Memo to Chien-Ming Wang:

You are not Carl Pavano. Why are you behaving as though you are?

Wang goes limp...

I'm told Wang was limp in his start tonight. I wouldn't know, I just got home from work, after spending 17 hours there. In other news, Alex Rodriguez made my annual salary between the hours of 12 midnight and 9 am today in exchange for his efforts at not playing baseball.

Will Wang go soft on us?

I know there are many games ahead, and that no one game is do-or-die in April. However, since most of the 2008 Yankee team, possibly the streakiest Yankee squad I can remember since about 1993, remains intact, momentum is essential. Hence the reign of terror the Yanks perpetrated in the grapefruit league...meaningless, yes, except that the fact remains the team compiled their 24-10-1 record in very hot and cold fashion. The hot streak was longer than the cold one, but still.

So as Wang takes the ball tonight, the question is whether he'll be rock-solid or go soft on the Birds (wow, that was...that was quite a sentence). There was no question the Yankees missed him last year after they lost him to one of the stupidest injuries you'll ever see (in the sense that interleague play shouldn't exist, and if it didn't, an AL pitcher wouldn't have a chance to get hurt on the basepaths). But I've never seen him as the kind of stopper that, for instance, a young Andy Pettitte was, so who knows what we'll see.

I'm not worried yet, but if this team is anything like last year's, two games counts as a losing streak, and a losing streak can perpetuate itself better than The Myth of A-Rod. A win tonight will go a long way towards keeping the club focused and reminding them what winning looks like (it should take more than one loss to forget, but...)