Injuries is an excuse. The Red Sox lost a ton of games by All Star caliber players, traded their best offensive player, played another 6 weeks without their second best player, and lost Schilling for the season. The rays were missing Crawford for the last six weeks, Longoria for a month, and they were essentially without a closer for the entire season. The Yankees problems run much deeper than injuries. They stunk. There record is quite misleading. They got as close as they did, because they picked up some ground when the games really no longer mattered to the Rays and the Sox. They were a third place team pretty much wire to wire this season and they were fighting to stay out of 4th place. Your aging offense, relic SS, idiot manager and unaccomplished GM will have to overcome numerous obstacles to return to the post season next year. Among those obstacles are: the relic at SS with no range (he will hurt the sinkerballer Wang tremendously) and the idiot manager and GM.