Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Things go from bad to worse

First it was Jorge Posada going down. The Yankees expected him to come back after giving his shoulder a little break but all they did was end his season. Then Hideki Matsui went down with his shaky knees. The big injury came in June, though, when their ace Chien-Ming Wang went down for the year on a freak foot injury.

Even after all that the Yanks looked to be in good shape when the trade deadline came and went. Pudge Rodriguez would do a satisfactory job filling in for Jorge, Nady would be a good right-handed hitter who would step in for Matsui and balance out the lineup and Joba Chanberlain had successfully transferred back to the rotation and was doing a good job at filling in for Wang as the new ace. The stars were aligned for a second half run.

But now Joba has followed the path of Phil Hughes and the injury bug bit him in Texas. Chamberlain hit the disabled list today and a visit to Dr. Andrews pretty much means the end of his season if not most of next season too.

The Yankees will be extremely cautious with Joba, as they should be, but with the loss of Chamberlain the Yankees will almost assuredly face ridiculous odds at making the playoffs. It's hard to blame Brian Cashman or Joe Girardi for the flaws of this team. Girardi lost his two starters and two aces to injuries. Cashman did his best to fill the holes left by injuries, but replacing one ace is next to impossible. But to replace two is unfathomable. The Yanks may still pick up Jarrod Washburn and he will be an improvement over Sidney Ponson, not to mention a decent option to replace Pettitte as the lone lefty in the rotation. But he is a back end rotation guy and the Yanks have a plethora of those already.

Right now the Yanks are still in it but it's hard to imagine them lasting that long without Chamberlain, especially if Pettitte keeps pitching they way he has these past two starts. Tonight could get pretty messy with Ponson on the mound against the rookie Tommy Hunter.

By the way, how do the Red Sox have two plays in the same season where the ball balances on the top of the wall? Inconceivable.

1 comment:

Joe said...

It has definitely been an unlucky year for the Yanks. Part on the problem is they are an old team, but atleast Cashman has realized this and is trying to incorporate more young players into the everyday lineup.

In a few weeks if they haven't made a run I could see the yanks just shutting everyone down in Sept. like the Red Sox did in 2006.