I like this guy. Let's hope the hypnotist has his answer. At some point, that career year has got to arrive.