WATCH OUT: YANKEES MIGHT NOT BE DONE

I was watching PTI, the only show on ESPN that I still watch, when Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle mentioned that the Yankees schedule after the All-Star break is ridiculously easy. So, I looked it up, and the man is right (for once).

After the break, the Yankees are going to play 29 straight games against teams with below .500 records. If they are going to make a run of it, this would be the time. During this stretch, they play:

1. Tampa (8 games)
2. KC (7 games)
3. Toronto (7 games)
4. Chicago WS (3 games)
5. Baltimore (4 games, including completing a suspended game from 6/28)

I'm not sure you could design an easier schedule if you tried. Maybe you'd throw in the Rangers, but still, the point remains. Ugh.

I'm not sure the Yankees can take advantage of this schedule. Its not like they have been particularly hot recently, or not any more than they have been all year. Still, pretending they don't have talent is silly. This is not a great team, and I won't claim it is, but it is a talented team capable of getting hot, and facing a bunch of lousy teams in a row could help. Wang and Clemens are both pitching very well and the offense is still scoring runs. Fortunately, the majority of these games (15) are on the road so that could slow them down a bit.

At the same time, our Red Sox start the post-All-Star break schedule with eleven games against Chicago, Toronto, and Kansas City, all at home. This is probably the easiest part of the schedule all year. Then they get seven on the road vs. Cleveland (4) and Tampa (3).

It only gets worse from there. August will be positively brutal, with only nine of the 28 games at Fenway Park (??). (Who made up this schedule? George Steinbrenner?) Further, its not as if the Sox will play a ton of games against Kansas City and Tampa. Nope. In fact, the Sox get to face Seattle, New York, and the Angels all on the road. They also face LA at home.

If the Red Sox can maintain their double digit lead going through July, the Gloom 'N Doom factor (copyright, 2007, FPE) will be reduced going into a potentially painful August. If you are looking for a reason that Theo should seek to bolster the team, whether from inside or out, one look at the August schedule should do it.

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I don't particularly care about the All-Star game, so I won't be posting anything about it here. I'll try to post something else between now and when the Sox start up the second half against Toronto this Thursday night.