It’s the end of June and the Yankees find themselves in third place, five and a half games behind the first-place Tampa Rays. That can all change in just 10 days as a few key match ups put the Yankees in a good position to move up in the standings.

The Yankees are 16-and-8 since June 4 and hope to continue their winning ways as they take on the Texas Rangers at home. The Rangers are one game above a .500 winning percentage and have struggled to stay at that point all season. Aside from their mediocre record they are facing two of New York’s best pitchers in Mike Mussina and Joba Chamberlain.

Meanwhile the Boston Red Sox host the Tampa Bay Rays in a three-game series. No matter what the outcome of that series the Yankees will have the opportunity to move up in the AL East standings, the AL Wild Card, or both.

After those pair of series are over the Yankees will host the Red Sox over the weekend for four games before Tampa comes to the stadium for a pair. That puts the fate of the standings directly in their hands. For instance, winning six of the next nine games could put them right back into the race for first place.

The way the rotation lies is actually in the Bomber’s favor as it stands right now. Against the Rangers the Yankees are expected to send Mussina, Joba, and Dan Giese (or Sidney Ponson) to the mound. They should be able to take two-out-of-three in that series. Andy Pettitte, Darrell Rasner, Mussina, and Joba are expected against Boston. But the Red Sox are a tough team so the Yankees are going to need all of their pitchers to bring their A-games to gain ground on Boston in this series.

Same goes for the two game series against Tampa. For the Yankees to have made any real progress they’re going to have to win both games. As it stands right now Pettitte and Rasner should be the starters in this series.

With the pitching probables the way they are the Yankees can easily win all three of these series, but the offense can certainly help. There is good news here as their three hitters who have struggled the most this season, Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano, and Bobby Abreu have been hot lately. Jeter has hit in 16 of his last 17 games, Cano has been hitting .455 since June 24, and Abreu has ended a terrible June on a strong note hitting .478 over his past six games.

What won’t be helping them are the injuries. It looks like Hideki Matsui could be out for a long time as he is now on the DL and could need surgery for his problematic knee. The injury bug has also kept Johnny Damon out of lineups and brought his batting average back down to earth recently. Since sitting out against Pittsburgh he has a pedestrian .200 batting average with no extra base-hits or stolen bases.

If things go right they could be right back in the AL East race or at the very least real Wild Card contenders. If they lose these three series things will be worse, but luckily for the Yanks there is still half a season to play which, as history shows, is plenty of time for the Yankees to mount a comeback. But their luck has to run out sometime, right?