The Yankees and Barry Bonds

Alright, a quick update on the state of Yankees Baseball.

Right now, they are 44-38 and 5 1/2 games out of first place- 5 games out of the wild card lead. There's plenty of time to erase those game margins from now until October- honestly, we've overcome worse deficits in the past. For a little bit, it looked like things were really clicking- A-Rod hitting one out for 4 days straight, Giambi (mustached and) playing like he did 2001, Wang figuring it out again and shutting teams down, Jeter, Abreu, and Cano all breaking out of their slumps, Petitte pitching like a no. 1 starter, Joba is now a full-time starter, Matsui hitting .330+, Damon hitting .330+, Mariano is pitching out-of-his-mind- yep it looked great. It was during this streak the Yankees left .500 ball behind them winning 8 in a row.

But not all good things go on forever. First Wang goes down and may be out for the season- we had to rely on Dan Giese and Sidney Ponson to start a double header against the Mets a few days ago. Then Damon and Giambi are on mini-slides starting bring them out of the stratosphere while Melky seems to have forgotten how to hit and Cano seems to be reverting to early season form. Fortunately, it doesn't seem that those slumps will really last. Our bulpen's inexperience is beginning to show as Edwar and Ohlendorf had a couple of trip ups and we just split a series with the Mets- THE FREAKIN' METS!

The guys over at noMaas.org (one of my favorite Yankee blogs) had an interesting suggestion: sign Barry Bonds. Apparently Bonds says he just wants to play, willing to sign for the veteran's minimum salary. In fact, Bonds' agent Scott Borris said that Bonds "would play for free - offering to donate whatever salary he receives to purchase tickets for children. (source)"

My response: just do it.

Barry Bonds put up a .480 on base percentage last season. In other words, he ended up on base nearly half the time he stepped up at bat. That's ridiculous.

Everyone knows what Bonds can do with a bat by launching a ball at any given moment (if pitched to). Imagine this as your batters 1 through 6: Damon (LF), Jeter (SS), Abreu (RF), A-Rod (3B), Bonds (DH), Giambi (1B). Each of those guys have the potential to crank the ball out at every at bat, each of those guys can take more than 5 pitches an at bat, each of those guys are tough outs. After those 6 batters, a pitcher might very well have spent 50 pitches in one or two innings! I don't care who pitches against that line up, they'll struggle.

Bonds doesn't have to play DH either. With Matsui perhaps ending up on the DL, Bonds could be put out in LF and I'm sure if you give him a glove, he could handle 1B at least to Giambi's defensive standards.

Sign Barry Bonds, it makes the Yankees better.