Wednesday, September 01, 2004

The Guy With the 1.80 ERA Since the All Star Break.

Nope, it's not Javy Vazquez.

Even after yesterday's 22-0 loss (I miss Warner Wolf and his, "If you had the Yankees and 21 runs, you still lost!"), I still think the Yankees will cruise to 100 wins against weak September competition and win the AL East.

But if the standings hold, the wild card winner goes to Oakland, and the division winner hosts Minnesota (I checked the standings fifty times yesterday, and must have inexplicably transposed Oakland's record with Minnesota's. I blogged it, I even argued with folks about it -- sorry John, sorry Les -- insisting that the wild card winner goes to Minnesota, which was something I didn't want the Yankees to do.)

But even if the Yankees got the Twins out of the Metrodome, I'm not so sure that's a preferable matchup. Right now, Santana scares me more than Mulder, Hudson, Zito, Pedro, Schilling, Lowe.

Of course I want the Yankees to win the division, I want the Yankees to win every game. I know it could easily backfire to "try for a wild card" and no sane organization would even suggest it. I also know that it could easily backfire to actually desire a matchup with Oakland's Big Three in the first round.

But I could also foresee a scenario, if the Red Sox actually finished off this 1978 Redux and won the division, where they're down 2-zip to Santana and Radke before they're done celebrating their AL East title. Be careful what you wish for.




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh, they Yanks lost yesterday? I hadn't heard that.