As a life-long Yankee fan and someone who follows the team closely, I have always felt that I had a good feel for the team, its potential and its issues.  I must admit that this year’s edition has me puzzled.  On paper, they are a .500 team or perhaps slightly better than that if everyone can stay healthy.  But they rarely play at a .500 level.  This team is either red hot or ice cold.  They either field well for long stretches or are as Clyde Frazier would say they are “fumbling and bumbling.”  After losing 3 of 4 to a bad Oakland team, they have now won 6 games in a row and long dormant bats like Beltran’s and Stephen Drew’s are emerging.

SU will stick to its .500 record prediction for the season for the following reasons:

• Mark Teixiera is projected to hit about 49 homeruns and drive in 130 runs as of today.  Now, in the post-PED era, hitting 20 homeruns and knocking in 95 runs gets you on the All-Star team.  There is no way he can sustain this type of performance and for him to stay healthy all year will be achievement in itself.  Therefore, others will need to pick up the slack.  I am not sure who that could be.
• The defense is just not very good.  Chase Headley is on pace for about 40 errors and Didi Gregorius is an adventure at shortstop.
• Brian Cashman has some decisions to make in the next few weeks and SU has a feeling he is going to blow these.  For example, Brendan Ryan is ready to come off the DL.  He cannot hit at all – at all.  Did I say at all?  Cashman is incredibly loyal to Stephen Drew and he actually hit a few homeruns last week although still hovering around .168 for the year.  Perella is starting to hit – had a double and homerun today.  Will he send Perella down, lose the offense and keep having Girardi roll Drew out there?  Or will he trade “high” and move Drew now, put Perella at 2nd base and have Ryan be the utility infielder?  SU would like to see them go younger and this is a chance to do that.  Plus Perella brings some life to a very vanilla team.
• The bullpen is very thin for the 6th and 7th innings.  Betances and Miller have been perfect and you are 5 games over .500.  There is no margin for error at the end of the game.  They need to find pitchers for the 6th and 7th.  Carpenter got desginated for assignment – just had a brutal couple of months – and now it’s a crap shoot.
• SU will not be fooled – I am not getting on the bandwagon.  You can say there is parity in baseball but a handful of teams always rise to the top in the 2nd half of the season.  84 wins will not win you a division or a wild card.

Great French Open and SU was sad to see Djokovic lose in the finals to Wawrinka.  But Wawrinka had 60 winners to 30 for Djokovic and he just played out of his mind.  Right now in men’s tennis, the quality at the top is just so high it’s hard to picture anyone reeling off a string of Grand Slam victories.  It’s hard to believe we will ever see an era like this one again.