Highwater Mark

So now that the Yanks have finished blitzing London—sorry, too soon?—and the Red Sox, their record stands at 54-28, exactly where they were at this point last year.

This record reflects a great deal of organizational depth and intestinal fortitude, with one player after another coming through despite a rash of injuries.  It's been a heady effort by a very likable club.  And according to nearly every local or national commentator heard from on my TV machine or in the tabloid pages, it's all over but the shouting.

The Yanks are the best team in baseball.  They are a lock—to put down the Red Sox, to take the division.  Probably to win it all, if they can just find one more "power arm."  Or so we are told.

Forget it.  It's a pipe dream, and the usual suspects in the tabs and on the chatter shows are smoking some spectacular shit, as (I imagine) the kids say.  The big drop is just around the corner, and I'm not just writing this to conform to this site's policy of official, JuJu-appeasing pessimism.

Much as we think of last year's second half as a disaster, in 2018 from here on in the Yanks went a respectable, 46-34, to win 100 games.  That was despite considerable injuries then, too—even if management didn't always admit to them—to Judge, Sanchez, Sevvy, Bird, and others.

What made it so disappointing was that the Sox played out of their minds, and finished with 108 wins.  They won't do that well again this year.

The trouble is, neither will we.

The 2018 Yanks actually had a deeper, more consistent bullpen than the 2019 version.  It also had more starting pitching, thanks to what now seems like a miraculous 7-0, 2.69 performance by Happ in   his 11 starts.

No one like that is going to show up this year.

Coops has painted himself into a corner.  Nobody is going to trade the Yanks even a serviceable pitcher—much less a Scherzer or a Bumgarner—for a pouty young busher with a history of concussions, and who plays right field like a man searching for the edge of a cliff in the dark.

They're not going to take that deal even if we throw in the estimable Thairo the Pharaoh.  And there's nobody else left in the minors, not really.  Not even Estevan Florial, now hitting .198 in Single-A, who is the Yankees' centerfielder of the future and always will be.

No, there's no help coming.  And if anything, some of our hottest players—The General, Gio, Sancho—are more likely to cool off or, of course, get hurt.

And then there's the competition.

Of the Yankees' 80 remaining games, 45 are on the road, and only 35 are at home.

49 are against teams with records of .500 or better.  Only 31 are against losing squads, most of the games against Toronto or Baltimore.

We still have 8 games against Tampa Bay, and 12 against the Carmine Hose, with 8 of those in real Fenway, as opposed to EuroFenway.

We start the post-England season against one of those losing teams...but it's the Mets, who have finally broken their awful losing streak, and who always play these games against us as if they are their World Series (which they are).

All in all, we will be hard-pressed to even split these last 80 games.

It's likely our pitching will get worse.  Betances ain't coming, Sevvy ain't coming, and we don't know what, if anything, we can now expect from our favorite German.  We'd be fools to count on much from Happ and the Maple Sapling ("Happ and Sap"?), and the pen is bound to get winded.

The likes of Gio and The General are likely to cool off at least somewhat, and who knows what can happen to the likes of Judge, or Sancho, or Hick.  And if one of our more-or-less reliable starters—Tanaka and CC, basically—go down, this could really get ugly.

In other words, don't believe the hype.  This Yankees team will struggle in the second half.  It's more likely to miss the Wild Card Play-In Game than it is to win the World Series.

And again, that's not in any way to diminish the moxie of this hardworking, undaunted team.  As has often been said, the spirit is willing but the pitching is weak.