Independently, ice cream and halibut are both delicious. Put them together, though, and you have a distasteful disaster.
This is the Yankees roster. Independently, maybe the parts make sense. But put them together and you have something unpalatable. It is too inexperienced and too aged. It is too full of DHs and too light on impact players. It is conceived both to win now and play for the future.
The parts don’t really mesh, nor does the ambiguous philosophy of the organization.
It leads to Thursday afternoon, when Alex Rodriguez came off the disabled list to be the DH, moving Carlos Beltran to right field. It was almost certainly coincidence that Beltran — raking as the DH — struck out four times for just the third time in his career and the first time in eight years as the Blue Jays beat the Yankees 3-1.
But it happened. It led to questions. And it led to answers from Joe Girardi that showed his growing discomfort, not just with the line of inquiry but having to manage this mish-mosh.
When asked if there was cause and effect to Beltran going to right and performing so poorly, Girardi at first said sarcastically: “I’m sure it all had to do with him being in right field. He was 0-for-4 [Wednesday], too.” Then Girardi literally made as if he was mixing cake batter with his hands as he said, “Let’s not keep stirring this and stirring this and everything. We over-evaluate. Carlos had a rough day. A lot of our right-handers had a rough day today off of [J.A.] Happ.”
I am sure that is it and this was just the Yanks regressing to their miserable first month, when they couldn’t handle lefties or thrive in the clutch (1-for-10 with men on base Thursday). But it is also this: Girardi’s tell when he is aggravated about a situation is to raise his voice an octave or two and unnecessarily inflame a situation rather than extinguish it. Girardi has spent most of the past two decades employed by the Yankees and has to know that such a demonstrable beseeching not to make a big deal about something in New York will have the opposite impact.
He also is too much the shrewd baseball man not to know he is managing a mismatched roster. Rodriguez cannot play the field. When I asked Girardi before Thursday’s game about why the experiment of A-Rod at first base was so quickly squashed last year, he answered annoyed and moving: “He’s not comfortable.” Rodriguez clearly was against embarrassing himself at a new position, plus potentially wearing down and not hitting as well.
But when the brittle Mark Teixeira can’t play because his neck needed cortisone shots again, the Yankees are using either Dustin Ackley — such a bad fielder everywhere that he too should only DH — or, as was the case Thursday, Austin Romine for his second major league start at first.
Beltran, meanwhile, is a below-adequate right fielder. His tepid throw home in the ninth inning, as an example, allowed an insurance run against Aroldis Chapman.
If the roster had either Beltran or A-Rod — ice cream or halibut — fine. Having both makes maneuvering devilish for Girardi, especially if Beltran really is much more effective hitting only.
“I don’t know,” Rodriguez said when I asked if a roster with him and Beltran was functional. “It worked last year.”
But both got a year older — Beltran is 39, A-Rod turns 41 in July. Still, Rodriguez said, “In order for this team to win, the old guard — me, Beltran, Teixeira, CC [Sabathia] — have to be productive. We have to do our thing.”
What is that thing? We see glimpses. Sabathia has been good recently, really good Thursday. He allowed two runs (neither earned) in seven innings. His velocity rose. According to StatCast, Sabathia threw his 16 fastest pitches of 2016 on Thursday, peaking at 93.56 mph. But he already has had a DL stint, and would you really bet against another DL stint or regression?
At the take-notice marker of Memorial Day weekend, the Yankees are dancing with the Blue Jays and Rays at the bottom of the AL East. Do they have the talent and consistency to dabble with the Orioles and Red Sox up top?
And, if not, should they not be worried about the playing time and feelings of Beltran, A-Rod and Teixeira and be seeing what they fully have in guys like Ackley, Aaron Hicks, Romine, Rob Refsnyder (demoted to Triple-A Thursday), Gary Sanchez (now on the DL in the minors) and Aaron Judge?
Again, this is part of the two-faced nature of this roster, the win now vs. the win later. Nearly one-third of the way through the season, it has been as disjointed as you would have expected, as appealing as halibut-flavored ice cream.