Catching Up

The season has been slipping away, both from me in terms of the blog and from the Yankees in terms of their hopes of sending the House that Ruth Built to its great slumber in October rather than in September. The former couldn't be helped--I have some seismic changes going on in my life that made regular posting pretty hard to manage. The latter? They say luck is the residue of design, and there's been a lot of criticism of the design Brian Cashman brought into this season. Everyone knew the path the Yanks chose--leaning on a trio of young pitchers and a lineup larded with elder statesmen--was risky, but it was also part of a larger plan by which the Yankees rebuild from within. Sadly, larger plans don't carry much weight in the Yankees' universe; at least, no one wants to hear the excuse that we can't win now because we want to set up to win in the future. In those terms, this season is likely a bust.

I haven't written the Yankees off--after seeing what the Rockies (and, conversely, the Mets) did last season, writing anyone with an over .500 record in August seems silly--but the hope that the Yanks will pass the Sox (both Red and White) and Twins for the Wild Card is coming out of my heart, not my head. My head sees the lower than 5% chance on the Playoff Odds Report and gives a shrug and a sigh.

In the meantime, as far as the blog goes, I'm relaunching things for the stretch run. We'll be fiddling with new looks for the WTDB, new links, and for the immediate future, very short entries (fewer than 200 words each) to catch us up on the various and sundry topics I missed over the last month.