If The Yankees Don't Turn It Around This Weekend, They Never Will

I didn't have a great morning today.  Woke up a little hungover.  Remembered I ate four slices of pizza before I went to bed last night.  Account balance isn't quite where I need it to be.  But then I checked the calendar and remembered the Twins are in town this weekend.  Now THAT is a way to put a little pep in your step.  Nothing brings back the shaken confidence of a Yankee fan quite like a Minnesota Twins regular season visit to Yankee Stadium.  It's one of my favorite times of the year.  The Twinkies walk timidly off the team bus and into the bowels of Yankee Stadium and the game is over before it even starts.  It's a tradition as old as time.

Now I haven't been confident in anything when it comes to the Yankees this year but I'll tell you this - there isn't a chance they don't sweep this series.  That's how far the freehold of the Twins goes.  It's ownership on a cellular level that transcends time and space.  The Yanks have been using the regular season home series against Minnesota as a springboard to figuring their shit out since the stone age.  Doesn't matter who's playing under the uniforms.

Now this is an especially sucky Twins team.  One of the worst we've ever seen.  To think that these losers are going to stroll in here with nothing to play for and upset this ritual is preposterous.  So other than the games, which we can all chalk up as wins now, here's a couple of other things I'm thinking about as we head into the weekend...

Tex's Return

At this point the Yankees are looking for absolutely anything to enhance this offense and make it a more dynamic and consistent group.  Tex may be having the most pathetic start to a season that any Yankee has ever had but we forget he's not THAT far removed from hitting 31 homers in under 500 at-bats last season.  If the knee holds up and he can even slightly resemble the player he was in 2015 it'll be an improvement on this team.  My hope is that it doesn't come at the expense of getting Rob Refsnyder regular turns at the dish.  I know he's going to lose playing time but there's still a lot of ways to get his bat in the lineup and it would behoove Joe Girardi to get creative and figure out how to make that happen.  Or just wait until Tex inevitably needs season ending knee surgery.

Getting Evo back on track

For a second there it looked like Nate was about to pick up where he left off towards the end of last season where he was throwing like one of the best pitchers in baseball.  Instead he's resurfaced back to a level of performance where he, like the rest of his team, cannot be counted on day-in and day-out.  His last time out was also against Minnesota when his team spotted him a lead in a game that would have clinched a four-game sweep had they held on.  Unfortunately he couldn't get the ball into the hands of Betances fast enough, blew the lead, and when the day was over his ERA had crept all the way up over 5.  If he keeps churning out shitty starts like this, the Yanks are doomed.  Nova and Pineda can't be counted on.  God knows when the carriage is going to turn back into a pumpkin with CC.  Getting Eovaldi to at least be the guy you used to be able to count on for 5-6 quality innings is so important and there's reason to believe he'll figure it out.  We've seen him pitch like an ace a bunch of times this year.  As far as I'm concerned he's the new Michael Pineda.  Sometimes it just takes one start to get your mind straight and who better to beat up on than the Minnesota Twins.