New York Yankees: Playoff Hopes Are Slipping Away

Following Saturday’s third straight loss to the Red Sox, the New York Yankees find themselves looking up at five teams who are ahead of them in the sprint for the final Wild Card in the American League. The end is near if they can’t right this flailing and failing ship beginning on Sunday.

The New York Yankees have shown none of the resilience needed following Friday’s heart wrenching loss in the final inning of Friday’s contest. They haven’t necessarily played badly in this series but they have played well enough to lose, which is almost as bad.

To add insult to injury, both (Pulled right hamstring) and Jacoby Ellsbury (right knee injury) left Saturday’s game early . There is no further information as to how much time they could lose. But if the Yankees can’t right this rapidly sinking ship swiftly, when they return becomes a moot point.

Okay, so how black do we want to paint this picture? The Yankees have now dropped four in a row including three straight to the Red Sox following losing two of three to the Dodgers. It adds up to six out of seven down the drain in the past week. Worse, there are now five teams that the Yankees need to climb over to win the final Wild Card spot, and that includes the Mariners who came out of nowhere.

Bleak enough? Probably, but there’s still plenty of fight left in them even if there is not much time. Here’s the way Joe Girardi explained it to the New York Daily News following Saturday’s game, “I still believe in this team,” Girardi said. “You can’t look too far ahead, that’s the bottom line. You have to take it a day at a time, see where we’re at and keep fighting. We had a really good week the week before, we have not had a good week and we need to turn it around.

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Easier said than done but you can’t argue with him because he’s right. The remaining schedule is set and the Yankees have everything in front of them. All they need is a 8-2 run over the next ten games and we’re right back to proclaiming the Yankees as the sleeper team of the 2016 season.

You might even argue that the veterans on the team are hungrier than the Baby Bombers who don’t know any better yet. After all, Mark Teixeria is counting down the days he will be spending in a major league uniform. Think he’s not motivated? And how about the other guys too who have been pretty much counted out since the Yankees trade deadline splash going for youth – they’ve got to be pumped and some of them like Gardner, Ellsbury, Hicks, and McCann could even be auditioning for a job with the Yankees next year if a trade possibility emerges over the winter.

In this game, you learn to go with the flow. At the moment, the Yankees are struggling to keep even their heads above water. The current is swift though for all of the teams involved. As the Yankees have learned over the past week, life and death in the standings can be cruel and swift as the ever intriguing mysteries of a baseball season moves on.

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We were probably too high last week and now we’re definitely too low. Where she stops nobody knows. Welcome to a major league playoff race.

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