After a couple of delayed flights, a connection in London that was tighter than a virgin gymnast and two bags jettisoned somewhere along the way I stumbled home three hours later than planned but just in time to catch some of the Yankees game north of the border. I was aware that they hadn't been doing much winning in the week I spent overseas but it had been quite a while since I'd seen any baseball and was hopeful that my return would coincide with their return to the winning ranks. No such luck. Silent bats greeted me when I turned the game on in eighth as the Blue Jays were well on their way to a 7-2 victory. A pretty sad welcome home party, guys.
Taking a look at the postseason odds report on Baseball Prospectus, the panic button that has already been mashed into the console a dozen times this season may need to go into overtime. Roger Clemens, sterling in Scranton last night, will be here this weekend to firm up the rotation but the questions now focus on how to fix a lineup that's gone from thunder to pop gun this month. Is it still a matter of sittting on their hand and waiting for players who have always hit to start hitting or do you try to make a move even if it is one from a diminished hand. Clearly they can't go on with the one day in/one day out lineup shuffle being done by Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi, they need to either go on the DL or stop talking about it because the story's gotten old.
Steve Lombardi at WasWatching wonders if the way to light a fire under this team isn't to let the manager go. I'm in agreement with his belief that the team has no signs of life, for the second time this season they are in the midst of a long losing streak with little reason to think they can snap right out of it to play .650 baseball and I'm in agreement that Joe Torre shoulders a large portion of that blame. I also agree that things couldn't get any worse if they brought in a new skipper but I'm doubtful of both the chance this particular move happens and the likelihood that the coddled, hands off Yankees would respond to a different voice. Especially with Clemens coming back and having made such a fuss about how he's doing this, in part, for Torre you have a team full of guys who don't want the kick in the ass that a new foot in Torre's shoes might try to provide.
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