For Real? - Yankees 8, Royals 5

Positives coming out of the weekend: Hughes was lousy, and the Sox took two of three from Seattle. That's all.

Give the Yanks credit. Coming out of the all-star break, they had a month of easy baseball to play. And with this sweep of the Royals and the Tigers' collapse, they find themselves just a half-game out of the wild card.

In the past week, the Yanks have had a team OBP of .447. Since the all-star break, the Yanks have had a team average of .330 and a team OBP of .400. This is a team, that, offensively, is firing on all cylinders right now. Robby Cano is batting .434 in the last month. I though age and the wear of catching would slow Jorge Posada in the second half, and he's batting .400 over the last month. Abreu is at .350 over the last month, Matsui at .345 with 11 dingers. All of those guys who looked old and done in the first half, have suddenly come alive. And how.

Of course, the other side of the story is that the Yanks have accomplished all this in playing most of their games against KC, Tampa Bay, and the White Sox, three teams that are at the bottom (along with Texas) in the AL ranking in team ERA. Against teams with decent ERAs like Toronto and Baltimore, the Yanks went 4-3.

Yanks now go up against Toronto, Cleveland, and Baltimore. Gonna be a lot more difficult than what they've faced. However - I've said it a million times, and I'll say it again - the mark of a good team is the ability to dominate against bad teams. And the Yanks have done that very well over the last month. But the bats have to cool off sometime, and that better happen now.

Good for Them: Yankees 13, Pirates 6

Okay, now that the exhibition series is over, we can get back to real baseball.

Boy, this series reminded me of the late '90s Yankees - they'd give up ten, but score eleven. They'd score two, but give up only one. And as usual, my paranoia has set in that perhaps Old York is destined to never lose another game in 2007.

But then the rational side takes over and says, you know what? This was not a great series for them. Yes, a win is a win is a win. But then I think about how I asked whether Tyler Clippard was this year's Aaron Small. Well, after a dismal outing, an ERA of 5.32, and 14 walks in 23.2 innings, I think not.

And as Manny mentioned, Pettitte and Clemens were no great shakes, either. So who knows how they'll handle a major league team when they face Arizona on Tuesday.

Obviously they've been much better offensively, especially Bobby Abreu (still only three homers), but this hot streak can't go on forever. Or can it?

I suppose you still have to look at the overall picture. They still trail Boston by a wide margin, and with the Sox taking on the Rockies, there's a chance to pad their lead. Oh well, what else is there to do but pray?

Is A-Rod Back To Normal?

Quietly, A-Rod has gone the way of Don Imus in disappearing from the headlines. Lost in the discussion of the Yankees' slide, Torre being on the hot seat, and that Mets employee involved in dealing steroids, A-Rod has gone 1 for his last 14. For all I know, A-Rod will hit three dingers tomorrow. But his bat is back to normal. And if his slump continues, New York's A-Rod lovefest will be over.

On Rob Neyer's blog, he mentioned that A-Rod has had similar streaks at other points in his career. So any Yankee fan who though the guy was gonna hit 100 homers is as delusional as that idiot who wrote the book "Dow 36,000" in 1999.

- On the other hand, is Mo back? Hard to believe he finally got his first save a few days before May. In his case, he's pitched so infrequently that I can't say the guy is back. And I can't say he's finished. Friday night's appearance was ugly stuff, but only if and when the Yankees win consistently and give Rivera more save chances can we say whether he's still got it. The jury is still out.

- Igawa pitched surprisingly well today, but as putrid as the Yankees have been, you couldn't have expected the Sox to sweep them two series in a row. But with Julian Tavarez going tomorrow, the Yanks have a chance to take the series.