Yanks Post Season Streak in Jeopardy

For the first off-season in over a decade, the Yankees look like an underdog to play October baseball.

With the reigning World Champion Red Sox in their division and the re-tooled Tigers and the talented Indians in the Central, the Yankees will need their young pitching, erratic bullpen and aging lineup to contribute for an entire year.

Lady Luck may have been on the Yankees' side when she had the Twins make an underwhelming trade, at least a weaker one than what had been forecasted earlier in the hot stove season, to the Mets right before the Red Sox announced that Curt Schilling may be out for the season.  

However, Lady Luck has not only sided with the Yankees. Besides the Mets, the biggest winners from the Santana trade may be the Tigers and Indians. (For a look at the biggest losers, see every National League team outside of New York.)

With the unbalanced schedule, the Tigers and Indians are both slated to play the Twins 18 times this year. This means that the three or four starts Santana would have had against both the Tigers and Indians will go to the girthy Livan Hernandez. 

Assume that Santana would have started three games against the Tigers and Indians each. With Santana's career winning percentage around 68 percent, this means that both of these teams have taken two probable losses and replaced them with an opportunity to fatten their statistics against Livan Hernandez, more of a danger to a buffet table than opposing hitters at this point in his career.   

Even the Red Sox get lucky. With seven games scheduled against the Twins, they would most certainly have had to face Santana at least once. Not known for hitting lefties, the Red Sox probably got one game better by Santana moving to Queens. 

Despite the fact that Santana went to the NL, the Yankees will most likely see the best pitcher in the game twice. Because of interleague play, the Yanks play the Mets six times this year.

You can be certain that the Mets will do everything they can to trot Santana to the hill at least once, if not twice, to show the other half of New York what they are missing. This means that the Yankees can chalk another one or two losses onto their record.

I know. The games are not played on paper, and the Yankees have faced aces and beaten them before. (See Pedro Martinez calling the Bombers his "Daddy.") However, with how tight the races were last year and the Yankees’ pitching issues, a one or two game swing even on paper does not make continuing a postseason streak look promising.