Nine out, our best hitter hurt, our best pitching prospect compromised... the Season from Hell continues

Today, the Tankees - presumptive 4th-place winners of the AL East - stand nine games behind Baltimore, the largest deficit of the season. The next loss could knock us 10 out, a magical figure for past Yankee apocalypses, and the Bronx will bloom with handwriting that only the Yankee bigwigs fail to notice.

You cannot get people to see if they refuse to open their eyes.

Last night, every Yank fan in captivity spit his donuts when Carlos Beltran gimped off the field on a single. The horror notion: What if he tore something? Beltran is one of the Big Three trades waiting in the team cookie jar: He, Aroldis Chapman and either Betances or Miller - (they'd keep one closer) - could be dealt for young players, perhaps salvaging this brutal prison sentence of a season. But if he's hurt, well... you break him, you keep him.

Today, the Yankees say Beltran merely skinned a twinkie and will be back soon. Unfortunately, the only people who believe Yankee press releases are the YES courtiers who get paid to recite them. Beltran won't come back until the leg feels right, and that could be a week, and a week can stretch into the DL. At any time, Miller or Chapman could tweak a gonad. As the Yankees merrily sift through their options on the season, make no mistake: They are holding live grenades.

But the worst news yesterday came from the Death Star in Tampa: James Kaprielian - the 22-year-old UCLA pitcher who was our first draft pick last June - unbuttoned a doohickey in his elbow, and he might require Tommy John surgery. That would mean he becomes a 24-year-old rehabber in 2018, with a scar on his arm and no experience beyond Single A, and the world has no shortage of such people. But there's more to this...

Kaprielian is the guy that the YES machine touted all last year as a great first-round pick. He generated 12-months of self-congratulation and pomposity. He is a reason why nobody walked the plank in the Yankee scouting staff after the debacles of Andrew Brackman, Cito Culver, Dante Bichette Jr., et al: Kaprielian was such a wondrous grand pick - the next Clemens, the next Maddox, the next your name here - that everybody kept his designated parking slot, and the heirs and heiresses still sit cozy atop the shitpile.

Not long ago, there were so-called "expert" bloggers predicting that Kaprielian would be pitching in Yankee Stadium by July 1, along with Luis Severino, Ian Clarkin and the ensemble cast of Hogan's Heroes. By now, we would be enjoying an explosion of young arms, lifting the Yankees into the future. What a crock.

Listen: There's a polarizing political debate in America, and I try not to inflict my absurd views on anybody, because - well - frankly, I might be wrong. But I believe the worst thing that ever happened to Conservatism in America is the "echo chamber" of Fox News and AM radio talk shows. Old right-wingers watch nothing else, and get a false read on public opinion. They think everybody watches Hannity, and they can't understand why only three other people show up at the parade, and sometimes they get wacko. (This happens on the left, too, in the closeted dungeons of social media.) And here's why I'm raising this: The Yankees have our own version of Fox News and AM radio. We get fed a constant stream of fun-house mirror crapola, which is only designed to sell tickets and get TV viewers. We actually start to believe our own bullshit, and as a result, we're stuck with a mediocre team and a franchise that cannot change.

Sometimes I read this site and think, "Jeeze, we don't sound like Yankee fans. You'd think these bloggers hate the Yankees. What's going on here?" Then I look at the standings, and I realize we have no choice.

Nine games out. Anybody for 10? Fine with me. As long as nobody gets hurt.