Yankwatch 2008

The race for October is heating up, and here's how the standings look with about 35 games remaining for each team.

AL East

Boston 73 - 54, -
Yankees 67 - 60, 6 games out
Toronto 66 - 61, 7 games out
Tampa Bay 49 - 77, 23 1/2 games out

AL Wild Card

Yankees 67 - 60, need one win to clinch playoff birth
White Sox 0 - 127, disqualified
Minnesota 0 - 127, disqualified

After last night's humiliating loss to the Blue Jays, can we finally stop talking about the Yankees as contenders?

Teams in the playoffs, if the playoffs started today:

Tampa Bay
Chicago White Sox
Anaheim Angels
New York Mets
Chicago Cubs
Milwaukee Brewers
Arizona Diamondbacks

Teams not in the playoffs, if the playoffs started today:

Boston Red Sox / Minnesota Twins (one game play-in)
New York Yankees
Los Angeles Manny Being Mannies

Arizona's Acquisition of Adam Dunn makes the Mets the team to beat in the NL East

A guest column by ESPN's Buster Olney

At the time of his trade, Adam Dunn had mashed 32 home runs. This tied him with Carlos Quentin of the Chicago White Sox of the American League for the Major League Lead. This is major news, because as any encyclopedia of baseball can tell you, no one who has ever led their league in home runs has ever been traded before. It's also interesting because Dunn is the first name player ever to be traded to the Diamondbacks, who play way out there in the NL South. When Arizona's not serving its purpose as the Yankees' farm system, they're playing through a futile attempt to hold off the amazing Dodgers and the incredible Manny, who has been Manny enough to lead the Dodgers to a record two games over .500. In the brief history of the division (2004), this is the highest winning percentage any team has ever had. I give Arizona a 0% chance of holding them off.

Now, let me tell you who the real winner between this trade of the Reds and Diamondbacks was. The New York Mets. The Mets, who entered play Tuesday at 62 - 56, sit a mere four games in front of Philadelphia for the NL East lead. The Mets have already finished their season series with Arizona, and I'm pretty sure the Phillies still have to play them - so the advantage here goes to the Mets. New York has also already finished their season series with the Reds, preventing anyone from claiming that the Mets' 9th straight division title was earned by beating teams that had already given up on the season. Thirdly, Arizona's a ridiculously small market. I don't know how they can possibly even have a baseball team, but they do. There's no way they'll be able to keep Adam Dunn for more than these two months - and at that point, the Mets will be able to sweep in and grab both Dunn and CC Sabathia of the Brewers, making sure that in 2009 we'll be able to see the league championship series that we all want: Red Sox - Yankees and Mets - Cubs. Those four clubs have more tradition than the other 26 combined, and quite frankly it's a crime that they're not the last four teams standing every year - but the trade of Adam Dunn to the Diamondbacks changes everything. This trade is the thing that puts the Mets over the top in the National League East.

This has been a special guest column by ESPN's very own Buster Olney

Welcome to the Weekend

It's the weekend, so you know what that means: another Indy car race where the television networks attempt to portray Danica Patrick as a sex symbol and fail miserably. Here's a tip to all future racing promoters: sex symbols should be attractive and not look like men. Also, if they're going to be the only racer you're going to talk about, they should have a winning percentage better than .011.

This has been Ja Doe, once again. Where are the other guys, anyway?

Chris Mortenson Is A Clown

It’s unbelievable. After Brett Favre unretired, this genius, who is most notable for telling us that Bill Parcells would retire after the 2003, 2004, 2005, AND 2006 seasons and then tooting his own horn when he was finally right, made several Favre-related predictions.

1) Brett would be welcomed back to the Packers.
WRONG.

2) Brett would be traded within the division, most likely to the Minnesota Vikings.
WRONG.

3) Brett Favre would be traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
WRONG.

4) Brett Favre was considering taking the Packers’ 25 million dollar marketing offer. Of course, Ed Werder reported the next day that Favre was considering spurning it as ESPN covered all the bases.
Mortenson was (surprise!) wrong again.

He predicted four different outcomes for the 2008 Brett Favre unretirement saga in the span of two months. All four were WRONG. Naturally, ESPN refuses to acknowledge this clown ever made these mistakes. After Favre was traded to the Jets, ESPNNews had the gall to actually have Mortenson on and ask him how he thought this trade would affect the Packers and Jets after he had proven without a shadow of a doubt that he had no idea what he was talking about.

Maybe I’m just still bitter about the 2006 NFC Championship game, when Mortenson, Sean Salisbury and five other ESPN experts predicted the Saints would prevail over the host Chicago Bears, ignoring just about every sign along the way. Mortenson was wrong about that too, as you may have guessed.

Ja Doe attended his first major league game at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland during August of 1992. The Indians beat the Rangers 6 – 2 on a Paul Sorrento home run.

BREAKING NEWS- FAVRE TO THE JETS

Well, thank God for that. Now, the Mainstream Sports Media have another overrated player and New York sports team to talk about for the next six months that won't be making the playoffs to replace the Yanks and the injured Joba Chamberlain. Pheeeeeee-ew.