COMMENTARY : N.Y. on Pinstripes and Needles

They can make real trouble for themselves over the next few weeks, don’t think they can’t. It is why they need a good home stand. They have had a lot of injuries, and those injuries should mean a slow start. But not this kind of start. The Yankees are 13-18 today, and it has as much to do with the people who are healthy as the people who are hurt. The Yankees need to start the season now.

Melido Perez has an earned run average of nearly 5.00. Bob Wickman, who was supposed to be such a big guy setting up John Wetteland, has a 5.85 ERA, and has almost as many walks on his record as strikeouts. Steve Howe has an ERA of 7.04 and has been awful. It is not just pitchers. Wade Boggs is only .277, even if he is leading the team in RBI. Luis Polonia is .241 and has done nothing. Bernie Williams is .204. Tony Fernandez was .206 before he got hurt. They are all killing the Yankees as much as Jimmy Key’s shoulder, Paul O’Neill’s wrist, Don Mattingly’s eyes.

And Danny Tartabull is .209 with two home runs. Just once it would be nice to see him carry the team.

The Yankees have had so much bad luck. But they are lucky this way: They’re tied with the Blue Jays and the Orioles are still behind them in the AL East. It is hard to believe the Red Sox are this good, though they must have some kind of game if they can go 20-11 without Roger Clemens.

“We can’t kid ourselves into thinking the Red Sox are just going to disappear,” Buck Showalter said.

The Red Sox aren’t going to run away with the division. But they are going to be around, especially now that they have Clemens back. The Yankees need to start playing some ball now. Last season, because of the strike, they played 113 games and won 70. Now they have 114 games left. It is hard to believe the Yankees can come anywhere close to winning 70 of those the way they are going.

They are hurt. It is early. General manager Gene Michael, Showalter and Mattingly are right when they see that it is too early to panic. The Yankees are a solid home stand away from getting back to .500.

But more trouble right now would be bad. Now Pat Kelly is gone for at least a month, and maybe more than that if the doctors do not like what they see when they operate on his wrist. The entire organization is holding its breath on Key, because if Key is going to be gone for a long time, then the Yankees are going to have to make a trade. Losing the ace of a staff changes all your plans.

With all that, the Yankees should have a better record. When the Yankees got Wetteland, and moved both Wickman and Howe into set-up roles, we were supposed to be talking about the best late-inning relievers around. It has not worked out that way. Howe is the biggest worry, just because he has no fastball.

And the bullpen is asked to save games the Yankees should already have put away. Tuesday night’s game should have been over before the Mariners went crazy with all those runs off Perez and Wickman and Howe. But the Yankees left 12 men on base. On Wednesday night, a night when they pounded Randy Johnson, the Yankees left 10 more runners on base. So the game was still quite available when Tino Martinez hit his three-run homer off Bob MacDonald to win the game and make the road trip end at 1-8. The Yankees did not look this bad when Showalter got them a few years ago.

None of this is the manager’s fault. You have to give Showalter every break because of some of the line-ups he has had to use. In Wednesday’s game, Showalter could not play Mattingly at first base because Johnson was pitching, and Mattingly is still having a lot of trouble picking up the speed and spin of pitched balls, especially from left-handers. Randy Velarde was the second baseman even though he is much more useful at other positions. And 20-year old Derek Jeter was the shortstop.

Still the Yankees would be a lot better off if the pitchers available to Showalter would start doing the job, and the hitters available to him would hit.

The Yankees had a terrific team meeting the other day in Oakland. Showalter told the Yankees to remember what they feel like right now, because payback time is coming.

The Yankees went out that day and scored early and beat the A’s. Then they promptly went to Seattle and got swept.

“There’s two words you will always hear from me,” Showalter says. “Responsibility and accountability. The players know that. Mr. Steinbrenner knows that. I am aware that I am accountable for the record of this team, even when we see the kinds of injuries we’ve seen so far.”

The record needs to get better, fast. The long season is a lot shorter this time. That makes it a Yogi Berra season. It could get late early around here.