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The Yankees have been struggling of late, 5-10 in their last 15 and down to just .500 for the month of May. Given the team’s injuries, this may not be all that surprising–shades of 2008, if you will–but the rotation picked a bad time to have a bunch of off starts as well.

Let’s break it down, shall we?

Offense

It only feels like the Yankees aren’t scoring.

The problem is, a large number of these runs have been scored in the late innings–not itself a problem, but an issue when the team finds itself in a 5-0 or 6-0 hole to start. Ninth inning rallies can be fun, but a baseball team has a much better chance of winning when they’re ahead in the eighth inning (blown games vs Boston and Minnesota notwithstanding).

Let’s break it down further.

Derek Jeter Jeter, in 2010, in a lot of ways mirrors the Yankees. He was great in April–.330/.354/.521 /.875 and has had something of a horrid May .224/.290/.276/.565. Although he has looked a bit better of late, he still takes a lot less pitches than you’d like to see for a lead off guy, which is a problem because lead off guys need to walk as much as they hit.

Brett Gardner Gardner, who started the season off on absolute fire, has come back down to earth of late, now hitting under .300 on the year. As a ninth hitter, in the ideal situation, the Yankees could no doubt carry his bat–but batting second, if he’s not getting lucky, can be a liability. At some point, Girardi will probably have to consider returning Nick Swisher to batting second as long as Nick Johnson is out (and this could be a while), but since it took Girardi till after July 4th last season to drop Canó from the fifth spot, I won’t hold my breath.

Mark Teixeira Writ simply, the Yankees’ power-hitting first baseman is not hitting. At all. He’s not hitting righties, he’s not hitting lefties, he’s batting .148/.324/.148/.472 in B-Ref’s high leverage situations…yikes. This would perhaps be less of a problem if any one of these applied: 1) it was still April, 2) he was hitting somewhere other than the middle of the lineup, and 3) the rest of the lineup wasn’t struggling. Yet none of these apply: it’s towards the end of May, he’s hitting third and the other Yankee hitters are having issues. I know hitters slump, but I think we’re past that point and into genuine concern territory–two months is a third of the entire season.

Alex Rodriguez A-Rod’s numbers, for him, may be on the low side, but his numbers, on the whole, are at least respectable enough. Half of his home runs have come in the last two weeks, and in the last week he has been hitting .333/.429/.500/.929–all signs that he may be heating up once again–if only the rest of the team could do so along with him.

Robinson Canó How good was Canó’s April? Despite OPS-ing .720 for the month of May, he’s still at .956 for the season. He hasn’t had a home run since the opening days of this month, but he’s hit nearly .300 in the last two weeks, and over .400 in the last one, which means that he may, in fact, be coming out of his early-mid May slump. Let us not forget that in Alex Rodriguez’s historic 2007, he was hot in April, came back to earth in May, and then took off again in June. I’m not saying that the same thing will happen…but you never know.

Nick Swisher Oh, hello there again Nick Swisher. I still can’t explain it; can you?

Francisco Cervelli Cervelli is batting way over his head right now, but given how the rest of the Yankees seem to be either hurt or struggling, it’s far more than they could have otherwise expected out of their back up catcher. Calls for Cervelli, who has almost no power, to be the starting catcher over Posada may be a bit misguided. Let’s see how he holds up playing every day for nearly a month till Posada gets back before we anoint him the catcher of the future, shall we? That said, “you got Cerv’d” is one of the better fan mantras of this season, I think.

Marcus Thames Before the season, we were told that Thames would be excellent in his ability to hit left handed pitching, and those predictions were spot on. The big issue is that with Granderson hurt, Thames is occasionally asked to play the outfield. The best way to describe Thames’ fielding would be that I might be better in the outfield, and I’m still scared of the ball.

Randy Winn Wondering why Winn didn’t get the start last night? His numbers versus LHP this season: .000/.000/.000/.000. Yeah. Um. That’s not really a good thing. He has, rightly or wrongly, become the offensive scapegoat for the season–especially now that Javier Vazquez has been pitching well–so if we take any lessons for this it should probably be that anyone who has recently played on a San Francisco Giants offense, baring Kung Fu Panda or Buster Posey (cited in advance), probably won’t magically become a better hitter when playing for the Yankees. As a defensive substitute, he works just fine, but as a starter, thus far, not so much.

Ramiro Peña: Before he was called up last season, the mantras repeated were that the kid could field, but not really hit. This year, we’re seeing why. Although Peña’s .211 BA is higher than Teixeira’s .209, Teixeira is at least occasionally working walks while Peña’s OBP of .244 is just not going to cut it. His OPS, in the .480s, is just, well, bad. Still, Peña is a good defender, and guys like Jeter and A-Rod will need days off if they’re going to be worth anything later on in the year.

Juan Miranda: I’ll leave my comments about Miranda to this: he doesn’t always hit, but when he hits a home run, it’s an absolute bomb. No Yankee Stadium cheapies for him!

Kevin Russo: Without him, the Yankees would be riding a six game losing streak right now. So, thank you Kevin Russo.

Curtis Granderson, Jorge Posada and Nick Johnson have all missed significant time with injuries

The Rotation

The Starting Rotation carried the Yankees through much of the early part of the season. At one point, Phil Hughes and AJ Burnett had ERAs under two, with Andy Pettitte just over and CC Sabathia also under three.

Alas, regression is a nasty thing, and over the last week, wherein the Yankees have won just two games, Javier Vazquez has been their best pitcher.

Now, Vazquez pitching well was something that was probably likely going to happen, as well as Hughes eventually struggling and AJ being AJ, but Sabathia’s been getting hit hard and Pettitte’s peripherals have shown we should expect a normal year for him–not a 2.12 ERA.

CC Sabathia: It’s May 24th, and Sabathia’s given up ten home runs. All of last season, he gave up 18. That said, although his last start at Citifield was, erm, not good, his start before that–seven innings of one run ball–should have been a win. His career shows that he tends to be a better pitcher later in the season; let’s hope that holds true here.

AJ Burnett: I remember the warning from a Jays fan before the 2009 season started: when AJ’s good, he’s really good. When he’s bad…. For some reason, pitching at Fenway has become some sort of Kryptonite. It’d be nice if the Yankees could figure out how to alter that, given the fact that the team plays nine games there every season. During his last start versus Tampa, for a while he looked like he had amazing stuff, and then he had the whole one bad inning thing and the Yankees were not able to recover (they were also hurt by their bullpen). Just AJ being AJ.

Andy Pettitte As I posted earlier, Pettitte’s 2.12 ERA, given his peripheral statistics, probably wasn’t sustainable. If Pettitte pitches to his career averages, that should be just fine for the Yankees. If the Yankees end up needing Pettitte to turn into Superman, then we’ll know that the season has gone very badly, indeed.

Javier Vazquez What happens when the team scapegoat turns into the team’s best pitcher over the last two weeks? He stops being the scapegoat. Is it the long layoffs that have helped Javy? Who knows? If his finger holds up well enough to make his next start, however, we’ll get a better idea. Vazquez was never supposed to be the Yankee ace, but he also wasn’t going to pitch to an 8.00+ ERA all season, either. Nice to see himself right his ship.

Phil Hughes Struggles aside, still the best part of 2010. Opponents, it seems, have caught onto the cutter, so it’s time to see how Hughes makes his adjustments. No matter how much he may (or may not) struggle between now and the end of the season, let’s make sure we don’t forget that he still has yet to turn 24. There will be growing pains’ a-plenty, but if the 2008-2010 progression is any indication, all signs point upwards.

The Bullpen

Umm. It’s not Arizona. Small victories, yes?

Sergio Mitre Might actually be an unsung hero. Both of his spot starts have been games that the Yankees could have won–one in Detroit and one against the Twins. I doff my hat to the Yankees, who thus far looked like they made the right choice in retaining Mitre over Gaudin.

Damaso Marte Okay, so maybe he’s not been as awful as I had otherwise thought, but a 1.500 WHIP for a LOOGY probably isn’t going to cut it in the long run.

David Robertson Robertson, finally, seems to have turned it around. I realize it’s fast becoming cliché, but he really was a key part of the Yankee bullpen last season, and with him pitching well, everyone else can, at last, take a deep breath. For the season opponents are hitting .333/.420 /.533/.954, but over the last two weeks those numbers have dropped to .133/.278/.133/.411. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take it.

Chan Ho Park Ten innings, five home runs. Insert your jokes about spasmodic bowels here.

Boone Logan Not a fan of guys with a SO/BB ratio of 0.86 (ie, more walks than strikeouts) in my team’s bullpen. No siree, not at all. Not even a little, because then what happens is Boone Logan walks one (or two or three) guys, and then Girardi sighs and goes and gets ChoP to actually come in and get outs, but given the whole 5 HR in 10 IP think, the thing that probably happens is that ChoP comes in and the batter hits a bomb and what was a two run game becomes a four or five run games and the Yankee offense doesn’t have enough outs left to make up those runs.

Joba Chamberlain If you’re team hands you a 5-1 lead in the eighth inning, get the guys out. Even if your teammates make errors, you’ve still got to pitch around them. And yes, I’m still mad at you for that, can you tell?

Mariano Rivera The Immortal has now given up runs in each of his last three appearances, although the number of runs has decreased each time out. The problem, writ simple: he’s lost velocity and the command, thus far this season, hasn’t been there. For most pitchers, this would be disastrous, but because Mariano is Mariano, history tells us that it’s more likely to be a minor blip on the season’s radar than anything serious. Or so we hope, as much as one can with a 40 year old closer.

Alfredo Aceves has missed significant time with a back injury.

So, there you have it. Pitchers gotta pitch, hitters gotta hit, and bullpens gotta bullpen.