The Yankees, and this Tribe fan, head to town

And so here it is!

The series I had been waiting for, but am now dreading.

The series that might render the Yank – O- Meter obsolete much sooner than I thought.

I’m heading to Cleveland for a long weekend, to visit family and to see the Tribe take on the Yankees Friday night.

When I bought these tickets six weeks ago, I bought them with much glee in my heart, knowing full well the Tribe was likely to prevail or that it wouldn’t really matter if they lost because they’d be so far ahead of the Yankees in the wild card chase.

My kids, Yankee fans all, lobbied to go to all three games, but in my effort to shield them from a weekend of discouraging losses I used the old “we don’t have the money” gambit. I threw in the “grandma will be offended if we come to visit her and spend the whole weekend at the ballgame” yarn.

Six weeks later – whomp! Reality. Right in my face!

As I write this, before games are played Wednesday and Thursday, the Yankees trail the Tigers in the wild card race by ½ game. They trail the Tribe, should the two find themselves jousting for the back-door prize, by 1 game.

At the All-Star break the Yankees were 8 behind the Tribe and 9 in back of the Tigers. Not long before that they trailed Cleveland and Detroit by double digits.

The Yanks have turned it on and turned it around since the break. Here’s the breakdown among possible wild card contenders and the Yankees division rival - the Red Sox:

Team W L GB
Yankees 20 7 --
Red Sox 15 11 4.5
Indians 12 13 7
Mariners 12 13 7
Tigers 11 15 8.5


(note to our faithful reader Moose: I know about the Twins. But MLB.com allows you to only compare five teams at a time on their on-line stats page.)


Here’s what Tribe fans have waiting for us as the Yankees hit town for the weekend.

Since the break, the Yankees have scored 210 runs in 27 games. That is exactly twice as many runs as the 105 runs the Tribe has scored in 25 games during the same period. In the last 27 games the Yanks are hitting .328. The Tribe - .253 in 25 games.

Pitching-wise, the Tribe has done better than New York since the break, with a 3.68 ERA compared with 4.13 for the Yankees. The Tribe has given up 103 runs in 25 games while the Yanks have allowed 120 runs in 27 games.

Put another way, since the break New York has scored 7.77 runs/game compared to the Tribe’s 4.2. The Yankees have given up 4.44 runs a game compared with 4.12 runs a game for Cleveland.

The Yankees, in fact, are absurdly superior to all the wild card hopefuls and division rival Boston on offense since the break, but are in the middle of the pack in pitching.

What that means for this weekend, we’ll know soon enough.

NOTE TO READERS: Because of my weekend-plus trip to the Promised Land, we are unlikely to be updating this blog again until Tuesday, Aug. 14. We’ll be visiting my mom, where the Internet has not been invented yet. I expect the Yank – O- Meter to be out of whack by the time I get back. Hopefully it will still be serving a purpose.