"The Yankees are 29 games over .500. They have owned at least a tie of first place for 62 of the past 63 days. Their magic number to clinch a postseason berth sat at 34 heading into last night's batch of games. There are a lot of teams with a lot of laments right now; The Yankees shouldn't be one of them.

And yet they are a team with laments. It isn't just the third baseman, Alex Rodriguez, finally shipped to the disabled list after yesterday's 9-5 win over Seattle with a troublesome calf so that, in manager Joe Girardi's words, "we have a healthy player in 15 days." And it isn't just that in a game against the lowly Mariners, Girardi felt compelled to call on Mariano Rivera for a four-out save because he trusted neither David Robertson nor Joba Chamberlain to preserve what, at the time, was a three-run lead."