A Lost Road Trip

So first off, I apologize for being so sporadic recently. I've been dealing with some personal issues which will hopefully sort themselves out, but it looks like I haven't been missing much.

This was, after all, a make-or-break road trip for the Yankees, and, well, when you only win three games out of ten, things don't look very good.

It's hard to pinpoint where it all went wrong.

It's easy enough to blame the injury to Joba as a death knell or contend that the Angels are simply unbeatable, but the fact is, the Yankees had a legitimate chance to win every game they played on the road trip.

In at least one of the Texas games, all of the Anaheim games and two of the Minnesota games, the Yankees had a physical lead. They only won three of those games, and in only two of the games, if memory serves, did they not relinquish a lead.

Teams that play baseball in October, it should be noted, know how to keep leads once they have them.

There wasn't any one part of the Yankees that has been more at fault than the other--when they hit, they didn't pitch, when they pitched, they didn't hit, when the starters couldn't go deep, the bullpen was overworked and prone to giving up even more runs.

The ERA of the pitching staff, once one of the best in the majors, has skyrocketed since the eight game win streak.

To add injury to insult---err, reverse that---it now looks like Derek Jeter and Dan Giese are hurt as well.

It's not time to write 2008 off just yet--speaking as an optimist, I won't until the Yankees are mathematically eliminated--but the team is fighting for its life right now, and the fight is not going in their favor, at all.

Miracles can happen, but the Yankees shouldn't have to rely on that for October baseball.