It could get late early: The Yankees simply cannot sustain another week like the last one.

Damn, I can't get this out of my head: The notion that the Yankees are another bad week from a catastrophic, year-crushing meltdown. Good grief, in the eight miserable days since the 2019 season launched, we've lost Stanton, Tulowitzky and Andujar, while Hicks, Ellsbury and Severino remain frozen in carbonite, and Betances and Sabathia float outside my bedroom window, shrieking into the cold night like the ghost of Hideki Irabu.

Listen: It's flat-out, Alex Jones-level insanity to suggest the Yankees should throw in the towel on 2019 - certainly not before the trade deadline, when Sir Didi will have returned. I get it. This wave of injuries should break and maybe even-out across the league, decimating the Redsocks and everybody else on my shit list. There is no reason to suspect the Yankees will continue to lose players the way the Pentagon loses track of nuclear warheads.

But but BUT... what if we do?

What has me spooked is the potential finality of Andujar's shoulder tear. If he needs surgery, he misses the season. It's not the end of him - he's just 24 - but we go from a 3B who could hit .300 with 30 HRs to - jeez - DJ LeMahieu? Tyler Wade? Thairo Estrada? Some Cashman scrap heap reclamation? Damn, everywhere you look, it's like a kick in the nuts: You know it happened, but the pain hasn't yet fully arrived. 

So, the terrified six-year-old inside me says... what if next week is like last week? At what point could the Yankees - come July - be staring at a full-scale meltdown? Here's the short list of season-ending asteroids - events that could cancel our show before the fifth episode, when Cher appears. Print it out, then set fire to it. The juju gods need to know we mean business.

1. A major injury to Aaron Judge. No surprise here. Take him from the lineup, and our batting order turns to margarine. The drop from Judge to, say, Mike Tauchman, is like replacing Bruce Springsteen with Benny Mardones. (And I say this with respect to "the Voice," an all-time Syracuse fave.) 

2. Loss of Gary Sanchez. Yes, Gary. In this case, it's not so much that he's lived up to his clippings; it's the lack of a replacement. Austin Romine hits for two weeks, then turns into Kyle Higashioka, who is entering his fifth year at Triple A. Wow. He should write a tourism guide for Scranton.

3. An injury to Aroldis Chapman. We may be seeing this in slow motion. While we do have alternatives, the mere act of watching Chapman blow saves until someone else is installed as closer would mean a month of horror. And then, there goes the bullpen, dominoes dropping, one by one. 

4. The Loss of Gleyber Torres. This would be catastrophic on every level. We would lose our SS, our 2B, our cleanup hitter and the break-out player that most gave us hope. We cannot afford to lose Andujar and Torres in one month. It's just not fair. We would have to sue the juju gods. 

Of course, this is merely my list of sky-is-falling terrors. No team in baseball could sustain such losses. But playing in the cold northeast - and refusing to postpone games even when it's sleeting - endangers our employees. If the floor collapses, there is no cavalry in Scranton waiting for the call. Cashman would have spent the month of May, trading young talent for new versions of Vernon Wells and Travis Hafner. So, when all has collapsed, here would be the plan.

Come July 30, we would trade Happ, CC, Gardy, Britton, Betances, Tulo and El Chapo, if he's throwing. Get whatever we can. We would pay part of Giancarlo's salary and do with him what Miami did with us: Wave goodbye. Hicksy? Flip a coin. Ditch either Bird or Voit. We would give full auditions to Wade, Clint Frazier, Domingo German, Luis Cessa and Johnny Lasagna. Maybe we would bring up Estevan Florial (if he's healed.) We'd sit back and hope somebody beats Boston. We'd retire Cooperstown Cashman - maybe bump him to a position where he can't cause trouble - and start looking at 2020. 

Yes, it's way too early to be having suicidal thoughts...

But what if this decade simply cannot be saved? We need a good week. Damn. We just need a good week.