Ken Davidoff

Ken Davidoff

MLB

Stephen Drew? Martin Prado? How desperate are the Yankees?

Let’s take a look at the latest transactions.

Oakland Athletics: Acquired Jon Lester and Jonny Gomes from the Red Sox in return for Yoenis Cespedes.

Detroit Tigers: Acquired David Price from the Rays as part of a three-way trade.

New York Yankees: Slapped some lipstick on a pig.

Yes, the never-say-rebuild (or even “retool”) Yankees experienced a typically busy July 31, closing out the non-waivers trade deadline by picking up Stephen Drew from the Red Sox(!) and Martin Prado from the Diamondbacks in an effort to upgrade their lagging offense. The two veterans are expected to join the Yankees on Friday in Boston, as they kick off a three-game series against the retooling Red Sox at Fenway Park.

Drew and Prado should help. Yet you wonder whether they’ll help enough. Or, conversely, whether they could have helped more had they or reasonable facsimiles arrived far earlier.

“We’re obviously trying to improve our offensive output and give Joe [Girardi] a bunch of available options,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said Thursday in a post-deadline telephone news conference. “Hopefully these two deals can assist in that effort.”

They are options that reek of desperation, in an attempt to repair a dramatically underachieving offense. Drew, who will take over as the starting second baseman despite never having played anywhere besides shortstop in his nine-year major-league career, is the same guy on whom the Yankees repeatedly passed earlier this season when the 31-year-old lingered in free agency, a victim of baseball’s draft-compensation system for free agents.

Prado will be asked to play right field, where he has played one major league game (for two innings) in a nine-year career. And the Yankees agreed to pay him the rest of his $11 million salary this year, about $3.65 million, in addition to $11 million each of the next two seasons.

“I appreciate ownership stepping up,” Cashman said, and sure, Hal Steinbrenner followed his usual procedure of turning the spigot back on after tightening it shut in January, following the monster signing of Masahiro Tanaka. When you tally the costs of Drew ($4.2 million), Prado and their fellow July arrivals Chase Headley ($3 million) and Brandon McCarthy ($3.05 million), you get another $36 million or so in Yankees commitments. Furthermore, in order to pick up Prado, the Yankees gave up minor-league power bat Peter O’Brien.

Nevertheless, you wonder how much better shape the Yankees would be in now had they acknowledged in January what they finally conceded in the latter half of July: Their infield stunk. Brian Roberts and Kelly Johnson never were going to be the answers. Shoot, just think how much worse off the Yankees would be had Yangervis Solarte’s radioactive spider bite not carried him through an electric April and May.

The Yankees (55-52) trail the Orioles (60-47) by five games in the American League East and the Blue Jays (60-50) by 3 1/2 games in the hunt for the second AL wild card. Their daunting run differential of 429 runs scored and 459 allowed reflects how fortunate they should feel not to be even further back in the pennant race.

Cashman acknowledged making runs at Lester and Price, and the Yankees’ farm system has improved to the point where they could trade O’Brien and not feel too much pain. Yet the Red Sox couldn’t give the Yankees Lester, out of concern that Lester would grow to like The Bronx and sign there long term this winter, and the Rays couldn’t give the Yankees Price, since Tampa Bay didn’t want to face Price (a free agent after 2015) six or so times next season.

Those two high-ceiling pitchers’ employer switches make us look forward to an A’s-Tigers AL Championship Series, which would feature some fabulous pitchers’ duels. The Yankees’ trades make us figure, sure … they’re now more likely to earn do-or-die postseason appearance in Anaheim against the dangerous Angels than they were beforehand.

Even pigs look better with lipstick. Still, this was a day that had you thinking less about what might be and more about what could have been.