I have been watching just about every club in both leagues and I just have to say I think my Yankees will be able to win their Division, their league and beat any N.L club in 7 games of the World Series. Are the 2011 Yankees as good as the 1927 Yankees or the 1961 Yankees or even the latest Yankee Championship team in 2009-Probably not. The saving grace for the 2011 Yankees is still that they are darn good and the rest of MLB has lost a couple of steps.
The toughest thing the Yankees had to do is get solid starting pitching. Beyond belief, somehow, Giraldi has mannaged to make a really good starting 5 out of his Ace, C.C Sabathia and 4 guys hardly any team wanted. The Yanks have survived the retirement of Andy Petitte, the no-show of Phil Hughes and the non-signing of Cliff Lee. Both Garcia and Colon have become reliable 6-7 inning guys who give up 2-3 runs and keep the Yankees close while waiting for the Yankee offense to explode. All of the regular Yankee starters have winning records and respectable ERA’s. Even with Joba Chamberlain out injured for the season the Yankee bullpen has been solid and mariano Rivera is on pace to become the closer with the most saves by the end of this year.
The infield and outfield has spectacular defense. It’s a baseball highlight every game . The offense has been explosive. Some people say a team shouldn’t be so dependent on the home runs as the Yankees are but I’ll take 50 from Tex and 35 from Granderson, 30 from ARod and 10-20 from the rest of the starters (excepting Gardener and Jeter and worry about being over-dependent some other time.
Hopefully some people will agree with me on this and some won’t but in a fairly below average baseball season the Yankees are the class of baseball. The Bronx will host the Champions this fall.