Unfortunately the baseball gods didn't die in that nuclear blast...

As I've already written, the Yankees season has been insanely frustrating. Underperformance, bad luck, injuries, etc. Nothing going their way. On the other hand, Daisuke Matsuzaka once again gets away with murder. His line from last night:

7 IP
5:5 K/BB
6 H
0 ER

HOW DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING? HIS STUFF FUCKING SUCKS. He walks the ballpark and doesn't strike out that many people to go along with it. He allows a lot of fly balls, too. He pitches in Fenway Park. How on earth does he have a 1998-2003 Pedro Martinez-like ERA? Pedro was legitimately unhittable. He struck out like 20/9 IP and never walked anybody. Matsuzaka SUCKS. If he had enough innings to qualify, he would have the 5th worst xFIP in the AL, right nearby his knuckleball-throwing buddy. Seriously, why are those 2 guys getting away with not being very good? Baseball gods, can you please explain to me why just about everything has to go right for the Red Sox but everything has to go wrong for the Yankees? Can you? And don't give me David Ortiz and his wrist. Blowell, Pukelis, and Petunia all hit way over their heads while he was out or sucking. And Manny wasn't too shabby either before they traded him. Fuck Youkilis. Hitting .322 with a .963 OPS. Are you kidding? Since when did he become mid-80s Don Mattingly? And also...why are you pricks making my favorite player hit .260 and OPS under .700? I wouldn't care if it was Pat Kelly doing what Cano is doing right now. It's the expectation of .300+, .840+ OPS, .850 ZR and he is underperforming in all aspects right now. For the longest time he wasn't letting his offensive struggles bother his defense, now it is.

As Yankees fans we're spoiled, yes. But this is not about feeling entitled to make the playoffs or win the World Series every year. This is about players who should be good all either underperforming or getting hurt and players who suck playing way over their heads. Of course, that happens in every year. But it's the number of players it's happening to. If you look at last year, nobody was DRASTICALLY under their xFIP. And most people who were under it by a close to a run had some other factor in there contributing to it. Carmona was about a run below, but he had a psycho GB% (and even then, it was 3.99 xFIP to 3.06 ERA, he was still good regardless). Shit like that. Brian Bannister was the only one who appeared to get really lucky (3.87 ERA vs. 5.14 xFIP) and guess what, his ERA is 5.36 this year. It caught up to him. This year, Matsuzaka, Saunders, Jackson, Wakefield, Duchscherer, and to some extent Garza are all WAY overperforming.

I wish I could believe that things will even out, but it's been a couple months and things still haven't evened out. Oh well, I guess I'll get through today's work and then go watch the Yankees strand 20 runners tonight. Who knows, maybe the law of averages will overtake Murphy's Law. That would be nice.