State of the Universe

What if on April 1st I had told you that on June 9th:

The Yanks would be in 1st place. Mark Teixiera would be, argueably, the MVP of the AL. ARod would be playing everyday. Jorge Posada would be catching most of the time. Robinson Cano, Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon, Melky Cabrera & Posada would all be hitting around .300. The starting staff would be just as it was slated to be in spring training and Mariano Rivera would have 14 saves.

Not sure about you, but I would have signed up for that in an instant. Now, we all know what it's taken to get to this point. It has not been all smooth sailing. But the Yanks are in good shape.

The two biggest question marks at this point for the team are Chien Ming Wang and the bullpen.

Wang pitches on tomorrow against Boston. In his first start back in the rotation, he looked real good for 2 innings. But then he got beat up after that. The sinker and velocity were there but not consistently. Maybe it's just a matter of building up stamina since he hadn't started in so long. I'm not expected him to be great tomorrow. Just serviceable would be just fine. Something like 6 innings, 7 hits, 3 runs would be a step in the right direction.

As for the bullpen, it's looking better? But one reason the bullpen has looked better in the past month is that Girardi has started to rely on the guys who are the most reliable. Sounds simple doesn't it? But I give Girardi credit. He gave Veras, Alabaladejo, Ramirez & Marte ample time to prove they could get the job done. Times up. Albaladejo & Ramirex are in Scranton, Marte's on the DL and Veras has been relegated to mop-up duty.

Brett Tomko, Alfredo Aceves, David Robertson have been getting it done. Phil Coke, although not dominating, hasn't been awful. But the wild card may be Phil Hughes. Last night there was a Phil Hughes sighting and it looked good. He was hitting 95, 96 on the gun.

Who knew he could even throw that hard??? Maybe I'm wrong but I've never known him to throw more than 94 in the big leagues. I know a reliever can let it go a little more but are you telling me that a guy like Justin Verlander who hits 99 as a starter would be hitting like 103 out of the bullpen??? Verlander to the bullpen!!!!

But I digress. Having Hughes in the bullpen could be a nice piece to the puzzle after all. That's if the Yanks choose to use him more than just once a week in that role as they currently seem to be doing. (Look, if you're not going to use him more than that, send him down to Scranton to get regular work.)

More bullpen help is on the way. Brian Bruney should be back (again) by next week to take back the 8th inning set up job, and add a little more depth.

So, things are looking good. The offense is clicking and the other starters have been reliable, so getting something positive out of Wang and the bullpen, would make the Yanks very tough to beat the rest of the season.