As Yankees collapse in August, quick October exit looks likely for flawed roster

Here’s everything you need to know about the current state of the New York Yankees: Harrison Bader was trending on Twitter Tuesday morning, and Brian Cashman was trending Wednesday morning.

Bader is of course still on the injured list. He has one game left for the Yankees, his new team, after being taken over with the Cardinals by Yankees GM Cashman on Aug. 2. His new team are hoping Bader, a Gold Glove midfielder, will be back from his foot injury sometime in September and in full swing for the postseason. That was always the plan. He would never help immediately.

Yankees fans are getting uneasy, to say the least.

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The club won their 70th game on 1 August, a total unequaled by any team from the majors. Since then, the Yankees are 2-11, a low-water mark that no team from the majors has fallen below.

“We have a couple of guys who are in trouble,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone told reporters after Tuesday’s game, a 3-1 home loss to the Rays. “We have to prepare and get ready and fight our way out. It’s part of the game and not fun to go through, but that’s where we are right now.”

Yankees fans are never a patient bunch, of course, but the breaking point could have happened Monday night at home against Tampa Bay. Rays outfielder David Peralta led from the top of the fourth with a long fly ball to center field off ace Gerrit Cole. If center fielder Aaron Hicks had gone the right way to the ball, he would have easily caught it on the warning track. Instead, he looked like a toddler on roller skates navigating orange cones on a frozen pond, stumbling back and finally missing the ball by a few yards.

It was the latest in a series of defensive mistakes, and not just from Hicks. But this happened at a most inopportune moment. Peralta scored when the next hitter, Isaac Parades, singled. The Rays won with a final score of 4-0.

Yankees fans have rarely been more excited for a player to make his midseason debut in pinstripes than for Bader. It’s that bad right now. If he recovers — we’re probably still talking weeks, not days — and makes his Yankees debut, Bader will do exactly what Cashman expected when he traded for him. Bader will play an outstanding defense. He’ll make plays few other midfielders can make in the game, and he’ll do it with a flair and enthusiasm Yankess fans will love.

And, folks, it probably won’t matter. Bader’s defensive influence won’t be nearly enough, and that’s why Cashman was trending on Wednesday.

A need that seemed very important as of the deadline – improving the club’s midfield defense – looks like an outlier on the Yankees Issues depth chart at the moment. Remember the Yankees traded one of their rotation games to Jordan Montgomery for Bader. In his two starts for the Cardinals, Montgomery has thrown 11 shutout innings and allowed just six hits while batting nine. Every single Yankees fan noticed that one of those starts was a five-inning one-hit jewel against his former team.

Yankees fans also noted that the starting pitcher their favorite team traded for – Frankie Montas – wasn’t as good as the starting pitcher most Yankees fans wanted, Luis Castillo. Adding salt to that wound is the fact that Castillo has started twice for his new team Seattle against the Yankees and the Mariners have won both games. Castillo hit 15 in 14 2/3 innings and only allowed three runs as Seattle won the two games by a combined score of 8-3.

The New York bullpen looks wobbly, especially at the back end; Clay Holmes isn’t what he was for the first two months of the season, and Aroldis Chapman isn’t what he was in the early years of his career. And the loss of Michael King hurts the stability of the group.

But even more concerning is the Yankees’ abysmal offense, and that’s even with Aaron Judge still posting an OPS north of 1,000 in August. They have scored a total of nine runs in the past seven games. And of course Giancarlo Stanton’s absence hurts. As was the loss of Matt Carpenter, the out of nowhere former Cardinals thug who was signed off the scrap heap and somehow became Judge’s middle bashing pal for a few months.

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But the general struggles are so deep that one can wonder how the Yankees will look in October even with Stanton and Carpenter returning. The Yankees will still give regular at-bats to Josh Donaldson (.306 OBP, 98 OPS+), Isiah Kiner-Falefa (.318 OBP, 86 OPS+) and the streaky Gleyber Torres (.299 OBP, 107 OPS+). And yes, Bader is certainly a defensive upgrade over Hicks, but Hicks has a .339 OBP while Bader sits at .303 for the season (and just .320 for his career). Another trade acquisition, Andrew Benentendi, bats with the Yankees just .211 with .647 OPS.

If you look at the Yankees’ lineup through a postseason lens — with pitchers who helped propel their teams into the competition rather than pitchers on also-rans — there’s a lot of swing-and-miss in this lineup. types. There are many catching opportunities for opposing launchers. The judge may not see a single pitch to hit in an entire playoff series.

The Yankees had the best record in baseball for most of the season, but now they’re just a half game ahead of the Braves, behind the Mets, Astros and Dodgers. Looking ahead to October, an early exit seems much more likely than a World Series title.