A-Rod Here For the Duration

A-Rod will go down with the ship.

Barring injury, Alex Rodriguez will be in the Yankees lineup for the remainder of the season. As expected the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) filed an appeal on A-Rod's behalf for the 211 game suspension handed down from MLB.

No appeal hearings will be held until November, so that means A-Rod will be in uniform through the end of the 2013 season, which looks more and more like it will be after game 162 and not beyond.

Most fans would probably like the appeal to be over and done with so it won't be a topic of conversation for months, but Bud Selig certainly doesn't want to distract from the game itself or the post-season.

A post-season that will in all likelihood not include the Yankees. They arrived home Thursday for the start of a homestand against the red hot Detroit Tigers (11 straight wins) on Friday. It doesn't matter right now if the opponent is hot, cold, or breathing. The Chicago White Sox had lost 10 in a row, but completed a three game sweep of the Yankees, after rallying from 4-0 and 5-4 deficits in the finale.

Things are so bad that Mariano Rivera blew the save in the 9th inning Wednesday night and then with two outs and no one on in the 12th, Adam Warren got in the way of a ball ticketed for Robinson Cano for what would have been an easy third out of the game. Instead the inning continued and the White Sox won.

All I could do was laugh. It beats crying.