Thursday, July 12, 2007

Stregnth of Schedule

Don't count the Yankees out from going on a great second half run. With 14 games each against Tampa Bay and Toronto, 12 more against Baltimore, and 10 against the Royals. Yup, 65% of their games are against just those 4 teams.

From August 16th to August 30th may be what makes or breaks their season. They have enough easy games to get back into it, if they can do well that half of the month, 8 games vs. Detroit, 3 against the Angels, 3 against the Red Sox, expect to see the Yankees in October.

Phil Hughes just had his first rehab start. It was only 2 innings, but once he gets up to 5 innings (possibly just 2 more outings) his next will be in the Bronx. With Wang, Pettitte, Clemens, Mussina and Hughes as the rotation, and a schedule that's not the most challenging in baseball, expect the Yankees to be making some noise.

1 comment:

Greg said...

I would laugh you off a lot more confidently if the Red Sox hadn't been stinking it up since the start of June, but they have, so I'll try to make a rational counter-argument.

That Wang-Pettite-Clemens-Mussina-Hughes may sound good, but Pettitte got by with smoke and mirrors until he got hammered in his last two starts, Clemens (although coming off of two great starts), is still 45 and making the switch back from the NL, Mussina sucks, and Hughes is still a rookie. There's a lot of talent there, but there are also a lot of questions marks. I just don't see how so many Yankee fans can be blindly optimistic about that rotation knowing full well that it's far from bullet proof.

I'm not saying that they can't make a run. I'm just saying that my hopes wouldn't be as high as some people's seem to be.