WORST TEAM IN BASEBALL? HARDLY!

I was taking a break on Friday when I decided to catch up on my Twitter feed and found the most interesting exchange. It was actually a few exchanges, between Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News and a few opinionated Yankee fans. I say interesting because I thought it captured how Yankee fans, in general, are feeling.

Look, dropping seven of eight to fundamentally bad teams at home is hard to take. Believe me, I get it. I'm watching these games too. While I can appreciate how good it feels to just vent, some people clearly are losing perspective or never had it to begin with. This particular statement got my attention. "It's not even remotely an exaggeration to say this is the worst team in the American League. May not even be close." Okay, we may not have the look of a World Series contender right now. But to say we're the worst? Feinsand answered it better than I ever could. "A huge exaggeration, actually."

So which Yankee fan doesn't feel like this right now? Losing sucks and it's hard to avoid the temptation to make such statements. A bunch of us are just about ready to call for Joe Girardi's firing. Many more of us recall how George Steinbrenner would not have tolerated this and would have demoted or fired somebody by now. By the way, George did exactly that and fired Yogi Berra 16 games into the 1985 season, long considered one of the worst moves he ever made, but I digress. It's funny how the same folks were excited when we started 4-2 and were scoring 8 and 16 runs a game. Even before the season started we were bragging about the back end of our bullpen being the best in baseball.

Baseball is often a game of trends and streaks. It's not the team that makes it to October that wins the World Series. It's the team that gets hot in October. Those teams sometimes start the season poorly or go cold for a period of time somewhere in the middle of the season. Every player goes through a slump at some point. You hope that others will pick him up. Sometimes they don't, sometimes a group of players go into a slump at the same time, and sometimes you drop seven of eight.

By now you have heard the parallels with past Yankees teams. In 2005, they started 5-9 and made the playoffs. The same happened in 1997. It's why I don't buy into the thinking that this team is bad because of a 14-game stretch. I thin the Yankees have some serious issues to address, but they also have a  lot of good players to work with here. Think about that after you're done yelling at your TV after another disappointing loss.  I am not ready to give up on this season. Neither should you.

--Ike Dimitriadis, BYB Senior Staff Writer
Twitter: @KingAgamemnon







Thank you for your loyalty to Bleeding Yankee Blue. 
Please shop at the BYB store!  
On Twitter: @BleednYankeeBlu 
On Facebook, LIKE Bleeding Yankee Blue!
Don't forget to check out the BYB Hub.