Now that I've seen the Rays, Yankees, and Red Sox a few times, I've come to this line of thinking: The Yankees Are In Real Trouble. Not 'wishful thinking' trouble. REAL trouble.

Their missing the playoffs in 2008 won't necessarily be of their own doing. It's not a question so much of the Yankees underachieving...it's simply that there are now two teams in the division better than they are, Joba-In-the-Rotation be damned.

The Rays have better starters, more depth, a much better defense, and adequate hitting, while the Red Sox are just plain better. When the Sox get good pitching from a castoff like Colon, they are really tough to beat, much more frightening than the Yanks. If their pitching falters (and their starting is certainly fragile), they can still bludgeon most teams into submission. If the pitching holds up at least 80%, they win the division, hands-down.

What hopes really do the Yankees have? Hughes coming back strong? The overrated Kennedy suddenly righting himself? Joba turning into Cy Junior? ("Save us, Obi-Joba, you're our only hope.")

Well, let's say two out of three occur, most likely the bookends.

What about the flip side?

Is Mussina going to keep pitching like a team ace, considering his track record of recent years? Is Dennis Rasner going to continue his out-of-nowhere performance? The ending of those two scenarios is likely to neutralize even the most outstanding performances by Hughes and Chamberlain.

And that's not to say that Posada won't help the Yankees, if he's able to play effectively. He will. So will Cano, but he's already been hitting better and the Yanks still aren't winning. The team isn't performing in a vacuum; the Red Sox and Rays will have a lot to say about how close the Yankees can get, and it's not looking to this observer that they have enough to pass both (or either) of those clubs. (One of the ironies of the season is that Yankee fans who crow about Giambi coming off the books can look at this season's offense without Giambi and shudder...he's one of the few Yankee mercenaries performing at a high level, with a RC/G over seven.)

There are some Wild Card Wannabes elsewhere in Cleveland, Oakland, and Toronto, and the Yankees can handle any/all of them. But there's a pair of clubs in their own division that - well - they just aren't as good as.

This isn't meant to be a nose-thumb at the Yanks. I didn't think that trading for Santana was a good idea, either (though I think the Yankees were over-valuing their prospects.) I'm not saying there was anything in particular the Yankees 'should have done' to prevent their descent; and it very well could be a short, short glitch (at first glance, though, it looks to be at least one more season before some of those touted farmhands can be expected to make an impact in pinstripes enough to put them back up there with the Sox and Rays). But it's a Strange New World for a lot of Yankee fans who have forgotten or never known a cyclical baseball world where the team they root for isn't always among the two or three best.