Hank Huffs and Puffs, Yet Again

From the NY Post:

HANK Steinbrenner had a message yesterday for his Yankees: Gentlemen, it’s time to get your act together. New York Yankees

“We’ve got to forget about all the injuries and start playing our butts off,” Steinbrenner told The Post. The Yankees were buried by the Rays on Monday. These are difficult days for Joe Girardi’s club.

“The bottom line is that the team is not playing the way it is capable of playing,” Steinbrenner said. “These players are being paid a lot of money and they had better decide for themselves to earn that money.”

The Yankees, whose $209 million payroll is the highest in baseball, are in fourth place in the AL East with a 19-21 mark. Starting pitching ranked 27th with a 5.08 ERA heading into last night’s 2-1, 11-inning loss in Tampa.

The offense is limping along because of injuries to MVP Alex Rodriguez and perennial All-Star Jorge Posada, but this slide is deeper than injuries.

Steinbrenner is right to say that injuries cannot be used as an excuse. There is too much talent for the Yankees not to be playing better.

“We have good professional hitters and I have a lot of faith in them,” Steinbrenner said from Tampa. As for the team in general, he noted, “I’m not saying they are not giving the effort, but they need to be playing harder.”

He then paid the much-improved Rays a compliment, saying, the Yankees have “got to start playing the way the Rays are playing. (The Yankees) need to start treating it like when they were younger players and going after that big contract, like they’re in (Triple-A) and trying to make the majors. That’s the kind of attitude and fire the players have to have.

“There’s no question we need to turn it around and we have the talent to turn it around. We’ve got the team in place, and now they just have to go out and do it.

“This is going to get turned around,” Steinbrenner said. “If it’s not turned around this year, then it will be turned around next year, by force if we have too.”

If you were a Yankee player, would this threat scare you? To be honest, I’d probably laugh and I can picture Bobby Abreu squinting his eyes and bellowing in the clubhouse. Then again, he’s playing for a new contract next year and he knows that the Yankees can give him a lot of money. Let’s see how he and the rest of the team reacts tonight against Tampa Bay and the talented changeup wielding, James Shields.