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Just when the New York Yankees allowed us to think we might be done forever with controversies centered around Alex Rodriguez, manager Joe Girardi pulled us back in.

In case you’ve recently crawled out of a cave with no television and/or spotty Wi-Fi, we’re in the final days of A-Rod’s career. After 12 years of Alex’s occasionally great, occasionally not-so-great and presently bad service for the Yankees, the club announced Sunday it will release the 41-year-old slugger from his contract, which runs through 2017, after he plays his last game at Yankee Stadium on Friday.

If you hadn’t been in that cave, you could have seen this coming.

Rodriguez returned from his 2014 suspension to have a heck of a season in 2015, but he’s hit just .204 with a .609 OPS in 2016. He’s also been stuck on 696 career home runs since July 18. All this has forced Girardi to mainly confine Rodriguez to the bench. When the club finally embraced an overdue rebuilding phase at the trade deadline, phasing out A-Rod became an inevitable next step.

And yet there was no fire and brimstone when the word came down Sunday. A-Rod was emotional in a press conference, but not angry. Ditto for the Yankees. Given how just how sour things got between them during the whole Biogenesis thing, this goes to show how far things have come in the last two years.

Since the split did indeed seem so darn amiable, it was no surprise when Girardi tee’d Rodriguez for a proper farewell in the final week of a 22-year career.

“If he wants to play in every game, I’ll find a way,” the Yankees skipper said, per Bryan Hoch of MLB.com.

That brings us, at last, to A-Rod controversy No. 4,674.

So far in the final days of A-Rod’s career, the Yankees have played two games against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. A-Rod did not start in a 5-3 loss Tuesday night, nor did he start in a 9-4 win Wednesday night. In all, he’s come to the plate once.

And not by choice.

“I came to the stadium hoping to play all three games, maybe two out of three,” Rodriguez said Tuesday, per Barry M. Bloom of MLB.com. “[Girardi] just said, ‘We’re trying to win games.'”

Rodriguez went on to call Girardi’s decision “surprising and shocking.” Those two words can also be used to describe A-Rod’s entire career, in which he’s balanced being a 14-time All-Star and three-time MVP being twice connected to chemical enhancement and frequently playing the part of a heel straight out of professional wrestling.

However, A-Rod did his time for performance-enhancing drugs in 2014 and has played the good soldier ever since his return. He can’t be faulted for wanting to go out with dignity. For that matter, can you blame him if he wanted to get as many chances as possible to bump his career home run total to 700?

All you can do, really, is wonder what Girardi’s deal is. Even the explanation he gave to ESPN.com’s Andrew Marchand and others on Wednesday doesn’t clear things up:

Ah, right…except for the fact no manager in the game knows farewell tours better than Girardi.

He’s overseen two of them, one of which featured him routinely prioritizing respect for the farewell tourer over his team’s chances of winning. Mariano Rivera’s final year in 2013 was everything anybody could have hoped for. But when Derek Jeter bid his goodbyes in 2014, Girardi frequently batted him second despite his .256 average and a .617 OPS that was second-lowest in the American League.

Granted, you can use the ol’ “one of these things is not like the other” when placing the careers of Jeter and Rodriguez side by side. And as bad as Jeter was then, A-Rod’s no better now. The optics suggest Girardi knows this. The whispers confirm it.

“Joe believes he’s done,” a source told ESPN.com’s Wallace Matthews. “And he’s still trying to win these games.”

To the first part: sure. To the second part: seriously?

Their efforts didn’t amount to a postseason trip in 2014, but the Yankees were at least trying to contend during Jeter’s farewell tour. They can only say they’re trying to do that now, and they’ll fool nobody when they do. Teams that are trying to contend don’t trade Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller and Carlos Beltran.

That’s not contending. That’s tanking. Make no mistake—Girardi would be committing a far smaller sin by wasting a few at-bats on A-Rod this week than the one he committed when he wasted many at-bats on Jeter throughout 2014.

The times being what they are, Girardi is wrong to view Rodriguez’s farewell tour as a sideshow the Yankees don’t have time for. On the contrary, it’s a sideshow they should have made time for.

For one week, anyway, it’s one of the only reasons for fans to pay attention to the Yankees. That even goes for Red Sox fans. Their “We want A-Rod!” chant was one of the liveliest moments of Tuesday’s game. When A-Rod was called to pinch-hit on Wednesday, it was the liveliest moment of the game:

There’s no escaping thoughts of what Rodriguez might have done with more moments like this. In particular, thoughts of him hushing all the boos with a home run or two to get him closer to 700. Unlikely perhaps, but certainly a tantalizing appetizer for his final farewell at Yankee Stadium.

Mercifully, our not-so-long national nightmare will end Thursday. Girardi has confirmed Rodriguez will be in the lineup against left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez, giving him a chance to get a few hacks in before his big day at home on Friday.

But rather than the tail end of what should have been a jovial farewell, Rodriguez’s final two games will be more like a consolation prize. And a cheap one, at that.

Sure, you can say the Yankees don’t owe A-Rod anything. And realistically speaking, they don’t. Cliff Corcoran of Sports Illustrated crunched the numbers and found A-Rod hasn’t even been worth half of the $275 million contract he signed in 2007. And yes, he’s cost the Yankees headaches in addition to dollars.

Rodriguez’s good times in pinstripes, however, may be just as plentiful as the bad. Punctuated by MVP campaigns in 2005 and 2007, his first five seasons in New York were terrific. And in 2009, he willed the Yankees to their 27th World Series title almost single-handedly. He hit .438 with five home runs in the run-up to the Fall Classic, and each homer was seemingly more clutch than the last.

If nothing else, that’s the A-Rod the Yankees could have honored in his final days. But rather than let Rodriguez live large, Girardi and the Yankees are saying goodbye by letting him know who’s in charge.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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New York Yankees fading star Alex Rodriguez might be in his final week as a major league ballplayer, but he won’t be getting much of a chance to say goodbye on the field.

After it was announced Sunday that Rodriguez would be released Friday, Yankees manager Joe Girardi told the media Tuesday the 41-year-old will not be playing in the first two games of New York’s series against the Boston Red Sox, per ESPN.com’s Andrew Marchand.

Rodriguez spoke with the media shortly after learning about his playing schedule, per Marchand: “I’m disappointed. When I heard him say I can actually play in all four games, I was really excited to get some at-bats. I don’t know what happened.”

He was referring to Girardi‘s comments during Sunday’s announcement in which he stated that if the veteran “wants to play in every game, I’ll find a way.”

The New York manager recanted those statements Tuesday, saying he got caught up in the emotional moment.

Instead, Rodriguez will play Thursday night against Boston knuckleballer Steven Wright and Friday, the supposed final game of his career, against the Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium.

But he wasn’t sure if it is going to be the end when asked about it Tuesday: “I don’t know that answer right now.”

He hasn’t started a game since July 31 and has had only one at-bat in August.

With what looks like two more games remaining in a controversial yet Hall of Fame-worthy career numberswise, Rodriguez is four home runs short of 700, as his days as a player look destined to be coming to an unceremonious end.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

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Amid the worst season of his MLB career, New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez announced Sunday he will play his final game Friday before assuming a new role with the club.

The three-time American League MVP made his decision public in a press conference, according to YES Network. Per Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, A-Rod will become a special advisor and instructor for the Yanks after Friday’s clash with the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Yankees and managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner released a statement following the announcement, per Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal:

Rodriguez was emotional when addressing the media, per Jack Curry of YES Network:

Rodriguez said during Sunday’s press conference that he wanted to continue playing but that the Yankees were no longer on board with that idea, via MLB.com’s Richard Justice: “No athlete ever ends [their] career the way they want to. They all want to keep playing. Saying goodbye may be the hardest part of the job. … I think I can play baseball. You always think you have one more hit in you. That wasn’t in the cards. That was the Yankees’ decision.”

Rodriguez said he is “excited” about his new role and “at peace with the organization’s decision,” per Justice.

There had been whispers that New York would release Rodriguez before his contract was up following the 2017 season.

After the Yankees dealt Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, Ivan Nova and Carlos Beltran before the non-waiver trade deadline, Peter Botte and Christian Red of the New York Daily News cited a source who said Rodriguez “could” be released by the end of this season.

Rodriguez did his best to keep a level head when reporters asked him about the possibility of being released.

“I’ve had a great career,” he said Tuesday, per ESPN.com’s Wallace Matthews. “Whatever happens, happens.”

Rodriguez also said he was hopeful the Yankees wouldn’t release him, per Matthews, but that “it’s out of my control.”

Rodriguez has been used sparingly this season. He’s hitting .204/.252/.356, and Yankees manager Joe Girardi has expressed frustration when answering questions about Rodriguez’s status.

“When I don’t play him, I’m questioned,” Girardi said July 30, per Matthews. “When I play him, I’m questioned. Anyone who wants to do it can do it next time.”

Rodriguez said prior to the 2016 season that he would play out his contract, but he and the Yankees have altered their course.

Despite the fact that he will no longer be on the field, Rodriguez is still in line to earn a huge salary, per Bob Nightengale of USA Today:

After a bounce-back 2015 season in which he hit 33 home runs, Rodriguez is no longer an impact hitter and can’t play the field, so his value is negligible.

His 13-year tenure with the Yankees was never smooth sailing. Though he won MVP Awards in 2005 and 2007, he played second fiddle to Derek Jeter until Jeter’s retirement in 2014.

There were off-field issues, too, notably a season-long suspension in 2014 for his role in the Biogenesis scandal, and Rodriguez never quite endeared himself to the notoriously tough New York crowd.

But now that his career has reached its conclusion, there’s no denying he was one of the best players of his generation. Rodriguez’s three MVP Awards are tied for the second-most in MLB history, and he ranks fourth all time with 696 homers.

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Mired in the worst slump of his career, New York Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira announced his retirement from baseball Friday, effective at the end of the 2016 season, per Pedro Gomez of ESPN:

ESPN’s Buster Olney first reported the news, and Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports confirmed it.

The 36-year-old slugger has been hampered by injuries all season, and he’s hitting just .198 with 10 home runs and 27 RBI. Teixeira hasn’t appeared in more than 123 games in a single season since 2011. He missed nearly all of the 2013 campaign with a wrist ailment, and his 2015 season was cut short due to a fracture in his leg.

Tex was named to his third All-Star team and was enjoying a fine year prior to the leg injury; he was hitting .255 with 31 home runs and 79 RBI in just 111 games. That production lent hope that he would be a key part of the Yanks lineup in 2016, but his stats have taken a nosedive.

The Maryland native was set to hit free agency after the season, and a return to New York was in question due to the impending return of Greg Bird from injury in 2017.

At 54-54 and fourth place in the AL East, the Yankees waved the white flag on the 2016 season after dealing closer Aroldis Chapman, reliever Andrew Miller and outfielder Carlos Beltran for minor league talent.

Teixeira, who played for the Rangers, Braves, Angels and Yankees, has a .269 career batting average with 404 home runs and 1,281 RBI in his 14-year career. He is one of just five switch-hitters in MLB history to go yard at least 400 times.

Teixeira is also regarded as one of the best defensive first basemen of his era, netting five Gold Gloves. He’s likely to fall a tier below the Hall of Fame, though he’s had an excellent career.

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With the New York Yankees purging themselves of many veteran stars before the MLB‘s non-waiver trade deadline Monday, Alex Rodriguez‘s future remains up in the air.

Continue for updates.

Rodriguez a Candidate to be Released During 2016 Season

Tuesday, Aug. 2

According to Peter Botte and Christian Red of the New York Daily News, “While the more likely scenario still seems to be parting ways with A-Rod over the winter, a source familiar with the situation told the Daily News on Monday that there’s a chance releasing the slumping DH ‘could happen’ before the end of this season as part of the team’s ongoing overhaul.” 

Wallace Matthews of ESPN.com added context, noting there was “no chance” the veteran slugger would be waived to make room for elite catching prospect Gary Sanchez. 

That wouldn’t come as a huge surprise. The Yankees clearly indicated they were in rebuilding mode after trading relievers Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller, starting pitcher Ivan Nova and slugger Carlos Beltran before the deadline, per Billy Witz of the New York Times.

Ostensibly, that offers the Yankees the opportunity to open up playing time for a number of exciting, young prospects. Players like Rodriguez would stand in the way of giving those prospects playing time, however, making the possibility of his release seem realistic.

“I hope not,” Rodriguez told the Daily News when told there was a chance of his release. “I want to play and think I can make a difference on the field and in the clubhouse.”

General manager Brian Cashman noted that Rodriguez was a part of the team’s current plans, however, per Botte and Red:

A-Rod is a choice for our manager and coaching staff as they try to dissect every day what’s the best lineup to put out there. He’s going to do everything he continues to do to try to put himself in a position to succeed and then leave the decision making to the field staff if there’s opportunities to play or not.

The answer to that’s easy, I guess. We evaluate everything on a daily and weekly basis. We’re always trying to do the right thing. We’re always trying to do the best thing. Nothing has changed there.

Certainly, there are financial reasons to keep Rodriguez around. He’s still owed a guaranteed $21 million next season and the remainder of his salary this year. 

Struggling Rodriguez Coming to End of Road 

From a performance standpoint, however, Rodriguez has struggled. He’s hitting just .205 with nine home runs and 29 RBI entering Tuesday’s action. He’s hitting just .196 against right-handed pitching and was given only 37 at-bats in July, hitting .135 in the month with a homer and two RBI.

Either way, his days with the Yankees seem numbered. If the team decides to give younger prospects more playing time and A-Rod becomes disgruntled, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Yankees cut ties this season. Otherwise, it still seems most likely the team will move on from the veteran over the winter, as Botte and Red suggested.

You can follow Timothy Rapp on Twitter.

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New York Yankees designated hitter Alex Rodriguez struck out in each of his four at-bats during Saturday’s 6-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, becoming the first batter in major league history to record a four-strikeout performance in both his teens and forties, per Elias Sports Bureau (via ESPN.com).

The 41-year-old continues to struggle in what may be his last season, but Saturday’s showing was notably bad even by the reduced standards, with Rodriguez seeing just 17 pitches in four at-bats while recording a golden Sombrero.

Rays starter Drew Smyly fanned Rodriguez three times, including on his final pitch of a six-inning, two-run performance that improved the lefty’s record to a still-unsightly 3-11.

Rays relief pitcher Alex Colome later struck out Rodriguez to begin the ninth, eventually striking out the side to earn his 24th save of the year.

Reduced to a part-time role due to his poor performance on a team that was a clear seller at the trade deadline, Rodriguez followed Saturday’s showing by striking out in his only at-bat during Sunday’s 5-3 loss, making a brief appearance as a pinch-hitter.

Even after Saturday, the 41-year-old Rodriguez has impressively recorded just seven four-strikeout performances in his 2,779-game career, per ESPN Stats & Info.

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Standing on the grass at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Florida, this spring watching Aaron Judge drill moon shots toward Dale Mabry Highway, you couldn’t yet see into July, when the New York Yankees would hit the eject button on two-thirds of their killer back end of the bullpen and parachute into seller mode for the first time since 1989.

But here in midsummer, Andrew Miller—now property of the Cleveland Indians, as the Yankees’ PR Dept. announced Sunday—and Aroldis Chapman—now of the Chicago Cubs—you sure as heck can look ahead as these ho-hum Yankees slog toward the 2016 finish line and see a future that has clicked from grainy, muddled signals to high-def.

Somebody asked general manager Brian Cashman on a conference call Sunday whether he thought the Yankees fanbase would tolerate this sell mode, a concept that in recent years has been as difficult to imagine as Derek Jeter getting, um, married.

A better question would have been whether the Yankees should have done this a long time ago.

Look, as great as the days of Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera were, what’s evident at the other end of that era is how the Yankees allowed their farm system to become overrun with weeds. The only homegrown position player they’ve developed since 2008 is Brett Gardner. No offense to Gardner, who is a gamer, but he ain’t exactly the second coming of Joe DiMaggio…or Bernie Williams.

Yes, in their efforts to keep the ball rolling in the present over the past few years, the Yankees wound up delaying their future. Birthday candles for Alex Rodriguez and Carlos Beltran don’t exactly lead to the next promised land.

For Miller, the Yankees pulled in outfielder Clint Frazier and left-hander Justus Sheffield, considered two of Cleveland’s three best prospects, along with right-handers Ben Heller and J.P. Feyereisen.

For Chapman last week, the Yankees hauled in prized shortstop Gleyber Torres, considered the best prospect in a very rich Cubs system, right-hander Adam Warren and two other minor leaguers.

“I don’t know if I can say there is a change in institutional thinking,” Cashman said Sunday with Miller en route to the Indians. “Clearly, there is a recognition that has to take place that the chessboard that’s lined up that we’re playing on is not the same chessboard we were playing on when I started in the late 1980s and 1990s.

“Clearly, there have been a lot of changes in the game. Access to talent is more restricted; penalties are more in play. Back when I first started under the Boss [Steinbrenner], we could go into the international market and pull down an El Duque [Orlando Hernandez] to replace an Eric Milton we traded away. You could execute and dominate that way.

“You could play in the draft with a Deion Sanders, [taking a flier on] a two-sport star. But now the draft is restricted; you’ve only got so much money to play with. And the cost of international talent is capped.

“Instead of institutional change, it’s a reaction to how the industry is completely different and operating standards are completely different.”

In other words, the game is a lot more balanced now. Old money doesn’t go as far as it once did. The game was forced to react, and it did. Not only does money flow through many more markets in a modern game that last year produced some $9.5 billion in revenues, but rival front offices have gotten smarter. Much smarter.

“If you want to become a superteam, there are different ways to go about that now,” Cashman said. “One thing the Yankees have always stood for is an effort to become a superteam.

“We obviously have a number of World Series titles, and there were years we haven’t been able to win. But I can tell you, the effort is always there—the strategizing and dreaming about how to become a superteam.”

Cashman did not dream overnight Saturday, because he did not sleep. Not a wink, he said. Talks with Cleveland that produced the Miller deal started in earnest around 10 or 11 p.m. Saturday, the GM said, and continued throughout the night.

“It’s hard, especially with Miller, because we’ve had him through last year, and we had him under control, obviously, under a very strong contract for the next two years,” Cashman said. “In his case, it was extremely difficult.”

Reality is, the difficulty should have been in the details of whom the Yankees were getting back, not in the decision to move Miller. As play started Sunday, the Yankees were one game over .500 (52-51). Toronto was 14 over (59-45). Baltimore was 13 over (58-45). Boston was 10 over (56-46). If the American League East teams were swimming in a pool, the Yankees would be the kid learning how to swim, flailing madly just to keep moving forward and hold their head above water.

That’s no way to roll. And that’s coming off last season, when the Yankees were eighty-sixed from the AL Wild Card Game they hosted by Houston.

No, this superteam Cashman talked about, the Yankees haven’t been that in years. And it’s because when you acquire too much of your oxygen from the free-agent market—A-Rod, Beltran, CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, Brian McCann, etc.—you get too many players just after their peaks. Maybe you get a brief window of high production, but the returns begin to diminish far too quickly.

As Theo Epstein and the Cubs are showing, as World Series champion Kansas City exhibited last year and the up-and-coming Astros continue to prove, teams cannot thrive in today’s game without a healthy farm system.

Finally, the Yankees are making the moves they need to in that area. Cashman talked Sunday about “doing a dance between the future and the present” to “cushion the blow,” attempting to give manager Joe Girardi a chance to win now while the club focuses on the future. Thus, Warren from the Cubs and the acquisition of reliever Tyler Clippard from Arizona.

But all that is is borrowing furniture during a move because, well, you’ve gotta have someplace to sit in your living room until the move is complete.

Let’s just say the Yankees won’t be having guests over to show off their place right now. But they plan to soon.

“I’m getting a lot of compliments when scouts parachute in to cover us; they walk away impressed with the work we’ve done,” Cashman said. “I know that recognizability hasn’t been the case as much for a period of time.”

Now, he promised, “the picture is brighter than at anytime since I started.”

In Frazier, Cashman said, the Yankees acquired “an electric bat. His bat speed is already legendary. He’s got all the tools: He can run, hit, he has hittability, he can hit for power, play all three [outfield] positions. And he has high energy—he shows up for the national anthem in a dirty uniform.”

Sheffield, he said, “gets up to 95 [mph], has a three-pitch mix and is a competitor on the mound.”

Using their “Prospect Points,” MLBPipeline.com, in a midseason adjustment Wednesday, ranked the Yankees system fourth in the majors.

It now ranks Frazier as the No. 1 prospect in the Yanks organization and Torres No. 2. Judge, the 6’7″ behemoth with the raw power to make any park look small, is No. 4.

“They’re nice additions to what already is considered a very strong farm system,” Cashman said of Sunday’s haul. “When I started with the Yankees, with [current San Francisco GM] Brian Sabean as director of player development and [legendary former Yankees scouting director] Bill Livesey, we had started to build under their direction some of the best young talent we’ve had.

“The system currently in play is hopefully starting to mirror that system that propelled us into the 1990s.

“We’re trying to get back into a situation where we’re building an uberteam.”

Call it what you want—superteam, uberteam, whatever.

The most important thing today is the renewed recognition that the seeds for those teams must begin to flourish in the bushes—and not with the free-agent checkbook.

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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The New York Yankees are remaking their bullpen prior to Monday’s non-waiver trade deadline, acquiring right-hander Tyler Clippard from the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sunday.

MLB Network’s Jon Heyman first reported the deal. Joel Sherman of the New York Post noted Clippard, under contract through next season, will serve as the seventh-inning setup man for the Yankees, with Adam Warren and a slate of young arms such as Luis Severino, Chad Green and Brian Mitchell bridging the eighth inning to Dellin Betances in the ninth.

The acquisition of Clippard is an interesting one for New York, which is in sell mode for the first time in decades.

The Yankees traded Aroldis Chapman to the Chicago Cubs on Monday, and Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reported Sunday that New York dealt Andrew Miller to the Cleveland Indians.

Clippard has struggled this season in Arizona. He has a 4.30 ERA, which would be his worst mark in a full season, and he’s allowed seven home runs in 37.2 innings.

The 31-year-old is still missing bats with 46 strikeouts, but the key for him to succeed will be keeping the ball in the park. Left-handed hitters have tattooed him for a .534 slugging percentage in 2016, per Baseball-Reference.com.

The Diamondbacks, who are 43-61 and in last place in the National League West, had no reason to keep Clippard. They also perhaps wanted to dump his $6 million-plus yearly salary.

The Yankees are in an awkward position because they are 52-51 but also loaded with aging players—such as Alex Rodriguez and CC Sabathia—who likely can’t be moved because they are owed too much money.

It’s a credit to New York general manager Brian Cashman that the club reaped solid returns in the deals for Chapman and Miller. Clippard isn’t going to turn the Bronx Bombers’ fortunes around, but he will provide a veteran relief presence.

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The New York Yankees are considering trading catcher Brian McCann ahead of the trade deadline on Monday, though no deal is imminent.

Continue for updates.

McCann Linked to Braves

Sunday, July 31

MLB.com’s Mark Bowman reported on Sunday that the “[Atlanta Braves] have discussed trading for [McCann]. It depends on how much money the Yankees are willing to eat.”

McCann previously played with the Braves from 2005 to 2013 before joining the Yankees. He’s in his third season with the Yankees after signing a five-year, $85 million deal in 2013.

McCann Expendable as Yankees Fail to Win

McCann, 32, is hitting .235/.334/.430 with 15 home runs and 41 runs batted in this season. 

The Yankees (52-51) are in fourth place in the AL East. They’re six games behind the Baltimore Orioles for the division lead and 4.5 out of the AL’s second wild-card spot.

McCann hasn’t made an All-Star team since his arrival, but he’s been a generally solid addition. He is on pace for his third straight 20-homer season in New York and could clinch another two-plus WAR (FanGraphs formula) with a good second half. The Yankees have essentially jettisoned him from the lineup against left-handed pitchers in favor of Austin Romine. 

“This year, we have not been getting what we expected,” general manager Brian Cashman said, per Andrew Marchand of ESPN.com. “He is better than this.”

Romine would stand to see a majority of the work if McCann was dealt. The Yankees also have 23-year-old top prospect Gary Sanchez waiting in the wings. Sanchez is hitting .286/.333/.478 with 10 home runs and 48 runs batted in for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre this season.

Moving McCann now would clear Sanchez to split catching duties with Romine for the remainder of 2016 and perhaps set up a full-time job in 2017. The Yankees already have too many aging players who need time at the designated hitter spot, so McCann has essentially become expendable.

The biggest issue would be his contract, which teams would no doubt expect New York to pay part of. The Yankees are currently on the hook for at least $34 million in 2017 and 2018, and there is a vesting option for $15 million in 2019, should McCann hit certain playing-time barriers. He also has a full no-trade clause, so he would have to approve any trade.

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Including this one, the New York Yankees have been winners in each of the last 24 seasons. That’s meant 24 years of buying or staying the course at the trade deadline, as one does when one is a winner.

So go figure that doing the opposite before the August 1 deadline is exactly what the Yankees need now. This is a franchise in need of a turning point, and only by selling will it find it.

Brian Cashman, a key player in the Yankees front office since 1992 and general manager since 1998, took a step in that direction with the trade of fireballing closer Aroldis Chapman to the Chicago Cubs. After a quarter-century’s worth of deadline moves with only the short-term future in mind, this could be merely the first in a series of moves with the club’s long-term future in mind.

But for the moment, that’s not a given.

A full-on fire sale seemed inevitable when the Yankees dropped their first two games after the All-Star break. But they’ve since won eight out of 11 to climb to within four games in the American League wild-card race.

“Anything can happen in baseball,” first baseman Mark Teixeira said Tuesday, per Andrew Marchand of ESPN.com. “A lot weirder things have happened. If we get hot, we can play with anybody, but we just need to keep grinding away.”

The bosses may be on Teixeira’s side. A recent report from ESPN.com’s Wallace Matthews claimed Cashman and the Yankees front office want to sell but that owner Hal Steinbrenner and the other suits aren’t yet ready to detach from the ol’ George Steinbrenner edict to win no matter what.

From the sound of things, they haven’t yet changed their minds.

“I have a green light to continue to do my job, which is to assess market values both coming and going and make recommendations, and [Hal will] tell me what he wants done,” Cashman said, per Marchand. “Then I’ll execute as told.”

The idea that the Yankees should still go for it is a defensible position. Chapman was aiding the Yankees bullpen with a 2.01 ERA and tons of strikeouts, sure, but he’s also a free agent-to-be who was superfluous next to Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances. Trading him didn’t fundamentally change the team, which is indeed still alive in the AL playoff picture.

But in reality, the Yankees are “still alive” like the Black Knight was still alive in his fight with King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 

Entering Wednesday, Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs put the Yankees’ chances of making the playoffs around 10 percent and of winning the World Series at half a percent. Because a still-terrific bullpen is flanked by an offense with the AL’s lowest OPS and a starting pitching staff with the AL’s ninth-best ERA, it’s hard to say these figures underestimate the Yankees.

If they stay defiant and go for it, the Yankees won’t actually be abiding by the franchise’s proud history of chasing championships. They’ll only be sticking to the more recently established tradition of mediocrity. They’d be asking for a fourth straight season without a postseason victory.

Taking the alternate route wouldn’t be painless. The actual end may have already come, but the Yankees admitting defeat will certainly feel like the end of an era. You can already hear the takes about The Boss spinning in his grave.

What should not be forgotten, though, is that it was when the Yankees’ late owner was out of the way that the foundation for the club’s best years was built.

During Steinbrenner’s three-year ban from baseball from 1990 to 1993, a front office led by Cashman and Gene Michaels cultivated a core of young players that included Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera. The rest, as they say…well, you know the rest.

The list of quality homegrown players the Yankees have developed since then is frighteningly short, consisting only of Robinson Cano, Brett Gardner, Betances and a few others. Rather than developing their own stars, the Yankees have spent the better part of the last two decades buying and trading for stars developed by other teams.

In fairness, this used to work. There’s no arguing with five World Series and seven AL pennants between 1996 and 2009. But in today’s MLB, this approach just doesn’t fly anymore.

As Rob Arthur showed at FiveThirtyEight, the notion that baseball’s star power is skewing younger is no mirage. And for good reasons. More young players have grown up playing baseball exclusively. And without performance-enhancing drugs, veterans just don’t age like they used to.

You can’t count on young players landing on the free-agent market, and an environment such as this one makes them tough to pry away in trades. That means the best way to build a winner is to be like the Kansas City Royals or Chicago Cubs and build one from the ground up. 

The Yankees aren’t totally unaware of this. Hal Steinbrenner made a point of wanting to rebuild the club’s farm system in a 2013 interview with Daniel Barbarisi of the Wall Street Journal. Credit is owed to him and Cashman for following through as much as they have since then.

Four Yankees prospects made it into Baseball America‘s latest top 100: shortstop Jorge Mateo (19), catcher Gary Sanchez (36), right fielder Aaron Judge (42) and right-hander James Kaprielian (99). They got shortstop Gleyber Torres, the No. 27 prospect, in the Chapman trade. The other two prospects in the deal, outfielders Billy McKinney and Rashad Crawford, have too much talent to be called mere throw-ins.

However, this is only a good start.

In the coming years, the Yankees need to worry about restocking a lineup with only two players (Didi Gregorius and Starlin Castro) under the age of 32 and a starting rotation that features only one guy (Masahiro Tanaka) controlled beyond 2017.

The upcoming free-agent markets aren’t going to help the Yankees do this. The next free-agent bonanza won’t come until the winter of 2018-2019, when guys like Bryce Harper and Jose Fernandez are due to headline maybe the most star-studded winter market in history.

The Yankees’ best play is to load up their farm system as best they can, graduate as many young players to the majors as possible within the next two years and then use their riches to add impact veteran talent to a team already loaded with young up-and-comers.

If the Chapman trade was one step in that direction, it’s now time for the others. Carlos Beltran, another free agent-to-be, should also go. Bolstered by two more years under contract, Miller’s trade value is too high for him to be deemed untouchable. Gardner, Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi and Ivan Nova look like trade chips too. Guys like CC Sabathia, Brian McCann and Chase Headley may not be immovable.

Collectively, that’s a big pile of trade bait that could net the Yankees a big pile of prospects while also saving them a decent pile of cash. If that’s what they end up with, that’s how they’ll know they’re rebuilding the right way.

It would indeed feel like the end of an era. But what the Yankees must understand between now and August 1 is that this might be the start of an entirely new era that, in time, could be just as good as the old one.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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