MLB

These Yankees no match for the elite teams in baseball

OAKLAND, Calif. — To steal from Bill Parcells, who lost the only two games he coached here at O.co Coliseum, you are what your record says you are.

The problem with these Yankees is, when they play teams with similar records, they become something less.

They get exposed. Their record worsens.

Bad Phil Hughes showed up in the Bay Area Wednesday night, so the offense-starved Yankees suffered their second straight loss to the impressive A’s, 5-2. They have gone five games without hitting a home run, their worst such stretch since 2000.

“That’s too much,” Mark Teixeira said. “We’re the Bronx Bombers.”

For a team with a respectable 37-28 mark, the Yankees sure don’t look very good right now. That’s probably because they have outplayed their mathematical expectation, having scored 258 runs and allowed 247, making them close to a .500 team on paper. It’s also because, when matched up against good teams, they haven’t fared well.

The Yankees are now 14-18 (.438) against clubs that currently have winning records and 23-10 (.697) when playing clubs that reside under .500 today. The Bombers should be pleased they have only today’s series finale left against the A’s before heading to Anaheim to take on the lousy Angels and then return home to host Don Mattingly’s lousy Dodgers.

You can worry about Hughes, and it wouldn’t be without justification. The erratic right-hander couldn’t make it through the fifth inning, throwing 95 pitches to get just 13 outs. As is his way, he struggled to put away hitters, most memorably getting ahead of Seth Smith, 0-and-2, in the third inning and walking him nine pitches later. He is now 3-5 with an ERA of 4.89.

But manager Joe Girardi did well in lifting Hughes for reliever Shawn Kelley so that, by the time this game became official, the Yankees faced a manageable 3-0 deficit. At least, it’s a manageable deficit for a team with a respectable offense.

That team isn’t the Yankees, who rank 11th in the American League in runs scored. Against A’s starting pitcher Dan Straily, the Yankees produced one hit, an Ichiro Suzuki single in the second, and no walks through those first five innings. To their credit, they cobbled together a run in the sixth and one more in the seventh, with Mark Teixeira (sacrifice fly) and Jayson Nix (single) delivering with runners in scoring position in successive innings.

Yet that proved insufficient, as Girardi lost a seventh-inning chess match with his Oakland counterpart Bob Melvin: When Nix stole second base on the first pitch to Austin Romine, the Yankees pinch-hit Lyle Overbay on the 1-and-0 count, which prompted Melvin to turn to lefty reliever Sean Doolittle, which in turn caused Girardi to go with Chris Stewart, who struck out to end the frame. The turn of events meant that Overbay departed the game without even stepping to the plate.

It was a bold call by Girardi, and it spoke most to his desperation and lack of offensive weapons. And everything fell apart when Joba Chamberlain, edging closer to irrelevance, allowed two insurance runs in the bottom of the eighth, putting the game out of reach for the Yankees’ feeble lineup.

It’s to their credit that the Yankees have played very well against bad teams (well, besides the Mets). And if they maintained these respective winning percentages the rest of the way, matched against what remains on their schedule _ 53 games with winners and 44 against losers? They actually would finish with 91 wins, which would at least keep them in the playoff hunt until season’s end.

That’s dangerous math, though. You would rather play a winning brand of baseball all around, for the sakes of consistency and confidence.

“You try to score more runs. That’s the bottom line,” Girardi said. “But right now, we’re going through a little bit of a hard time. These guys will bounce back.”

The Yankees’ actual ace Hiroki Kuroda will try to salvage this series today, attempt to close out the season series with Oakland on a positive note. The A’s, loaded with young, talented players, are a strong bet to win a postseason berth for the second straight year.

Will they see the Yankees there? Too early to say. Not too early to offer this, though: The Yankees sure aren’t scaring any of their fellow winning teams.