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New York is limping to the edge of the season, having lost five of their last eight games, and across a greater stretch they are 16-18 in their last thirty-four games. Baltimore has all but secured the American League East, with a 9.5-game lead, and the Yankees currently sit at four back of the second Wild Card. Their run differential (-28) is the worst of any team currently contending for a playoff spot, and depending on how things go against the Kansas City Royals this weekend, "contending" might be a purely subjective term.
Onto this litany of woe comes the news that Carlos Beltran will likely undergo surgery in the off-season. According to Brendan Kuty of the Newark Star Ledger, Beltran doesn't expect the surgery to affect his status going forward:
Approximately two months of rest will follow before Beltran will be able to throw again, he said. But that will give him plenty of time before position players report to spring training in early February, he said.
Considering the type of season that Beltran has had, for the Yankees sake they better hope he is right.
Beltran has missed significant time this season, and had been relegated mainly to being a designated hitter. He's in the middle of the second-worst season of his career, hitting just .239/.305/.416. He has played in just 106 games, and has started only 29 of them in the outfield.
These are things that are to expected of a thirty-seven year-old outfielder, but it is not something the Yankees were looking forward to when they signed him to a three-year, $45 million deal last off-season. New York is on the hook for two more years of an old, injured outfielder for a team that is trying its best to stay relevant while still needing to contend.
Future Hall of Famer Derek Jeter is retiring and Alfonso Soriano will be a free agent, so the Yankees will be able to shed just over $30 million in salary of old, unproductive players. With those two gone, though, they will still be carrying Mark Teixiera, who isn't necessarily unproductive, but isn't worth the $23 million he'll make for the next two seasons; CC Sabathia, who has started the physiological breakdown that most assumed would happen five years ago; and Brian McCann, whose five-year, $85 million deal looks like a bargain compared to the rest, despite the fact that he is hitting just .244/.295/.405.
There was a song once that expressed the belief that the amount of issues and concerns in your life was directly proportional to the size of your cash flow. And though the Yankees have sizable cash considerations being dealt to sub-par players, they are still the Yankees. And as long as they have money, it will be hard for them to have a losing season.
Making the playoffs, though. That's a different thing altogether.