Yankees Eliminated But It's OK

Last night the Yankees kept up their recent winning ways and beat the Toronto Blue Jays to keep from being eliminated from the playoffs. Unfortunately for them the Red Sox were beating the Indians at the very same time to eliminate the Yankees. Thing is I'm not really that upset. I mean obviously I'm sad that I won't be watching playoff games this year and that my Mets fan friends are probably going to be more annoying than ever, but the Yankees couldn't keep winning forever and I knew that. Also coming into this season I was ready for a let down. Using a young pitching staff has advantages, but they are mostly long term. Hardly does a team which is relying on guys under 25 to make up about 60 percent of its rotation win many games no matter how good the rookies are. But the gamble the Yankees took was a good one because they needed to get out of the rut they were in recently where they barely make the playoffs and then are easily over matched once there. By taking this one step back, OK it may have been two steps back as none of the starters really logged as many innings as they wanted, but soon they will be in a position to take a few steps forward and hopefully begin a new dynasty. Besides this years team wasn't even that bad. It took a lot of little things to go wrong for them to miss the playoffs. Things started early when Jorge Posada came down with a lingering shoulder injury. Without Posada's bat in the lineup the offense took a beating and I'm sure it couldn't have helped the pitching staff. Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy shouldn't have been this bad. It is expected that young pitchers are going to struggle, but it's September 24 and neither of them have one win in the majors this season. Nobody really expected that, back in April it would have been conservative to guess they'd combine for 10 wins this season. Robinson Cano had an unexpected terrible season. Coming into this year his worst season was his rookie year where he still managed 34 doubles, a .297 average, and a .778 OPS. During the first half of 2008 he couldn't have gotten much worse batting .246 without much pop, and a .643 OPS. Then when he was expected to have a big second half he came up short. For the most part he hasn't let it effect his defense, but in a few big spots he came up looking like he wasn't even trying and cost the Yankees when it counted. Poorly timed injuries also lead to this team's downfall. Heading into the second half of the year the Yanks were finally starting to get their stuff together, but Chien-Ming Wang went down on June 15 and with him went the rotations chances at staying consistent. Without their top starter that meant guys like Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson would be forced to continue making starts which eventually came back to bite the Bombers in the ass. Losing Joba Chamberlain from the rotation for good on August 4 further exacerbated the situation when the team still had a chance for a comeback. The list of bad omens didn't end there. Derek Jeter played poorly in the first half due to a hit by pitch on his hand which he never received X-Rays for and probably played for weeks with a broken hand. There is also Melky Cabrera to consider, he was the team's starting center fielder who played so poorly he lost his job to an outfield platoon. With all of this the team is still 15 games over .500 and have a legit chance at getting to 90 wins and in the past 10 years two teams have won the World Series with a worse record than 90 wins. They may even finish this season with a better record than three playoff teams. So they didn't miss by much. They are also expected to turn over a good portion of the roster which should give them the flexibility they need to put together a good off-season. Finally, they have a decent group of young talent which should be able to produce a few players which will stick around this team for years to come.