The horror, Mr. Girardi. The horror. Nine ponderings about last night's Apocalypse Nova

No, Virginia, there is no Easter Bunny. Your little friends who claim otherwise have smoking banned animal laxatives again. They have been affected by the Disneyism of a Hakuna Mutata age. Alas, how weird would be the world if there was an Easter Bunny. There would probably be entire festivals devoted to the Insane Clown Posse. Wait....

Sorry about the rambling. But Yankee baseball was supposed to be an escape. What do you do when you need an escape from your escape?

About last night...

1. Something tells me Ivan Nova's grand experiment with the New York Baseball Yankees has ended. The final verdict: He is the latest in a long line of Doc Medich, Bill Burbach, John Cumberland, Domingo Jean, Sam Militello... etc. Last night, he went for an MRI. The imaging is going to look like Syracuse radar during a spring thunderstorm. He will go on the DL. He will soon be pitching in Scranton again. I think this car has run its course.

2. Talk about Easter? It took two - not three - days for us to resurrect the  Devil Rays. Last week, they were a team in free fall. With a sweep, we could have dug them a hole, the kind that might have made management start punting contracts into the bay. We healed them. The Yankees are frickin' Christlike.

3. Suddenly, the rotation - our great hope - has blown a tire. Vidal Nuno and/or David Phelps (neither of whom has pitched well) is now our fifth starter. Once again, the Yankees are looking at Scranton, and once again, there is nobody there but left-overs from the past. We can try to look hopeful about Alfredo Aceves, but it doesn't negate the fact that everybody else in baseball recently passed on him.

4. Tomorrow, for the first time, Yangervis Solarte faces a team for the second time. The league will be watching to see how Boston pitches him, and what he does. It's been fun seeing him in the lineup. But the Matrix is about to change.

5. Let's face it: Our big hitters simply cannot adjust to overshifts. They will not temper their swings. They will not bunt. That ship has sailed, my friends. So in all future projections, we need to knock 20 points off the BA's and live with it. That means Brian McCann, Mark Teixeira and Alfonso Soriano could hit a collective .220. They might smack 90 HRs, and they'll walk a lot. But how far can three .220 hitters in the middle of your lineup take you?

6. Unlike last year, a couple of our top prospects have gotten off to nice starts. Mason Williams and Junior Bichette have hit well. That big guy, Aaron Judge, looks promising. So does Jagiello, last year's top pick. But nobody is going to help us this year. And the most pertinent question is probably whether we will trade some of them in June for yet another pensioner. But at least we will have chips to deal. Last year, we didn't.

7. If anybody cares, we are still tied for first. Something tells me this isn't Boston's year. (Though we could resurrect them, beginning tomorrow.) But Tampa is alive and well, the O's have a powerful lineup - soon to improve with Manny Machado - and Toronto just returned Jose Reyes. We could be a fourth place team.

8. Nova's continued elbow soreness reminds us of Pineda's sensitivity. How far dare we expect him to go? A hundred innings? A hundred fifty? Will the Yankees shut him down, if he continues to pitch well? This could be a huge issue in June.

9. Last night, John Sterling sounded demoralized. Not since Mel Allen puked on himself during the 1963 World Series has a Voice of the Yankees sounded so grim, so dismayed. The Master knows two secrets of this world. There is no Easter Bunny. And you CAN predict baseball.