It has become an annual baseball rite to wonder whether the current version of the Yankees has devolved into their 1965 forefathers. Or should that be grandfathers, because a dynasty crumbled as stars grew moldy with age?
But what I have begun to wonder is whether the 2013 Yankees are closer cousins to the 2012 Red Sox.
It is easy now to dismiss last year’s Red Sox as a lab experiment gone horribly wrong, with Bobby Valentine as the mad scientist brewing a toxic team chemistry.
And there was huge dysfunction as the collapse and beer-and-fried-chicken debacle of September 2011 spilled into last year.
However, what undermined the 2012 Red Sox most were woeful starting pitching and injuries. They might have survived the rotation malfeasance had they ever stayed healthy, which, like the 2013 Yankees to date, they never did.
Consider the Red Sox were 36-33 last year through 69 games, not far off the Yankees’ current 38-31. And the Red Sox were 48-45 on July 19, just one game out of a wild-card spot. Carl Crawford and Jacoby Ellsbury returned after each missing most of the first half, but David Ortiz injured his Achilles, was expected to miss a few days and played just one game the rest of the year.
This is the where 2012 Red Sox and 2013 Yankees merge: Boston was just trying to weather the opening months to get injured players back. But more players went down, such as Will Middlebrooks and Dustin Pedroia. Some of the players, such as Crawford and Ortiz, suffered re-injuries. An offense that was going to revolve around Crawford, Ellsbury, Ortiz, Pedroia and Adrian Gonzalez never had those five in the lineup at the same time.
The Red Sox had 34 DL stints (the most since MLB began tracking the figure in 1987), 15 of them involving 13 former All-Stars (Crawford and Ortiz were disabled twice each). They lost 1,748 manpower days to the DL.
Suddenly, players such as Mauro Gomez, Ryan Lavarnway and Pedro Ciriaco — Boston’s version of Reid Brignac, David Adams and Thomas Neal — were lineup staples. The Red Sox closed 21-48, tied with the Astros for the second-worst record in the majors.
Now, the Yankees might share Kevin Youkilis’ chronic back problem with Boston, but they do not have the clubhouse animus and — even with CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte down a grade — they have strong starting pitching. Maybe that will counteract the injuries, as it has so far, to prevent collapse and fuel contention.
Still, the eroding impact of injuries looms. The Yankees have used the DL 15 times (pending word on Mark Teixeira’s re-injured wrist) and lost 653 days of manpower — the major league averages are 10.4 and 390.2. They have DL’ed eight former All-Stars a total of 10 times (Curtis Granderson and Youkilis twice each). The ramification is a Yankees offense as bad in 2013 as the Red Sox’s rotation was in 2012.
Those Red Sox reacted to disaster by dumping the enormous contracts of Crawford, Gonzalez and Josh Beckett (plus Nick Punto) on the Dodgers, initiating a rebuild that has the Red Sox in first place now. But that was a perfect storm because the Dodgers were under new ownership, willing to indulge substantial pacts to buy relevance and, perhaps, contention.
The Yankees have no sugar daddies ready to take Alex Rodriguez and Teixeira off their payroll.
Still, I asked Brian Cashman yesterday whether he would be willing to try to build a better tomorrow by selling in July/August if matters looked bleak, and he said, “I will worry about that if I have to deal with it. That is not on my plate, right now..”
Besides, the Yankees might not have much to sell. Hiroki Kuroda has a full no-trade clause, and when he had the same provision in July 2011, he refused to waive it to leave a losing Dodgers club to accept a trade to the Yankees, among other suitors. Thus, it would be shocking to see him agree to go now. Could Granderson get healthy enough in time to become an interesting chip in July? Would the Yankees really go nuclear and deal Robinson Cano?
Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain are struggling pitchers who are set to become free agents this offseason, which means the Yankees might not get enough to make a deal worthwhile.
If the Yankees become a 2012 Red Sox clone, they cannot expect the one windfall Boston received for its injury-doused plummet last year — a financial reset.
joel.sherman@nypost.com