Taking inventory, waiting-for-the-playoffs edition

This will be the last time I use the post title "Taking Inventory." Larry hates it. He's been asking me to come up with something more creative for these posts. In 2011 I'm leaning towards "Stuff."

As always, these are random observations about the Yankees' recent play.

Alex Rodriguez | In Wednesday's game against the Blue Jays Alex hit his 30th home run of the season. The milestone brings the number of consecutive seasons that he's had at least 30 homers and 100 RBI to a baseball-leading 13 (14 in total). It is even more impressive because as recently as mid-August few baseball prognosticators thought A-Rod would get there.

Here's a look at how he did it:

These numbers surprised me. I'd assumed that A-Rod's 2nd half numbers were closer to his career norms (.303/.387/.572). I was wrong. Only Alex's SLG approached his career averages. His AVG and OBP remained sub-par (for him). In addition, his lights-out September is propping up his second half. In July he hit a ghastly .248/.305/.467. In August, he hit for more power, but was getting on base with the alacrity of Yuniesky Betancourt, to the tune of .226/.268/.528.

What a difference a month makes! Alex hit 30% of his home runs and 21% of his RBI in September, a month in which he got only 16% of his at-bats. If he hadn't caught fire (and by that I mean nuclear explosion, inside the volcano, house-on-fire hot) in the last month of the season A-Rod's 2010 would've looked pretty bleak. Talk of decline and an albatross contract would follow. Now, 2010 is just one more line on the back of his baseball card with a few sub-par numbers, but a line that is mostly what we've come to expect from Alex.

To put Alex's hot month into perspective, you have to go all the way back to June 2008. That was the last time he hit nine homers in a month, a month that saw him hit those homers, along with 23 RBI and a super-human .366/.455/.693 in 101 at-bats. His rate stats were down this month compared to that one, which has been par for his 2010 performance, but he hit just as many homers and more RBI with almost 20% fewer at-bats. That's a power surge, if ever there was one.

The Yankees are lucky that their best hitter is getting hot at the right time. They may be luckier still that he remains capable of producing this way. Alex is said to be aware of his role in baseball history. Hopefully he recognizes that OBP is part of that history. That seems to be the only part of his game he's missing. It looks like it will be back in time for the playoffs. Hopefully that carries into 2011.

Mark Teixeira | Did he have a good season or not? On the one hand, he's got 33 homers and 107 RBI. On the other hand, he's posted a career slash line of .286/.377/.537, all three of which fell this year, to .259/.367/.487. Those numbers are solid, but they're below what Yankee fans expect from Tex, and below what the Yankees are paying for.

This is one of those rare instances when all the blame can probably be put on injury (injuries are part of the game, but they are usually a nagging part of the game, such as what happened to A-Rod or Jorge Posada this season.) On August 31, Tex hit his 30th home run. That day he'd battled his slash stats all the way up to .264/.370/.510. That's also the day he broke his toe. Later that week he'd suffer a bone bruise to his thumb. He then went into a tailspin to start September. If Tex doesn't get hurt, in all probability he doesn't go into that tailspin, and his OPS is above .900 right now.

All things considered, Tex has put together another solid, if not spectacular season, and demonstrated he can fight through his troubles. He's also getting hot right now. Either his toe died and doesn't hurt him anymore, or his thumb has healed, but something has been very right with Mark Teixeira. Over the last seven days he's batting .370/.438/.778 with three homers. Those are the kinds of numbers he put up in July and August when he salvaged his season. Hopefully he doesn't start 2011 as badly as he did 2010, and he can continue his hot hitting for just one more month.

Mariano Rivera | Earlier this month, when Mo first began blowing saves, I prognosticated that we'd seen the worst from him, and his numbers for the month of September would fall in line with his season averages. Then he blew two more saves.

The good news is that Mariano is still a great pitcher. He's such a great pitcher that his numbers in this awful September are an ERA of 4.76 and a WHIP of 1.26. Those are bad numbers for Mo, but they are far from terrible. The bad news is that the last year Mo had such a bad month so late in the season was 2004. Seriously. He's had bad months since then, particularly his appalling April in 2007, but not since 2004 has it happened so late in the season.

Potential Playoff Opponents | Much has been made of the Yankees' poor September, and with good reason. September is now the only month of the season in which the Yankees have played to a losing record (12-15). Otherwise, the Yankees have been above .500 every month in 2010. It is because of this losing record that so many baseball analysts (myself included) feel the Yankees are limping into the playoffs.

What hasn't gotten as much press here in the Big Apple is the poor play of many of our opponents. The Rays have played to a 13-13 record, better than the Yankees, but not much better. The Twins, meanwhile, have surged in September, playing to a 17-9 record. That's great, except they've fallen apart recently. Until they won on Wednesday night they had lost five in a row, potentially sacrificing home field in the AL along the way. (Also, Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer are banged up, but that's a post for another time.) Finally, the Rangers have played 14-12 baseball in September, which is OK, but has to be taken down a notch because they got to pound the AL West. With the exception of June, when Josh Hamilton powered the Rangers to a 21-6 record, the team has never played better than .556 baseball in a month this season, which happened in May.

The mainstream media is focusing on the Yankees' recent spate of poor play (which featured something like four one-run road losses, but whatever) because its a good story, especially if you're a Yankee hater. Dig a little deeper, though, and two story lines emerge.

First, all four of the playoff teams have their problems and are limping right now. It is a 162-game season. That's what happens. Second, as much as analysts focus on what baseball players have done lately, all 162 games count. The Yankees, Rays and Rangers more or less locked their postseason berths up at the end of July. August and September didn't matter for them. They all clinched playoff berths despite mediocre records this month. The Baltimore Buck Showalters, on the other hand, went 17-11 in August and 14-12 in September, making up four games on the Yankees in the process. Guess who's playing in October?