When I was small, one of my favorite stories was about a farmer who had a favorite shirt he wore every day while he did his chores in the barnyard. One day, the sleeve caught on the sharp edge of a bit of fencing and tore; he patched it right up with a bit of shirttail, did so again when he tore it in another spot, and continued to do so as the shirt met all the hazards one worn by an active farmer might. Eventually, of course, he had no shirt left at all. The moral? Don’t get so attached to your shirt that you lose it.

For what should be obvious reasons, this tale comes to mind when thinking about the Yankees’ silly roster shake-up in response to their 11-16 start to the season.

There’s no mysterious reason why the Yankees have stunk so far this year. The offense has been very good, perhaps even a bit better than expected. The starting pitching has been mediocre and the bullpen somewhat worse than that, but the real culprit is the team’s overall defense, which has been magnificently awful. The Yankees never do anything on a small scale, and their atrocious fielding has truly been larger than life.

The problem isn’t really individual fielders – other than Bernie Williams, no one on the team stands out as a genuinely terrible gloveman. But somehow, relatively minor deficits like Derek Jeter’s poor range to his right, Gary Sheffield’s circuitous routes to fly balls, and Jorge Posada’s tendency to throw high and wide to second have reinforced one another, so that the team defense is, to an even greater degree than it has been for the last few years, much less than the sum of its parts.

In a league where 70% of balls in play are converted into outs, the Yankees have been turning just 66% into outs. That means more pitches with men on base for old starters like yesterday’s loser, Kevin Brown, who gave up 13 hits in five innings against the Devil Rays. It also means more pitches for an inferior and overworked bullpen, which in turn means more balls in play for the fielders to botch.

Calling up second baseman Robinson Cano, moving Hideki Matsui to center and Tony Womack to left, and making the long-overdue move of shifting Williams to a DH/reserve role are attempts to fix this problem. But in the larger picture of helping the team win, they make about as much sense as cutting the fabric from one sleeve of your favorite shirt to patch a hole on the other.

Matsui is a good left fielder; in 2003, when he spent a third of a season in center, he looked better than Williams. Womack, being animate, is also likely better than Williams. An outfield duo of Matsui and Womack is preferable to Matsui and Williams, but that doesn’t make it a good situation. Yankee Stadium has a spacious outfield, and the team needs a real centerfielder, not a slow left fielder with a weak arm who has solid enough fundamentals to cover the position in a pinch.

Moving Womack to the outfield creates room for Cano, a 22-year-old who has ranked as one of the team’s few prospects for a couple of years now. In one sense, that’s a fine thing – Cano is probably a better player than Womack right now. In another, it’s not – Cano being better than Womack has more to do with Womack not being very good than anything else.

In fact, Cano is a dubious bet to post an on-base average much above .310, though his .333 average in limited Triple-A action this year is encouraging. Baseball America, the most reputable independent evaluator of minor-league talent, wrote in its scouting report on Cano that “he doesn’t get down the line well and on defense, his range is lacking at second base, which could prompt a move to third.”

So, in sum, a team whose main problem was crummy defenders up the middle now still has crummy but less experienced defenders up the middle. These are not the kinds of moves upon which the recent Yankees dynasty was built, but they resemble the moves upon which the recent Mets anti-dynasty was built.

What to do, then? The team can’t be blown up – there isn’t a tradable player on the major league roster. And it is looking less and less likely to contend – with Randy Johnson now due to (stunningly) miss today’s start for a brief trip to the DL, Brown, owner of a 8.25 ERA, is the team’s third-best starter.

There’s really nothing to do with these Yankees. Major league rosters aren’t as easily thrown away, or as easily replaced, as farmers’ work shirts.