THE YANKEES SHOULDN'T UNDERESTIMATE THE RED SOX

There is nothing better than watching the Red Sox sit in last place in the American League East. To me, that’s glorious, but I also understand that when my own team is struggling, anything and I mean ANYTHING can happen. After all, it’s baseball Suzyn, it’s baseball.

The Red Sox seem to turn it on when they play the Yankees and have for years.  That’s what makes this rivalry so damn special.  When we face each other, it really doesn’t matter what happened before we met up. What matters is that series.  The players come out of no where and just dominate!  Plus, there is always that seesaw between teams, that tug-o-war that goes late into the night.  That’s the Yankees and Red Sox, to me, that’s some of the best baseball of the season. 

The Yankees are starting to come out of their hitting slumber, courtesy of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Curtis Granderson.  Russell Martin has showed some signs of life and for a brief moment, Mark Teixeira came back, only to get hurt again the other night in Baltimore.  There was a report that suggests Tex will miss 10 to 14 days, read HERE. I guess that's a good problem because if he was out the rest of the season, that would be a heartbreaker, but the Yankees made a smart move, resigning Steve Pearce and they’ll platoon he and Nick Swisher at first base. Is it perfect? No, but it's stable for 14 days.

Hopefully Nick Swisher’s bat wakes up.  He was on such a tear this year but lately the dude's been streaky.  We obviously want him streaking at the positive, not the negative. But back to my point…the Yankees and hitting. It’s happening ladies and gentlemen and I believe that’s a major factor over the next few weeks.  We’re only a success though if our pitching holds down the fort and gives our bats a chance to tack on runs and not play catch-up like we’ve been doing for the past 3 weeks.  We need to play like champions, bottom line.

Do I think the Yankees can win the next 3 games? No doubt in my mind, but only if we don't walk in cocky, meaning, instead of walking in thinking this is a last place Red Sox team we’re playing and “we got this”, we should instead walk in like it's the World Series, like it's a challenge, a hurdle that we must get over. To me, winning every game is important right now. Winning the series is the second part of the puzzle.  We do those things and we are in the playoffs, but we can’t just stroll in thinking the next 3 days will be a breeze, they aren’t, they’re the Red Sox… no doubt it’s a blood bath and it should be played that way.

Guys like Dustin Pedroia still lead that team of misfits.  Guys like Pedro Ciriaco is one of the most talented underrated young athletes in baseball right now.  They make things happen, we need to counter that.  We need to score early and stomp the guys that try to bring life to that team. That’s the bottom line.

So here we go. We’ve just come off an enormous win against Baltimore 13-3 and now we enter Fenway park ready to tack on more wins in what is the closing of the season…20+ more games and every game needs to be played hard.  Can we do this? Yes, I don’t think so, I know so.

#28 is coming ladies and gentlemen… I feel it, I really do.

Let's Go Yanks! The time is now!

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