Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

MLB

Joe Girardi’s star keeps rising during turbulent times for Yankees

BALTIMORE — In the Yankees’ clubhouse, crisis mode is the new normal. Which means Joe Girardi’s responsibilities have changed dramatically from his earlier days of running this team.

“I don’t know if it’s normal, but you understand that you have a job to do, and you’ve got to do your job,” the Yankees’ manager told The Post on Sunday before his team closed out its turbulent first half with a rain-shortened 3-1 loss to the Orioles at Camden Yards. “Obviously, you’re always extremely concerned about people that are injured and how they’re dealing with it and all that. But I think you also have to focus on what’s going on at that moment.”

This past season and a half has tested the Yankees, who enter the All-Star break at a perfectly mediocre 47-47, down to their core. Everything, from their ownership to their business operations to their farm system has been called into question as baseball’s behemoth faces a strong possibility of missing the postseason for a second straight year.

Through this chaos, however, Girardi keeps enhancing his status, both within the organization and among other teams. His guiding of last year’s injury-savaged club to an 85-77 record scored him a four-year, $16 million extension, and in the first year of that deal, he again has a decimated team performing over its statistical head.

The Yankees have scored 375 runs and allowed 412, by which they should be 43-51. Instead, they possess at least a prayer in the races for both the American League East title (they trail Baltimore by five games) and the AL wild card (they trail Seattle by 3.5 games).

Girardi has used 10 starting pitchers, 20 relievers, five second basemen and four third basemen, and while his immediate boss, Brian Cashman, continues to search for upgrades all over the roster, it’s hard to imagine any semblance of stability arriving. Too many voids exist. Too many questions remain. So the manager will continue to scrutinize every pre-game and in-game decision in a way he didn’t when he deployed a more static roster.

“It’s just a different thought process, is what it is,” Girardi said. “You’re not exactly sure what you’re going to have any given week, in a sense. So it’s just kind of different, in a sense.

“You have a lot of people walk in and out of the doors. Your team is not consistent. And the hardest thing about that is not necessarily making the lineup every day. But you just don’t know some of the signs that you’ve learned when you’re around people for a long time.”

To succeed in such an environment, Girardi relies on life lessons distant and (relatively) recent, personal and professional. His mother, Angela, was diagnosed with cancer when Joe was 13 and died six years later.

“I had a great teacher in my mom,” Girardi said. “Even though she was really sick, she focused on the job at hand.”

More specific to the baseball world, Girardi earned his first job managing with the 2006 Marlins, who took a wrecking ball to their team by choice as opposed to the 2013 and 2014 Yankees. Florida traded away nearly all of its pricey players, leaving its rookie skipper with Miguel Cabrera, Dontrelle Willis and a gaggle of unknown youngsters. Many of those youngsters turned out to be pretty darn good, like Detroit starting pitcher Anibal Sanchez.

Atlanta current headache Dan Uggla and Minnesota slugger Josh Willingham were among the rookies who established themselves with that team. Yet no one knew that at the season’s outset, so Girardi conducted the sort of day-to-day scrambling that wasn’t necessary in his first five years running the Yankees.

Even though that campaign ended with his dismissal after he clashed with difficult Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, Girardi took away much wisdom, not to mention the ’06 National League Manager of the Year trophy.

“I definitely think that it did [help],” Girardi said of his Florida experience. “All that I went through has helped me in this situation.”

He must summon every lesson he picked up along the way, for it doesn’t look to be getting any easier. The Yankees appreciate that without Girardi, it would be even harder.