A five-game win streak is always a good thing. Coming when it has, the Yankees’ run might almost be taken as evidence that the ship has been righted and will steam on toward the customary 100 wins. Maybe it will, but before they crow too loudly, Yankees fans may want to wait and see what happens over the next stretch. This team still isn’t even at .500, and it’s still not really very good.

Yesterday’s ugly matinee in the Bronx was a fine example of everything that’s wrong with this year’s team. All credit goes to Tino Martinez, Derek Jeter, Hideki Matsui, and Gary Sheffield for clutch hits that brought the Yankees back from two huge deficits and gave them the 13-9 win over the rather hapless Seattle Mariners.

Credit also goes to Paul Quantrill, Tanyon Sturtze, and Tom Gordon for pitching five scoreless innings of relief to seal the win. The Yankees need these three to pitch well, and it’s encouraging to see them do so. But even a team with an offense this good cannot count on winning when the opposition scores nine runs. As ineffective as starter Carl Pavano was, the Mariners’ uncharacteristic offensive outburst took work from all corners of the diamond.

The most obvious culprit was Alex Rodriguez, who made two crucial errors. A botched play in the first inning left a man at third with one out instead of none on with two out, leading to a Richie Sexson home run that opened the flood gates in a five-run inning. In the fourth, the Yankees would have been out of the inning having allowed only one run but for a Rodriguez throwing error that put Adrian Beltre on first, leading to a three-run home run by Raul Ibanez. That’s not a good day in the field.

Less obvious were some ugly misplays by Tony Womack, who looks every bit a converted infielder in the Stadium’s notoriously difficult left field. Whether waving helplessly as foul balls land just out of his reach near the corner, or futilely reaching for balls flying over his head in the left-center gap, Womack’s bad fielding, while it didn’t directly lead to any runs, was just the sort of thing that’s killed the Yankees this season.

Still, the lion’s share of the blame goes to Pavano. Having allowed 11 unearned runs this season, his 4.80 ERA dramatically overstates how well he’s pitched, as he’s allowing seven runs per nine innings. Thus far this season, he’s lent credibility to warnings that his strong 2004 was largely an illusion created by park effects and defense. Pavano doesn’t have great stuff or great command, and he doesn’t do much to make up for the lack of them.

After giving up the three-run home run in the first and a single, he pitched to 19 more batters, and started off 12 of them with a ball. That’s maddening, and that’s how a pitcher ends up allowing nine runs to a mediocre team such as the Mariners – by starting off behind in the count and putting himself in a situation where the hitter knows fastballs are coming. Pitchers have to throw the ball over the plate to win.

Crummy defense and bad pitching should come as no surprise to the Yankees. Common sense says that when your shortstop is playing third base, your second baseman is playing left field, and you’re in the habit of signing pitchers who don’t strike batters out, you’re going to run into significant problems.

Unfortunately, this is what’s going to happen in a great many games for the rest of this season. I put no great stock in the recent run of quality starts by Yankee pitchers; facing offenses as bad as those of Oakland and Seattle is usually a good way to get starters out of a funk. Nor will I be inclined to put too much stock in any good performances we see in the next six days; facing those same A’s and Mariners offenses in their pitching-friendly home parks is hardly a good way to gauge a questionable starting staff. Facing the Mets, Tigers, and Red Sox over the last 10 days of May will provide a much sterner test, one I doubt the team will pass.

That said, the home run ball can make up for a great many flaws, and the Yankees have it working for them. No team with Jeter, Sheffield, Matsui, and Rodriguez is going to want for runs, and though Martinez is hitting over his head, he clearly has enough left in the tank to help the team from here on out. Yesterday’s outburst, in fact, was an example of the model the Yankees need to follow.

With deep-seated problems in the pitching staff for which there are no easy answers, they probably need to simply forget about solving them, focus on putting their best possible offense in the field, and hope to just beat the hell out of opposing pitching staffs. It’s not the way the Yankees have won, generally, but all teams win by emphasizing their strengths and hiding their weaknesses. For the Yankees, their main – and perhaps their only – strength is that they can win games by a 13-9 score.

With a great shot at getting back to .500 over the next week, it’s time for the team brass to realize that the Yankees will be playing a great many games with similar scores, and that the only call is to make sure they’re on the right side of them.