Which is worse? Having Chapman for five, or knowing Boston will have Devers for 20?

Give Joe Girardi credit. Last night, Jiltin' Joe did the impossible: He achieved a new gold standard for excruciating, pineapple-up-the-butt, worst-loss-of-the-season defeats. 

I mean, the man is an artist. I thought Stephen King could plot a horror story. He's nothing, compared to Girardi. For a while, I believed Tom Coughlin - ex-coach of the NFL Jersey Giants - was the all-time master of last-minute, out-of-body, waterboard-worthy defeats, the human P.T.S.D. nightmare that would haunt me to the deathbed. Not anymore. It's Girardi, the new King of Root Canals. Somewhere out there lurk rich, troubled Yankee fans who will someday pay great money to have Girardi dress up in black leather and poke lit cigarettes up their gum wads. But for me, his greatest weapon of pain will not be fire and ice, or the rack or the rat cage mask. It will be his acolyte, the greatest horror that Shark Week ever produced - the unspeakably toxic Aroldis Chapman.

Let us stop for a moment and let those horribly odious five syllables sink in to your cortex: 

Uh. Rall. Diss. Chap. Min. 

It's a horror movie incantation. It is literally summoning the demon, calling for Mephistopheles himself to appear in a cloud of rosin. It is by far the most terrifying moment in any Yankee game (though the words "Now batting: Aaron Judge," with runners on base, is rising in agony.) Even if El Chapo succeeds - even if we win - we will be subjected to a wide-awake colonoscopy, the game saved by some incredible defensive gem. And we have him for five years - the longest and most expensive ($69 million) contract ever given to a reliever... and this by a front office that was publicly disavowing long and expensive contracts. For five years, we will watch this tattooed buffoon - sweat cascading in buckets - until someone swallows the money and trades him for a can of dog food, allowing Foodstamps Hal, our billionaire owner, to justify cutting payroll. 

Uh. Rall. Diss. Chap. Min.

I mean, it was incredible. When the Yankees took the lead in the eighth, with Dellin Betances in complete command, the first wild thought glanced off my brain: Surely, Girardi wouldn't just go back to the book and subject this game - this series - this season - to another El Chapo ninth? The definition of madness is to perform the same task over and over, long after it's clearly not working. Would Girardi actually bring in Chapman, as if nothing has happened, as if the Yankees have a closer?

Because we don't. The Yankees have 20 blown saves in 44 save opportunities. That's a conversion rate of 54.55 percent, the second worst in all of baseball. Only Texas, which has been destroyed by its bullpen this year, is worse. And yet to hear to the YES team talk, our bullpen is stocked with Olympian gods, the greatest of which is - gulp - the closer from Hell. The stat for a LOSS cannot fully describe the depth of Chapman's malignancy. He doesn't blow saves. He blows entire weeks. He's 29, going on 35, and he's already a dying arm bordering on head case.

Which brings me to a second ugly revelation from last night's torture chamber: Boston's willingness to play a 20-year-old 3B, while we put our stock in another generation of "cagey" vets. The other day, a friend asked why we often see other teams with 20-year-olds, but our rookies arrive closer to age 24? I mean, the modern sports world is brimming with kids. The NBA routinely drafts college freshmen - the one and dones - at 19. They had to ban NBA teams from drafting kids out of high school, because it was becoming so successful, it threatened their free college farm system. But when it comes to promoting youth, the Yankees always have an excuse not to.

This year's excuse is borderline brilliant: The Yankee front office - geniuses, all - had built such an incredible farm system, so brimming with prospects that the franchise had no choice but to trade a few, or we would lose them next winter in the Rule 5 draft. Therefore, barely three weeks after giving up on Chris Carter, who was hitting .201, we upgraded with Todd Frazier, who was hitting .207. And Miguel Andujar - age 22 - remained in Scranton, hitting .320.

You can say that our "baseball experts" know more than I do - and you're certainly right. But if these guys are so smart, why do we keep doing the same thing, over and over? Boston - with more to lose than us - brought up a youngster, Rafael Devers, while we traded four of our Top 10 prospects to make a wild card run that - given our current trajectory - might not last to Labor Day.

Give Joe credit. Just when you think it can't get worse, that the Yankees cannot torture you more over a nine-inning span... the incantation takes form, and you see Old & Sweaty warming in the pen. Howl, howl, howl. UNCLE! I say UNCLE!