Yankees Will Face Tough Road to Playoffs

NEW YORK- If you think the Yankees will easily be able to make the playoffs, you are wrong. As of today, the Yankees are 9 games back of the division lead and 6 games back in the wild card behind the Red Sox. Those leads are not insermountable by any means but the Yankees’ schedule makes it tough to belive the Yankees will be playing postseason baseball in 2008. After all, the Yankees have had to ride the pitching of Sidney Ponson and Darrel Rasner for the majority of the season and they have faced massive amounts of injuries. The Yankees have not been able to recover from these injuries by aquiring veteran pitchers to replace Chien-Ming Wang and Joba Chamberlain, their two premier starters. As far as the schedule is concerned, the Yankees play more games on the road then they do at home for the rest of the season and long roadtrips around the country are common for the Yankees in September. Although the schedule could be a concern for the Yankees, I think that the blame for the failure has to come down on Brian Cashman. Brian Cashman had one of the worst offseasons in recent history after a season where it was obvious, help was needed. The 2007 Yankees had to make agreat second-half run to make the postseason last year before being embarrased by the light hitting Indians team in the playoffs. The Yankees needed some pitching help and it was pretty clear that Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes will not get the job done as the #4 and #5 starters. What Cashman failed to do is get some veteran help in the offseason and when a golden opportunity arose, he did not pull the trigger to get the games best pitcher, Johan Santana. Yes, I understand the mentality of staying with the young guns, but according to several reports the Yankees were offered a deal that did not include Phil Hughes and they did not accept it due to financial concerns which to me, seems absurd. The Yankees have spent massive amounts of money on injury prone pitchers like Jaret Wright and Carl Pavano but when Johan Santana, the greatest of them all was available they could not get the deal done. The Yankees will have a tough offseason if they do not make the playoffs and in my opinion, they have to fire Brian Casshman if that is the end result.

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