The New York Yankees Should Be Embarrassed

The New York Yankees own a $308 million payroll this season. That ranks third in baseball behind the New York Mets (yes, you can still laugh) and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

So you would think that the Yankees should be dominating a Tampa Bay Rays squad whose payroll is below $100 million, right?

You would think that would be the case, but one look at the Division Series says otherwise.

The Rays hold a 2-0 lead over the Yankees heading into Game 3 at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night, and there is very little reason to believe New York can recover.

Remember how the Yankees dominated the Boston Red Sox to the tune of an 18-2 shelling over two games in the Wild Card Series? Well, New York has scored just two runs — just like the Red Sox — through two games in the ALDS.

The Yankees committed four errors in Game 2, three of them coming in the first inning. They managed just four hits, with their two runs both courtesy of solo shots by Ben Rice.

Aaron Judge is out. Giancarlo Stanton has been limited to just one at-bat this postseason. Obviously, that matters.

But what about everyone else?

New York didn't just build a team around Judge and Stanton. It added pieces like Cody Bellinger, Luis Garcia Jr. and Jazz Chisholm, all of whom have been no-shows thus far. Trent Grisham, the $22 million man, has been abysmal.

Meanwhile, Tampa Bay keeps finding ways to win games, and it did so Monday night without a single home run.

There was a time when mistakes were foreign to the Yankees in October. You would have been stunned to see New York have a playoff blunder. Remember those days?

Now, you're surprised if the Yankees don't mess something up in a big game.

New York is starting to become like the baseball version of the Dallas Cowboys, a once proud franchise that now lives on nothing but memories of the past ... and seems to find ways to lose at every corner.

The Yankees should be thoroughly embarrassed that they are on the verge of losing to the Rays in the postseason for the second time in six years ... and that they are just one game away from being ousted by yet another former AL East doormat.

Last year, it was the Toronto Blue Jays who bounced New York in the ALDS, a painful twist of fate after the Yankees had made the Blue Jays their squeak toy throughout their dominant run in the late '90s and early 2000s.

Derek Jeter. Bernie Williams. Paul O'Neill. Jorge Posada. Tino Martinez. Those guys aren't walking through that door. Not as players, anyway.

This current group simply does not have what that magical team possessed, but that doesn't make this any more excusable.

The Yankees should be the American League version of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Instead, they can't even beat the team with the 28th-ranked payroll in baseball.