You’re Colter Bean, Yankees minor league reliever, and you know baseball is no meritocracy. You know this because you’re 28 years old and you’ve been in the minor leagues since 2000. No one wanted you in the amateur draft that year, so you signed with the Yankees as a free agent. A couple of years ago, the open-minded Red Sox took you in the Rule 5 draft, but even they didn’t want you. It’s because you don’t throw hard – because you get hitters out with a deceptive delivery rather than hard stuff – that they don’t want you.

You have a career record of 23-11, a 2.61 ERA in nearly 300 innings coming into this season, and nearly 12 strikeouts per nine innings, but they (“they” meaning, at the very least, the Yankees and Red Sox brass and possibly everyone else in baseball) refuse to accept the evidence right in front of them. That’s why you’re still pitching in the sticks in a season in which the Yankees have had an endless parade of dubious arms pass through the bullpen, some more than once. Your ERA at Columbus is 2.68 in 57 innings. But Joe Torre apparently doesn’t believe in you, and in the short term, that’s all that counts.

If you hadn’t figured that out by now, Buddy Groom drove the point home on the way out the door. Even if the gutsy Groom wasn’t the ideal pitcher to deliver the message, mediocre, overage hurler that he is, what he said still qualified as truth-telling. “I wouldn’t encourage anybody else to come here thinking you are going to get an opportunity because unless you are one of Joe’s boys, you are not going to get much of a shot,” he told the New York Post.

It’s odd how few analysts picked up on what Groom said because it’s obviously true. Since taking over as Yankees manager in 1996, Joe Torre has used roughly 65 dedicated relievers. In that time, he has established exactly two relievers in the major leagues: Mariano Rivera and Brian Boehringer. Only 15 pitchers have thrown even 50 games during Torre’s administration, and just five – Graeme Lloyd, Jason Grimsley, Jeff Nelson, Mike Stanton, and Rivera – have made at least 100 appearances.

To be sure, the Yankees organization has thrown Torre his choice of ugly pitchers from the generic minor league righty department: Juan Padilla (6 games), Craig Dingman (10 games), Darrell Einertson (11 games), Todd Williams (15 games), Todd Erdos (20 games), Jay Tessmer (22 games), Mike Buddie (26 games), and so on. With the Yankees, you have to have a rep or a resume (not the same thing) or you’re given a very short leash. That’s why Torre’s top 10 relievers shows only three pitchers with any staying power; most everyone else gets dropped quickly and internal solutions are never adequately explored, so vets come in, do the job for a season or two, and leave. Prospect or journeyman, if you don’t earn his confidence in one or two appearances, he will never trust you again.

Earlier this week, Torre was discussing the politics of dealing Robinson Cano at the deadline. “As an organization,” he said, “young kids don’t usually get an opportunity to stay around because the future is right now.” Torre was parroting the organizational line, but this is, just on the basis of pure logic, one of the dumbest things a manager who is interested in winning can say. Why rule out a whole class of people based on age if the decision commits you to mediocrity?

Blinders have perhaps been placed on Yankees management because of bitter experience with second-guessing. Those whose jobs are dependent on the outcome of the season know that they’re safer if they fail with a veteran than with a rookie. That’s why the Yankees would rather try a Tanyon Sturtze than the Colter Beans of the world. When the Yankees acquired Sturtze, prior to his learning a cut fastball from Mariano Rivera, there was nothing to recommend him. He was a 32-year-old veteran with a career ERA of approximately 6.00. That the failed pupil of five other organizations would get a chance with New York before one of their own prodigies was a sick joke, and remains so despite Sturtze’s conversion into a serviceable reliever.

You’re Colter Bean. You wait for a call that will never come. The Prophecies of Groom laid out the truth for all to see. Still, no one will come to your rescue.

***

Yesterday’s downing of Bernie Williams’s contract extension was simply a bit of mandated housecleaning on the part of the Yankees; they had to let him know by yesterday whether or not they would be picking up the option. That they turned it down was a no-brainer.

The move wasn’t even a comment on his current reduced state, because whether he’s hitting .350 or .250, his $15 million extension was a bit of pre-market correction generosity that is almost completely out of line with today’s salary scale.

The contractual action doesn’t necessarily mean that Williams is leaving the Yankees, only that if he does return it will be for a vastly reduced amount of money. It also means that Williams will become a free agent at the end of the year. If anyone offers him more dough and/or more playing time, he’s free to go.

It’s hard to imagine that that would happen, as Williams’s skills are in serious decline. He doesn’t hit enough to play everyday and he doesn’t field well enough to be a versatile fourth outfielder.

At best, Williams might be useful to a team that is interested in having him come off the bench a couple of times a week and perhaps take a walk or two. That’s about what’s left. The Yankees can probably do better for next year’s bench.

When it’s time for a player to go, no matter how beloved he is, it’s time.

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