Yankees Season So Far

The good, the bad and the ugly of the first half

For a sport that venerates statistics, baseball doesn't do so well with fractions.

The first half of the season comes to an official close with Tuesday night's All-Star Game well after the Yankees and everyone else in the league have played their 81st game. Tradition is tradition, though, so we won't harp on the inexact mathematics. 

We'll just use the little break in the schedule to take a last look at the first half of the Yankee season. The half ended with the Yankees a game back of the Red Sox with a 53-35 record, or pretty much where we would have expected them to be when the season got underway. 

How they got there hasn't really gone according to plan, but, as always with the Yankees, the destination is what matters.

Biggest Surprise: Curtis Granderson's power spike has far exceeded the rebound everyone expected from his first Yankees season, but the fact that they expected something from him means he's a runner-up to Freddy Garcia and Colon.

After missing all of 2010, Colon has been the team's second most reliable pitcher over the first half while Garcia is having his best season since he was 24 years old. Getting something from either one would have thrilled the Yankees back in April, but getting so much from both of them has made the season.

Biggest Disappointment: Jorge Posada and Nick Swisher were big contenders, but each of them showed major signs of life in June. Derek Jeter's struggles have been well chronicled, although they could only have come as a shock to those with an inability to look at him realistically.

That leaves either Phil Hughes or Rafael Soriano to take the prize. Hughes has been hurt and terribly ineffective, but Soriano is a much bigger flop thanks to his contract and his obvious disinterest in filling the role that the Yankees signed him to fill in the off-season. 

Best Game: Could there be any choice other than Saturday's 5-4 win over the Rays? The day of Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit was going to be a contender regardless of context, but his five hits, including the gamewinner, in a tight game against a divisional rival make this an easy call.

MVP: You don't usually see pitchers winning this award, but it is hard to avoid giving CC Sabathia the nod for 2011. This team would be nowhere near first place if they didn't have an ace fronting the staff with the kind of performances Sabathia turns in once every five days.

Best Case Scenario for Second Half: The short answer is health. If Alex Rodriguez can come back on time with power restored, if Colon can go the distance and if no one else comes up lame, the Yankees will be in very good shape regardless of what moves the team makes in the trade market.

The long answer includes a continuation of the rebounds by Posada, Swisher and Jeter; Hughes's return to being the pitcher he was during the first half of the 2010 season; and the acquisition of an arm to round out a staff that's still a bit thin on the margins. None of those things matter all that much if the team can't stay healthy, however, so the short answer will have to do. 

Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.

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