SARASOTA, Fla. — The Yankees must get Small.
No, this is not another call for the Yankees to embrace the little game — the hit and run and double steal and suicide squeeze.
This is about finding hidden gems, which — believe it or not — the Yankees have been quite good at over the past two decades. And Aaron Small is the patron saint of value out of nowhere. The kind of patron saint the Yankees need now, when they seem in Jim Valvano mode — survive and advance until injured players return or better options emerge.
You might remember Small went 10-0 with a 3.20 ERA in 2005 after being called up by the Yankees. He was 15-13 with a 5.82 ERA in the rest of an eight-season journeyman career. In fact, he was 0-3, 8.46 the following year and never pitched in the majors again.
But for a few months in 2005, Small was huge. That 2005 season actually could be seen as an instruction course for these 2013 Yankees, because until now that is the bleakest matters had looked since 1996.
They opened 11-19 and nine games out of first. A month into the crisis, George Steinbrenner empowered Brian Cashman to act more like a real general manager rather than one of many voices to which he listened. There was no $189 million mandate then, but Cashman decided it would be wrong to further strip a thin farm system for a quick fix to try to salvage that season.
Instead, he promoted Robinson Cano and Chien-Ming Wang. In retrospect, that sounds great. But neither was viewed as an elite prospect at that time.
The Yankees had just one player (Eric Duncan) ranked in Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects. Cano was the second-ranked Yankee, but in the previous 12 months they had made him available in trades for Alex Rodriguez, Carlos Beltran and Randy Johnson. Translation: The Yankees were willing to move him, and three organizations did not value him enough. The Rangers, for example, took Joaquin Arias as the secondary piece in the A-Rod deal.
Cano displaced the inept Tony Womack at second base and hit .297 with 14 homers to finish as the Rookie of the Year runner-up. Wang, who was ranked as the Yankees’ 10th-best prospect, went 8-5 with a 4.02 ERA.
In late July, the Yankees made what felt like an inconsequential trade with Colorado for Shawn Chacon. But Chacon went 7-3 with a 2.85 ERA the rest of the way. He was terrible for the Yankees the following season, had a 5.17 ERA the rest of his career and was done after the 2008 campaign.
But, like Small, he had that one vital stint. The Yankees won 95 games and a tiebreaker over Boston to earn the AL East title and finished two games up on making the playoffs altogether. Remove Small, Wang, Cano or Chacon, and they don’t make it.
These Yankees need such blessings. Maybe Wang is Small this year, the minor league signing that makes good. Maybe Cano is Rodriguez, who won the MVP in 2005 to help solve so many problems. Perhaps Mark Montgomery and Tyler Austin will provide impact from the system. Perhaps Vernon Wells is the seemingly inconsequential trade acquisition that matters.
“You mix and match and keep trying even if it is an incremental upgrade,” Cashman said. “You keep fighting. You don’t give up.”
Look, this could be the year the Yankees run out of magic — large or Small. The pressure points — age, injury, a farm system not ready to deliver, a strong top-to-bottom division — make a 75-win scenario plausible.
The negativity really has intensified as the Yankees have reached out for pieces late in spring to attempt to survive and advance. The arrival of Wells and Lyle Overbay has unleashed another wave of “if this were only 2006” derision. A version of that has arisen the past two years in response to Luis Ayala, Eric Chavez, Bartolo Colon, Freddy Garcia, Raul Ibanez, Andruw Jones, Derek Lowe and Ichiro Suzuki. Yet that over-the-hill gang helped the Yankees win 192 games between 2011-12, the most in the majors.
The personnel department has also done a good job in finding small useful pieces such as Cody Eppley, Jayson Nix, Clay Rapada and Cory Wade.
Will players such as Brennan Boesch, Ben Francisco and Juan Rivera fall into the same category? To win in the tough AL East with so much gone wrong already on the roster, the Yankees need such Small miracles.
joel.sherman@nypost.com