A Week Gone By And Not Much Has Changed

Greetings from the Hannover airport, gang.  I got here way too early for my flight to Paris and had to pay for wifi, but whatever.  The important thing is my week of work training is over, the time gap between me and the baseball world is starting to shrink as I head back home today, and the blogging can resume as normal.

At first glance, it looks like I missed a lot in the last week.  Masahiro Tanaka has gone on the DL with a torn UCL that is going to eventually require TJS and the resulting lost year  no matter how good the Yankees think their rehab strategy is (spoiler alert- it's not).  There are 3 new starting pitchers in the rotation in the form of the called up Shane Greene and the traded for Brandon McCarthy and Jeff Francis.  None of that inspires confidence, but those are pretty big changes, right?

Not really.  The reality of the situation is that nothing has changed in Yankeeland.  For better or worse really.  They went 3-3 in the past week with a -4 run differential, putting them at 46-46 on the season with a -38 run differential.  They still can't hit (looking at you, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran), their bullpen is still drastically overworked and not deep enough to account for that, and they're still just close enough to the playoff races - 5 out in the division and 2.5 out of the wild card - to not really be out of them while at the same time not really qualifying as "contenders".  The All-Star break is coming at the perfect time for them, but there's little reason to expect the second half to be any better or different than the first.  This year's team has officially become more mediocre and more boring than last year's.  Gotta love Yankee baseball!

P.S.- Sorry about your broken face and concussion, Carlos.  Gotta keep that head on a swivel, chief.