With Opening Day just a week away, what can we say about this year’s crop of Bombers that hasn’t already been said? Obviously, there questions about the starting rotation and what the new regime under Girardi will be like. There’s been a lot of talk about the brawls with the Rays. And all those non-acquisitions…

First of all, word around the campfire has it that Girardi is not messing around this season and has had zero-tolerance for guys showing up to camp not in shape or acting as if they deserve a roster spot. Word around the campfire also has it that that Yanks under Torre (at least in the last few seasons) had treated spring-training too lightly and was just plain not pushing his guys. There may be evidence for this in the fact that over the last 2-3 years, the Yanks got off to awful starts. In ‘07 they dug themselves a hole so deep early on that it probably cost them the division. Now with the yanks going 12-8 (as of March 23) in spring training, perhaps they can roar into ‘08 taking advantage of the fact that Boston will be jet lagged for the first week of the season.

As for the Yanks “questionable” pitching, I’m hearing a lot of criticism from people who predicted the yanks staff in ‘05-’06 (Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright) would be utterly dominant. It’s not an issue of if the Yank’s young staff will be good but when. Yes, once you get through Wang and Pettitte (and even here, most teams will not be very intimidated), you run into a declining Mussina and a crop of untested rookies. But these rookies: Hughes, Kennedy, Joba (and maybe even Igawa) only have upside potential. Hal and Hank must believe in these guys because they passed on Johan Santana so that they could keep Hughes and the like. I stand by this decision and believe that one or more of these kid pitchers will emerge as a rotation anchor. And what of Joba’s sophomore slump? Sure, the league will have looked at a lot more tape of him, but as long as his velocity stays up, there’s not too much hitters can “learn” about him. Nobody can hit tripple-digit fastballs consistently.

As for the brawls with the Rays this spring, you have to wonder what fight these Yanks would have put up a year ago in the same situation. Personally, I think brawls like this can galvanize a team and get players more fired up to win. I’m not advocating brawling, of course.

So how will this year’s crop of Bronx Bombers stack up? Assuming Hank and Hal get along and somehow manage this co-presidency of the team, I’m predicting playoffs. From there, who knows. We all know that October is kind of a crap shoot where hot teams like the Rockies can go pretty far on adrenaline. There too much young pitching talent and too much offense for the Yanks not to be in it in October. Obviously, with the Sox in the same division, a lot has to go right for this team to take the pennant. This is an interesting year where expectations for the yanks are relatively low and they have a fiery (and very smart) new manager calling the shots–at least on the field. The Yanks will certainly not want to disappoint fans watching their last games in the great Stadium. This may be a refreshing year where the Yanks play (gasp) underdog and spoiler to a host of teams with higher expectations–like that team that plays in that old swamp up the 95 tpk.