I dunno. Remember 2006? Murderer’s Row plus Cano? We were tricked into thinking that the Yankees offense would bludgeon opponents on the way to yet another title. Then they go out and get shut out for 2 1/2 games, or something like that, and quietly succumb to the Tigers in round 1.
Teams that relay on offense in general, and the home run in particular, can go awfully silent in the post season. Hope that doesn’t happen.

I think the Yankees have been on cruise control. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I dunno. They are going to the playoffs nice and rested, I can’t get myself all too concerned about them scoring 4 runs per game when they’ve known they’ve had the division wrapped for a bit now.

Maybe that’s part of their preparation, we will most likely score less in October so we’ll have to pitch better – right? – so in a way they are getting their pitchers ready to pitch low scoring games.

Basically, I wouldn’t worry so much….

Any concerns about the yankees’ offense aside, at some point it may be helpful to obtain an understanding that when you take out the best of anything, its always going to look worse than what it is. Runs per game, record, whatever. The same thing goes in the other direction. I look at any stretch of games and take out the times the yankees scored 1 run thanks to being locked down by a dominant starter, and the average runs per game looks a lot better than it really is. These things even themselves out, if you only look at one side you’re only going to get part of the story, and its often if not usually very misleading.

Also, its an interesting concept that “gimme” games (whatever that means, nothing is easy if you’ve ever been around this sport, but let’s just play along for a second) only count when the yankees take advantage of weaker pitching, which again is never a guarantee in this game. Yet when they don’t take advantage of weaker pitching, which happens all the time for every team all season, its not a layup and gets lumped in with the rest of the games. And this is to say nothing of the opposite distinction, which is the offense getting stifled by good pitching.