These are some of my tweets from last night:
"Burnett is really fucking me up right now. This piece of shit couldn't lose last year, and now he's at 50+ in the 2nd. FML."
about 14 hours ago from Tweetie
"You know things are going bad for the Yanks when I decide that the 3rd inning is a good time to re-set my cable box."
about 14 hours ago from Tweetie
"Sox have a complete mental edge over the Yanks right now. Keep thinking of Yogi's quote, "We've been beating these guys for 100 years."
about 13 hours ago from Tweetie
"Going to sleep angry. First game of the year to really upset me. Yanks never had a chance tonight & that's not the mark of a winning team."
about 11 hours ago from Tweetie
Thankfully, there was a great Stanley Cup Game 6 on (and apparently some basketball) to take my mind off things. Because I'm not happy right now. Those two piles pictured above have the following lines for this year: Sabathia & Burnett.
Now, okay, I'll be fair and say that Sabathia has been decent. Still not lock-it-down ace form, but decent, and not far off his career averages. Those numbers still don't match up with his salary, but that's the tragedy of modern sports.
Burnett is a different story.
I don't know if Yankees fans or AL East fans or anybody who watches baseball remembers the pitcher Burnett was last year, but he was awesome. Dominant. Great fastball, nasty breaking stuff, and best of all, his pitching IQ seemed to be up. Then he came over to the Bronx and all we heard about was his relationship with Roy Halladay, and how he learned how to pitch finally, and we believed it, because we'd witnessed it.
Looks like he forgot.
For the second start in a row, it didn't look like Burnett had any idea where his fastball was going once it left his hand. And when you can't locate your fastball, your breaking stuff is useless, and so he was useless. And as he is going to learn quickly, looking useless against the Red Sox is not smart when you're wearing pinstripes.
What kills me is that this is not a National League import we're discussing here. There should be no need for adjustments or learning curves or unfamiliarity with lineups. Burnett pitched in the AL East! He literally played almost the exact same schedule for the last three seasons, except now it's easier, because he faces the Blue Jays more than the Yankees!
Get your shit straight, A.J. Stop worrying about the cream pies and the mustache and just pitch. Give Doc Halladay a call, go to a strip club, release some stress--do something--and come back ready to give your team a chance to win every fifth day.
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What's more distressing to me about this situation is bigger than Burnett or Sabathia. It's something I touched on in my tweets, and something the NY Daily News's John Harper wrote about this morning:
The Red Sox now hold the mental edge in this rivalry.
For years, the Red Sox were the whipping boys for the Yanks. Hot streaks, cold streaks, winning, losing, it didn't matter. The Yankees and their fans always felt that they were in a game against the Sox, regardless of the score, because they were. Pedro's "The Yankees are my Daddy," comment perfectly captured the extent of their dominance, and while it didn't always transfer into obvious statistics, it was amazing to see Pedro, a modern-day Koufax, out and out admit that one team had defeated the spirit of another team. There's no extra BP, no extra infield practice, no extra time in the gym in the world that can change something like that.
Then 2004 happened and everything changed.
Papi and Manny and Dave Roberts and Mo and 3-0 and 3-1 and 3-2 and series tied and Damon's grand slam and right before our eyes, the demons were exorcised, the lights were turned on, the earth began rotating in the opposite direction, hell froze over--whatever you want to call it--it happened, and the pecking order became clear.
I don't know what has to happen to get that mental edge back. And I do believe it has to be gotten back completely. There are no 50/50 splits when it comes to Yanks/Red Sox. There is a winner and a loser, and that's it.
Last night I watched as David Ortiz, who's OBP is sub-.300, hit a goddamn bomb off of Burnett. Dead center, no doubt about it, curtain call, just like old times. Right then, at 2-0 in the second inning, I knew the Yankees would lose.
And the Yankees knew it too, and that's the power of the mental edge.
Chien-Ming Wang is pitching tonight, and I'm already preparing myself to see Phil Hughes pitching by the 3rd inning.
That's the power of the mental edge.
Publicly, the Yankees won't let this 6-0 Red Sox season series statistic bother them. Jeter said it, Burnett said it, and Girardi said it. But they better let it start bothering them soon, because Jeter isn't getting any younger, and those titles he won are only getting further away, and instead of Burnett hitting teammates with cream pies, he's going to be ducking the flying debris as he walks off the mound, another crooked number on the scoreboard.
And Girardi is in the worst spot of all. Taking 27 as his jersey number to signify the next World Series win was a bold move, but 27 will quickly become the amount of weeks, days, and then minutes before he is fired, another wannabe who tried and failed to reel in the big one while under the thumb of the Yankees organization.
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I am an eternal optimist when it comes to sports. It's what keeps me going, what keeps me believing. This is why the mental edge the Red Sox have over the Yankees is even harder for me. I don't want to believe it exists, but deep down, I can't escape it.
Here's my latest tweet from this morning:
Just pulled all the old staples out of my office bulletin board. By hand. Hopefully I've atoned for all of the Yankees sins, but I doubt it.
41 minutes ago from web
Right now, I don't know what else I can do.
That's the power of the mental edge.
More soon.
JS
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