Daily Archives: June 8, 2005

O.K., man, forget this, garbage: The Yanks are going to spank the Brewers tonight, and that’s that.

I generally try to avoid commenting on the mainstream sports media, in part because I rarely bother to read, watch or listen to it. I get all I need from the outstanding community of bloggers of which I’m privileged to be a part and independent on-line powerhouses such as Baseball Prospectus. MLB.com gives me the quotes and news of a roster move or a change in the rotation and ESPN.com is useful for their stats and pitch-by-pitch data, but neither offer much in the way of useful commentary (though ESPN boasts some top columnists). The daily papers are generally worse than redundant.

Still, sometimes when things take an unexpected turn, I like to breeze through the dailies, or dial on over to WFAN to find out how the mainstream is presenting things. In doing so today, I happened upon a pair of articles in The Star-Ledger that are fairly unexceptional on their own, but are fascinating taken together.

For one reason or another, Star-Ledger staffers Ed Price and Dan Graziano have tackled the exact same topic in today’s paper. That topic is, of course: “what is wrong with the Yankees and how can they fix it?” What’s fascinating is not only that the paper would run two articles on the same exact topic in the same day’s paper, but that the quality of the two articles would be so divergent.

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It was too little too late once again for the Yanks last night, as a ninth inning rally fell short, and the team lost again, this time 2-1. How about these sobering facts:

“We’re right where we deserve to be,” Jeter said. “We haven’t played well.”

He’s not kidding. The litany of numbers that demonstrate the Bombers’ futility seems endless. They’ve lost four straight series; they’re 0-22 in games in which they’ve scored three runs or less; they’re 0-28 when trailing after eight innings; and, in case you were wondering how they’re doing with runners in scoring position, the Yankees are 0-for-their-last-25 with the bases loaded, which is the longest such skid since the DH was introduced in 1973. (N.Y. Daily News)

Is Joe Torre’s job on the line? Tim Marchman doesn’t see why it shouldn’t be:

As bad as things have been for the Yankees, there hasn’t been much speculation about Joe Torre. There probably should be. A team’s lack of talent or desire or luck can’t be held against a manager, but what can and should be is careless play and a failure to get the most out of the talent on hand. Never the greatest tactician, Torre’s strength for nearly a decade has been his ability to get the most out of veteran players. If he’s not doing that, what use is he?

I don’t think Torre will be fired, but if this keeps up, Steinbrenner is going to sack somebody.