Having taken their victory lap, the self-congratulatory Yankees have a month left to toast this ongoing disastrous season

In case you missed it, Sports Illustrated this week gives Brian Cashman a 2,000-word foot massage, barely a paragraph shy of a romp at the Airport Ramada. The upshot: Cashman is now a Yankee god, an icon comparable to Ruth and Gehrig, his bald head is bulletproof, and the 2015 Yankees stand as testimonial to his competence... this, as they plummet headlong into The Abyss.

Yes, The Abyss. The one Fred Nietzche feared, but with baseball. And it's so simple, so clean, so obvious: We are the team everybody said we would be, once August arrived. At a certain point of the season, a 40-year-old plays like a 40-year-old. Don't act surprised.

OK, we are still four up in the one game Wild Card, but a month ago Cashman's army was running away with the AL East. That ship sure sailed in a hurry. And last night they were stomped into a bloody gruel, undressed and embarrassed by an organization that has defined suckwad for a decade, but now trends upward through the sheer brilliance of all that incompetence. That's Houston's secret to success - and it may yet be Cashman's: Just come in last enough times, and the draft picks and luxury tax/salary cap will raise the boat. It's called improvement, NFL-style.

Well, rather be negative, let's look at the bright sides of last night...

1. Ivan Nova has finally overcome the inconsistency that plaques pitchers returning from TJ surgery. He has found his niche. He's consistently bad.

2. The Bobbsie Twins continue to glow at 2B. Stephen Drew went 0 for 2. It's practically Seussian! Stephen Drew went oh-for-two! Two strikeouts, too. Boo-hoo-hoo, that Stephen Drew! And for another week, every time he comes to bat, The Master will note that he's within a base hit of .200!

Also, Brendan Ryan - who pitched - went oh-for-three with an error. A ball went through his legs despite the fact that he went down to one knee. That's hard to do, like Stephen Drew! If it happened to Rob Refsnyder at Scranton, he'd be drummed out of the game. How dare he think the Yankees were going to turn over 2B to him!

3. Tex returned with a noticable limp. In other words, pick a percentage, and that's what level he'll be playing at for the next month. Is he 70 percent healed? Fifty? Thirty?

4. Last night, the Yankees were taken over their knees and spanked. Not only were we humiliated on the scoreboard, but their centerfielder took to mocking us while rounding the bases in his HR trot. Teams can react to this in different ways. I suspect we'll come out today with piss and vinegar. But The Abyss doesn't care about piss and vinegar. The Abyss just waits. And was it really Jorge and Andy who got their plaques this weekend? Or was it Cashman? Haven't we already taken our turn down the Canyon of Heroes?