The best player on the Yankees is currently the AL East.
The Yankees keep losing, five in a row now, and it feels as if they are just five more losses away from clinching the division. Such is the tepid state of the AL East — five defect-laced clubs good enough to finish first and bad enough to come in last. It is like a beauty contest for the ordinary looking.
The Yankees remain in second place despite having dropped nine of 10. But the kindness of others will not save these Yankees. They can’t keep pointing at the forgiving standings rather than themselves. Their current play has sunk into the unacceptable/intolerable sewer.
Finally getting home was supposed to be the charm that warded off the losing and bad play. Well, they have allowed 17 runs alone in the third inning of the first two games of a weekend series in The Bronx against the Rangers, or as many runs as they have scored in that inning all season. They had some fight Friday night to battle back to lose 10-9.
But on Saturday they suffered the kind of loss so thorough and humiliating as to beg for seismic change. They gave up 10 runs in a third inning of rancid defense and worse CC Sabathia pitching, and, by the end, Garrett Jones was on the mound mopping up a 15-4 trouncing.
There will be change — just not seismic. The Post has learned that after Branden Pinder was needed for 48 pitches Saturday, reliever Jacob Lindgren will be promoted Sunday. He was drafted just last June, but he has a 1.23 ERA this season and 77 strikeouts in 46²/₃ pro innings.
As for the players viewed most on the firing line — Didi Gregorius, Stephen Drew and Esmil Rogers — Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told The Post no changes were planned. All are staying. At least for now.
“We have to play better,” Cashman said. “We have to clean up our act.”
The Yankees knew they had real areas of concern going into this season such as a lack of overall team speed, the likelihood many hitters would be batting average challenged and a plethora of physical red flags. But they believed their strengths would allow them to overcome the shortcomings. Those strengths were supposed to include defense and a deep bullpen. But in their two miserable periods those areas have floundered.
The Yankees have 33 errors, which is the AL’s third worst. But the defensive miscues go beyond that to mental blunders, of which Gregorius is king. We are learning that, strangely, there is no “D” in Didi, but plenty of “Es.”
With a runner on first and no out in a scoreless game in the third Saturday, Gregorius made a nice sliding play to get to a grounder up the middle. The ball was hit by the speedy Delino DeShields Jr., so Gregorius should have prioritized getting an out at second. A double play was impossible. Instead, he tried to go Harlem Globetrotters and wound up a Washington General, his behind-the-back feed spiking in the ground.
Sabathia no longer has the power stuff to work through such malfeasance and didn’t survive a third in which Carlos Beltran had a single go under his glove and John Ryan Murphy couldn’t locate a wild pitch sitting right near him.
Gregorius has an option and the Yankees could send him down, move Drew to short and promote Rob Refsnyder. But Cashman said, “I have no problem dealing with the growing pains of a player that has the upside that Didi has.”
In theory, Rogers is more disposable. He replaced Sabathia and yielded seven runs. Rogers has been kept because he has a good arm and no options, which is why he is here. And Cashman said he still is safe because the righty is fulfilling the long relief/mop-up role by having the skills to warm up quickly and be resilient.
Rogers, though, is part of a bullpen that has underwhelmed. The Yankees do not have a strong corps. They have two brilliant relievers in Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller (two earned runs in 41 ¹/₃ innings combined) and everyone else. That is why if Lindgren pitches well, this could be more than a cameo. Also, if the Yankees get Masahiro Tanaka and/or Ivan Nova back in the coming weeks, Adam Warren could be swapped into the pen. Thus, Warren and Lindgren soon could become the bridge to Betances and Miller.
For now, those are the potential alterations. Troy Tulowitzki and Cole Hamels are not just a phone call away. As Beltran said, “There are no magic solutions.” The Yankees — at least for now — have to heal thyself, because no matter how forgiving the AL East is, they really can’t lose their way to the top.