For Diehard Fans, Gut-Wrenching Defeats Just Part Of A Long Season
Ugh.
Yes, only diehard fans can know how I felt after the Yankees fell to the Nationals on Sunday, as a result of a Ryan Zimmerman two-run walk off homer. As the ball sailed over the left field fence, my heart sank, and my stomach had that sickening feeling to it. In a word, it was awful.
An exceptional baseball team will lose about 62 games a year, and knowledgeable fans understand this; yet there are five or six defeats during the year which still make your stomach turn and ruin your day or night. Yesterday’s game was one of those gut-wrenching defeats. It’s a type of defeat that leaves you just wanting the next game to start so you can forget about such a dis-heartening loss.
Now because today is June19Th, "the loss" wasn’t catastrophic. The Yankees are only one game out of first place and there are 3-1/2 months left in the season. As a matter of fact, in a strange way, "the loss" may have woken up the Yankees and their fans and letting them know the primary need for this team right now is pitching.
Saturday and Sunday’s tough defeats showed us all that the Yankees can’t keep sending out starters who only can go five or six innings. In the long run, this will kill a team because the bullpen will be shot by August.
Shawn Chacon’s poor performance on Saturday not only lost the game for the Yanks that day, but it impacted Sunday’s game too. Because the pen was depleted from the previous two games, the "Bombers" could not use Mariano Rivera in the ninth on Sunday. The end result was Chien-Ming Wang (who pitched a brilliant game again) not being able to close the deal in the ninth–something a fresh Rivera does with ease.
The Yankees now realize the shaky and short performances they are getting from Chacon and Jaret Wright are going to hurt them. Now until they pick up another reliable starter, the Yanks are going to insert Wang between Wright and Chacon in the rotation. This will alleviate the problem we saw this weekend when Wright and Chacon pitched back-to-back short games and killed the pen for Sunday’s contest.
It will be interesting to see if this change in the rotation will help. Also, from all reports, Octavio Dotel may join the team this week. For me, all I can do now is wait 11 more hours until the next game starts and the sickening feeling in my stomach subsides.
Yankee Tradition 
I thought I was the only one who was going to be sick. Wang pitched his guts out and got the L for his performance. I hope this fires up the team for the Philadelphia series, seeing as philly just got swept and must be in a bad mood as well.