For the past few weeks, Yankees Manager, Joe Torre, maintained that his team needed to get back to .500 and things would build from there. After an 11-19 start, that day seemed far away, but thanks to an eight game winning streak, the Yankees have achieved Torre’s first step. With their 6-4 victory over the Oakland A’s, the Yankees have evened their record at 19-19 and can now resume their regularly scheduled pennant drive.

Tino Martinez continued his incredible pace of late, hitting two home runs to tie him with teammate, Alex Rodriguez, for the league lead at twelve. Since making two critical errors in the tenth inning of a game on May 6th, Tino has unstoppable at the plate, hitting eight home runs with 19 RBI”s over eight games. Nobody expected a revival of this magnitude when he retuned to the Yankees, but with Jason Giambi’s continued struggles, it is a welcome addition to the team.

The Yankees now head to Seattle for three games against the Mariners. Chien-Ming Wang, Carl Pavano and Mike Mussina are the scheduled starters. If the Yankees can take at least two out of three games, they will return to New York over .500 and primed for a confrontation with the Mets and Pedro Martinez this weekend.

Photo by AP/Ben Margot via ESPN