Ground Zero

Chien Ming Wang is the man. He's become such an important part of this team, it's hard to imagine where we'd have been without him over the last season, plus. He sports a 2.74 GO/AO ratio, which is 5th in the Majors and 2nd in the AL (Westbrook). He's also 10th in the Majors in SLG against at .348, which is good for 5th in the AL. Pitchers 5-10 on that list are separated by a mere .007 and the names are telling. Wang is in the same company as Pedro Martinez, Roy Halladay, and Mike Mussina in that bunch of pitchers. He's 15-7 in 31 starts as a Yankee, with a 1.28 WHIP and a 4.08 ERA. His 31 start-2 relief career in the Majors is also blessed by a stellar 2.92 GO/AO ratio. Impressive. I think it's fair to say that he's Hard Boiled.

The other hero of the game is the magnificent Robinson Cano.

Cano is still only 23 years old and the ceiling for him appears to be incredibly high. Torre and a few other "old timers" have thrown the name Rod Carew out there when speaking of our young second baseman, and I'd love to think that he will one day live up to that. They are both lefties. Both sport the initials RC. Both can rake with the best of them. Carew was a career .328/.393/.429 hitter, and it looks like Robbie has a shot at those kind of numbers one day. The power may be slightly better than Carew, but the speed will be a bit less. Time will tell, but you'd have to be hard pressed to trade either one of these players as of today. I love Soriano, but honestly....don't sell the young guys off.

The pen did it's job nicely in this game. Wang went deep into the game and Myers did his LOOGY work, followed by "Wild Thing" Farnsworth. Each reliever got an out and passed the rock to the Terminator. Gotta like that efficiency. Gotta like that start to a series after our struggles recently. Jeter back at SS, Phillips back at 1B, Thompson and Melky in the outfield, and a tie atop the AL East. Go get 'em Yanks! See you tomorrow.