So the Yankees got bopped in Boston. Now the cynics are pouncing, tag-teaming the Yanks as a leaky club with a woeful rotation. If this keeps up, they will lose to a wild-card team and thus a season that had so much charm and promise will twirl down the drain of memory.
It's no secret that the Yanks have suffered some bad outings from their starters. Before they finally won the fourth game at Fenway, the Yankees' rotation since the All-Star Game had an 8.10 ERA, had allowed an MLB-worst 28 homers and allowed the enemy to post a 1.024 OPS, which was also the worst in the majors (according to Buster Olney).
Adding to the calamitous second-half of the season is the fact that the Yanks whiffed on Marcus Stroman, who went to the hated Mets. Stroman would have brought a 2.96 ERA to a rotation that couldn't pitch more than 4.1 innings in any of the seven games prior to Sunday, allowing 48 earned runs in 26 innings pitched. The list of high-end starters is shrinking, as is the time until the July 31 trade deadline. The growing wisdom says the Yanks better get their hands on a starter or start making plans for the offseason.
The Yankees were invincible when they were 31 games over .500, yet were a mess at 28 games over .500. Today, at 67-38, the Bronx Bombers are 5-5 over their last ten games, and don't have the best record in baseball or even the American League. The Astros have 68 wins and the Dodgers have 69. And that's not nearly as ominous as you'd think. In fact, the Yanks may be better served if they didn't finish with MLB's best record.
In the 20 years since the 1998 Yankees steamrolled the sport, only four times has the club with the outright best record in baseball won the World Series. This includes the 2001 season, in which the Mariners won 116 games and got spanked by the Yanks in the ALCS, while the 92-win Diamondbacks won the Fall Classic. We also have the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, a team that eked out 83 wins yet still won the World Series (after a seven-game classic against the Mets in the NLCS).
It wouldn't hurt to grab Noah Syndergaard or World Series ace Madison Bumgarner. Either (or both) would beef-up the Yankees rotation, though neither has been seriously linked to them. (Nor was Stroman's name ever whispered in connection with the Mets.)
But folks are quick to forget how good the Yankees have been this year, and the mountainous odds against them, with an injury list pregnant with a dozen Yanks for much of the year. Giancarlo Stanton has played nine games. Miguel Andujar, the runner-up for Rookie of the Year in 2018, is gone for the season. Their projected ace, Luis Severino, has yet to throw one pitch in 2019. Stalwart setup man Dellin Betances has also been on the shelf all summer.
The Yankees have no business being here as World Series favorites or even as the first place team in the AL East. On top of their plague of injuries, the Yanks also play in the only division with at least three teams ten games over .500. With so much going against them it has taken team-wide wizardry to win 64% of their games.
With home runs shooting like Roman candles out of ballparks, the Yankees could be one of the few teams to win a World Series without a robust rotation. No one has a deeper lineup than they do, nor does anyone have a better bullpen. Of course, the odds are always better with better pitching. No one disputes that the Yankees have a dearth of dominant starters or the obvious truth that the staff has been pounded lately.
But losing to the Boston Red Sox over the weekend could be the best thing for a team that had been soaring over the sport no matter who plays for them. Maybe the Yanks needed a reminder that they're not the only big boys on the block, that the current World Series champs are still around, and that the next World Series champs have to be tested, if not thumped, to gain that October toughness. If anyone knows about toughness, or climbing over the odds, it's these Bombers.
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