Mansfield Fox

Law student. Yankees fan. Massive fraggle. Just living the American dream.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Perfect 10

So my Yankees, after an abysmal start, are looking pretty good right now, having won ten games in a row to pull themselves back above the .500 mark. Now that they're winning, everything seems to be going right. They're getting great pitching (the streak has featured two complete game shut outs) and great hitting. They're getting superior performance out of veterans everyone thought were past their prime (Kevin Brown, 2-0 with 3 earned runs in his last two starts; Tino Martinez, who's hit 8 home runs and improved his batting average 30 points over the last 10 days) and with rookies (Chien Ming-Wang has been giving the Yanks great production as their fifth starter; Robinson Cano has been hitting the snot out of the ball, and plays a decent second base). They're getting solid work out of superstars like Jeter and Sheffield and role-players like Tony "the 'Stache" Womack. Bernie Williams and Jason Giambi seem to have adjusted well to their reduced roles. Posada and Matsui have emerged from early season doldrums. They've also won every which way: pitching duels, blow-outs, slug-fests, games where they had to get incredibly lucky - variety, the spice of life.

The biggest weakness of the streak has been that it's come entirely against two pretty bad teams, Oakland and Seattle, which is true, although it's also true that those teams look worse than they really are because they've spent the last ten days playing, and losing to, the Yankees and Red Sox. Still it'll be interesting to see if the Yankees winning ways can continue when they face the Mets this weekend, or the Red Sox next.

Can the Yankees win out to finish the season on an astonishing 132-game win streak? Um, no.