YANKEES GOT BOSTON RIGHT WHERE WE WANT THEM

Another game, another blowout. God bless Comerica.

Photo: Getty Images

There's nothing quite like Tigers in the tank to make a Yankee team playing .500 ball since the trade deadline look like kings of the jungle.  With two games gone and one left to go against the second worst pitching staff in MLB, the Bombers have outscored the home team a combined 23-6.

That makes the Yanks 21-4 in games decided by six runs or more and undefeated in 11 games decided by eight runs or more. In fact, they're the only team in MLB that hasn't lost a game by more than seven runs -- which makes them, one might say, blowout-proof.

Photo: Getty Images

Or put another way,  when they don't suck, they really blow.

So now all they have to do is keep the hot bats sizzling and hope the Red Sox don't do the same for long. And speaking of our old pals up the 'pike, you might recall a few days ago I wrote about the double-edged sword of sucking ahead of the stretch run and how "There's at least one nice thing about rough patches and trolls. When you're in one, the other tends to stop looking back."

Well, wouldn't you know that venerated dean of the Boston beat writer Pete Abraham at the Globe went right out and made me look prescient on the very night the Yanks put up their second consecutive double-digit hurt on those reeling Motor City kitties.

Now, I admire and respect Peter at least as much for his skill and stylings as a reporter and writer as for his fierce devotion to the preservation of all things geezer rock.

But setting aside Boston's rich and varied history of choke aside, to consider the division is somehow safely in Boston's pocket this far out with such an unremarkable lead as 4.5 games and that any change would be "unexpected" is the not only the height of group think folly but flat-out flies in the face of logic.

Why? Due to the simple fact that they've already coughed up  just such a lead to the Yankees this very season -- and they did it just last month. And they did it in a far shorter span of time.

Photo: Getty Images

The Yankees were four games behind the Red Sox on July 4th and barely three weeks later on July 27th that lead was gone and they were in a virtual dead heat.

That was less than 30 days ago, Pete. Think the Sox got better and the Yankees got worse over the last 30 days?

Think again.  Momentum is a funny thing. It can plays all kinds of tricks on the mind. It can make a bad team believe it's better than it is and a good team believe it's worse. But at the end of the day, teams, like  players, regress back and forth from their mean and they are what their records and stats say they are.

And a home run or win in April counts the same as a home run or win in September -- and a four-game fade in July can happen again just as easily in August or September, especially in this jungle of division cannibals where everyone who isn't in the race always tries extra hard to take down those who are.

Photo: Getty Images

And especially when we've got key players like Marte, Holliday and Bird about to return from the DL and they just put a key guy like Jackie Bradley Jr. on ice for awhile alongside David Price, who doesn't seem to be progressing well at all.  So thanks Pete for what may be our first  indication the Sox have once more stopped looking back to see if our guys are stuck in the muck or gaining on them.

It's deja vu all over again and the timing couldn't be better.

We've got them right where we want them.

--Barry Millman
BYB Writer
Follow me on Twitter: @nyyankeefanfore

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