Thirty days and 29 games to go, starting tonight. Maybe that’s why, in a quiet but calm Yankees clubhouse Wednesday night at Rogers Centre, CC Sabathia thought back to the final month of the 2012 regular season.
“I think we know what we need to do in here,” said the big lefty, who starts tonight when the Yankees play the Orioles to kick off a critical, 10-game homestand. “We have the guys in here to get it done. We were up last year maybe, I think, one [game] in September, but it was still a dogfight just to get into the playoffs.”
Good memory by Sabathia. For most of last September/October, the Yankees either led the Orioles by a game or shared the American League East penthouse with Buck Showalter’s upstarts. The Yankees went 20-11 over that stretch to prevail.
That success can breed more success, Sabathia asserted, adding: “And I think that experience period that we all have, playing in big games, playing in the World Series and playoffs, I think it’ll help.”
Agreed. But such a sentiment brings to mind the real problem behind this Hail Mary of a playoff run: They aren’t going to fall short because of a lack of toughness or any sort of mental or emotional component. If they fail, which is likely, it’ll be because they simply don’t have the horses.
At 70-63, trailing the second AL wild-card team Oakland (75-58) by five games with Baltimore (71-61) and Cleveland (71-62) also in the way, the Yankees must put together the sort of monster run of which they’ve proven incapable all season long.
With Derek Jeter joining Curtis Granderson, Alex Rodriguez and Alfonso Soriano as recent roster additions, the Yankees are as whole as they’re going to get in 2013. They’re obviously better than they were earlier in the season, when they used smoke and mirrors to jump out to a fast start and then stay afloat for a while. Nevertheless, you wouldn’t look at this roster and think, “Playoff team.” Not when there’s so much ground to cover, and not when the Yankees’ starting rotation has turned into a liability.
Late Wednesday night, after Hiroki Kuroda got clobbered for the third straight time, Joe Girardi was asked whether his team can land a playoff berth without stellar starting pitching, particularly from struggling rotation leaders Kuroda and Sabathia.
“It’s going to make it very, very hard,” Girardi said.
“He’s right,” Sabathia said. “It’s going to take me and [Kuroda] and everybody else to pitch well. We have to start doing that.”
Granderson, A-Rod and Soriano all have performed about as well as the Yankees could have reasonably hoped; Jeter still appears creaky three games into his third stint of the season. Overall, the Yankees are 16-15 since acquiring Soriano from the Cubs, 14-12 since activating Granderson (for the second time) and 13-10 since activating A-Rod.
The trio has undisputedly helped the Yankees; remember, they seemed headed for sub-.500 territory not long ago. However, the returning All-Stars haven’t been able to sufficiently cover for the many other weaknesses that would enable the Yankees to vault quickly back into a postseason spot.
That the Yankees can discuss the race at all at this juncture is testimony to their perseverance. Girardi, an impending free agent, has earned an extension and a raise by virtue of the work he’s done, pushing, prodding and maneuvering to keep the club ahead of a very bad offseason, an even worse spring training and a first half highlighted by setbacks and new injuries. The players, by and large, have exhibited impressive professionalism when they could have given in to the slew of misfortune.
Attitude can get you only so far, though. These Yankees know what’s required to accomplish their goal. Unfortunately for them, there’s a wide gulf between knowing and doing.
kdavidoff@nypost.com
