AROD & COMPANY NEED HITS NOW!

I know, I’m not the only one who is thinking this, but there's been so much written and so much talked about when it comes to Alex Rodriguez, I needed to give my 2 cents.  So let’s just be honest and lay it out on the table….ARod just isn’t cutting it right now and he hasn’t for a while.

Eventually, push comes to shove and it is time to make the adjustments. Granted, it is now the postseason and one could argue that this push should have already happened for Alex, but that isn’t the point I am trying to make. Look, BYB has been pretty candid about it and when we wrote THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD'S ON ALEX RODRIGUEZ, it upset some of the Yankee faithful so we revisited it again in REVIEWING MY ALEX RODRIGUEZ RIPPING. Maybe you agree or maybe you don’t, but I think we can all agree that this clearly this isn’t working and it’s time to start thinking about ARod's  future, perhaps moving him permanently down in the order, or thinking about the future of ARod.

Who knows what is really going on with ARod, but the fans do know that this version is not what we expect. This postseason has been disastrous and for the record, it's not only him.  Our bats have holes in them. Take a look at this:

Alex Rodriguez:          2-16  9 K

Curtis Granderson:    1-16  8 K

Nick Swisher:            2-15  3 K 

Robinson Cano:         2-18

  
We got trouble, don't you think?  Look, Derek Jeter and Ichiro are doing their part by getting on base; we need someone else to drive in runs. ARod, and those others, aren't doing that, so it’s time to start thinking about switching things up a bit and trust me, looking at this postseason and looking how lost someone like ARod or even Curtis Granderson is, I'd be willing to move them down in the order.

There’s a cliché in baseball that says a team’s best hitter should bat in the three spot.  I believe in this idea and it can’t hurt to try something new.  Maybe you don’t buy into the cliché, but can we really afford to keep this lineup the way it is? Can we keep loading up the bases and walking off the field with missed opportunities? We have all season, the Yankees have not figured out how to fix this yet and here we are trying to overcome it in October against the Orioles, it's amazing.  This isn’t the time to sit back, wait and hope that Alex and the gang find that magic, we should have found it already.

 Look, we need Alex. He's a huge part of this team. When he is right, he can put that ball anywhere on the field. Right now, he is far from being right. This year we experimented with moving Mark Teixeira out of the 3rd spot and that worked out for us. It’s time to start moving the guys that are producing into the front RBI spots in the lineup. When Raul Ibanez and Eric Chavez are in the lineup, move them up in the order. When they are in the lineup, they are making producing runs, or at least making productive outs. Maybe moving Alex down in the sixth or seventh spot will help take off some of the pressure, not fifth, further down the line. As we saw last night, it didn't really work.

It stinks, the Yankees are finding ways to lose games and they're doing it because they aren't scoring runs, from guys that are our big run producers.  This isn’t the time of year to play “wait and see”.  It is time to play good, strategic baseball. Today it's win or go home for a long cold winter, nobody wants that if you're a Yankee fan! This is not about ego, and it can’t be anymore. This is about getting hits, scoring runs, and getting to the next round. We need all batters 1-9 to contribute, it doesn’t matter what spot you bat in. At the end of the day, all that matters is that we got the big hit. Message to the Yankees... this means you!

Now... Let’s go Yankees!

--Jeana Bellezza, BYB Writer and Editor

Twitter: @NyPrincessJ


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