April 26th vs Tampa Bay - L 4-2

14 walks. 2 runs. It's like a Nolan Ryan no-hitter...

Oh well, it happens. Mo is clearly suffering from the "I need to pitch more in the early season to get my arm strength back again because I didn't throw in the offseason" blues. Hey, if he pitches like last year, I'll take some early struggles again.

Ok, first the negatives. Matsui is officially in an all-out slump, now batting .257 after going 0-4 with a walk today. Posada and Arod also had sub-par nights. It happens. A little luck and we win the game easily.

Positives? Well, Giambi continues to get on base like it's nobody's business (0-1 with 4 walks tonight). The problem? Giambi, with Matsui slumping, has no one to bat him in. I'll talk about that in a second. Wang pitched pretty well, though he did allow a lot of fly outs, walks, and only had three strikeouts. Still, he pitched better from the stretch than last game, which is encouraging. In typical Wang fashion, he kept his pitch count down despite allowing a lot of baserunners. Oh, and Damon tore up the bases, to little affect.

Two Yankees weaknesses were exposed tonight. First, Bernie Williams is our top bat off the bench. He comes in with a man on and one out, and strikes out. We need someone better than Bernie for situations like that. Second, our batting order is flawed. We saw it tonight. What happened? Giambi got on base time after time and there was no one behind him to bat him in. We're batting the #1 on base threat in the game behind our RBI guys. I cannot comprehend why Joe Torre doesn't move him to the #3 spot except for gross incompetence.

The batting order should be changed to:

Damon-Jeter-Giambi-Arod-Sheffield-Matsui-Posada-Cano-SomeoneBesidesBernie

The current lineup wastes baserunners. 14 outs and 2 runs?

Amount left on Joe Torre's Contract: 12,384,567 dollars