... king of the bizarro stats.

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A few days after noting the struggles our pitching staff is having with Pudge behind the plate and expressing second thoughts about the trade, I'm thinking I may have misinterpreted it.

The obvious interpretation of trading for a rental on a guy like Pudge Rodriguez is that the Yankees are in "go for it" mode and wanted to upgrade the offense at the catcher position. That is what I initially thought.

But then Girardi sat Damon yesterday, and caught a lot of flak for it. A lot of people said he did this because he's stupid, but come on, he has an engineering degree from Northwestern and he's a former Manager of the Year. Say what you want about him, but he's not stupid.

Then it dawned on me: the Yankees aren't in "go for it" mode. They're not trying to make a playoff run, they're trying to keep their team fresh and healthy for 2009, so they're giving all their players a day off every now and then. I can't blame them for this: even if they somehow capture the wild card, there's no way in hell this team beats the Angels in a five-game series. I know it, we all know it, and the Yankees know it. Personally I'd rather see them miss the playoffs than another first-round humiliation.

With this revelation, my thoughts turned back to the Pudge trade. Trading for an old, declining catcher who's sure to walk at the end of the season sounds like the ultimate short-term move. But it was actually all about the long term. The trade had nothing to do with Pudge's bat — it was about protecting Jose Molina from overuse and injury. With Posada a big question mark, they know they're going to need Molina healthy next year. They gained a draft pick out of the deal as well — also a long-term boon.

With that in mind, I expect we'll see Joba back sometime in September to get his innings up closer to where they should be, but I would imagine they'd use him very conservatively. He probably doesn't go into the 7th in any start, no matter how well he's throwing.

All this is to say that I'm resigned to the Yankees missing the playoffs this year, and I think the medium- and long-term health of the franchise will benefit from the Yanks not making an all-out run down the stretch.

Wow. Just ... wow.

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I miss posting here regularly ... I no longer have a television in the same room as my computer, so I can't watch games and post at the same time.

After FOX pointed out that the Yankees are something like 35-1 when leading after the 6th inning, it made me wonder if the evidence of our bullpen's much-heralded suckitude is more circumstantial than real. So I went on baseball-reference.com and crunched some numbers. 

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