SNY: Boorstein and Salfino: Yanks’ season taking turn for the worse

If only Tony Pena would step away from the portable Hix Presto machine…I could run off a dozen or so “Almost Worse Than Melky Cabrera” t-shirts!

Salfino: Is there a bigger insult now than saying a hitter is “almost worse than Melky Cabrera?” I had higher hopes for Melky, seeing him as a poor man’s Delmon Young. Turns out that was a pretty fair comp, but not in the way Yankees fans hoped. But it shows you how smart the Rays were in parlaying Young’s hype into Matt Garza, who’s likely to be a rotation cog for as long as he stays healthy. There may have been takers for Melky last year.

Really, the Yankees young players have been terrible this year. Robinson Cano has snapped out of it a little of late, but still sports a sub-.700 OPS which doesn’t cut it at second base in the American League. (Really, Cano hasn’t been much better than Cabrera, which is scary to think about.) And then there are those young pitchers I didn’t think they should trade for Johan Santana: Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy. Joba looked great but made the tapeheads who break down deliveries seem prophetic when those sloppy mechanics presumably led to his shoulder trouble.

Beyond this year, you really wonder how they are going to retool. I’m with you on this being not the beginning of the end for Derek Jeter Jeter but more like the middle. Cue end credits. Alex Rodriguez is fine but likely on a slower downward trajectory. Johnny Damon, Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui? Yikes. CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira suddenly don’t seem nearly enough.