On August 10, 2011, Kevin Kernan (whose hair actually looks worse than mine) of The New York Post wrote the following:
If Mo goes south, the Yankees have no chance.
Joe Girardi’s club can live with A.J. Burnett being the Mediocre Man just trying to have fun. They can survive for a time without Alex Rodriguez and they can weather Jorge Posada’s struggles that cost him his DH job.
But if Mariano Rivera falters, the Yankees might as well call it a season. They go as Mo goes.
The New York Post is a tabloid – I get that. It’s a News Corp publication, which means you have to crank up the crazy dial to 11, and that’s fine, too – yet their sports reporting is usually OK – at least, in comparison to the rest of the paper. (Page 6 not withstanding.) But lets not lose our minds completely. Let’s take it piece by piece, statement by flawed statement:
"If Mo goes south, the Yankees have no chance."
I take that to mean either the Yankees won’t make the playoffs or the Yankees will immediately falter in the playoffs without Mo. According to sportsclubstats.com (as of today), the Yankees currently have a 97% chance of making the playoffs. That sounds pretty good to me, and Mo has not been throwing his best ball of late.. (As of today, baseballprospectus.com has them at 99%.) Oh, and they just took two out of three from the closest wild card contender and their 26 games over .500, so yeah… probably going to the playoffs. But maybe that’s nto what Mr.Kernan means – maybe he means that without Mo being Mo, the Yankees can’t win a playoff game… although, as we all know, there are games a team can win without using a closer – they’re usually called blowouts. For example, if the 9th inning roles around (home or away) and the Yankees are up by 7 runs, they’re probably not going to bring in the closer. Why waste an outing? Let’s look at it this way: suppose Mo’s recent struggles are the beginning of a trend and not a deviation from the norm; if that’s the case, then obviously the Yankees won’t use Mo as their closer – they’ll turn to David Robertson or the grossly overpaid Rafael Soriano, who lead the league in saves in 2010.
Joe Girardi’s club can live with A.J. Burnett being the Mediocre Man just trying to have fun.
Sure, I guess they can… although when your starting pitcher gets smacked around, its pretty hard to overcome, and if you’re losing in the 9th inning, it doesn’t really matter who your closer is, because you won’t need him.
They can survive for a time without Alex Rodriguez and they can weather Jorge Posada’s struggles that cost him his DH job.
The Yankees have done a lot more than surviving since A-Rod went down – he’s been gone for over a month now and again, the Yankees are 26 games over .500! Jorge Posada (who I have the utmost respect for… well, taking himself out of the line up that day kinda hurt my image of him) has essentially stunk all year and, again, not to keep waiving their record around, but his performance isn’t exactly killing them, and now that he’s relegated to off the bench duties only, he’s really only guilty of taking up a roster space, which won’t even matter when rosters expand in September. So yeah… ‘survive’ – ‘weather’ – gotcha.
But if Mariano Rivera falters, the Yankees might as well call it a season. They go as Mo goes.
Again, the Yankees bullpen has been a strength this year… imagine if they still had Joba Chamberlain? They lost that guy and his regained velocity, biting slider and swagger and didn’t skip a beat. Mo is great, and he’s still my first choice for closer (above any guy in baseball), but he’s not the only reliever on this team, and the job that David Robertson (cough 2011 all star cough!) has done this year is totally overlooked when you say something like ‘They go as Mo goes" – not to mention the presence of Rafael Soriano, who has been a beast since coming off the DL.
I understand that Mr. Kernan needs to help The Post sell papers and writing "relax, everything is fine" probably isn’t the best way to do that, but at least it would be true. And, at least he wouldn’t look so foolish, not to mention that reporters have been writing this particular ‘Yankees can’t win without Mo’ article for nearly 10 years (specifically after any time he struggles), and Mo always reverts back to himself and proves him wrong. With no drop in velocity and the fact that he doesn’t completely implode (see yesterday’s save for more details), the only other thing that I think Mr. Kernan could be suggesting is that there is a chance that Mo has forgotten how to pitch, and that seems unlikely.
Look, nobody believes in Mo as much as I do (I cross out "God" on all my greenbacks and write ‘Mo’), and it’s always shocking to see him not be perfect, never mind fail at saving a game. But the fact is, the guy is over 40 and he’s not actually God – he’s a human being, and he’s defiantly not a machine. I saw him and Jorge Posada do an interview on "Yankess on Deck" during which he forgot the English word for toothpaste… he’s just a man, all be it an extraordinary one.
Mo saves… just not every time, and that’s OK. He’s still the best there is.
Jamie Insalaco
