1. Jeter’s range at short is not what it used to be. Instead of playing him closer to the middle, and ARod a bit more off the line, they don’t. They continue to play Jeter as if its the 1998 version of Jeter and that hurts their defense. For a pitching staff that pitches to contact, its amazing to me they haven’t made that adjustment.

2. Minky batting second tonight. Another example of being unprepared. I would think, with a rookie pitcher on the mound, the idea would be to make the lineup a bit more top heavy (Cano?), or give you more options (Cairo), than putting a guy hitting .156 in the lineup. That moves simply makes no sense.

3. What I call, the “Torre Substitution Patterns”. He did it Friday night in Boston and he did it the other night in Tampa. Premature substitutions and it cost them both games. Again, not learning from your mistakes. Another sign of being unprepared.

Their starting pitching is problematic. No question about it, Pete. But, equally problematic is the inconsistency Joe has had this year with who he has used in the bullpen, as well as the above examples. Let’s face it. Mixing and matching is no longer Joe’s forte.

Sometimes, a team just gets too comfortable with a manager. That seems to be the case with this team right now. Hey, I hope the guy can get things going.

But, if they continue to lose, it gets tougher and tougher to keep him, especially since we all know he isn’t going to be back next year.

If its going to be a “rebuilding year”, whether its because of injuries, ineffectiveness or its just plain time, better to do it with the guy who is going to be here next year than the guy who isn’t.

One last thing on the subject. Tonight’s loss doesn’t bother me. Tonight, is what I call a “baseball loss”. Burnett has pitched great and that’s the way it goes some nights.

My big issues are the games (5 already this year) that the Yankees had 3 run leads or greater and fundamental missteps by Joe cost them (at minimum) 3 of those wins and the way he has misused the bullpen to the point of ineffectiveness this year.

He isn’t the first manager that has had to deal with injuries. He has just done a very poor job dealing with them.

That’s as much a reason as to why they are in last place right now as anything else happening with the team, IMO.

“The fallacy of Invincible Ignorance mimics the consistency that comes from having a well-thought-out position. However it asks us to overlook the distinction between rational consistency and sheer stubbornness.”

I grabbed the above from some academic website.

We have a lot of folks posting here who suffer from this particular problem. The difficulty with curing these folks is that no matter what you say, how rational and correct you are, these folks remain unswayed because giving in to another person’s logic is a sign of weakness. I have a large number of immediate relatives (and one ex-wife) who suffer from this very thing. We should start a foundation to fight this.

Do you guys think that whacking Torre is the solution? It may be a little extreme but…..

Have good night fans!!

Go YANKEES!!!!!

How is a baseball team unprepared and how can you tell that? This isn’t football or basketball where there is a team concept to offense and defense. This is an individial sport. Each player prepares himself. Is Joe supposed to give the Knute Rockne speech every day and say “Oh by the way, look out for delayed steals?”

Their starting pitching stinks. Once it gets better, they will start to win. Joe Girardi can’t change that.

“You are on borrowed time Joe Torre. You better win this weekend, or you won’t be going to Texas.”

You’re not planning to take matters into your own hands are you, SJ? I mean, don’t we gotta get permission? I don’t think we can just whack Torre without getting permission – - you know, talk to Tony. Tony Soprano. Look, just scare the guy, OK? Don’t hurt him….