Bombers badly need their ace to stop getting clubbed

Forget all the things that torture and torment these Yankees now as they grind their way through a September they had earmarked for cruise control. Forget the anemic numbers with runners in scoring position. Forget they are now 0-54 when trailing after eight innings after the Rays beat them 6-4 last night.

Forget the continuing misadventures of poor Eduardo Nunez, and the fact the baseball always seems to find him at the absolute worst time. And forget the high-energy Orioles, taking their house money out west with them for a week.

Forget all of it, because none of it matters.

Not if this is the best the Yankees can expect out of CC Sabathia the rest of the way. Not if Sabathia, a horse his whole career, as reliable an ace as the law has allowed for most of his baseball life, continues to cough up leads, continues to look ordinary, continues to profile as an injured or — much more worrisome — aging pitcher.

“My arm is good, my body is good,” Sabathia said last night after 6 2/3 innings, after six hits and four runs and just three strikeouts, his face a collage of anger and angst and agitation. For weeks now, he has talked about being close to top form, his manager and his teammates have said they can feel a hot streak just around the corner.

Sabathia shook his head.

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“We keep talking about it,” he said. “But it’s time for that to show up.”

He’s a realist, and he knows what it is to be unhittable, so he also knows what the flip side feels like. Every game, it seems, he has one inning in which he looks — quite unnervingly — the way Johan Santana looked in some of the innings he turned in toward the end of his abbreviated season across town.

The fifth inning last night he kept getting ahead of hitters — and the bottom of the Rays’ lineup doesn’t exactly conjure images of the Big Red Machine — and couldn’t put any of them away. He allowed just three runs that inning but only because the imposter in his No. 52 jersey was able to coax a double play out of the pretender presently occupying Evan Longoria’s uniform.

And Sabathia mimicked what you felt watching Santana in July: hitters who never belonged in his weight class digging in, hitting balls hard. We knew why that was with Santana — coming off an injured shoulder, a busted-up ankle, he maybe got a little too ambitious in his first months back. And besides: Santana was an ace in name only, on a team that wasn’t expected to win much and had delivered on those expectations.

It’s more complicated with Sabathia, and with this team, which has always generated so much good feeling from his starts.

Is it his mechanics?

“No,” manager Joe Girardi said, softly.

Is he healthy?

“Yes,” Girardi said.

Then he channeled Johnny Keane, the old Cardinals manager who in 1964 kept throwing Bob Gibson into fires in September and October, kept him in games long after his right arm was sapped, and when asked why said, poetically, “I made a commitment to his heart.” And also because he had no reasonable alternative.

Same as Girardi in 2012, even with Ivan Nova coming back today, even with Andy Pettitte returning next week. Those are helpful complementary pieces. But without Sabathia being Sabathia every fifth day — and in October, if that’s in the Yankees’ cards — those transactions won’t be near as meaningful as they ought to be.

“I know his heart,” Girardi said of Sabathia. “I’m with him every day in the clubhouse. I know his heart.”

Said general manager Brian Cashman: “As long as he feels good and reporting he’s healthy and good, he’s going to get the ball.”

It’s what he does with it that will define where the Yankees go from here. Across his last four starts, games the Yankees have desperately needed, he is 0-3 with a 4.67 ERA. If he isn’t hurt, if he isn’t sick, he has to be better than that. Being an ace isn’t a maybe thing. For most of his career, Sabathia hasn’t been a maybe pitcher.

The Yankees have to hope Sabathia’s inner ace has been on sabbatical, and need it to report to duty. On the double.