So was Torre's plan to have Broxton pitch until he died?

Yankee fans got to have all sorts of nostalgia this weekend.

They got to see Don Mattingly again.
They got to root against Manny Ramirez again.
They got to rewind lots of great clips of World Series past again.

And they got to see Joe Torre bungle the bullpen again.

Three batters into the 9th inning it was clear that Jonathan Broxton was toast. Even Charlie Steiner and Rick Monday were talking about it on the broadcast. His fastball was flat and he was nibbling.

And the inning kept going... kind of like a Star Wars prequel... you kept hoping for that awesome thing to happen but as it kept going on you realized it was going to end up sucking.

And Charlie and Rick kept pointing out "nobody is warming up in the Dodger bullpen."

Once the Yankees tied it 6-6, I turned it off. They won it right then and there. There was no need to play the bottom of the 9th nor the 10th. The entire planet knew the game was over.

And I had a great blog post all written in my head... and instead all I've got is this half assed entry.

Tip of the cap, Joe.
Now off to San Francisco.

The Dodgers are toast

The Dodgers went into last night's game 9 back in the loss column and a mere 3 games over .500. That is a perilous position for the two time defending NL West Champs. The only two branches they could hang on to at this point are they have a head to head series against the Padres and a sweep of that series would set themselves up for a potential comeback in August and September.

So how did they do?

They didn't show up.
A 10-5 crushing at home.

10 games back in the loss column and their 6th straight loss.

Keep in mind on June 16th, the Dodgers were in first place by themselves.
In the 41 game since then, they've had three different 6 game losing streaks.

They have been 16-25 since then. Only the long left for dead Pirates and Diamondbacks have been worse since.

Now they are facing a double digit deficit in the loss column and a .500 record right in the face.

The ship has sailed and no doubt so will the Joe Torre era in L.A.

It started off so promising... Torre leading the Dodgers to the NLCS while the Yankees failed to make the playoffs and a core of nice players like Ether, Kemp, Loney, Kershaw, Martin and Broxton giving the team hope and Manny giving the team character.

And now they are in the express lane to total irrelevance. With all of their losing streaks, they may have trouble staying above .500.

This current Dodgers team is probably going to go down along with the Mike Piazza/Eric Karros/Raul Mondesi years or perhaps the Adrian Beltre/Paul LoDuca/Eric Gagne years.

Good enough to make the post season but not good enough to make any sort of dent in the post season.

(Ironically the are ALL deeper in talent than the 1988 team that won it all.)

So Torre will probably step down, Manny is out the door and the McCourts will try to make us all feel like the divorce had nothing to do with anything.

They aren't showing much pride at this point and maybe a fresh start will do the organization well.

But for the rest of the year? Put butter on them. They are toast.