I’m back from vacation, and the Yanks are still in last place–7.5 games out of first with Boston pulling away. It’s not only the Yankees this year who are disappointing, but pre-season favorites Seattle and Detroit are also well in last place as of this post. All three of these teams are suffering from similar problems.

So what’s going wrong with the Yanks? There’s the obvious loss of A-Rod and Posada, but even when they were in the lineup the offense was not clicking. A-Rod is now back, so get your A-Rod jersey now and hope he can break this offensive malaise. Currently the Yanks are ranked 19th in the majors for batting avg. and and 13th for home runs. This is a surprise for a team that is essentially unchanged from last year and was a top 10 offense for most of that year (albeit below the top 10 in hitting with RSP).

Perhaps less of a surprise is the pitching. The Yanks are currently ranked 19th in the majors for ERA. (At least this team is consistent for something!) I think many predicted that it would be either feast or famine for this year’s staff, which is composed mainly of young arms who have simply not performed. Chien Ming Wang has been impressive as the occasional ace of this staff and Mike Mussina had a string of 5 wins, but Andy Pettitte seems lost, and Hughes and Kennedy combined have 0 wins. Even Joba Chamberlain has an almost human ERA of 2.66.

This may be a coaching issue, as Girardi brought in new coaches as the Joe Torre era ended. Some of the players may need to adjust to some new coaching styles. It goes without saying that if the offense continues to struggle this mightily that heads will roll but probably not Girardi’s. What may very well happen is that the front offense (i.e. Hank and Hal) will step in and have a much more hands-on approach with on-the-field matters.

The 2008 Yanks have not been an inspirational team, have not shown the ability to grind out wins, and have not shown that there is a leader willing to carry the team on his back. In short, this is a team that is not fun to watch and is in serious jeopardy of not making the playoffs.

Last year at this time I was saying that 2007 would be the first year since 1993 (I don’t count ‘94, the strike year) that this team would not play in October. While the Yanks have a marginally better record so far this year, they somehow seem more lost. This is all very unfortunate considering that this is the last year in the Stadium.

There is still a lot more baseball to play, however. On the plane back to NYC, I did manage to play the new MLB 08 for the PSP. It was awesome. Great way to kill time on a coast-to-coast flight.