Revisiting a Familiar Place

The Yankees are back in last place (AL East) and it’s a position that is strangely familiar to them, especially at the beginning of the season. The team’s pitching has been decent, with a couple of rough outings mixed in here and there, but Wang, Rasner and Moose have been doing their jobs. The offense just has not delivered at all and even without Posada or A-Rod, the team should be putting up better numbers.

Joe Girardi sums it up with the following quote:

“You look at a guy like Kazmir today, and he threw 50 fastballs in a row,” Girardi said. “We get one hit. That’s not good. We’re a better hitting club than this. They threw the ball well and did the things well that have to be done to win three out of four. We did not.”

The lineup has just hasn’t hit anything that its supposed to hit. Girardi is totally right. Matt Garza did the exact same thing to the Yankees a few days ago, throwing almost nothing but fastballs yet somehow, the Yankees who are a good fastball hitting club, could not mount anything against him. It’s just frustrating for everyone, whether its the players, coaches or the fans, nothing seems to be working offensively and we all seem to be waiting on A-Rod to inject some sort of life into this stagnant group of powerless hitters.

To show you how bad the Yankees are offensively, let’s look at the AL league leader in RBI, Josh Hamilton. Hamilton has had an extraordinary season, driving in 44 runs while hitting .293 (he hits cleanup for Texas). Now, our cleanup hitter, Hideki Matsui, has been batting either in the cleanup spot or around the 5th spot (he started off the season either 6th or 7th). Hideki Matsui is hitting absolutely everything and his average is at .317. He’s hitting .273 with RISP and .308 with RISP and 2 outs. Yet, while hitting at such a high clip in the cleanup role for the NY Yankees, Hideki Matsui has… wait for it—18 RBI. Compare that to the league leading Josh Hamilton and his 44 RBI (Jose Guillen of the KC Royals has 1 more RBI than Matsui and he’s hitting .217 on the season).

How is this happening? What’s going on? Could it be Johnny Damon’s streaky ways (he had 1 measly hit against the Rays)? Maybe it’s Bobby Abreu’s declining eye? How about those endless lineup changes by Joe Girardi? Maybe it’s just the aging lineup in general? Eh, it’s hard to tell anymore, but these guys need to figure something out soon before it’s too late. It’s still early, however the team looks dead on their feet and when you can’t hit a fastball, something is wrong.