Joel Sherman

Joel Sherman

Yankees’ Teixeira problem similar to Phillies’ mess with Howard

One of the worst-kept secrets in the majors is how badly the Phillies want to rid themselves of Ryan Howard.

They made it clear at the trade deadline and beyond that they would pay much and take little to make him go away. They have decided to keep playing Howard regularly down the stretch, hoping for a hot streak that could make him a little more desirable in the offseason.

When I sized up what the Phillies have in Howard — a one-time championship first baseman in steady, irreversible decline who will turn 35 in the coming months and has two ugly years left on his contract — it sure did sound familiar.

Oh, wait, that also describes Mark Teixeira.

You want to say Teixeira’s $45 million obligation for 2015-16 isn’t quite as onerous as Howard’s $60 million or Teixeira’s defensive skills are degraded from his heyday, but still superior to Howard’s. Fine.

Nevertheless, we are talking about guys who both had 20 homers to go along with .220-something averages and a campaign of too many empty at-bats.

The Yanks know not even to try to move Teixeira. First, the market is not exactly teeming with teams interested in physically challenged older players with terrible contracts and declining skills. Second, Teixeira has a no-trade clause, and he is not leaving a place in which he has established significant familial, business and personal stakes.

So the Yanks — like the Phillies — probably are stuck with their Howard-esque problem. Which is a killer in the waning days of this season gone wrong — plus future seasons, as well. The Yanks actually share troubling similarities with the Phillies: The World Series winners of 2009 and 2008, respectively, tried to hold onto their championship cores to expensive debilitation.

The Yanks, for example, already are looking at $74.4 million toward the luxury-tax payroll in 2015 on Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez and CC Sabathia with the possibility of getting little to no return on the trio — and all are also signed for at least 2016. Want another scary sentence if you are a Yankees fan? Of that threesome, Teixeira probably is the best bet to perform to even league average.

“I’d like to think that I am still a 30-[homer]-, 100-[RBI] guy who draws a lot of walks,” Teixeira said.

Maybe that is still in there. Through 81 Yankees games — exactly half a season — Teixeira was at 15 homers and 41 RBIs with a more than respectable .818 OPS. Where do the Yanks sign up for 30 homers and even the 82 RBIs to honor that pace?

But a combination of wrist and back problems, Teixeira says, doomed him. In fact, he used the term “starting behind the eight ball” to describe trying to catch up early this season, with so little training time as he recovered from wrist surgery.

He expects what he calls “a normal” offseason in which he can work out in a familiar way to prepare for next season. But his fragility now feels part of his baseball season. Why would anyone think he could endure better in 2015, when he turns 35 in April?

And we have seen with his game going vacant late this year just how deficient this version of Teixeira can be. He went 1-for-3 with a walk in the Yankees’ 5-1 victory Wednesday over Boston. In the month from Aug. 3 to Sept. 3 — as his body has worn down — Teixeira hit .176 with one homer, four RBIs and a .247 slugging percentage. He batted fifth Tuesday, the only time in this span he was not hitting third or cleanup. So he has been as responsible as anyone for the offensive outage.

When I asked him how culpable he felt for the state of the Yankees’ offense, Teixeira mentioned how the inability for him and Carlos Beltran to stay healthy has been a killer.

It was an interesting answer. I asked Teixeira about himself and he dragged Beltran into the response. This feels like part of the deal with the switch-hitter. It never seems as if Teixeira owns his failure well — whether it is including Beltran in explanation or being very public about his aches and pains in the way, say, Sabathia or Derek Jeter never would.

That doesn’t make him a bad guy, it is just part of the Teixeira portfolio.

No one cared much about the dubious stuff in the portfolio when the annual 30-100 output was reality, not a wish.

Now he is the Yankees’ Ryan Howard. And the way the Phillies have been trying to rid themselves of the actual Howard, well, it says what a bad thing this is for the Yanks.