The Yankees' First Homestand

The Yankees have finished their first two series of the year at home, and tonight they play against the Twins in Minnesota. They are 2-3, having had one game against the Devil Rays postponed due to weather. It's not the best start imaginable, but it's only been five games, so I'm not really worried at all. But what isn't great about the losses is that they were deserved and not just unlucky. Offensively, the Yankees have been very good, tied for 4th in the majors in runs scored, with all the teams ahead of them having played more games. A big part of the offense has been Alex Rodriguez, who leads the majors in home runs, runs batted in, and slugging percentage. Moronic fans and members of the media had already been piling on him for not being clutch this season, but he shut them up with a game winning grand slam against the Orioles. Whether he stays or goes at the beginning of the year, it looks like he'll have a great season.

The bullpen has also been very good so far this year. They haven't given much to opposing teams, unfortunately it's hard to win with your bullpen when the guys who pitch before them are giving up so many runs. The starting pitching has been very bad so far, and they haven't been helped by equally bad defense. The Yankees have committed eight errors, which is tied for the Major League lead, the worst offender being captain Derek Jeter, who has three by himself and should have four. In a play with the bases loaded, the ball was dunked perfectly in short right field for a hit, scoring two runs. Bobby Abreu fielded the ball and fired to Jeter at second, who should have had the greedy runner out easily, but Jeter dropped the ball, and the runner was safe, while allowing yet another run to score. The official scorer somehow, insanely, decided this was a double and not a single with an error, and even more insanely, Michael Kay said it was an error on Abreu, who should have made sure to magically will Jeter to catch the perfectly good throw, apparently. In addition to the errors, the Yankee field has also shown magnificently poor range, and I wonder how well they can help out the numerous ground ball pitchers on the team this way.

I don't really want to blame the starters, as they all have decent excuses for not performing well. Pavano hadn't pitched a major league game since 2005. Igawa never had. Pettitte and Mussina are both getting older and it was very cold in New York this week. And Rasner, in addition to not being very good, seemed to be having some sort of blister problem. That's still no excuse for not one of them going past five innings in their first go-around. They're going to kill the bullpen if they don't do better than this. I have all confidence they will, I'd just like to see it soon before everyone else blows out their arms. Here's a comparison of the starters' and relievers' numbers in the first five games, including Pettitte's one inning of relief:

5 Starters: 21 2/3 IP, 27 runs, 24 ER, 9.97 ERA, 12 SO, 13 BB

8 Relievers: 23 1/3 IP, 4 runs, 3 ER, 1.16 ERA, 17 SO, 10 BB

That's a dominant bullpen. If the starters can just get decent length, with this offense, the Yankees will win lots of games. Let's see if Pavano can get things started right tonight. Luckily, they won't have to face Johan Santana in this series.