Hulk's Rays last night lost to the mighty Seattle Mariners. Robbie Cano - bless his heart - had two singles, lifting his average to .257 - aka: Chase Headley Country. Tampa's bullpen blew the game. It surrendered five runs in the final three innings. But the Rays batting order won't scare anyone within sight of a Jumbotron. The last three guys are hitting .230, .091 and .152. We can snicker about Didi and Drew, but the Rays keystone is Beckham (.220) and Franklin (.091.) I'm thinking Aaron Carter would be an improvement. (He got screwed on Dancing With the Stars, BTW.)
Meanwhile last night, Boston was losing to Minnesota, 2-1. Big Papi is hitting .222. Mike Napoli is at .214. The Redsocks have no catcher, and the Rusney Castillo experiment is just starting in RF. (He went 0-3 with a strikeout, now batting .200.) Their pitching is suspect, and Mookie Betts is hitting .240. With Sanduval and Ramirez hobbling, they don't look like a franchise on the rebound. But you still have to worry.
Baltimore lost to Houston. Their SS-2B combo lately has been as bad as ours: (Hardy, .180 and Pearce .188.) They have a rickety bullpen and shaky starters. Toronto won, 10-9, but - frankly - who cares? You don't win pennants with teams that win 10-9, and that seems to be the Blue Jays best chance.
So there it is. The Evil Empire is holding sway over a mediocre division. As long as our opponents keep stumbling, our own problems aren't so bad. By vaulting back into first, the 2015 team has now outlasted the two previous Yankee clubs, neither of which stayed in first beyond May 24.
It's too early to be playing scoreboard ball, but the sheer crappiness of the AL East is the Yankees' strongest point. Don't get me wrong: I'll take it. I just can't get comfortable, not with Hulk Hogan somewhere out there, preparing to tear off his shirt.
I remember back when the Yankees and Red Sox were really good and always won around 95-100 games and the AL East was the unanimous best division in baseball I always laughed at the NL Central and the NL East for being dogshit. How dumb I was. Being the best team in the shittiest division is awesome. Lose 10 games in a row and your team only falls to second place? Sign me up. Win a few after that and your team is already back in front 2 games? Yep that sounds like the dream.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing. First place with a lineup with only one .300 hitter.
ReplyDeleteHeathcott with less than 25 at bats.