Gator's Blog: Get a Grip...For Now

It's way too early to panic. Sure, a 1-3 start to the baseball season is not how you wanted things to go, but let's all relax a bit.

Keep some things in mind, the Yankees are a damn good baseball team and the Orioles did start off with three wins before their home opener against the Tigers. Still, excuses get tiresome after a few days and the only thing we as fans want to see are wins. Fine, let's take a closer look then.

The Starting Pitching has been poor to so far, even Justin Verlander made a couple of mistakes in the opener that has people saying it's the same old thing. Verlander has historically been troublesome in April and this spring looked as though he'd conquered those demons. After one start, people are ready to bury the ace because he served up a meatball to one of the best power hitters in baseball and because it took him well over one hundred pitches to make it through six innings. Try and understand that what the Yankees do better than most every other team is show patience at the plate and work the count to their advantage. That means spoiling good pitches and taking others to the point where the Bullpen has to come in early.

I would fully expect JV to be fine when he takes the hill on Wednesday, it's just my opinion, but he's looked too good.

I certainly wouldn't panic over the hitting because the big bats were completely absent against Baltimore. It's one game and the other three they seemed to do just fine.

The Bullpen will be the strength of this team, but you won't see their ultimate effectiveness until they get handed a lead going into the 6th or 7th innings. We should all be supremely confident if a lead is had going into the 8th, given the likes of Benoit and Valverde, but it's guys like Perry, Schlereth, and Villareal that will eventually make us proud or angry.

4 games into the season is way too small a sample to judge, why don't we honor Sparky Anderson and wait the requisite 40 before heads start to roll? I'm just sayin'.