Reality jabbed the Yankees and their fans in the throat this past weekend as their winning streak on cloud nine was broken up by the Angels. It’s hard for anyone to be surprised by their collapse versus Los Angeles considering the Yankees have a 5-17 record in Angels Stadium since 2005.

Nearly every pitcher that the Yankees put on the hill during the three-day debacle gave up a run. Of the 9 pitchers the Yankee put on the mound over the weekend 8 gave up at least a run and 7 gave up 2 or more…SEVEN! They couldn’t beat the Hostos Community College baseball team down the Grand Concourse from Yankee stadium with statistics like that. That’s down right offensive.

Neither Joba nor Pettitte could make it through the 5^th inning and both gave up 5 runs (only 4 earned for Joba but that’s not saying much of anything). CC at least got them through the 6^th and into the 7^th but also gave up 5 runs; those aren’t acceptable numbers for last years high paid free agent. And when the bullpen was called on to stop the bleeding they seemed to squeeze out the blood like a near empty tube of toothpaste (minus Phil Hughes who pitched a scoreless 1.1 innings Sunday afternoon in relief of Joba).

All and all it was a pretty piss poor performance for the Yankees pitching staff. The Yankees were up by more than 3 runs to start both of the first two games, and collapsed. In fact the offence was there for a lot of this series. Often the Yankees smashed the ball and gave the starters a couple of runs to play with. A-Rod played well hitting over .400 for the series but most fans will probably just remember him hitting into a double play in the 7^th inning of the third loss over his 3 home runs, 5 RBI’s and 60 point jump in his average this series.

Even the Captain didn’t play particularly well—defensively anyway he hit his way to a season high .321 BA. He dropped a pop fly with both hands in the ball’s vicinity. Every one has dogged him for his lack of legs to ground balls in the gaps, but a Castillo like pop-up drop? That is very out of character for the stud.

Looking at the stat sheet doesn’t bring a lot of complaints to the offensive side of the dugout except for one juicy and disappointing stat: LOB 23. The Yankees left 23 runners on base, 11 in Friday’s 10-6 loss and 9 in Sunday’s one run sweeping. As we all witnessed over the weekend, good teams will beat you if you don’t capitalize on opportunities. The Yankees have had this problem for a few seasons and it obviously continues to plague them. No one took advantage of men on base, not A-Rod not Tex not anyone.

With the arrival of the All-Star break the Yankees will have 4 days to recover from an awful west coast showing. Jeter, Teixeira and Mo will all make the trip to St. Louis where they will look to represent the AL in the hopes of getting World Series home field advantage for their league.

The rest of the team, especially the bullpen, should fill their breaks with productive rest. Whether it be working out the kinks of a mid-season body, or resting ailing injuries it doesn’t really matter. They need to re-group after being swept by the Angels.