BALTIMORE — This was supposed to be the season in which the Yankees would begin their youth movement — an attempt to rebuild the team as the kind of homegrown contender that attained four World Series titles in the 1990s.
Gone were Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann, players who had turned from elder statesmen to senior citizens, at least by the standards of professional baseball. In were Gary Sanchez, Greg Bird and Aaron Judge, fresh-faced ballplayers with their best days presumably still ahead of them.
But in 2017, the only direction the Yankees’ youth has been moving is toward the training room or, just as worrisome, the bench.