Allow me to sum up last night's game in one word: Debacle.

Yes, twas quite the mess of a game. After the sorry way they played against the Mets over the weekend, the Yankees needed to bounce back in a big way and start clawing their way back towards that elusive .500 mark, and boy did they fail. Moose lasted a grand 0.2 innings and gave up 7 runs, and while 6 of them were technically unearned, his off-the-mark pitching should have put him on the hook for at least 4 or 5 more in my humble YC opinion. Jeter and Damon didn't help matters, blowing two plays that should have been tailor-made outs. After the Yanks were down by 10 runs, Jeet got smacked in the hand by a pitch and had to leave the game; he's now "day-to-day" but luckily the x-rays didn't show any bone breakage. A few innings later, LaTroy Hawkins threw two pitches right around Luke Scott's head (I'm still not convinced it was intentional, though... I think he was just sucking) and succeeded not just in getting himself ejected (BTW: with LTH getting suspended for that slip-up, the Yanks lead the league in suspended players [Melky, Spirit Coordinator, and Farnsworthless have all been booted]) but in clearing the benches for what turned out to be the weakest almost-brawl I've ever seen. No punches thrown, no coaches thrown to the ground... very disappointing.

There was one fleeting bright spot when A-Rod smacked a homer in his first game back after three weeks on the DL for that busted quad, but those two runs barely made a dent in the O's hearty lead. At least we got to see that he has fully recuperated from the injury, but the rest of the offense needs to get their asses in gear and start following suit with some hits of their own, because even A-Rod can't carry a team of slumpers to the playoffs all by his lonesome.

Tonight we've got Rasner vs Olson, both 3-0 this year with similar ERA's (3.00 for Ras and 3.47 for Olson), and the Yankees need Ras to hang in there for a good long time to give the poor over-taxed bullpen a little relief. Let's cross our fingers that Girardino sits the team down before the game tonight and fires them up... because I can't take much more of this.