I’m out of the Yankee loop for like 2 days because of graduation and finals and shit and I come back to what looks like the losing side of a civil war battlefield. Fucking bodies everywhere, mass hysteria, downtrodden people just giving up. What the fuck happened?? In the past 2 weeks, the Yankee bullpen went from arguably the best in the league to a compilation of question marks and overpaid underachievers. The guest list for the DL is overflowing, and guys who can’t get into that club are still bruising elbows and getting viral infections, just for fun. Seriously, what the fuck happened?! I come back from a couple days of class bonding retreats and storing every useless bit of information I need to cheat on these tests into my TI-83 calculator to see KFC stepping on my turf and posting a Yankee blog. I’m a-goddamn-shamed.

Year 1998 Yankees would have been able to stay afloat with this sort of devastation. Even some of the early 2000 teams would have had a chance. But, as much as it pains me to say it, this year’s team will not do anything significant if it doesn’t get healthy. The Rays are solid, the Blue Jays are teasing all of our dicks again, as they do every April/May, and Baltimore looks… good? (The little paperclip in my Microsoft Word just jumped up and said, “Whoops! looks like you made a mistake and put the words “Baltimore” and “good” in the same sentence. Want me to correct this?” Not this year, clippy!) Bottom line is this: the Yankees aren’t going to be able to coast through the early months and then turn it on in the summer like they have in years past. New contenders are emerging, and it’s going to take a consistently high level of play to do something special. That can only happen if the team stops going shot-for-shot with injuries.

P.S.- Was this like the 7th Yankees/Baltimore series of the year already? If I see Wei-Yin Chen shut that lineup down one more time, I’m chugging bleach.