If the Dodgers with their division with a .500 record, will people claim Torre lead them to the PS?

I under the reason for divisional play is to rey and achieve more parity, especially over the wealth of the Northeast. But there is no excuse for the poor play of the NL West. La and SF and not exactly small market teams. To allow a team with the 7th best record (out of 16) into the playoffs is a sham.

Is that honestly what this season has sunk to, looking on the bright side of a slap fight? Pathetic.

This team seems to just go through the motions more than half the time of late. I hope to hell I'm just imagining things, because if they come out of the gate slowly next year with an attitude like this, it's gonna be a long-ass inaugural season for the new ballpark.

Yes it's true: If curses exist, A-Rod is one.

As much as I'd like Moose to win his 20th, I'd also accept another reason for him to decide not to come back on his own; the way it seems right now, Moose would end up being the ace of the staff next year, Wang or no Wang.

Anyone wanna play that game where we guess which moment in the season was the key moment when the season went down the tubes? I say there were at least four to consider:

- Wang's injury and subsequent shutdown
- Jeter getting plunked in the wrist during a relative hot streak
- A-Rod was spotted with Madonna (and subsequently lost his wife and mojo, ironic that kaballah was perhaps involved?)
- Any one of Girardi's wtf-inducing decisions that backfired that even reporters questioned and he responded defensively about.

NOT excuses, mind you, just key moments when you probably saw this coming. Anyone game?

7 i agree with you on jeter being hit and wang getting hurt as far as two of the biggest longterm factors.

i guess for me the major turning point when i thought it was inevitable for the season to go south was joba's injury in texas.
another moment that looking back on was a crucial crap point might be the sunday night loss to boston at the end of july - they went on to lose 2/3 to bal and have mostly played poorly since then.
and the wtf giradi moment has to be the min game when he sat damon and giambi in the midst of a rough road trip.

Steinbrenner, fully back in the saddle and looking for the annual scapegoat, focused on him throughout the 2003 season and Zim quit in frustration afterwards. If it were me, I'd have a few curses on the way out, too.

The Yankees coaching staff, including Girardi, was completely let off the hook for Wang's injury (including by most people here). I, however, think it was an easily avoidable circumstance. If not Meacham on his own, then Girardi should have reminded all his coaches before every NL series that the pitchers were not to do anything more than run the bases station-to-station. Instead, Wang was waved home to a potential play at the plate and pulled up lame in the process.

It's not exactly throwing Josh Johnson after a rain delay, but I think Girardi deserves some of the blame for Wang's injury. Unlike Hank, I don't think the manager has done the best he can do. He has been as much a contributor to this season's demise as most players.

The scary thing for me is that Girardi is now management's guy. They have way too much of a stake in his success. If Girardi fails, so do they. As long as Torre stays in LA, it will be hard for the Steinbrothers to divorce themselves from Girardi. Personally, I have seen enough to seriously consider dismissing Girardi after this season. Not only has he been a very poor in-game manager, but now it appears as if the guys he has believed in so much have quit.

1) you have to give him another season. Yes, the Yankees are no juggernaut, but this 4th place finish has fluke written all over it, and yes he made some pretty weird decisions like sitting Giambi against any lefthander for like 2 months even though at the time G was raking against lhp. But overall, I think Joe managed the bullpen pretty well, and he had to manage around month long (or longer) injuries to A-Rod, Matsui, Joba, Wang, and Posada. Nothing Joe girardi is gonna do is going to make up for the lost production from those dudes, especially Posada's.

That for me was the moment the season went to hell, when Posada got hurt, and what, wasn't that opening day?

The most concerning thing I saw Girardi do all year, was the weird platoon he constructed with G and Sexson. Should never have been allowed to happen.

Finally, I thouhgt at the time, that the Marte acquisition was unnecessary, and in hindsight it looks even worse. I can't belive I'd rather have Farnsworth and no Pudge or Marte, but that's where I sit right now.

Good god, what an awful season.

In any case, how do you figure that Wang's injury meant Ponson AND Rasner every five days? Or did you mean Ponson or Rasner every five days?

Indeed, Rasner had already been in the starting rotation for weeks before Wang's injury in mid-June, so the problems indeed ran deep.

It's pretty amazing that at this point people are still pointing to injuries as an excuse. Every team has injuries. The yankees have been much healthier than the red sox over the past 2 months and have still sucked.

Since every team has injuries, exactly what does it take for the blind to simply admit the yankees weren't very good this year? Underperformance, old players, no center fielder...

If the yankees were in 2nd, 4 games out of first, injuries might be part of the problem. 4th place isn't because of injuries. 4th place is a bad baseball team, and that's what the yankees were this year.

I'm more concerned about the recent emphasis on acquiring high-ceiling, but injured pitchers who may not contribute if at all for years. I think I understand the logic, but it's a bigger gamble than most believe.

That said, is it due to our draft position or to the emphasis on pitching that we don't have quality position players coming soon (Austin Jackson being maybe a year away is our closest option.)

I just think that Wang's injury changed the feeling about this team. It's almost as if the thought that the Yankees wouldn't come back first crept into the players' minds. I know that's about when I seriously started to consider an October without Yankee baseball.

With the 15th pick (will be 16th in number due to the Nats getting pick 9A for not signing Aaron Crow) and the 29A pick (the 31st pick again thanks to the Nats).

The last time the Yanks had 2 1st round picks (not including the supplemental round) was 1978, when they had 3 picks (Rex Hudler, Matt Winters, and some guy named Brian Ryder; Bye-Bye Balboni was the 2nd round pick). (Ignore what MLB.com says, Joba, Marquez, Poterson, Sardinha, and Skaggs were all supplemental picks.)

I won't dream that Abreu, Marte, and I-Rod all are Type A free agents that sign with teams who pick after the Yanks.

No guarantee on 1st round picks ever becoming anything, but the fastest way to inject some hitting talent into the upper levels, since no one seems inclined to trade it, is to draft it. The more early picks, the better.

You had a bunch of old vets that were told, you aren't going to get Santana, because that was the way of the Old Yankees, this is a new era. We are going with youth and it's gonna be HOT.

Then the kids suck beyond belief and the vets look around and go...'we're f**ed.' Then everyone get's hurt, and they look around and go 'we're really f**ed!'

A-Rod would have had to outdo his 2007 season and be the clutchiest clutch mother clutcher ever to swing a bat, in order to carry the team, and he couldn't do it.

The team never appeared confident to me this season. Maybe that's egg - chicken, but there was not for a moment any swagger. They never looked like a contender to me.

I will now go back to being coldly rational and beholden to EQA and the belief that there is no such thing as confidence, or chemistry.

The last time the Yanks Rule 4 drafted a player in the 1st round who had any impact in the MLB (outside of IPK, which is still in question) was Eric Milton (20th overall, 1996).

Before him, Jeter was the last player to have a major impact (6th overall, 1992).

Right before him, Brien Taylor was the last Yankee Rule 4 draft pick to be chosen #1 overall (and we all know what happened with him)

The last certifiable HOF player chosen by the Yanks before Jeter in Rule 4 was some guy named John Albert Elway (2nd rnd, 52nd overall 1981; albeit HOF in a different league). Btw, 318/.432/.464 with an OPS of .896 in 42 games/151 ABs and 8 OF assists for Oneonta in 1982.

The only strong impact players the Yankees have chosen over the years in the first round of the Rule 4 draft are:

Derek Jeter
Thurman Munson
Ron Bloomberg (debatable)

Yanks Rule 4 1st round picks Honorable Mention

Scott McGregor (14th, 1972)
Pat Tabler (16th 1976)
*Rex Hudler (18th, 1978)
John Elway (see above)
Carl Everett (10th, 1990)

Not including recent Rule 4s Hughes and IPK; they are works in progress. If anyone cares to, they can do a Rule 5 draft comparison >;)

*notable because he was chosen before Lloyd Moseby and Dave Stieb (Toronto), Mike Marshall and Steve Sax (Los Angeles), Cal Ripken, Jr. and Mike Boddicker (Baltimore), Kirk Gibson (Detroit), Kent Hrbek (Minnesota), Ryne Sandberg (Cubs) and Hubie Brooks (New York Mets).

But the team did get its legs under it again ... then Wang went down. Huge. As someone else said, it's the psychological aspect more than anything else. In that regard, Jeter's un-Jeter-like play following the wrist injury also added to the problem.

And yes the final nail in the coffin was Chamberlain going down. Here we had a bright light after all the mishaps, and the team had picked up the pace after the All-Star break. Once Joba was gone, they never really recovered.

No Po injury, no Wang injury, the Yanks are right there in it, even with the sundry other misdeeds.