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.

SU has been looking forward to the NBA Finals even though I must admit that I pretty much forgot about them during the week and a half interlude.  When teams have that much time off in between games, you can generally expect some poor outside shooting in game 1.  There was some of that last night but for the most part, better than usual.

Steve Kerr won 5 rings playing with Michael Jordan and he had the chance to see how teams tried to deal with a superstar type player in the post-season.  There are usually a couple of approaches.  One is to always send help and leave open the other players and see if they can beat you.  You don’t want the star player to go off and win that way.  The other is to play the superstar man-to-man and not allow the other players to score.  You will give up the 40 points to the superstar but make him earn it with a lot of shots.

Last night, we saw that Kerr has opted for plan B.  LeBron scored 42 points on 38 shots.  Jeff Van Gundy kept commenting that he had never seen so much isolation offense in a game.  SU kept checking to see if Mike Woodson was calling the plays from the Cavaliers’ bench.  It almost worked for Cleveland as LeBron had a shot to win it and Shumpert came oh so close with a miracle attempt at the buzzer.  But SU says on a night when they had a pretty productive Kyrie Irving, this was the wrong strategy.  You need to get others involved and they have to touch the ball to be able to score.  Shumpert only took 6 shots and while JR Smith was firing and missing late and in the overtime, he made three 3’s in the first half but then never saw the ball again until late.  It’s hard to be expected to start hitting shots late when you are not part of the offense.

If Irving is done for the series now which is possible, then LeBron really needs to get others involved.  Only Kobe Bryant would appreciate the approach used last night.  SU says pass the ball.  It was like Carmelo Anthony had sneaked into the line up.  Michael Jordan always found a way to get his teammates involved and while he had Pippen, the rest of his roster really did not measure up to what Cleveland puts out there now offensively.  LeBron needs to not be taking 38 shots.

The playoffs are all about adjustments and we will see what game 2 brings.

There is a flash flood watch in the metro New York area due to all of the recent rain.  And SU has just issued a No Hitter Alert for tonight’s Yankee game with Seattle.  Felix Hernandez will be on the hill for the Mariners and SU is feeling that perfect storm of Yankee offensive ineptitude with a “tip your hat” performance as the hitters throw in the towel early on.  Why the pessimism you ask?

• Brett Gardner is either red hot or ice cold.  Lately, he be very cold.
• Stephen Drew has been benched the last 2 games but SU believes Girardi is feeling guilty and will put him back in the line up tonight.  His hit projections for June are on the 6th, 14th and 25th.
• It will be cool and damp in Seattle.  Girardi may be thinking of giving A-Rod a day off which makes it even worse.
• While as SU subscriber S. Goldman points out that the Yankees are 4th in runs scored, it feels like a lot of that offense came back in late April and early May.

SU has been wrong before but it’s important to be bold.  History could be made tonight.