Back In The Groove?

4 out of 5. 9 of the last 12. 2 games over .500. 6 games behind Cleveland in the loss column. I'm liking what I'm seeing. But it's still so hard to judge. Are the Yankees actually good, or are they just the best of the worst? They're hitting the ball pretty well. A .304 batting average with 21 longballs over their last 12 games. But again, they've done this before, so I can't get too far ahead of myself. Regardless, they're moving in the right direction. And I like that.
Man, I can't wait for the return of Phil Hughes. I'm so tired of watching our 5th starters continue to pitch so poorly. There's been no consistency from that spot of the rotation. With Hughes, I think we'll get that consistency and I'll actually like our chances to win. The Yankees got lucky today that they ran into Josh "I shouldn't be a major league pitcher" Towers. Towers has given up more home runs than walks. The Yankees took advantage of that and took him deep 3 times, with Posada coming oh so close to making it 4 knocked out of the park. The offense did their job tonight, and finally actually knocked around a guy they were supposed to knock around. If the Yankees want to make a serious run at the postseason, they can't let no name chumps come off looking like Cy Young.
Despite the offense's efforts, the bullpen is doing everything in their power to blow these games. Tonight, it was Proctor's turn to give up the longball. When is this going to end? It's too bad they can't clone mo and let him pitch the 7th and 8th also. Mo has 3 saves in 3 days. What happened to not pitching him every day? I guess things change when your bullpen blows and your 7 games out of the wild card race. Memo to Brian Cashman: upgrade the bullpen. Make that priority number one because what we got, ain't good enough. Can anyone say they honestly have confidence in any of these guys, except of course for Mo? I cringe whenever they go to the bullpen. The last few games have done nothing to increase my confidence.
So here we go. Pettitte, Clemens and Wang. It would be so awesome to win these 3 games. I still feel that the Yankees rotation is good enough to win 3 of every 5 games. Unfortunately, a .600 winning percentage isn't going to get us to the promised land. It's games like tonight's that are going to be the swing games. I think they Yanks are capable of winning 4 out of 5 every so often. And if they do it enough, we'll be seeing some October baseball. They've dug themselves quite the hole. It's good to see them climbing out of it.
Hopefully this time, it's for real.
J