Are the 2012 Yankees the 2011 Red Sox?
Are the Yankees making it to the post-season, as per usual, or are they in for a rude awakening and a very long winter?
It started just over a year ago. On September 1st 2011, the Boston Red Sox finished off their three-game series with their bitter rivals and AL East foes the New York Yankees knowing that whilst a defeat wasnt a good thing, they would be leaving Beantown atop of the division regardless of the result. Nobody could have predicted then what fate awaited them less than a month later. After all, the Red Sox seemingly had the foundations in place for another tilt at the World Series, with many in the media tipping them to win it all and ESPN analyst Bobby Valentine even going so far as to predict theyd score 1,000 runs on the season. Led by the best manager in the game, Terry Francona, and overseen by boy genius GM Theo Epstein, life seemed pretty good for the Red Sox and their fans. Thats what made the events that followed so extraordinary. So unthinkable. The Red Sox lost that game on September 1st, before going on to finish the season with an appalling record of 7-20 and thus missing out on the play-offs. Its gone down in notoriety as perhaps the most catastrophic collapse in Major League Baseball history. Twelve months on, the ominous spectre of an unthinkable collapse once again lingers over the East coast, although this time its the people of New York who are anxiously looking at their calendars and hoping that October arrives sooner rather than later. Because the Yankees the great, fearsome New York Yankees are struggling, and if their form over the past few weeks continues the way it has been for too much longer, their fans will begin to understand just how gut-wrenching it must have felt to be part of Red Sox Nation at the end of September last year. Before the All-Star break, the Yankees were the owners of a very healthy .612 win percentage (61.2% if you prefer it that way) but post the mid-season festivities theyre playing .490 baseball, the end result of which is that the 10-game lead they enjoyed on July 18th has now been whittled down to just the 1 game. Since that July 18th date, theyve gone 19-24. So whats happened? 
Over the course of a season that contains 162 games and spans six months, even the luckiest teams fall foul to the dreaded injuries, and the 2012 Yankees have been no different. Their acquisition in the January blockbuster trade with Seattle, Michael Pineda, underwent season ending surgery on May 1st. Their dominant closer Mariano Rivera is also out for the season (though replacement Rafael Soriano has done well in his place). Star third baseman Alex Rodriguez has only played 95 games, and important hitters such as Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira have all spent time on the Disabled List. At times, the Yankees have had to rely on bits and pieces players such as Eric Chavez, Andruw Jones and Jayson Nix adequate in the short term, but not the standard required for the long haul. At the time of writing, the Yankees stumble isnt comparable to the landslide of the 2011 Red Sox campaign - yet - but every defeat for the boys in pinstripes is accentuated by the performances of the two teams who are hunting them down the Baltimore Orioles, and the Tampa Bay Rays. Since that July 18th date, the Rays are 27-16, the Orioles are an incredible 28-15. How are Baltimore doing this? With a lot of luck and smoke and mirrors, according to their Pythagorean Expectation, a calculation which predicts the wins and losses record a team should have based on the number of runs theyve scored and conceded. The statisticians have the Orioles at 64-70 on the season, when actually theyre 75-59 and showing no sign of their luck running out just yet. So are the 2012 Yankees the 2011 Red Sox? Its unlikely, but not impossible. The Red Sox were besieged by personal problems reports of Francona being reliant on medication, rumours that players were eating fried chicken and drinking beer in the clubhouse, suggestions that many players didnt see eye to eye. Theres nothing coming out of the Yankee Stadium along those lines, but post-the All Star Game their performance has been tepid, and not even the surprising acquisition of veteran Ichiro Suzuki has helped matters. Their starting rotation is sketchy beyond ace pitcher CC Sabathia, and theyre scoring fewer runs on the road than they are inside the hitters dream of Yankee Stadium. They finish their schedule with seven series against fellow AL East teams three of which are against the Orioles and the Rays and you get the feeling that its the results of those match-ups that will decide their fate. Are the Yankees making it to the post-season, as per usual, or are they in for a rude awakening and a very long winter?