There is a line that has been crossed here, folks. Throughout the history of professional American sports -- especially baseball -- players' personal lives have been off limits. Unless a player found himself in legal trouble, their off-the-field actions were private and never reported on. Can you imagine what the Yankees would have been like had Mantle's off the field transgressions been plastered all over the local papers?

What The Post did today is beyond the pale. And I think it just might have made up Arod's mind on whether he will agree to any trade that Cashman (of whoever acts as GM for the rest of this season) brings to him. This was the straw that broke the camel's back for Arod and he is GONE, GONE, GONE as soon as he chooses to make the move.

I am so disgusted right now.

The idea of watching the Yanks for baseball's sake has also been somewhat foreign to me since I started college. Recently, that's what Extra Innings and the other 29 teams are there for- the fun matchups, hot rookies, etc. I'm not ready to write the season off quite yet, but this 2007 edition seems to be quite snakebitten, and what tempers some of my eternal optimism is that it's not been just any one thing- it's everything.

I'm not fully on board with Jeter's "any season w/o a title is a failure," but this year is going to be a massive diasppointment unless they do one of two things:
1) Make the playoffs. If this were to happen, then we are looking at an awfully fun June-Sept.
2) Miss the playoffs but lay the groundwork for a successful next 3-5 years. IMO, this means keeping Cash, jettisoning Torre, and continuing to make the roster younger, payroll more flexible, and the team less dependent on needing to add that one last bat/arm. I've got a million more thoughts on this subject but will hold my tongue until the rebuild/reload phase is truly upon us...

Personally, I'm more disgusted with Arod than the Post. It's also nice to know that while I spent my Sunday replaying Scott Proctor's performance in my head, Arod was out on the town.

I've been one of his biggest supporters, but have no excuses for his behavior. Incredibly, the Yankee season has a new low.

I guarantee there will be repercussions in that clubhouse for the Post.

As for the Yankee Doodle Randy, it's most likely some big misunderstanding. The blonde is probably a literary agent. She and Arod were just discussing children's books. And the Brass Rail, well, they serve the best chicken wings in Canada. It was a simple business meeting. What's so juicy about that, NY Post?

But in all seriousness, you gotta love that the Mets finally make the back cover. But the Yanks make the front!

To me the really pathetic thing about watching the Yanks right now is that they look like they've given up. They look like they expect to lose, and when it happens they're not surprised. I can't tell you how much I wanted Torre to come out of the dugout and get thrown out of the game after that preposterous check-swing call on Minky in the 2nd.

Somebody show me some fire...a good 'ole Paulie water cooler incident would be welcome about now.

Runs scored and runs allowed are a very useful way to predict future winning percentage as past RS/RA are better correlated with future wins than past W/L. From the RS/RA data of this season, it is a reasonable bet that they will win more often over the remaining 110 games.

That said, I think it a bit too easy an answer to say the Yankees have just been unlucky. The won what they won and lost what they lost, and two 10 run victories don't cancel out 6 1-run losses. We've watched these games and we know that they aren't playing well, especially when the game is on the line.

They're playing bad baseball, with poor fundamentals in the field and at the plate. It has been years since I was this pessimistic about their chances in a close game -- I'm no longer expecting them to play well. In the past, I knew they might lose but I expected good at bats in an attempted comeback. We're not even seeing those.

I've been a Torre supporter for years, cringing whenever it was mentioned he should be fired. I thought his ability to create a winning environment amidst the chaos of New York was a rare skill of incalculable value to the team. But I think that he's done, no longer effective in that role. Furthermore, his in game tactics seem worse than ever, though perhaps they're just as bad as ever. I think the team needs a new manager, as it is bad baseball, not bad luck, that has led to their swoon.

Seriously, I keep thinking of a combination of 2000 and 2005. The Yanks have had so many almost death knells, it's hard for me to rule them out. What would be sweeter than them roaring back to take the wild card, breezing through the first round, then rolling into the "mighty" Boston team?

Hey, I can dream, right?

Seriously - does Torre make it through the weekend? We keep asking that question, but then they keep sucking more and more after a brief respite.

A-Rod has not been a paragon of good judgement and his contract alone is cause celebrie in many circles to focus on athletes with enormous contracts and equate that with either absolute good or absolute evil, particularly in the journal trade. There appears to be an absolute disconnect between the writers and their subjects, though it's certainly debateable whether what was written is the cause or effect of what was done. The Post reflects journalism as an irresponsible grab for attention and dollars, along with an agenda of destruction of peoples' lives surreptitiously or blatantly. However, the item is newsworthy in a society that places an aggressive interest in celebrity life. The way A-Rod handles this would be indicative of the type of person he is, not the measure of his skill as an athlete.

Unfortunately, if the implications are indeed true, there's nowhere to run. E@#% will televise it around the world and that will be that. A-Rod is a target, but he should very well know that. However, if he exercises poor judgement, that's not the paper's fault. Like my brother says, "There's no sense in calling a snake a snake when you're standing in a snakepit."

All we can do right now is just wait and see. If the implications are false, then it will bear out and A-Rod can take comfort in the fact that he handled this like a man. If it's true and he confesses, same thing. But if it festers and he either ignores or waffles on it when directly addressed, and then we see things around him solidifying implications as fact (wife moves out, legal seperation or files for divorce, etc.), then you decide whether it's worth him being here to the team, which at this moment has little to do with it. If he leaves because of the Post, then why would you want to keep him in the first place? He'll have proven his critics right.

That said, I don't trust a paper with an obvious agenda, whether they uncover facts or make them up. They've lost credibility over much lesser issues. This could either be a tempest in a teapot or a full-blown scandal, but as far as I'm concerned, it's more crap to pile on a crappy season by a crappy media source, and ultimately doesn't concern me nearly as much as living on $28 a week in food stamps, if I ever had to go that route. Move along, nothing to see here.

It's in the best interest of Yankee management to stick a fork in the 2007 season. Get value for ARod before the ASB. He is gone no matter how the season and the Post article plays out.

I have to amplify this point:

"But baseball is great even if the Yankees aren't, and if you pay attention, something interesting is happening in every game, even a grotesquerie like tonight's."

Eloquently said.

The trick now is for management to give us a team that gives us something to watch besides contention.

Let the kids play!

Which kids, you ask?

I don't know, but now would be a good time to work some kids into the mix rather than just deferring until next year.

If we cut our losses now, this could actually prove to be a very interesting year.

Any top prospects we could get for an Arod, if need be?

We could really use a catcher, e.g.

I, for one, would love to watch some more players develop.

Dunno if this was mentioned in the game thread last night, but why didn't the Yankees protest when Glasses ran straight into Phelps -- he was clearly outside the runner's alley and while he may have beaten the throw, Phelps could have kept the ball in front of him and thus kept Hill from advancing to third and then stealing home.

But here's the deal, a few years ago, I came up with an over simplification called the "5 Run Theory." The Yankees it seemed to me were built on a spectacular offense, and mediocre pitching. There for I reasoned that as long as they had league average pitching or even a little worse than league average, they'd win a lot of games because they would more often than not score 5 runs a game. Their winning percentage in games in which they scored 5 runs or more was over 80%, their winning percentage in games in which they scored less than 5 runs was in the 40s if I recall correctly.

This season, they have scored fewer than 5 runs in 50% of their games, so at best, I'd project them to be a .500 ball club at best, given the absolute disaster of a pitching staff they had in April.

The biggest problem though is that the offense seems to be getting dramaticlly worse as the season goes on. If they don't start scoring runs again, this season could turn into an absolute disaster.

17 Torre said in the post-game that he didn't think there was interference from where he was sitting. He felt Phelps was sprawled out to get the ball.

16 I'm with you on wanting to see the kids. The old guys aren't performing, so might as well give their seats to the young ones and see if they can do better.

And about your point in the previous thread about Jeter bunting: yes, players seem to assign a larger value to bunting than they should. Jeter's doing it may be revealing of the larger desperation the team feels: just do anything to get on the board, as if doing so would somehow get the monkey off their back.

http://i.cnn.net/si/pr/subs/swimsuit/images/04_arodriguez_01.jpg

No, I think the Yanks are stuck with who they have, unless they make a trade. I'm still thinking Cashman should call the Royals and ask about Huber and LaRue, but that's just me.

My best case these days is Clippard shows he belongs until Hughes returns.

Britton should of course be in the bullpen. And I'm very intrigued by Ed Ramirez - who's sporting 43 K against 10 BB in 23 IP - that's unreal but the only knock is that's it's so far beyond anything he's shown in his career.

And the guys you'd like to move (Dorf, Jackson, White, Smith, etc) just aren't that valuable.

Rasner and Karstens would be, but that will have to wait until the off-season.

27 Same here. Vizcaino and Farnsworth, here are your replacements! (If only.)

http://tinyurl.com/25hgec

Interesting no?

(but I didn't get to read it! :-( )

On the other guys: they're not that valuable or they're hurt. The pitching injury woes extend to the minors.

Don't get me wrong - I agree with the idea but that's what killed me with the Unit deal - that was the chance for a decent position player. The spare parts they got instead don't add up to much.

In this case, though, I think the conditions were completely wrong. If Damon had been on second rather than first; if Jeter had been bunting for a hit; if the pitcher had been Burnett or Halladay; or if Jeter had been mired in a slump - then the bunt would have had more merit. As it was, all it did was kill one of the two reliable hitters. And it didn't look like aggressive play, it looked like desperation. That's not a good way to rally a team.

However, Joe could - and probably should - have called a hit-and-run. Jeter is a good bet to make contact, and in the worst case, Damon is a good bet to steal against that battery. That would have been a more aggressive play with at least as good a result.

If you add Bettances to your list of blue chips, I think there is even enough in the top tier to shop one around.

By the way...who is Alan Horne? He has some very nice numbers in Trenton.

Can't be any worse than what's going on at the mom