Phillip Hughes

Phil Hughes hasn't been his dominant self this postseason, as has been very well documented. So far, his line reads:

4.2 IP, 9 H, 5 ER, 4 BB, 6 K.

That works out to a .557 BABIP, but it's not like he's been giving up weakly hit balls. Thirty-five percent of the batted balls against him have been line drives. Usually, I wouldn't be worried over a few bad innings. I mean, it happens to everyone.

Well...that was fast. My night of celebration ended about 15 minutes after I posted the last piece . Immediately, my mind started to shift to the new question at hand.

How do the Yankees beat the Phillies this week?

Here's the game plan, in three(-ish) parts:

1. Use the Long Lineup to Tire Out Cliff Lee and the Philly Starters Early. Then, Go to Work on the Bullpen.

Alex Rodriguez is having a career-altering postseason.

Nick Swisher? Not so much.

No matter whether he's hitting left-handed or right-handed, whether he's swinging at fastballs or breaking balls, whether the pitch is a foot outside or right over the middle of the plate and thigh high, he is the surest out in the Yankee lineup right now.

So, at the beginning of this season I wrote that the Yanks had a shot. All the Bawston guys were yelling through their keyboards at me. Hmmm.

Turns out I was right. Turns out that having Texieria, Posada, Swisher, and Cabrera—all switch hitters—in one lineup is pretty annoying for opposing teams. The main hitters in this fall roundup are:

A-Rod: .455

Jeter: .400

Posada: .364

Carl Pavano robbed the Yankees of $38 million from 2005-2008 and on Sunday night, New York will look to make him pay for it.

The 33-year-old right-hander is the only thing standing between the Bombers and their first trip to the American League Championship Series since 2004, and there's more on the line in Game 3 than just the satisfaction of sweeping the Twins and exacting revenge on Pavano.

...Chad Gaudin.

The Yankees broke from their season long stand of having Joba Chamberlain pitch strictly as a starter, and, in the last game of the season, threw him for one inning out of the bullpen.

Joba threw strikes, his velocity was in the mid-to-high 90s, and he punctuated a seven-pitch inning with a strikeout of Fernando Perez.  Perez swung and missed on a biting slider, and then whiffed on a 95 MPH high fastball.

It was like the Joba of late 2007.

Well, the fans and media that occupy Yankee-land have started to push the panic button.

After a two game sweep on Monday and Tuesday, the Yankees have now lost five in a row to the Boston Red Sox. Then after coming back from down three to the Rays on Wednesday, only to see that wasted by a Phil Coke fastball to Carlos Pena that went very far in the 10th, the Yankees last night saw the ultimate sign of the apocalypse.

What the (insert explicit term here) happened to Wang?

Three consecutive pitiful outings, and a shaken self-esteem, has done no good for the Yankees thus far.

It appears the ball is up, and his secondary pitches are hanging. The sinker is sinking into the batter's wheelhouse, with the slider and splitter just turning into batting practice fastballs.

It appears to me that Dave Eiland has been stressing this body before the arm thing too much. Look at the photo above, Wang is getting under the ball via this new mechanical philosophy, not on top.

5.3 IP, 34.50 ERA, 23 hits allowed, 23 runs allowed, .622 BAA, six walks, two strikeouts.

Surely this all must be some sort of nightmare for New York Yankees fans.

As of this writing, Yankees sinkerballer Chien-Ming Wang was the primary culprit of the most recent bloodbath at the new Yankee Stadium, surrendering eight runs on eight hits in 1.1 innings of work.

With the way Wang has struggled early on, one can only wonder what the Yankees can do to fix this.