Raf–My general point is not that freak things can’t happen in the playoffs or that home field advantage is the be-all, end-all solution to everything.

The point is that this team is a better ball club than the 2004-2006 teams and there is no reason to mess with anything. The Yanks are more than capable of playing at a torrid pace for the next 25-30 games.

Bullshit. No Bubba-Sheffield collisions on the road in Game 5. No moronic Gary Sheffield experiments at the end of the season. No Tom Gordon blowing up 8th innings at Fenway. Petal to the metal.
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You can’t assume the collision would not have happened, there are way too many variables to consider.

Sheffield @ 1b was a way to get his bat in the lineup. Nothing to do with home field advantage.

Assuming you’re referring to Gordon’s 2004, the Yanks had homefield advantange in that ALCS.

Dan, Pete Abe, ESPN and no doubt many others in RSN are trying to come up with subtle justifications as to why the Yanks should take their foot off the gas pedal: They need to rest up; they can’t get home field anyway, so what’s the difference, etc…

Bullshit. No Bubba-Sheffield collisions on the road in Game 5. No moronic Gary Sheffield experiments at the end of the season. No Tom Gordon blowing up 8th innings at Fenway. Petal to the metal.

The Yanks are the best team in baseball and they’re playing like champions. 19-21 wins to first place, home field, and the Canyon of Heroes.

~~But the Yankees probably won’t get home field if they win the division anyway; the angels and indians will probably have better records than them, meaning that each gets home field no matter who theyre playing.~~

I disagree with this.

Right now, the Yankees have 88 wins, the Angels have 91 and the Indians have 90.

But, the Angels magic number is 1 and the Indians magic number is 3. Both teams should clinch this weekend. So, the last week of the season is garbage time for them. It’s not a reach to say that the Indians and Angels will wind up with 95 wins at the end of the year.

To top that, the Yankees would need to go 8-2 in their last 10 games – and lock up the best record in the AL, and home-field through out the post-season.

It’s not impossible for this to happen.

a) Your stats on the Wild Card teams are enough to convince me that there is no reason to fear the Wild Card as a way into the post-season.

b) There is no evidence that September performance, whether it’s pitching, hitting, or defense, correlates in any way to post-season performance.

c) The Yankees play in a pitchers’ park- offense is depressed by 5% in Yankee Stadium in 2007. Therefore the home/road splits of most of the Yankees’ pitchers is not surprising.

d) “If pitching is important in the post-season.” Of course it is, and yes perhaps moreso than hitting. It stands to reason that you would then want your top pitchers going in post-season games, and not having to pitch Kennedy, Hughes, or Mussina in Game 1. As another poster and I have shown this week, the current (six man) rotation doesn’t really need a lot of tweaking to be set up optimally, and without tweaking it puts Yankees’ pitchers in fine shape for the post-season. “Going all out” for it is on the one hand unnecessary and on the other hand counter-productive.

d) What dan said- the Yanks aren’t likely to get home-field even if they win the AL East.

But the Yankees probably won’t get home field if they win the division anyway; the angels and indians will probably have better records than them, meaning that each gets home field no matter who theyre playing. If the Yankees win the division, they’ll still have the 3rd best record in the league in all likelihood, meaning that they would open the playoffs in either los angeles or cleveland anyway.