Jobu grumbles about the Yankees and their 0-3 start.

I know Jerry Ballgame is the one who is usually offering up his thoughts and random observations, but I can’t help but have a lot on my mind today. I’ve been looking forward to baseball for the last five months. Five months of writing about baseball, five months of analyzing the Yankees off-season and five months of excitement and build up. After three days, I feel like never watching baseball again.

The above over-drammatics were courtesy of the Yankees horrid start against the Tampa Bay Rays this weekend. The Rays swept the three game series from the Yanks in pretty ugly fashion, and it kind of made me a little sick to my stomach. Now my team sits at 0-3, tied for last place in the American League East, and I can’t stand it.

How did this happen, you ask? Well, in game 1, Carlos Peña decided he’s the best player ever to play the game. He hit a Grand Slam off of CC Sabathia in the very first inning (after some terrible over-managing by Joe Girardi), and later almost hit another Grand Slam off of Mariano Rivera. The deep fly ball was good enough for a walk-off single and a Rays comeback victory. At least the Yankees had shown some life, erasing a 4-0 deficit as CC settled down and the bridge to Mo did a wonderful job. Rivera always seems to have a rough patch in April and somewhere in the middle of the season, but this one hurt.

Game two was never in doubt, as my favorite free agent acquisition of the off-season, Hiroki Kuroda, took a nice big dump on the mound. Everything was up, and Kuroda got hammered. Eduardo “Scissorhands” Núñez’s (thanks to RAB for that nickname) error in the first inning set the tone, and the Yankees were down 8-2 by the middle innings. The Yanks did manage to show some late life, scoring four runs in the top of the 9th inning and getting the tying run on base for Robinson Cano with two out, but ultimately fell short. Hey, at least Corey Wade was awesome.

I barely watched game three. First of all, it Was Easter Sunday. Second of all, Joe Girardi put Raúl Ibañez in right field. The latter led to a run in the first  inning when Ibañez, the guy we signed to be a DH, misplayed a bloop single into an rbi triple. I appreciate Girardi resting Nick Swisher’s groin, but can we at least put Andruw Jones in there? Anyway, the Yankees bats decided they’d hop an early flight to Baltimore (where the Yankees play next), so it didn’t matter, and the Rays won 3-0. Truly awful.

If I’m the type of guy that looks for silver linings (and I am), I would point to the fact that the bullpen (except for Second Lefty, Inc. Clay Rapada and Mariano) was pretty darn good in the series. Corey Wade, who I’m pretty sure I could have gotten a hit against in Spring Training, didn’t even allow a base runner in the series. On opening day, SoRo (Soriano and Robertson) were impressive in getting the game to Mariano Rivera too. Also, the Yankees scored twelve runs in the first two games, which is usually going to be enough to win.

I am not really concerned with Sabathia and Kuroda. Those guys are real professionals, and they’ll be alright. Phil Hughes needed 99 pitches to get through 4.2 innings, but he had great velocity all game, and really didn’t pitch badly. He showed a lot of good signs, generating more swings and misses in this start than any of his starts last year. I still think he’s going to have a monster year.

Hey, at least the Yankees aren’t alone in the cellar. They’re splitting rent with the Red Sox, who looked just as awful this weekend. Also, it’s very nice of Alfredo Aceves and Mark Melancon, two former Yankees relievers, to cost the Red Sox two of those games. Aceves has looked awful, and my brother and I are fully convinced that, the next time he goes out on the mound, he’s going to hit Bobby Valentine with a chair and reveal a Yankees jersey under his Sox one, completing his heel turn (Good Gawd! That’s Brian Cashman’s music!!).

Anywho, next up for the Yankees is Baltimore, where they will face the 3-0, first place Orioles, which is a sure sign of April baseball. Hey, the last time the Yankees were 0-3, they won 114 games, and crushing the Orioles is a great way to get a start on that. Let’s Rock.

Sabathia image courtesy of: REUTERS/Steve Nesius