The Yankees managed to pull off a big game on the last day before the All-Star Break:
The Yankees arrived at the final day before the All-Star Game break yesterday with no chance to even their record. The best they could hope for was to make an emphatic statement that things will be better in the second half, and they did that by punishing a nemesis, the Los Angeles Angels, by 12-0 at Yankee Stadium.
“In some sense, you wish you could keep playing when you’re playing good,” Derek Jeter said.
Too often this season, it has not been much fun for the Yankees to come to work. So it was encouraging that, as they scattered, they wished they could play more.
Yet with a record of 42-43, there is still a long way to go, and the math for them is daunting. In a one-game-at-a-time sport, the Yankees must think bigger.
“We need to fight our way back to 20 games over .500,” Manager Joe Torre said. “That’s basically where we need to go, and hopefully up from there.”
A final record of 20 games over .500 would give the Yankees 91 victories, which probably would not be enough to reach the postseason. A more manageable goal is to win each series, and the Yankees have taken their past two by winning five of seven against the Twins and the Angels.
“Minnesota and Anaheim are a lot like National League-style teams that give you fits,” Alex Rodriguez said. “This was a good win today and a good series.”
Rodriguez, as usual, was a big part of the offense, passing two Yankees Hall of Famers on the way. He slammed his 494th career home run, 1 more than Lou Gehrig, and collected four runs batted in to give him 1,433, three more than Yogi Berra.
Barring a collapse in Boston, I fear that this is pretty much a lost season.
