Joel Sherman

Joel Sherman

Many shades of 1995 Yankees in this year’s desperate team

They brought in three big-name players during the offseason, refused to surrender at the trade deadline despite discouraging results all year and seemed as if they were going to let the final season of their beloved captain come and go without even making the playoffs.

If the 2014 Yankees — now 8 1/2 games out in the AL East and four out of a wild-card spot after their 7-4 loss to the Astros on Tuesday night — need a reminder that what has occurred up to now is survivable, then we bring you the 1995 Yankees. Derek Jeter, in fact, could be the wise man/storyteller here. For 1995 was the debut season for all the members of the Core Four — heck, on June 1, 1995, the Yanks made what would (with 20-20 hindsight) be one of the most interesting personnel decisions in history: They demoted both Jeter and Mariano Rivera to Triple-A Columbus.

So, this a full-circle opportunity here: Jeter joined the Yanks as the previous captain, Don Mattingly, went to his first playoff in his last season. Now, the Yankees could end this glorious Core Four era for good by sending Mattingly’s successor to his final postseason. That would be a better gift than anything Jeter is getting in these pregame ceremonies.

A quick refresher on the 1995 squad: The 1994 Yankees had the AL’s best record when the strike hit. That would lead to the cancellation of the World Series, the low point of the commissionership of Bud Selig (talk about full circle).

Don MattinglyAP

That offseason the Yankees bulked up by adding Tony Fernandez to play short (Jeter was not ready yet) plus Jack McDowell and John Wetteland. But the team simply never got going. Toward the end of July, there was an internal tug of war between Bill Livesey, who ran the Yankees’ amateur scouting wing and didn’t want to trade touted prospect Marty Janzen, and GM Gene Michael, who did because Janzen was the key to landing David Cone from Toronto.

George Steinbrenner did not tell two of his key aides what he would do and instead finished the trade by himself. You know how Detroit just put together the last three AL Cy Youngs with David Price joining Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer. Well, that trade gave the Yanks the previous two AL Cys: McDowell (1993) and Cone (1994).

Nevertheless, even with Cone, the Yankees still struggled initially. In fact, on Aug. 19, 1995 — 19 years to the day the 2014 Yankees began a pivotal six-game homestand — the Yankees began a seven-game losing streak that would leave them at 53-58, a hopeless 15 ¹/₂ games behind the first-place Red Sox and 5 ¹/₂ games out of the first-ever AL wild card and behind five teams: Texas, Milwaukee, Seattle, Kansas City and Oakland. In the next-to-last game of that losing streak, Seattle knocked rookie Andy Pettitte out in 2 ²/₃ innings, so hardly anyone made note in a blowout that Rivera came in to relieve and dominated with 5 ¹/₃ innings of one-run ball.

David ConeAP

It was yet another time those 1995 Yankees were pronounced dead, especially with the season being just 145 games because it started late due to the labor strife. But from that point to the end, the Yanks went an MLB-best 26-7, avoiding a three-way tie for the wild card by one game. They essentially got healthy, finally found the best of themselves and used the motivation of getting Mattingly to his first playoffs to do just that.

Jeter mainly sat on the bench in September and was the only member of the Core Four not on the playoff roster — it is funny now to think that Jorge Posada was as an emergency third catcher and, of all things, a pinch runner. Actually, the more famous pinch runner in the division series against the Mariners was Seattle’s 20-year-old Alex Rodriguez. Then Yankees manager Buck Showalter, though, believed it would be a good idea for Jeter and top prospect Ruben Rivera (considered a far-better future bet than his cousin, Mariano) to sit on the bench in uniform for the playoff series against the Mariners to get the experience of what it felt like to be around such intense, meaningful games.

Now Showalter is the manager of the Orioles — who like those 1995 Red Sox — might be just too far out in front of the Yanks in the AL East. So the question is whether these Yankees, getting healthier now, have their best run in them to go from fourth for the second wild card to the playoffs, give Jeter the same parting gift Mattingly received.

It is possible. Just ask Jeter.