Wild cards are bogus.

The fans don't care, and they shouldn't. 

John Harper suggests the Giants can spoil the Yankees' playoff hopes. The Giants are too late. We're talking about a team that has been swept by the Mets and the White Sox; a 4th-place team that has been outscored about 20 runs this season. The full roster provided a little short-lived rejuvenation, but let's get serious.

The Lind HR felt like sweet relief:

"As Adam Lind pulverized a Joba Chamberlain slider Thursday night, sending it deep into the right-field stands and burying the chance of another come-from-behind Yankees victory, the ugly truth emerged:

These Yankees have been too terrible, too often. They have virtually no chance to qualify for the playoffs, and no right to do so, either, even in baseball’s watered-down format.

Another must-win game turned into a tepid, 6-2 loss to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre, and at 80-73, the Yankees are gasping for their final breaths. They head home Friday coming off a roller-coaster, 4-6 road trip through three cities that likely will be remembered as season-killing."

You can't kill something that is already dead.


"It’s almost certainly too late. Until Girardi made the highly questionable decision to call upon Chamberlain to keep the Yankees’ deficit at 3-1 in the bottom of the seventh, you thought that maybe the Yankees could pull off another late-night theft as they did in Wednesday’s 4-3 thriller. The problem is, it’s hard to keep winning games in that fashion.

When Chamberlain spit the bit, the hope evaporated. A bases-loaded, one-out rally in the ninth proved mere window dressing.

Girardi defended his choice of Chamberlain, both in starting the seventh and then staying in the game against Lind, who entered the at-bat with eight hits in 18 at-bats against the fallen prodigy. Shawn Kelley has been shaky since returning from his injury hiatus, David Phelps is just back off the disabled list, and Girardi wanted to save Adam Warren for the eighth. And Chamberlain had thrown two shutout innings in two appearances against the Red Sox. Lefty Cesar Cabral is an inexperienced rookie.

'Where do you want me to go?' Girardi asked reporters.

It’s easier said than done, but anywhere besides Chamberlain, once he walked Munenori Kawasaki and gave up a seeing-eye single to Brett Lawrie. Not given how bad Chamberlain, now the owner of a 4.97 ERA, has looked for the duration of this season."

Hughes and Chamberlain should have been abandoned mid-season, just for the sake of the fans who stuck with this team. Watching Hughes and Chamberlain on the mound is a big downer. It's fitting that Joba went out like a punk and took the team down with him.