The Good: The Wang-Pettitte 1-2 punch has been pretty solid for the Yankees (even though the Tigers did do a number on Pettitte). Mussina hasn’t been too bad either, but the Yankees really needed both Wang and Pettitte to be near their best in order to bring some stability to a rotation that has many questions about it. The bullpen is another “Good”, I mean who expected to see so many different faces actually do a pretty good job. We all knew about Joba and Mariano, and LaTroy Hawkins is not going to make me forget Jeff Nelson but Bruney, Traber, and even Farnsworth have been surprisingly good. Let’s hope their arms don’t fall off by the time August rolls around. Finally, the last “Good” is a “Good” because of how much I like him…my man, Hideki Matsui, give it up for him. Last year he was past his prime, ineffective, figured out by opposing pitchers, and almost traded. But he is conceivably having a revival here. Last year was not a bad statistical year for him but people talked about him being done, so seeing him come out like this has been nothing short of awesome.

The Bad: Robinson Cano has just been horrible, he might have to be bumped down to ugly is this continues. But the reason why he won’t be bumped is because May should be a lot better. He started last April pretty bad as well and recovered nicely. Hopefully, he can do that this year as well. To win games you need good pitching and good hitting. Good hitting requires scoring runs and scoring runs means hitting in those RISPs. The Yankees just look bad at doing just that. If the bases are loaded with no outs I expect the Yankees to get no more than 2 or 3 runs, not 6 or 7 that you would expect out of this lineup but just 2-3 with one being walked-in. The last ‘Bad’ is run differential, the Yankees are a -8. With THAT lineup? Its pretty sad, considering the Yankees ended April with a 14-15 record, they should be pretty happy to have that record with that run differential. A -8 is equivalent to something like 3 games, so the Yankees should be 11-18.

The Ugly: The injuries are mounting. A-Rod, Posada before, and now there is Hughes(not that big of a loss considering his struggles) and Bruney. Not to mention Betemit. Those are a lot of bodies, the only positive is that its only May. The Hughes-Kennedy experiment has looked pretty awful. The only bright spot is that they are young and talented and will help the Yankees, just not this year. Hughes is hurt, nothing major, and it might be a little blessing to get him away from the mound a bit and get him refocused. These young guns need to get their groove back because the alternatives aren’t that much better. The last ugly is one that will not be saved or get better regardless that ‘its only May’ and that is Hank. Can he please shut-up…please. If the losing gets worse the Yankees season will go from bad to ugly with this guy.