TAMPA — The Yankees are set up for the same calamity this year that befell them a season ago. They have areas of real fragility and little in the way of strong second-tier options.
In 2013, as they used a franchise-record 56 players, that meant fire-drill acquisitions of underwhelming players such as Ben Francisco, Lyle Overbay and Vernon Wells, and too many at-bats ultimately for lightweights such as David Adams, Reid Brignac and Luis Cruz. It was “The Day After Tomorrow” as age, lack of emphasis on the bench and a woeful farm system finally caught up with the Yankees, leading to a playoff-less season.
Well, “The Day After Tomorrow 2” is in pre-production. The Yankees began the offseason with voluminous holes and budgetary constraints on how much could be laid out for 2014. They went big for Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Masahiro Tanaka. The result is the Yankees have a terrific top 15 players on their roster.
However, the farm system still isn’t ready to help much, the depth remains iffy and the frontline is brittle enough to suggest the Yankees are going to need way more than 15 really good players, even if the plague doesn’t hit again to cause the need for 56.
As general manager Brian Cashman acknowledged: “In some cases we are still looking for positions if we can. The second and third wave is a developing storyline. I don’t have obvious answers for this. We had a lot of problems to fix [in the offseason]. We didn’t fix all of them and we are still in problem-solving mode.”
Yet, the Yankees have no plans to hand out another major league contract, which means, for example, no Stephen Drew. Which is a factor. Because while Cashman is worried about rotation and bullpen depth — heck, who closes if David Robertson can’t or gets hurt, for example — the infield is causing the greatest angst. In the championship 2009 season, the quartet of Mark Teixeira, Robinson Cano, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez was in the conversation for greatest ever. Five years later, not so much.
Teixeira, 34 in April, is coming back from a major wrist injury. Brian Roberts, 36, is the Travis Hafner of second basemen. Jeter, 40 in June, is returning from a devastating ankle injury. Kelly Johnson, 32, has never been a regular third baseman.
And the scariest part is the safety net for such a fragile foursome.
Teixeira arrived in camp Sunday, took batting practice, pronounced his wrist is feeling great and said he expects to play 150-plus games and be a 30-100 man again. He better. Every other player due in camp has combined to start 10 games in the majors at first, two by Johnson, who is seen as the primary backup.
Roberts has started 174 games over the last four years at second — Cano started at least 150 in each of his last seven years as a Yankee. Scott Sizemore, who missed all but two games in 2012-13 due to tearing his ACL twice, is the prime backup candidate. Johnson also could play second, but then who plays third or backs up at first? Johnson has started 12 games at third — one more than Teixeira. The best third baseman under contract to the Yankees remains A-Rod, who you might have heard is not available to them in 2014. Brendan Ryan is a defensive whiz as Jeter’s caddy, but his .619 career OPS is the worst for any current player on a 40-man roster (minimum 2,500 plate appearances).
The Yankees did try to remedy this. But they were outbid on Jhonny Peralta and Omar Infante, and tried hard to acquire Logan Forsythe from the Padres, who was instead dealt to Tampa. Which actually provides clues on the Yankees strategy — to mimic the Rays by having multiple players who can play several positions and having Joe Girardi deploy them to their best use in Joe Maddon-esque style. Girardi conceded this is what he expects to do, saying, “I will have to make more decisions in this camp how to use people than ever before.”
For example, Ryan and Eduardo Nunez can play second, short and third, Johnson and Sizemore second and third. The Yanks would probably like to carry Ryan, Nunez and Sizemore as reserves, but could only do that if they can get Ichiro Suzuki off the roster. Assistant GM Billy Eppler believes Dean Anna and Yangervis Solarte will offer multi-positional options at Triple-A.
Perhaps the Yanks could use Suzuki or one of their backup catchers — Francisco Cervelli, Austin Romine or J.R. Murphy — to make the infield less vulnerable; Murphy, in particular, is viewed as having value. Maybe desperation later in camp could lead to Drew. How long before we start hearing Aramis Ramirez or Chase Headley rumors?
For now, though — even as Teixeira and Jeter pronounce they are feeling great — the Yankees are in jeopardy of revisiting “The Day After Tomorrow.”