Monday, May 19, 2008
NY Daily News: Joe Girardi: Blame me for this
“We need to play better. We need to hit better. We need to play better defense and pitch better. It starts with me,” Girardi said after his Yanks lost for the fifth time in six games and remained at the bottom of the AL East. “You can put it on me. The leader needs to take charge and find a way to win.”
While I admire Girardi sticking up for his troops, I don’t know that it’s really his fault that the team isn’t playing all that well. Like many I thought that the stricter spring training with a renewed focus on conditioning would mean a faster start than the Yankees have had the last few seasons, but they are playing like an old team, which isn’t surprising, since they are old for the most part.
The logical part of my brain knows that how the team has performed to date shouldn’t affect my expectations for the rest of the season all that much, although the struggles of Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes whenever he returns make them a worse than I expected. Add in the injuries to Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada and this is probably a .500 team right now.
The good news is that Rodriguez should be back tomorrow, with Posada to follow in the next few weeks. Darrell Rasner may give them a reasonably solid fourth starter behind Wang, Moose, and Pettitte. Joba Chamberlain may or may not move into the rotation at some point although there is suddenly speculation that he may not start this season. The schedule gets a lot easier over the next few weeks, a fact that’s been pointed out several times by John Lynch in the comments, so this is the Yankees’ chance to get back into things. As awful as they’ve played they are only 6 games out of first. At this point last season they were 20-24 just like they are now, but were 10.5 games out of first.
I normally hate off days during the season, but this year I’m learning to like them. That’s not a good thing.
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