It's over

I really thought that this was our year. I thought that our combination of pitching, defense, and one of the best offenses in the game's history would be enough. But it was not. Who is to blame? A lot of people. Brian Cashman. Joe Torre. Randy Johnson. Jaret Wright. Alex Rodriguez. Gary Sheffield. Robby Cano.

There is a lot of blame to go around, that is for sure. I'm not going to play the blame game with the players. They performed poorly, as a whole. I am going to critisize Joe Torre and Brian Cashman, who don't have a 103 mph fastball as an excuse.

Jason Giambi should have been in this game. He's our best overall hitter. He's chews up right handed power pitchers. I really do not understand how Joe Torre can believe that Gary Sheffield would be better on either side of the ball than Giambi. Sheffield sucked at the position this year in his brief time there. In the games that I watched (1, 2, 4), Sheffield did not make at least five plays which an experienced first baseman would. In addition, Sheffield did exactly nothing with the bat.

Torre did not handle Arod correctly this series. Hit him 8th? 6th? We won 97 games with Alex Rodriguez batting 3, 4, or 5. Why all of the sudden change things? Torre was creating a self-fulfilling profesy.

Brian Cashman failed at creating a deep enough pitching staff for Torre to use. There are going to be a lot of changes this offseason. I think that we could be facing the real possibility of Alex Rodriguez not being in New York next year.

The offseason just got a little longer. I will be spending it talking about next year, reviewing any Yankee moves, and talking about the Yankee farm system. I sincerely hope that George Steinbrenner does not make any irrational decisions ala the 2004 offseason and set this team back signficantly. The future is bright, even if this year's outcome is not.