Loose screws could sink Yankees' World Series ship

Hate Mail: Devil didn't make me do it

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Playing like this, the Yankees won't win the World Series. They can't. Not with their players getting picked off and their starting rotation at 60 percent and their meddling manager making moves just to show everybody how smart he is.

Playing like this, the Yankees can reach the World Series -- but that's not their goal. Getting there? The Yankees didn't spend $200 million to get there. They spent it to win it, and they were way too good for Minnesota in the Division Series and they're proving to be too good for the Angels in the American League Championship Series.

But the Yankees can't screw around and win the World Series like they're screwing around winning the pennant.

Philadelphia ain't Anaheim.

Is that clear enough? The Phillies are at a whole other level from the Angels, and I don't care what the regular season tries to tell you. The regular season lies. You are what your record says you are? Not really. Not in baseball. Strange but true: The two teams that finish 162 games with the best record in each league almost never advance to face off in the World Series. The AL's regular season best vs. the NL's regular season best hasn't happened in 14 years, and it won't happen this season. The Dodgers won 95 games, tops in the National League, but they're being clocked by the Phillies in the NLCS.

The regular season is 162 games of misleading drudgery, and without any competition in the National League East to keep their attention, the Phillies drudged their way to 93 victories. The Angels won 97 games, but the Angels aren't four games better than Philadelphia. The Angels aren't any games better -- not in the postseason format. The regular season is about depth and patience and front-office moves and grinding, and the Angels have all of that. The postseason is about star power, and the Phillies have that.

The Phillies have as much star power as the Yankees, is my point. Which means the Yankees won't be able to shock-and-awe their way to the World Series title like they have shocked-and-awed -- and botched-and-bungled -- their way to the precipice of the AL pennant.

The Yankees would be wise to use the rest of the ALCS -- whether it's limited to Game 5 on Thursday night or it extends to Game 6 or even (doubtfully) Game 7 in New York -- tightening up the loose screws in their ship.

The loosest screw is in the dugout, where Joe Girardi has turned the ALCS into his personal Buck Showalter moment. Not since Showalter was reinventing the game has a manager been such a showoff, including a whopping stretch that saw Girardi make 14 pitching changes in 18 innings. That micro-managing leaked into Game 3 of the ALCS, when Girardi broke up the momentum of Andy Pettitte's duel with Vladimir Guerrero to visit the mound with two balls and two strikes just to remind Pettitte of something, presumably how smart his manager is. Girardi was brilliant, all right. Probably puzzled and definitely disrupted, Pettitte's next pitch was blasted by Guerrero for the tying home run.

And it's not just Girardi. It's the New York offense. And pitching. And base running. Let's take them one at a time.

Offensively, the Yankees reached the fourth inning of Game 4 in a team-wide 3-for-35 slump with runners in scoring position. New York had survived that thanks to an awful lot of Alex Rodriguez, but his hot streak can't continue. It just can't. Baseball is about ebbs and flows, and he's flowing almost as well as anyone has ever flowed in the postseason, but it can't continue. The odds are against it. Baseball is a coin flip, and A-Rod has come up heads eight games in a row. In the next round we'll see his tail. Count on that. And if the rest of the Yankees are still doing their 3-for-35 thing, well, there's always 2010.

Maybe by 2010 the Yankees can figure out their rotation. General manager Brian Cashman is getting too much praise for New York's dominance considering he spent $200 million on a team that has just three starting pitchers. Three. And that will hurt in the World Series unless Girardi drops the Showalter act and goes all Dusty Baker on the Phillies, using (up) ace C.C. Sabathia in Games 1, 4 and 7. The schedule will allow it, assuming the ALCS ends in time for Sabathia to be ready for Game 1 of the World Series, and then assuming he pitches on three days' rest -- as he did in Game 4 of the ALCS -- in Games 4 and 7 of the World Series.

Goofs like this might not hurt the Yankees in the ALCS, but they certainly will against the Phillies. (Getty Images)

Sabathia was dominant Tuesday night, but the last time he went on three days' rest in the postseason, he was battered for five runs in 3 2/3 innings in Game 2 of the 2008 NL Division Series. The team that battered Sabathia that day? The Philadelphia Phillies. You follow?

Whoever would become the Yankees' fourth pitcher in the World Series, presumably Joba Chamberlain, the Yankees' Sabathia-dependent rotation won't be as good as the Phillies' Cliff Lee-injected rotation.

Which means the Yankees will have to do the little things well. But they haven't done the little things well all week. The most holy shortstop, Derek Jeter, was picked off Tuesday. So was Nick Swisher, though the umpire blew the call. Later, veteran Jorge Posada ran himself off the bases when retreating to third on a comebacker to the mound, only to find teammate Robinson Cano there. The reaction of both Posada and Cano? Stepping off the bag. Brilliant. That's not the Yankees. That's the Bad News Bears.

And these are the Phillies: Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley. Shane Victorino and Jayson Werth and Raul Ibanez. Pedro Feliz and Carlos Ruiz slugging from the seventh and eighth spots in the lineup. A rotation of Lee, Cole Hamels, J.A. Happ, Joe Blanton and Pedro Martinez. Brad Lidge closing games like it was 2008. Ryan Madson setting him up.

The Yankees had better get their stuff together, and soon. Or the 2009 World Series won't come back to New York for Games 6 or 7.

It'll already be over.