Welcome to Kansas City East. Surely a more terrifying phrase has not been applied to a Yankees team that hopes to contend for a championship. Yet after Tuesday’s 19-1 shellacking at the hands of the Cleveland Indians, changes had to be made,if only to provide some fresh meat for a weary bullpen and to provide some depth for an offense that, with the exception of a 16-run explosion against the Mets on Sunday, has had trouble putting up crooked numbers.

The first volley in what should be a small flurry of moves dresses the Yankees in Royal blue. Kris Wilson,a righty who compiled a 14-9 record with a 5.32 ERA in 90 games with the Royals between 2000 and 2003 was added to the roster yesterday, replacing the seldomused Kevin Reese. Wilson has been in the minors since the Royals tired of him, and with Columbus since last season. With a 2.84 ERA in 92 innings and a fine 73/15 strikeout-walk ratio, the 29-year-old has pitched well for the first time in years.

Wilson’s renaissance is undoubtedly going to be brief.The Yankees have Octavio Dotel coming soon (at least in theory), Jesus Colome may prove to be salvageable, and Jose Veras, signed away from the Texas Rangers last winter, has done a fine job closing for Columbus. For now, though, Wilson is a veteran who can provide the depleted staff with innings in a pinch. His job is quite literally to take up space. If there is any significance at all to the move, it is that the Yankees showed that they aren’t anxious to revisit old favorites like Ramiro Mendoza and Jorge De Paula, both of whom have pitched superficially well for the Triple-A Clippers.

Simultaneously, the Yankees took another draught from the City of Fountains by putting in a waiver claim on five-year Royals fallback outfielder Aaron Guiel. Guiel, 33, is one of those heartwarming baseball stories, the one about the veteran minor leaguer who has to believe in himself because no one else does until finally, through sheer perseverance (or the desperation of the pseudo-expansion team they’re running in Missouri), he makes it to the top, or at least the top of Kansas City (elevation: 750 feet). Guiel had passed through three organizations and was hanging on with Oaxaca of the Mexican League when the Royals picked him up in 2000. Two years later he was a 29-year-old rookie.

The road since then has been up and down, both in terms of productivity and majors-minors service time.After a very useful 2003 (.277 AVG/.346 OBA/.489 SLG with 30 doubles and 15 home runs in 99 games), Guiel’s 2004 season – and to a large extent his nascent career – was destroyed by vision problems. Guiel was on the disabled list for three months and batted .156, proving the old baseball adage that you can’t hit what you can’t see. Since then he hasn’t factored into the Royals’ plans, if the Royals could be said to plan.

This season, Guiel batted .220/.339/.460 for the Royals (three home runs in 50 at bats), which, despite the low batting average, is a good deal more punch than the Yankees have gotten from their bench or either of their corner outfielders. Setting aside his year playing the Who’s Tommy, Guiel has hit roughly .261/.320/.441.That’s not starting outfielder material on most clubs, but given that Bernie Williams and Melky Cabrera have demonstrated a consistent inability to hit for power, it might be sufficient for the Yankees until something better comes along.

In the event that Babe Trading Deadline is acquired, Guiel will be an asset on the bench.The Yankees haven’t had a left-handed hitter with even a modicum of power on the bench since Darryl Strawberry burned out back in the last century.

With Babe Ruth’s short porch in Yankee Stadium’s right field and the way Strawberry was able to alter the strategy of opposing managers just by being a presence on the bench, it’s shocking that the Yankees haven’t made a priority of putting another slugging southpaw reserve on the pine.

Not every team can have a Strawberry waiting in reserve – even the Yankees wouldn’t have been so fortunate had Strawberry not put himself in the position of being a reserve through various foibles – but there had to have been a compromise candidate out there somewhere. Since 2000, the Yankees largely haven’t had a lefty reserve; there’s no successor to compare to Strawberry, and memories of Luis Sojo as the first man off the bench in the 2001 World Series still loom large in the annals of recent pinstriped frustration.

This isn’t the first time the Yankees have looked to Kansas City for salvation. In the 1950s, the Kansas City A’s, whose owner, Arnold Johnson, had business connections with Yankees ownership, acted as an unofficial farm club for the Yankees, indulging the Bombers with a series of one-sided trades in which the Yankees dumped off tired veterans or not-ready-for-prime-time rookies (later reacquired) in return for whatever good stuff the A’s had on hand. In this way, the Yankees acquired Clete Boyer, Ryne Duren, Hector Lopez, Ralph Terry, Roger Maris, and others.

What the Yankees got then was the choice fruits of the Kansas City operation. Now, baseball’s richest club must content themselves with castoffs from one of baseball’s worst franchises. Needless to say there is no Roger Maris here, that Wilson and Guiel are mere stopgaps. As this column was going to press, Johnny Damon was forced out of last night’s game with a sore oblique muscle, giving way to Bubba Crosby. Damon is a determinedly durable player, and perhaps this latest setback will be brief. If not, the Yankees just lost their last impact outfielder.

Sunday’s game aside, the Yankees have averaged four runs a game over the last 30 days, and that number could be going down. If there’s a Roger Maris being given away somewhere, they’d better find him soon.

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