Ugh. The dreaded “sometimes you just tip your cap” line came from Aaron Judge yesterday after another anemic Yankee offensive performance. Yes, you “tip your cap” in consecutive starts against Oakland A’s starters who had dreadful ERAs in both the minors and majors this year.
SU gives the Yankees credit for piecing the pitching staff together given the rash of injuries and now Chapman’s tattoo related infection on his leg (I must say that is a new one). The pitching generally keeps them in every game. But for this team, unless they hit home runs, they lose. Rizzo and Stanton are now trending into below .220 territory. LeMahieu has a toe injury and is trying to play through it but without success so far. Gleyber Torres has become an automatic out. SU has been saying for months that the Yankees are not an October team. When you face the best pitchers in the post-season, you need to be able to manufacture runs. Check out the Yankees in extra inning games. Clueless.
As stated earlier, my lower expectations have made the losses easier to take. SU was actually rooting for the no hitter yesterday (Aaron Hicks ruined that one – of course he did). The lead is still 7.5 games but 3 games in LA vs. the Angels where they never play well and then 3 in Tampa coming up. This could get interesting.
US Open starts today. The men’s bracket is a bit depleted this year with Federer (injury), Zverev (injury) and Djokovic (idiocy) out. Medvedev plays well at the Open and should win it all. You can’t count Nadal out although he has not played much of late but has an easy draw. Alcaraz may be ready to make a run. He loves the spotlight and should get his share of night matches. All eyes will be on Kyrgios but it’s hard to see him keeping it all together for 2 weeks playing in New York.
On the women’s side, it’s all about Serena. Not an SU fave (too many threats against lineswomen and umpires for my taste) but she is in the GOAT discussion and deserves a nice send-off. Coco Gauff may just be ready to break though in the next couple of weeks.
Sports Update Intergalactic 
If we do anything less than winning the first round in the playoffs this will almost rival the Red Sox debacle in 1978 with a 14.5 game lead.
I have never seen a team ranked 1 or 2 in so many positive categories more than half way through a season in which now their 2nd half stats rival teams well below 500. I can understand how a few players go on bad streaks while others go on good streaks but besides Judge they all seem to have gone bad…including most of the pitching staff. How does that happen? One day you have 20 hits and then a few days combined not equaling a total of 20 hits. It just doesn’t make sense