Underachieving Yanks playing more like $200

PHILADELPHIA – Gary Sheffield recently allowed his eyes to roam around the New York Yankees’ clubhouse.

“When I look at this team, I feel … like we shouldn’t ever lose. I don’t see how we lose,” he said this week.

“But we do.”

So far this year, in fact, the mighty Yankees have lost almost as often as they’ve won. They got off to an 11-19 start, rallied, then slipped back into a rut. Suddenly, the unthinkable – that the team with the glorious history and the $200 million payroll could be marked absent from the postseason for the first time since 1994 – seems more than possible.

“It’s going to be tough to win the division,” general manager Brian Cashman conceded.

Well, the Yankees certainly have the pieces in place to make a strong run in the final two-thirds of the schedule. Still, there remains a sense that somehow all of the expensive talent that has been assembled might not equal the sum of its parts.

Manager Joe Torre, who normally doesn’t call team meetings, has had three already this year.

Randy Johnson, brought in on orders from Boss Steinbrenner, is an all-too-human 5-4 at age 41.

Only Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Mariano Rivera have been with the team continuously since the World Championship of 1996. Only that trio, plus catcher Jorge Posada, has been around since the last World Series win in 2000.

“Talentwise, it’s better (now),” Sheffield said. “But those guys were willing to do the little things. They were willing to get blood on their clothes. They were willing to fight the opponent. They were willing to do anything to win. Because their job was on the line.

“With a team like this, you don’t feel like you have to play with a sense of urgency all the time. I sense that sometimes, like guys go out and feel like this talent is so good we don’t have to run into a wall or do something extra to win this ballgame, to take the walk and let somebody else get the hit. The little things are the reasons you lose games, and that was the reason we were losing.”

In the past, the Yankees have used their success like a weapon, making wins seem inevitable. These days, however, that seems to weigh heavily on the franchise. “Everybody else plays 162 games. The Yankees play 162 seasons. It’s that much more heightened,” Cashman said.

Can you imagine a baseball postseason without October electricity pulsing through historic Yankee Stadium?

It’s getting easier and easier every week.