The wave of Yankee injuries is not random occurrence

Existential question for today: 

How can you welcome back your best pitcher, win by a score of 8-0, clinch the division and still call it a horrible, awful, crappy, tick-infested rat-hole of a night? 

Well, that's what happened last night, as it's happened all season. There's no reason to expect it to stop. All year, it's been two baby steps forward, one giant step back. Today, it just doesn't seem fair.

A partial tear of the Achilles tendon. That's the line on Dellin Betances. He'll be in a cast for three months, in a boot for five. He might return next June, at age 32, with no guarantee that he'll ever recapture the fastball of 29. He might not be a Yankee, if he dares ask for a decent contract. Gone.

Last night, at 8 p.m., we were the happiest team in baseball, peering through the clouds that had blanketed us all season. Three hours later, we were snake-bitten and cursed. 

Who's behind this? Carl Pavano? Kei Igawa? Is there a double-agent in our midst, a jujuist being aided by Iran? Scott Proctor! He used to burn his jersey at home plate; could he be torching old sweat socks - revenge porn against Joe Torre for being worked to death? Somebody out there has invented an injury machine - like the hurricane generator off the Ivory Coast - and they're aiming at the Bronx. If Cokey Roberts were alive, she could explain. Aurec Goldfinger said once is happenstance, twice, coincidence, three times, enemy action. WTF do you say to 30? All I know is we've been hexed - this aint random, this aint the universe, this is mean-spirited and angry - and it won't stop until we beat the bastard with a tire iron and broken bottle of Mad Dog. 

(And let us now - as a blog, unanimously - hereby agree to dispense with the absolutely insane notion that Giancarlo Stanton will soon return and lead the team through October. The YES men (and YES women) use it to jack up false hopes; never again. He'll step on a wad of chewing gum and disappear to the Calgon Bath Oil Beads of Tampa. Nope. Never again.)

We either win the World Series this year - end this cursed thing - or spend the next 10 years whining that we've been robbed, like the cast of Glee at a post-Emmy party. We either snap this decade-long drought - beat not only the Astros but the Fates, the Furies, the Destinies, the Kardashians, Vladimir Putin - whoever is joy-sticking the drones. We win next month or face the cold reality: 

We are just another New York sports team, crushed under the weight of our self-induced hubris, incapable of going all the way. 

So, Dellin is done. Sure, we were fools to expect him back, but it sure was fun, eh? Imagining a scary, lights-out hulk striking out the side, showing the opposition that we can stuff them, at any time. Gone. It was just a dream, Dorothy. You were dreaming, that's all. 

So, here is our pitching staff for the playoffs - at least until someone gets dengue fever. I figure we carry 11 or 12, depending on whether Boone wants Tyler Wade to pinch run. 

Paxton (game one starter)
Tanaka (game two)
Severino (game three)
Happ/Sabathia/German (game four... CC here as a legacy.)
Ottavino/Kahnle/Green
Britton
Chapman

Twelfth man: Whoever looks good. Loaisiga, Cessa, Cortes, Adams, Heller, Montgomery. This would have been Dellin, if the gods weren't such pricks.