Halftime

  The year was half over on Wednesday and the baseball season is halfway over for the Yankees. The Yankees record is 50 wins and 31 losses so they are on a pace for 100 wins. Just like yesterday’s 7-6 win over Toronto where the starting pitching was suspect, 3 Yankees got thrown out at the plate, Rivera blew a save in the 9th , the Yankees got just enough help from the Blue Jays inherent laziness (allowing an inside park home run on a ball the center fielder missed and no one backed up on and a double play on a botched bunt that the batter didn’t run hard on) to win the game. The pitchers wins and losses look impressive enough with Pettitte, Hughes, and Sabathia all having 10 wins, but Hughes has been awful the last month, Pettitte is 38 and starting to show some wear, and Burnett has been pathetic for 2 months. In the bullpen, no one has been reliable. Chamberlain and only Marte and Rivera have been reliable.

  The hitting has been carrying the team by scoring the second most runs in the league to make up for giving up more than runs than all but 2 teams. Cano is an all-star, Rodriguez and Teixeira are heating up, but Jeter and Posada have cooled off after hot starts. Curtis Granderson, the new center fielder has been good in the field but doesn’t get on base enough to be able to hit at the top of the order.

  Despite all the problems, the Yankees are still in first place by 2 games over the Red Sox and the Devil Rays. I think they have enough to beat out the Rays to at least get in the playoffs, but it bothers me a lot that the Red Sox have almost their entire starting lineup on the injured list, yet have overcome a poor start to be within 2 games of first place. If they can get all their players healthy, they could blow the race wide open.

  Ultimately, the goal of the regular season is to get into the playoff with the pitching staff healthy and in a groove. The Yankees understand this better than any team so hopefully they will be able to get the staffs’ problems worked out in the next 2 months for the stretch run.

  On my personal halftime, the first half of 2010 has been successful. The new job is going great and my chess rating is at an all time high (I suffered a defeat to the barefoot chess player last Thursday, but that was July 1st, the second half of the year. I’ve been playing very poorly in our blitz tournaments the last few weeks, but like the Yankees, have done just enough to win. I’m looking forward to the results when I start to play well again.