Yankees' embarrassing spot in ESPN's power rankings should send message

The New York Yankees are bad. Injuries or not, this team is bad. Their best players don't perform. Their depth is laughable. The decisions made to try and right the ship are always wrong and short-sighted. That makes for a sad state of affairs that can no longer be denied.

It's reached a point where the outside baseball community can take note, too, instead of just sitting back and assuming spoiled Yankees fans are whining for no reason ... because New York is under .500 this late in the year for the first time since 1995. They're in danger of finishing below .500 for the first time since 1992.

They have the reigning MVP and current Cy Young frontrunner. They had one of the best projected rookies in the sport coming into the 2023 season. They statistically have one of the best bullpens in the league. That's how bad the rest of this roster is, and that's how incorrect they were on so many decisions.

In ESPN's latest power rankings, the Yankees took another punch, as they fell to the mat when they were placed at No. 17. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, that's because there's a precipitous drop after them.

Then again, some might argue the D-backs and Padres should be ahead of New York. Arizona really has had a better season, despite their recent slide, and the Padres have fallen victim to a considerable amount of bad luck when you look at their run differential (+64, sixth in MLB).

Yankees' embarrassing spot in ESPN's power rankings should send message

Somehow, ESPN didn't really lay into the underperforming Yanks either, opting to focus their analysis on the injured Nestor Cortes and spiraling Luis Severino. No comment on this offense never scoring runs? Interesting.

The Yankees' rotation took another hit this week when Nestor Cortes returned to the IL with a rotator cuff issue, and this time, it sounds like his campaign is likely over. The shorthanded New York rotation desperately needs Luis Severino to rediscover his former dominance, but instead, the hole his 2023 season has fallen into just keeps getting deeper. After a six-start stretch dating back to the first of July yielded an 11.22 ERA for Severino, the Yankees made a somewhat ham-handed decision to deploy an opener for him at the outset of a game in Chicago on Aug. 9. Opponents have lit up Severino to the tune of .433 in first innings this season, so maybe just skipping that frame would help him turn the corner. It did not. Severino was back to his usual routine for his next outing in Atlanta, but the results weren't much better.

And then there's The Athletic, stating the Yankees "have lost a step." A step? Yeah, actually, they missed the first step and fell down the entire staircase, through the front door, and into the garbage can on the curb.

Power rankings are usually of little interest to fans because very few people care where a bunch of talking heads place their team in a list. There are, of course, the sect of fans who are outraged when their team is "disrespected" and take to social media to express their discontent.

This isn't one of those times, though, which should be sending a message to the Yankees and their fanbase.