New York Yankees Open the Season Like Pretenders, Not Contenders

Here is the best news about the Yankees' lost opening weekend in Tampa.

The Boston Red Sox looked even worse getting swept in Detroit.

It's never too early to panic in the Bronx, but keep this in mind: winning in April makes for meaningful games in September.

On paper, the Tampa Bay Rays don't measure up to the Yankees over the long haul. But we should have learned by now that games aren't played on paper.

After two days in which their starting pitching was inferior, the Yankees couldn't hit or pitch Sunday against the Rays.

So how concerned should fans be?

You know that CC Sabathia will rebound from his poor start, but Hiroki Kuroda, pitching in the American League for the first time, and Phil Hughes, trying to prove he is a worthy starter, didn't provide much encouragement in their first start of the season.

Throw in a blown save by Mariano Rivera, which seems to occur about as often as a solar eclipse, and the Yankees head to Baltimore wondering whether they should have left Andy Pettitte behind in Florida.

Now it is up to young Ivan Nova and the grizzled Freddie Garcia to put the team back on track.

A three-game losing streak in May, July or August is no big deal. But everything at the start of a season is magnified and manager Joe Girardi appeared to acknowledge that when he started Alex Rodriguez at third Sunday instead of giving him a planned day off.

Girardi didn't want to be swept by a division rival and postseason contender.

That should tell you a little about the significance of this series.

The Yankees are an older team, which is why Girardi plans to utilize his depth to give position players a day off to keep them fresh for the late summer and fall.

That's a good strategy in general, but here are my questions.

Derek Jeter needed to DH the second game of the season instead of playing shortstop?

A-Rod needed the third game off?

Older players need more time to get into the groove, so no one should be contemplating jumping off the Triborough Bridge just yet. What's worrisome, even after three games, is that the Bronx Bombers are not knocking down fences.

This is not a team that is going to hit for average so extra-base hits and home runs are imperative.

A-Rod is their lone .300 hitter after the first weekend, but he hasn't homered or driven in a run.

Neither has Curtis Granderson (.167) or Mark Teixeira (.111), who is a notoriously slow starter.

Raul Ibanez and Nick Swisher have accounted for both Yankees home runs and nine of the team's 11 RBI.

The lineup should start rounding into form in Baltimore at the start of the week. But the pitching will remain a question mark for the time being.

The Yankees have never been patient so Kuroda and Hughes have to perform better in their next starts. It shows, however, just how much the Yankees are counting on Sabathia and Rivera to be the constants of the staff.

No matter how good the Yankees figure to be, the number of good teams in the American League means the margin for error will be less than in the recent past.