Nightmare Yankees bullpen stat just proves the Trade Deadline Gods are laughing at us

Good news! After Tuesday's absolute bullpen meltdown and narrow victory over the Twins in Minnesota, the Yankees still have Fernando Cruz, Luke Weaver, Camilo Doval and Devin Williams available to set up David Bednar in a potential tight game on Wednesday night.

Bad news: the Yankees have Fernando Cruz, Luke Weaver, Camilo Doval and Devin Williams available to set up David Bednar in a potential tight game on Wednesday night. Tough break.

One of my least favorite varieties of Yankee Pain is hearing that the team is bringing in a vaunted new addition and wondering, in what specific way, they are about to suck upon arrival. Will they lose the strike zone entirely? Will an injury manifest itself out of thin air? Will they dominate against every team except Boston and Houston? Forget to button up their jersey and go viral for an accidental on-mound nip slip? The possibilities are endlessly stupid, but that's been par for the course with Brian Cashman's past decade of patchwork. Too often, big names arrive — Andrew Benintendi, meet Frankie Montas — and then immediately disappear. Sometimes they linger too long, like a stink cloud. Whatever they do, the front office's best intentions often seem to go up in smoke this time of year.

And so, on the heels of a 10-9 Yankees victory that was 10-1 in the fifth and 10-8 by the end of the sixth, allow me to note (via Katie Sharp) that the Yankees' bullpen has the worst ERA in the game at 5.71 since the day that followed the trade deadline. That's a deadline that featured Doval, Bednar and Jake Bird, by the way, a three-headed monster where only one head remains functional and blinking, while one of the other heads is literally in Scranton.

Yankees' bullpen ranks worst in MLB after transformative MLB trade deadline

And that's with Bednar being very good.

The unit started off humbled by the horrid omen of Aug. 1 in Miami, a game that featured a blown 6-0 lead (and a blown two-run lead in the ninth), with malfeasance committed by Bird, Bednar and Doval in order. As Tuesday's game threatened to wriggle away from the Yankees and supplant that horrible nightmare as Top Dog Loss, Aaron Boone notably went to Mark Leiter Jr. to be his sixth-inning fireman instead of Doval, who has fallen far down the pecking order, walking eight men in 11 1/3 August innings and sporting a 9.00 ERA through four seven-hit innings to start September.

Almost no one has been immune. Bird, who got walked off by a three-run home run at the season's low point in Texas, was swiftly demoted to Triple-A, where he has remained. That's the long-term project the Yankees gave Roc Riggio away for, by the way. Weaver, brilliant in August, with a 1.23 ERA in nearly 15 frames, has allowed 10 earned runs in 3 2/3 to kick off September; his ERA on the season is now officially higher than Doval's.

This offensive Yankees wasteland has Williams, coming off brilliance in Boston, somehow sitting in the catbird seat as October beckons (or is it "looms"?). The bottom line? Cashman attempted to overload his scuffling unit with top-tier stuff, and things only fell apart further. As always, the motto is: Never Try.