You could sum up the problems that have beset the Yankees the past two years in three words:
The Texas Rangers.
Actually, a case could be made the Rangers have the Yankees’ troubles on — forgive the analogy — steroids:
♦ You think the baseball deities turned vengeful on the Yankees by inflicting so many injuries last year, well (apologies up front to Monty Python), those were mere flesh wounds compared to what Texas is enduring this season.
The Yanks used the disabled list 28 times last year. Texas already has done so 20 times — six more than any other team. The Rangers have lost 818 days to the DL — 317 more than any other team.
Texas has endured injury, re-injury and annihilation in certain positions. Its first four first base options — Prince Fielder, Mitch Moreland, Kevin Kouzmanoff and Jim Adduci — all are on the DL, forcing them to use Brad Snyder, who though 32 had just 20 games of major league experience before this year, just two at first base.
♦ The Yankees lost three-fifths of their rotation this season, but just Ivan Nova certainly for the season. The Rangers have had it worse. Martin Perez, like Nova, required Tommy John surgery and is gone for the year. Matt Harrison has needed a third back surgery, and now there are worries about his career. Derek Holland hasn’t pitched this year after tearing cartilage behind his kneecap when he tripped over his dog in the offseason — and that isn’t even the weirdest Rangers injury this year. That belongs to lefty Joe Ortiz, who had his foot fractured when a motorcycle ran over it while he crossed the street in his native Venezuela.
So Texas is operating without its Nos. 2-3-4 starters (though Holland is due back around the All-Star break) and has needed to use an MLB-high-tying 10 starters in all.
That has left the Rangers depending on their touted Japanese starter Yu Darvish (10-2 when he starts, 23-32 when he doesn’t) at least as much as the Yankees do on theirs, Masahiro Tanaka (11-2 when he starts, 24-29 when he doesn’t). Texas has an AL-high 13 shutouts — five started by Darvish.
♦ Chagrined how little impact Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann have had on the offense after the Yankees’ offseason spending spree, well, the Rangers built up their largest payroll ever by trading Ian Kinsler for Fielder and the final seven years of his contract (with Detroit eating $30 million of the pact) and signing Shin-Soo Choo for seven years at $130 million.
Choo has been slowed by an ankle injury. But the big worry is Fielder, who was following a declining trend line that began last year in Detroit. Now, he has gone from one of the game’s iron men to needing season-ending neck surgery. The Rangers are hopeful he returns in full next year, but between his decline and this injury, who knows?
The trade was designed to have Fielder at first and Jurickson Profar take over at second, but Profar has not yet to play this year and is now not expected to because of a tear in his right shoulder.
And though the Yankees decided to let Robinson Cano go to free agency and allocate the dollars elsewhere, Texas did the same the past two years with Josh Hamilton, Mike Napoli and Nelson Cruz — all three have been productive this year, though Hamilton and Napoli have battled injury.
♦ And if last season offered the final venue for moaning, groaning and theorizing about how flip-flopping between starter and reliever curtailed Joba Chamberlain’s chance for Yankees greatness, then the Rangers have that on endless loop with Neftali Feliz, Alexi Ogando, Robbie Ross and Tanner Scheppers — who have incurred arm injuries, performance regression or both as they have shuffled between roles. Feliz, the 2010 AL Rookie of the Year who suffocated the Yankees in the ALCS that season, has fallen so far that he has yet to be promoted out of the minors, though the Rangers already have used 22 pitchers (one fewer than the MLB-leading Yankees).
The Rangers went into Saturday 33-34, 2 ¹/₂ games out of the second wild card, but at the outset of a nine-game road trip against the three AL West teams ahead of them — the Mariners, A’s and Angels. Texas general manager Jon Daniels insisted over the phone that this is not the defining buy-or-sell moment for his club.
“I am not giving up on the year,” Daniels said. “I am pragmatic. I understand we are challenged and disadvantaged from where we expected to be from a personnel standpoint. When it rains it pours, but Wash [manager Ron Washington] has been great — he said we just need to get a bigger umbrella.”
It is the right jutting-jaw sentiment to offer publicly. And, as a way to show how long the season is and how quickly results can change, Daniels pointed to 2012, when the Rangers had the AL’s best record on Sept. 3 (134 games into the schedule) and wound up tumbling out of first place and losing the one-game wild card.
But in many ways, that also represents the star-crossed Rangers of this era: Only the Yankees had a better record than the Rangers from 2009-13. Tampa Bay is the only other team to win at least 90 games each year from 2010-13 (and, by the way, the Rays are in a worse predicament this year than the Rangers). Texas never could win it all, though, losing the World Series in 2010 and 2011 — in ’11 when it was twice one strike away from winning a first-ever title — and having late collapses each of the past two seasons.
Daniels said regardless of what happens, the Rangers are not in rebuild mode, that this is unlike 2007 when they had decided, no matter what, to trade Mark Teixeira in July for the best offer. The reality is that the three players who could most impact the trade market — Adrian Beltre, Alex Rios and Joakim Soria — could not be easily replaced for next season, when Texas expects to contend regardless of what occurs this year.
So the only reason to trade that trio would be if internally the Rangers agreed this period of success is over — that a window never climbed fully through is now closed — and they need to restock their system after giving up big pieces going for it in 2012 (for Ryan Dempster) and 2013 (for Matt Garza) and to better cope with what could be problematic long-term deals with Fielder, Elvis Andrus (whose offensive game has fallen apart) and possibly Choo.
“We are not at that point right now, and I don’t want to say we are going to look to do that,” Daniels said. “Let’s give it time. We are not declaring our intentions before we have to. You have to respond to realities of all situations. If the group we have comes together and we get quicker development in some players, we can take a step forward and stay in [the race]. That is our first choice. If that doesn’t happen …”
Stay tuned.