Starting Slow Nothing New for Yankees

In his first game back from the DL, Alex Rodriguez hit his first home run since April 16th. That was about the only thing that went right on Tuesday night for the New York Yankees, who suffered an embarrassing 12-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. The loss was their fourth in a row and second consecutive blowout at Yankee Stadium, where Joe Giradi’s team is only 9-12. Mike Mussina only allowed a single earned run in his start, but he couldn’t get out of the first inning, registering only two outs before Girardi had to resort to the bullpen. How does that happen? By allowing six unearned runs in the first inning where Baltimore cashed in on a two-out error from Derek Jeter to run away with the game in the first half inning. Things got worse for Jeter in the third inning when he was hit in the left hand, and was forced to leave the game, adding another injury to the laundry list of players that are missing in action.

New York is now 20-25 overall, and sitting in last place in the AL East. They have a -28 run differential and the offense is struggling, only 25th in runs scored and 20th in team batting average. Jason Giambi and Robinson Cano are hovering around the Mendoza Line, struggling to get into any kind of rhythm at the plate. The pitching hasn’t been much better. After ace Chien-Ming Wang and his 6-1 record, New York has struggled to get any consistency from its starting rotation in front of the Joba/Mariano connection that is so efficient in closing down wins. With all of this stuff going on, it’s easy to get panicked at this stage with the “World Series or Bust” attitude that resides in the Bronx, but this has become a bit of a pattern in New York. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone as the Yankees have been notorious for coming out of the gate slowly.

In each of the last two years, the Yankees have put their fans through a mini version of the apocalypse by getting off to rough starts in the month of April. This has prompted management, George Steinbrenner mostly, to begin his verbal bashing of the team. To their credit, New York responded by playing solid ball in the midsummer months to make a run to the playoffs in both 2006 and 2007. The profound veteran presence on this team will always make the Yankees a threat, no matter where they are in the standings. Despite those rough starts in past seasons, the team always knew they had the talent to turn it around. Only a team with established stars could ever find a way to do that, while handling Steinbrenner’s pestering.

On a team full of veterans, the infiltration of injuries has forced many players into new and bigger roles. Predictably, they have struggled. This has been most apparent in the starting rotation where Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes have had trouble becoming quality starters. Their struggles have made fans demand that Joba Chamberlain be moved to the starting rotation. Offensively, Wilson Betemit, Jose Molina, and Morgan Ensberg have been seen with regularity on the lineup card, instead of regulars like Jorge Posada or Alex Rodriguez. Not many offenses can deal without a three-time MVP and a guy who routinely gets 20 homers and 85 RBI each and ever year.

In order for New York to make the playoffs from a bad start for the third consecutive year, it will be veterans like Mussina, Hideki Matsui, and Johnny Damon that take them there. In the absence of their fallen stars, these guys have an extra burden to be the veteran leaders that this team needs while they are struggling. Those guys need to keep the ship afloat until the team can finally get healthy and get some pitching help. A-Rod is finally back, but it came at the price of Jeter. You can bet that now that he’s finally off the disabled list and that his team is in last place, Rodriguez and his newly minted $275 million contract will come under even more scrutiny than usual.