Moments after Chien-Ming Wang limped off the field in Houston, a Yankees employee of my acquaintance who was not in the ballpark said, “I just hope it’s not a Lisfranc sprain.” He turned out to be amazingly prescient, but not in the way he had hoped: It was indeed a Lisfranc sprain of the right foot, with a bonus partial tear of the “peroneal longus tendon” in the same extremity. Wang will be in a boot for at least six weeks. Assume extended rehabilitation time after that, and it becomes a realistic possibility that the pitcher’s next major league start will be in April 2009.

There is no good time to lose a pitcher of Wang’s ability, but the timing of this injury is especially disheartening. After going 19-21 during the first quarter of the season, the team had seemingly turned a corner, going 18-12 in the 30 games since then. The pitching staff was the smaller part of the improvement, which was really powered by the offense, which plumped up from .260 AVG/.328 OBA/.414 SLG and 4.2 runs a game through May 13 (the 40-game mark) to .287/.359/.443 and 5.3 runs a game since. The batters have been carrying the pitchers; though the team’s ERA has dropped from 4.31 in the first 40 games to 4.21 in the last 30, this accounting disguises a flood tide of unearned runs in recent days that has actually seen the staff’s runs allowed per game decline to 4.7 from 4.3.

The declining performance of the pitching staff provides a big clue as to how the Yankees will survive Wang’s injury and how they should react to it. While it is difficult to tell how much of the current offensive boost is real given that much of it is powered by players who are atypically hot, such as Johnny Damon (.427/ .471/.555 in the last 30 days) and Jason Giambi (.366/.480/.720), it does stand to reason that with the lineup healthy for the first time all year, a good portion of the uptick will be lasting, even as the hot hitters cool. Simply replacing the awesomely miserable bat of Jose Molina with that of Jorge Posada is an upgrade tantamount to taking an engine powered by an ordinary hamster on a wheel and replacing it with a nuclear-powered hamster on a wheel. In addition, the Yankees have been dragged down by the under-performing bats of Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano, and Melky Cabrera. While it seems an act of faith at this point to believe that Cano will ever stop compulsively hitting pop-ups to shallow left field, all three have performed in the past and should do so again at some point this season.

If the Yankees accept that the improvement in offense is real, then they know they don’t have to try to replace Wang on a one-to-one basis for now. That would be difficult as is, given that he exists in the sub-ace realm of the very, very good. It is more realistic to try for a pitcher, or combination of pitchers, who is very, very average, and bet that the offense can support that pitcher adequately to win the majority of the time.

This is easier said than done, of course, but the Yankees do have plenty of alternatives and all the time in the world to try them. The journeyman Dan Giese may fit the bill. Ian Kennedy, soon to begin his rehab work, was a very promising prospect before his struggles earlier this season and deserves another chance. They can try to get spot starts from scary fly-ball guy Jeff Karstens or perennial disappointment Kei Igawa and try to batter their way to victory. They could even pull up the veteran Mexican League starter Alfredo Aceves from Double-A Trenton. One of these five, mostly likely Kennedy, may surprise. At worst, they would serve to buy time for an Alan Horne or Dan McCutchen to be ready to come off the farm, or even for the eventual recovery of Phil Hughes.

The point here is that the Yankees can and should patch as best they can rather than make a trade that spends all the team’s hopes for the future on a season that may well already be lost. Even with the team temporarily healthy and hot, the Yankees are not likely to overtake the Red Sox for the division title or the Rays for the wild card without dominating their remaining head-to-head meetings and/or an unlikely collapse on the part of either club. The Yankees still need to find another gear to salvage their season.

They may yet find that gear, even with Wang gone; twice in the last three years, the Yankees have done the unlikely, if not the impossible, and come back to make the playoffs after a devastating start. The Yankees should hope that magic reasserts itself rather than try to force its appearance by overpaying for, say, a C.C. Sabathia.

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