It is not at all ironic that Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” is the top single in the country, but the Yankees had a bad week. In fact, it’s fitting. The Yankees always do things bigger. “Bad Day” is, oxymoronically, a big success, but the Yankees’ opening week reveals some causes for concern.

First, the good news. The Yankees ended their opening road trip with the third-best earned run average in baseball, 3.04. That ERA conceals six unearned runs, the most in the American League, raising fears that the Yankees will again have problems with range and converting balls in play into outs. That aside, the Yankees pitched well, getting four quality starts (defined as an outing of six innings or more resulting in three runs or less) in six outings, both by Randy Johnson and Mike Mussina, the latter of whom looks like a new-old version of himself.

Of the two starters who failed to pitch well, Chien-Ming Wang looked great until Derek Jeter botched one of those plays that the Jeter-is-infallible press contingent will never hold against him. Only Shawn Chacon was truly ineffective. More than any other pitcher on the team except perhaps Aaron Small, Chacon is likely to regress. As a Yankee in 2005, Chacon allowed a .240 batting average on balls in play, a number all the more miraculous when the defense he was in front of is considered.

On average, pitchers allow a batting average on balls in play of about .300, so it has to be assumed that good luck was responsible for a portion of Chacon’s shockingly good results upon arriving in New York – that is, balls that might normally have found a hole happened to be hit at a fielder. Chacon’s first start suggests that he won’t be that lucky two years in a row.

On offense the news is mixed. Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Hideki Matsui are off to terrific starts, but Robinson Cano is again showing why he will have to hit well over .300 to be an offensive plus, and Bernie Williams’s rehearsals for retirement are overdue for closing. It’s one thing that the owner got sentimental about an aging star, another to saddle a team in competition with a non-hitting DH. Sadly, it will take months before the Yankees are ready to face reality on this point, months of “But Bernie is traditionally a slow starter” before they can get to the business of giving Andy Phillips more playing time, promoting Eric Duncan from Columbus, or looking outside the organization for Carlos Pena or some other cheaply available talent who might give the Yankees some extra bang for the buck.

Unfortunately, Joe Torre hasn’t displayed any sense of urgency, and his justifications for the choices that he makes, or fails to make, are getting stranger. Miguel Cairo, the career .270/.318/.364 hitting utility infielder – the same guy who put up a .296 on-base percentage for the Mets last season – started Sunday’s game at first base over Phillips. As Jenn Royle of the YES network reported, Torre explained this bizarre move on the basis of character. “”He can steal a base, fights his way on. He’s a shot of adrenaline for you. We just needed a little extra energy and I think Miggy’s experience can help.”

Of course, experience only helps win ballgames if it’s the experience of hitting, fielding, or pitching well. High mileage alone doesn’t cut it’ if it did, the Yankees would have signed Dick Cheney over Johnny Damon. The Yankees had been lacking in offense over the previous games, not experience or stolen bases, and Cairo deducts offense, as he has shown during the vast majority of the nearly 1,000 major league games he has played.

Though he is not a young man, Phillips does lack Cairo’s experience. What he does have is two major league home runs in 50 career at bats, the same number Cairo hit last year in 327 at bats for the Mets, and one home run every 15 at bats in his last two minor league seasons. Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA system predicts that if Phillips is given 350 at-bats he’ll hit 14 home runs. That may not be a Ruthian figure, but it’s the best chance the Yankees have at the moment. Because Cairo is one of Torre’s guys, and Phillips, for reasons we will never know, is not, the Yankees will forego offense from the DH spot.

Similarly troubling is the way Torre saved Mariano Rivera throughout the week, keeping him in reserve for save situations that never developed. This despite frequent off-days in the early part of the season. While it is not unreasonable to want to preserve the aging Rivera for the latter part of the season, one or two key innings in a six-game stretch shouldn’t overly tax him. That Torre was reduced to getting Rivera an inning of garbage time work in Sunday’s blowout underscored how he squandered his ace over the previous week when a dose of his magic at a key moment might have won the team a game that Scott Proctor fumbled.

It is choices like these that make one doubt the Yankees’ chances of putting another pennant flag on the aging Stadium wall. They may win the division because the division is weak. They should score a lot of runs, maybe the most in baseball, and the pitching should, on the whole, be sound if not dominating. But in races lacking wire-to-wire-style dominance by one club, the contest is often won on the margins, by astute decision-making, by the best deployment of resources. At 5-1, the Red Sox have already shown the aggressiveness of their thinking by dethroning closer Keith Foulke after just one game. They learned their lesson with Foulke last year and didn’t need half a season to relearn it. If only Yankees thought as fast.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for www.yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.