Yanks Must Lose to Win
Written by Blake Forseth, Thursday June 25 2009
The New York Yankees these days are a team that is looking bleak, but it’s a team that will continue to lose if they make no adjustments. One of the hottest topics brought up recently has been how the pitchers are responding to Posada and Cervelli. Since Cervelli has started playing consistently with the team in May, his ERA with pitchers has been lower than that of Posada’s ERA. Translation: pitchers feel more comfortable and pitch better to him. Of course his offense isn’t his strong point, but the offense as a whole hasn’t hit at all when Posada has been playing lately either. It seems that even the hitters are hitting better when Cervelli has been starting. The most evident game of this was the blow-out 15-0 game the Yankees had against the Mets when Burnett was pitching to him. I can’t explain why it happens, it just does. Because Girardi does not want to offend Jorge as he is being paid the $13-million dollar contract and has been a core leader for years, Posada will continue to start a majority of the games because he wants to. If things continue to the way they are with their current losing streak, Girardi will be the one to lose his starting job. The Posada ‘pride thing’ is killing the NY Yankees and it’s time to swallow it down whole. Winning is what matters most, not making sure Jorge feels good and isn’t offended.
Phil Hughes is in the bullpen, still! With the Chien-Ming Wang project still going on and resulting in an amazing success rate of 0-6, the Yankees are firm they want to continue the project. Maybe by the time Wang is 0-10, he will be allowed to start pitching into the sixth and seventh innings, too. Do you see the logic here? Wang is showing gradual improvement while the season is slipping away. Hughes has only come into every game Wang has started and has looked dominant each time out. This is just another example of misuse by the organization that we have seen happening throughout the year. It seems as though Cashman, the Steinbrenners and Girardi have showed us that they are good at one thing, waste management. Don’t even get me started about the Joba issue. He is the so-called ‘crown jewel’ that will not even know what he is good at anymore in a matter of time.
It is difficult to really know what is going on with the hitting as the team has been struggling most of this month, but Girardi needs to once again make some simple adjustments. When David Ortiz was struggling so much not too long ago for the Red Sox, the manager eventually had him batting sixth or seventh in the lineup. He is now back in form and hitting homeruns once again. With A-Rod not hitting for most of June, a similar move could be made to help give him a jump-start. It is tough for all of us media and fans to figure out who really is making these stubborn decisions (or indecisions), but losing more games will certainly force them to deal with the issues and break this stagnant pattern of thought.
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