As the Yankees battle the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for their very survival, they should keep in mind that this may be the last year that this rightly maligned franchise makes it so easy on them.

“Easy” might seem like the wrong word, given how successful these cut-price baitfish have been against the Yankees this season, but this is an organization that has spent its entire existence fighting with both hands tied behind its back. Their managing general partner, Vince Naimoli, is underfinanced, tantrum-prone, and ineffectual. The general manager, Chuck LaMar, has been more concerned with job security than trying to improve the franchise.

When other teams offered to take some of the team’s useful veteran parts, like Aubrey Huff, in exchange for prospects, LaMar (or Naimoli) repeatedly refused to deal, to the point that many organizations no longer even attempt to work with them on trades. On Monday, their best prospect, Delmon Young (Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year), publicly accused the team of not promoting him simply as a way of holding down his service time, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing to do if you’re the Yankees, if you’re the Devil Rays it’s just one more Dickensian deprivation for the players and fans.

“The only thing I can think of is them being cheap,” Young told the St. Petersburg Times. “Why not call up guys when you’re 50 games out of first place and you’re not going to the playoffs? They’re so worried about saving dollars and cents, and they can’t compete with no one.”

It’s a pathetic way to run a franchise, because the organization has been undercut not just by its low payroll but by the inability of upper management to decide which players are of value and which are not, which players to keep and which to deal. Rather than make these decisions, management has routinely abdicated, which means that the team has floundered year after year despite producing quality players like Carl Crawford, Jorge Cantu (who the organization desperately tried to replace with the superannuated Roberto Alomar), and Jonny Gomes.

There is the core of something good in Tampa Bay, but no one on hand knows what to do with it. Which is to say that if the anticipated change of ownership from Naimoli to Stuart Sternberg goes off this autumn as rumored, Sternberg wouldn’t need George Steinbrenner’s pockets or Billy Beane’s savvy to compete next year, just all the common sense the current group has lacked.

Right now, the Devil Rays are a 90-loss team. Correction: They are a 90-loss team overall and a 100-loss team to every team in baseball except the Yankees. Against non-Bomber ballclubs, the Rays have played just well enough to go 62-100 over a full season. Against the Yankees, the Rays are a 105-win team. That’s what an 11-6 record will get you if carried out over a full season. Every other team in baseball looks at the Devil Rays and sees a patsy. The Yankees see the 1954 Cleveland Indians. One can only imagine how the Devil Rays will appear to the Yankees when they’re actually trying – probably like something out of “Field of Dreams,” with a platoon of reanimated Hall of Famers making up the batting order.

It’s not all psychosis for the Yankees, though. The 2005 Devil Rays have been stronger at home (38-34) than the Yankees have been on the road (33-35). Their pitching has improved in the second half and the Cantu-Julio Lugo double play combination has made up for some of the offensive weakness of the other positions.

The Rays have also been striking at the Yankees’ weak points. While the Rays beat Randy Johnson early in the season and sent Mariano Rivera to a rare loss in one contest and a rarer blown save in another, they also beat two pitchers, Kevin Brown and Carl Pavano, who largely weren’t prepared to pitch this season, they beat Sean Henn twice, and they’ve sent rookie Chien-Ming Wang to three of his four losses.

In this sense, it is unnerving that New York’s two starting pitchers for the final two games of this series are Wang and Aaron Small. (Jaret Wright was the happy beneficiary of last night’s offensive eruption in Tampa.) Small, he of the smoke, mirrors, and inspiring story of dogged perseverance, was also thrashed by the Devil Rays, albeit in a one-inning relief appearance on August 17.Perhaps Small the Recently Charmed Starter will be less susceptible than Small the Journeyman Reliever.

Either way, the Yankees don’t have much choice but to start treating this 90-loss team for what it is. Forget about Boston for a moment. The Cleveland Indians, who lead the wild-card race by a game, still have two series remaining with the dismal Kansas City Royals.

The A’s may help the Yankees with the Indians, and they may help with the Red Sox, who they also play on their current road trip. But that help may be irrelevant if the Yankees don’t play tight ballgames, and most of all, don’t give a weak team a shot at their even weaker relievers. Tanyon Sturtze, Buddy Groom, and Alan Embree have all played crucial roles in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory versus Tampa Bay this season. Rivera has enough trouble with this team; he doesn’t need the help of arsonists. Joe Torre remembered this against the Red Sox on Sunday, and he should try to remember it for the rest of the season, too. It’s like W.C. Fields said: Never give a sucker an even break.

The Devil Rays are most definitely suckers, but that condition won’t last forever. The team is young and talented, and this off-season it just might get started. The Yankees had better get in their licks while they can.

Mr. Goldman is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.