Don't Look Now, But The Yankees Are Bad - Really, Really Bad

No team in Major League Baseball gets as much coverage as the New York Yankees.

From hailing from the biggest media market on planet earth, to winning the most titles in all of Major League Baseball (27 World Series titles), the Yanks will always have the most eyes in sports on them as they take the field.

When the Yankees are good, they are likely the lead story nightly on 'Sportscenter.' When they are struggling, there's still plenty of people watching, but the usual New York bandwagon fans are not out quite as much as they normally would be.

That leads us thus far to the 2021 campaign, which to date for most teams is still only 13-14 games in. It's not much for a season which lasts 162 games over the course of six months, but for the Yankees, slow starts are something that makes their fans panic like no other.

The team sits at 5-8 entering action on Saturday, which is currently the worst mark in all of the American League.

How 'bad' is it right now for the Yankees?

Things like being three games under .500 might not be that big of a deal for other teams and their fan bases, but when it comes to the Yankees, there's a ton of eyes as well as opinions on why this organization has come out of the chute so slow.

Yankees Newsday beat reporter Erik Boland says that

"I always hesitate to overreact to a slow start because it seems, almost as long as I've been covering the Yankees, which for me goes back to 2009, more often than not they've gotten off to slow starts, only to recover and win their usual 90-100 games," Boland said Saturday.

"I still see, top to bottom, more talent on this roster than most of their competitors in the AL so I'm inclined to see this as nothing more than the slow starts that have been typical of this franchise the last decade plus.

"That said, at some point a bad start to a year simply becomes a bad year and while I'm not close to the point of declaring that with this team, the shoddy defense, inconsistent starting pitching (other than Cole) and more often than not all-or-nothing trips to the plate for too many hitters is slightly concerning because it's all happening at once."

For now the Yankees have plenty of time to get back to being in the playoff mix, but as long as they keep having struggles, all of baseball will take notice.