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Yankees fans, no need to worry. Based on my past experience and getting ideas from managers that I've played for, the first fourth of the season, the first 40 games or so, are like the horses getting out of the gate and getting into position in the Kentucky Derby. There is an old cliché: "You can't win a division in the first 30-40 games, but you can certainly lose it." The Tigers are playing better as of late, but if they go through another tough stretch, they might fall out of it if they fall too far behind.

However, if you're just plodding around like the Yankees, who are playing .500 baseball, the first 40 games should usually give the manager, the coaching staff and the general manager an idea of what their strengths and weaknesses are. In other words, are they going to be able to depend on the starting pitching that they have or will they have to make a change? Are they happy with the outfield configuration with Melky Cabrera in center? Is first base going to be a problem? In the first 30 or 40 games, you should be able to take a look at those things and figure out where you stand, and where you need to make some improvements. Then from there, until the first of September, the general manager can make those necessary changes, whether it's acquiring a new player, changing the lineup, or if one of the starting pitchers doesn't seem like he's going to be able to do his job, you can swap him out for someone else.

After the first of September, you either hope that you're in the lead or that you're in contention with a chance to win your division. That's kind of the way all teams that are potential contenders have to look at it right now.

If you look at where the Yankees are at this point in the season and you break it up in 10-game segments, the difference between finishing in the middle of the pack and winning the division is winning six out of 10 to only winning five out of 10. Teams don't have to win nine out of 10 or have a 15-game winning streak.

These recent Yankee teams don't compare to the ones of the late 1990's, those were pretty special teams. They could rattle off 10-12 wins in a row maybe a couple times a year. I don't even know if this team is going to be the kind of team that can do that for a number of reasons. I think the competition has evened out; teams like Tampa Bay have gotten a lot better. Then I don't think the Yankees are as strong as those teams. But if the Yankees do what I referred to earlier, get an idea after about 40 games, and then getting everything together around Labor Day, then all they have to do is just out and win it. That's the best you can hope for.

Slow Offensive Start/Concern is Pitching
Yankee fans shouldn't panic about the offense, but the trend in the last couple of years has been guys like Robinson Cano, Jason Giambi, and now even Alex Rodriguez, have gotten off to some slow starts offensively.

First of all, hitting comes and goes. To me, I wouldn't care about the offense. I don't care if a player is hitting .150 in April; if they've hit .300 in the past, there's a pretty good chance they will be hitting .300 again. I don't worry too much about offense. To me it's more about pitching. You can even go into fielding slumps, but for the most part, when I see the Yankees win, it's a good, solid start, and then Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera finish it off. They're going to have to have another guy or two step up in the bullpen and show Joe Girardi the kind of performances that he can have confidence in bringing them in.

Chamberlain and Rivera cannot pitch every night. There are also going to be certain situations where they may need to bring Joba in earlier in the game. When Girardi allowed Mike Mussina to pitch to Manny Ramirez in the sixth inning in that first series in Fenway Park; that might have been a situation to bring in Joba. Sometimes a game needs to be saved in the sixth or seventh inning. If Brian Bruney or someone else down in the bullpen comes in and begins to show Girardi that they're the kind of guy that can get big outs when the team is ahead late, to me that's going to be the key to how well the Yankees do. I wouldn't worry about whether Robinson Cano is hitting .150 or whoever is hitting well below their average in April.

The Manager's Corner
Girardi has only managed the Yankees for about three weeks now, and has already received praise and gotten questioned about some of his moves. However, you can not really assess how a new manager is doing with such a small sampling of games

When you make decisions about when to bunt and when to hit-and-run, you are probably at the mercy of the players. If you put the bunt sign on and the player doesn't bunt, the manager gets second-guessed on why he didn't bunt. The player has to execute it and it's the manager's job to know which players are capable of executing in those situations. I put all of those things in the backburner. I think the biggest job that a manager and his pitching coach have to do is make the right decisions in the late innings.

The best manager I ever played for in making those decisions was Whitey Herzog. He was just so far ahead of being able to match-up from the sixth inning and on. When we won the World Series in 1982, he had told me the previous year he was going to put a staff together and build it from the ninth inning back, and that's when we got all of those great coaches. I don't know the exact numbers, but if you look at our record the year we won the World Series, if we had the lead after six innings the game was essentially over, which was awfully impressive. Just as the Yankees records were in the late '90s. So those are the key things that I think manager has to learn: when to take the pitcher out, which guys to bring in during certain situations, and I think that's something that is going to be a learning process for Girardi, as it would be for anybody.