Tuesday, June 23, 2009
A Bad Moon Rising
This is one of those moments, when I sit back in my chair and marvel to what extent this New York Yankee franchise has been deconstructed.
Down again tonight. This time 3-0 to the Braves. A two-time 19-game winner is on the verge of getting bounced from the rotation, which will put a stake in the Joba-to-the-Bullpen contingent. A defensive play that should've been made with two outs and no one on helped open the door to a three-spot in the bottom of the 3rd for Atlanta. No excuses for Wang though; the hits he's given up could've been hung up on a line.
There is a ton of talk now about the A-Rod contract. Pete Abraham wrote about it this morning. Tyler Kepner wrote about A-Rod's current freefall in The Times. We all knew it was a bad contract from the beginning. Did we suspect it could turn nightmarish? Maybe some doomsayer out there was making a clarion call that this could potentially be the worst contract in the history of professional sports. I never went that far. I couldn't foresee the guy having a degenerative hip or succumbing to the steroids hysteria. Although the latter wasn't much of a surprise.
Alex Rodriguez needs a big summer. If July & August are anything close to his .153/.315/.288 (.288!) June, then this will go beyond simple contract-regret and typical booing into a kind of frantic search for an answer to one question: how are the Yankees going to get out of this contract?
This is one of those moments, when I sit back in my chair and marvel to what extent this New York Yankee franchise has been deconstructed.
Down again tonight. This time 3-0 to the Braves. A two-time 19-game winner is on the verge of getting bounced from the rotation, which will put a stake in the Joba-to-the-Bullpen contingent. A defensive play that should've been made with two outs and no one on helped open the door to a three-spot in the bottom of the 3rd for Atlanta. No excuses for Wang though; the hits he's given up could've been hung up on a line.
There is a ton of talk now about the A-Rod contract. Pete Abraham wrote about it this morning. Tyler Kepner wrote about A-Rod's current freefall in The Times. We all knew it was a bad contract from the beginning. Did we suspect it could turn nightmarish? Maybe some doomsayer out there was making a clarion call that this could potentially be the worst contract in the history of professional sports. I never went that far. I couldn't foresee the guy having a degenerative hip or succumbing to the steroids hysteria. Although the latter wasn't much of a surprise.
Alex Rodriguez needs a big summer. If July & August are anything close to his .153/.315/.288 (.288!) June, then this will go beyond simple contract-regret and typical booing into a kind of frantic search for an answer to one question: how are the Yankees going to get out of this contract?
