You can mock the Yankees all you want for retiring pretty much every number besides 00 and 13, but nostalgia sure sells in The Bronx. You think 45,681 filled Yankee Stadium on the Sunday night of a holiday weekend to cheer on Chris Capuano?
And since the Yankees proceeded to follow Bernie Williams’ stellar opening act with yet another stinker, a 5-2 loss to the Rangers for a Texas three-game sweep, their status updated rather clearly:
Very bright recent past. Rather dim short-term future.
“There’s frustration in the room, but there’d better be frustration,” said manager Joe Girardi, the most prominent link between that past and that future. “You play this game to win. That’s the bottom line. That’s why you play this game. But we’ve been frustrated before. Our guys have responded. They need to respond.”
With dignitaries such as Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter (in his first post-retirement appearance) on site to support Williams as the Yankees retired his No. 51, the Yankees lost their sixth straight game and 10th in 11 tries, and this one brought about a trio of statistical indignities:
1) They are back to .500, at 22-22, their first time there since April 21. At their high point, May 11, they stood nine games over at 21-12.
2) They own a negative run differential, with 194 runs scored and 197 allowed, for the first time since April 17.
3) They reside closer to third place, a game up on Boston (21-23), than first place, a game and a half behind Tampa Bay (24-21), in the embarrassingly weak American League East.
Poor results tend to produce poor indicators. And every indication is that the Yankees are headed south in the standings.
“You always want to be above .500,” Mark Teixeira said. “We’re still well within striking distance of first place. That’s the only thing we can take solace in, is we haven’t dug ourselves too big a hole. If there was a good team out there in the AL East that was lighting the standings on fire, we’d be in a big hole.”
Maybe Masahiro Tanaka (right wrist and right forearm) can return after one more minor-league rehabilitation start. Do you like his chances of staying healthy, though? And all we know about the timeline for Jacoby Ellsbury (right knee) is that he’ll take longer than the minimum 15 days to return to the roster.
There’s irony in the fact that Williams, a brilliant contributor to the Yankees’ last dynasty, benefited significantly from organizational patience. Check out Bernie’s early numbers: A .238/.336/.350 slash line in 85 major-league games in 1991, his age-22 season. A step up to .280/.354/.406 in 1992, although in just 62 games. And after Gene Michael pulled off the eternally triumphant trade of Roberto Kelly to Cincinnati for Paul O’Neill, making Williams the every-day center fielder, the 24-year-old responded with a league-average .268/.333/.400 line in 1993.
Yet the Yankees hung with their young talent, Michael deftly ignoring George Steinbrenner’s requests to shop Williams in trade discussions, and the payoff … well, Bernie and his brethren continue to pay off.
The fans here roared in approval for all of their favorites, with Tino Martinez and Paul O’Neill among those joining the Core Four, and offered a standing ovation to Jeter, whose appearance the Yankees didn’t publicize beforehand. You can’t blame them. This was a most glorious run, with four World Series titles in the five seasons from 1996 to 2001 and six pennants from 1996 to 2003.
And even now, as Girardi — a 1996-99 teammate of Williams — said that era “went to pasture” with Jeter’s retirement last September, the franchise battles those young ghosts. Steinbrenner’s “World Series or bust” philosophy defines the team’s approach.
That approach has led to the Yankees taking on many poor contracts and fielding a team of questionable quality this season. On the bright side, it has caused Steinbrenner’s son, Hal, to place a greater priority on player development, and a group of interesting prospects — highlighted by pitcher Luis Severino and outfielder Aaron Judge — gets closer to the big leagues.
Probably not close enough to help this year, however, so the Yankees face the very realistic possibility of registering their first losing record since 1992. In which case their best scenario for positive momentum is to at least show improvement from the likes of shortstop Didi Gregorius, outfielder Slade Heathcott and new arrival Jacob Lindgren, the reliever whom the Yankees selected with their first pick (second round) of the 2014 amateur draft.
The Yankees might require some patience from their fans. Or they could just keep changing the subject with salutes to better times.