The Yankees may be on a roll and they may finally be playing solid ball. I look at the record and see they are six games above .500. Great. I see that they are 8-2 in the last 10 games. Wonderful. I see the recent brush success has come during Interleague play. Maybe I’m starting to feel a little less confident about it. I look a little closer and see that the stats are little scary. All of the sudden I’m not so cheerful.

I know I am not the eternal optimist, perhaps the eternal cynic instead. I am not exactly pleased about being five games out from first and three and a half behind the Tampa Bay Rays. I would like Yankee Stadium’s last season to be a little smoother, a little more dominant.

I would like to see the team with highest payroll in Major League Baseball play with a little more passion. I would also like to see a greater run differential than +19. I see that statistically, the Yankees rank in the middle of the rode in runs scored and runs allowed, though our hitting is rated much better than our pitching.

I would like to see an offense that ranks third in hitting average, fourth in slugging percentage, and third in on-base percentage do a little better than sixth in run production. This means that means that for all the power behind Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi’s bats they are more likely to be hitting solo shots than driving batters home. Of course, Rodriguez and Giambi are not the main offenders. If anything they are the exception to the numbers, with both having over 40 RBIs so far this season.

The rest of the offense needs to wake up and start hitting the ball with others on. It is inexcusable for a team to have so many good hitters and struggle to score runs. New York can forget about buying World Series tickets until the offense starts finishing better. Let’s face it- the pitching is not going to get much better, so it is up to the offense to carry the load.