Start thinking, Yankees Fans

Bombers can only hope Rivera will save this pen
BY FILIP BONDYDAILY NEWS SPORTS COLUMNIST
Posted Wednesday, April 25th 2007, 4:00 AM
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The last-place Yanks dropped their fifth straight game last night, falling to Tampa Bay, 6-4, and this is as good a time as any to take stock of the damaged inventory: The hitting is just fine. Better than fine. The Yankees have been rounding the bases with great abandon whenever they aren't watching the other team do the same thing. The starting rotation is a terrible mess at the moment, yet there is plenty of depth and it will heal itself. If it doesn't, then a deal will be made or Roger Clemens will drop from the sky, straight into pinstriped pants.
That brings us to the real problem, the bullpen. And for once, after all these years, after more than a decade of his one perfect, illogical pitch, that problem includes Mariano Rivera. The bullpen failed again last night. Mike Myers hung a slider to Carl Crawford for a grand slam. Those middle relievers have been little more than a flimsy bridge for the past six or seven seasons, and the Yankees have worked around them. But if Rivera is not Rivera, then the Yanks are not the Yanks anymore, no matter how many homers Alex Rodriguez smacks. You do not simply pull a reliable closer out of your cap in August or September, no matter how much money you want to throw around.
If Scott Proctor and Kyle Farnsworth were halfway reliable, then you know Joe Torre wasn't bringing Rivera into the eighth inning at Fenway the other night. Farnsworth had six saves and an ERA of 4.36 last season. Proctor has one save in four seasons, with an ERA of 4.48 with the Yankees. These numbers, those arms, don't scare anybody. There's a 26-year-old closer in Scranton, T.J. Beam, who has a decent fastball, two saves and a 3.68 ERA in Triple-A. That isn't going to rescue a division title. The truth is the Yankees do not have a backup for Rivera. There is no Plan B.
So three-plus weeks into another year of 162 mini-seasons, you have your crisis. It is not the four-game deficit in the AL East, that's for sure. If you are a Yankee fan and you want to drive yourself crazy about yet another slow start (they were 11-19 in 2005, after splitting six games with Boston), then the smart sweat is all about Rivera. It is not about Chien-Ming Wang or Kei Igawa or Carl Pavano or Mike Mussina.
The people who tell you never to worry about Rivera, that he will be fine because he had another great spring, will be right until they are wrong. And of course, they have to be wrong one of these seasons. It is just a question of when that happens, when it is that age finally catches up with the Hall of Fame arm.
Rivera has blown two saves and given up seven hits in 6-1/3 innings. This is hardly a valid sample to judge a man with such an accomplished resume. He has also struck out seven, a more hopeful stat.
Still, the scariest of Rivera's number is this one: 37 years old.
Bruce Sutter began fading at 32, and was out of baseball at 35. He had injury problems. Goose Gossage pitched until he was 42, but he wasn't a viable closer after 38. Rollie Fingers, too, wasn't effective after 38.
You can take some comfort in knowing that Rivera has thrown far fewer innings in his career than most of these other guys, but he also has been used in the kind of playoff situations that exact their own special toll. There have been starters such as Clemens and Nolan Ryan who have broken through their own boundaries and kept right on pitching effectively. They are the exceptions, however, and they weren't walking into games in the ninth inning with the tying run on base.
It isn't time yet to panic about any of this. It won't be time even if the Yankees drop two of three to the Red Sox in the Bronx. That April sweep in Boston doesn't prove much of anything, except that the Red Sox have a sounder rotation at the moment.
It is harder to admit that Boston also has a much more effective closer in Jonathan Papelbon. If that doesn't change by summer, the Yankees are not the AL East champions in October.
Without Rivera at his best, the ride ends badly for Torre. One of these seasons, the optimists are bound to be dead wrong. If that happens this season, the Yankees ought to be readier than they are right now.
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