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I used to love rivalry weekend. Interleague play may have lost some of its sparkle over the years, but there's always a certain electricity in the air when the Yanks play the Mets.
This year, though, it's hard to get too excited. The Yankees are just...flat. Flat as Kansas. Flat as day-old beer. Flat as Roseanne Barr singing The Star-Spangled Banner. They've got All-Stars at every position, they're reasonably healthy, and yet...they don't win.
The Yankees have been way behind before, and come back to win the division. I was confident they would bounce back last year, and the year before. But this year seems different, for some reason.
I loved last year's team especially. Injuries resulted in a team very different from the one Cashman originally planned. And such a scrappy team they were, winning with the likes of Melky Cabrera, Nick Green, Miguel Cairo, and Aaron Guiel starting. And Bubba, of course. It was a nice mix of youth and experience, contact and power, speed and defense. They somehow found a way to win. And had fun doing it. Even people who usually hated the Yankees were rooting for them.
At the end of the season, the injured veterans came back (not quite at 100%, to be fair). The team became old, slow, and one-dimensional. They lost that never-say-die scrappiness. They didn't last long in the postseason, and didn't even put up much of a fight going down.
It seems that team has carried over this year. They seem old and tired - even the youngsters, Cabrera and Cano.
It's only May. They will pull out of this slump; they're too talented not to. And the Sox will fall back to earth. But it's getting late early. They've got a lot of ground to make up. And even if they make it to the postseason, they just don't seem like the kind of team that can win it all.
I think they need a few hungry players, like Bubba. Guys who are happy just to be on the team, who have reason to keep trying even when the game seems hopelessly out of reach. Players who still have something to prove.
Labels: Yankees
