The Yankees don't quit. They just added Andrew McCutchen from the Giants. In the past month, the Yanks have now acquired a former National League MVP Award winner in McCutchen, two of the top six vote-getters for the American League Cy Young Award just two years ago -- Zach Britton, J.A. Happ -- and Lance Lynn, once a front-of-the-rotation guy for the Cardinals. The Yankees don't quit because they can't. They didn't change managers last season after coming within a victory of the World Series so they could watch this season end the first week of October. They didn't add Giancarlo Stanton thinking the best they could do this time was make it back to the AL Wild Card Game.

• Yankees add another MVP, trade for Cutch 

Brian Cashman, the Yankees' general manager, thought he could do better with Aaron Boone than he did with Joe Girardi, even though nobody said it that way when Cashman and owner Hal Steinbrenner made the change. Not only did Cashman make a big bet on Boone, who had never managed anywhere except in a TV booth, Cashman made a big bet on himself.

The Red Sox also removed a manager, John Farrell, who had won a World Series for them, and who had just taken them back to the postseason. But Farrell's team, even if it did win the AL East, lost to the Astros in the AL Division Series. The Yankees were ahead of the Astros, 3-2, in the AL Championship Series, one game away from the team's first World Series appearance in eight years.

They didn't make it. Neither did Girardi.

Again: Cashman doesn't make that move if he thinks the Yankees are going to get worse under Boone. And the thing is, they have a better record this season than last, still have a good chance to win 100 games, even with the injuries they've had to Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez and Didi Gregorius. But barring a rather epic collapse from the Red Sox -- not unlike the one in 2011, when they blew a nine-game lead after Sept. 1 -- the Yanks aren't going to win the AL East for the first time since '12.

So a team Cashman built to win now, no matter how much money he spends on free agents after this season, is being designed to at least win a Wild Card Game against the A's and then a Division Series against the Red Sox. The Yankees aren't going to win the six-month season in the East from the Sox. But they will take their chances across what could be as many as six games the first and second weeks of October.

The Yankees don't quit. Can't quit.

Are you kidding? If there were another Trade Deadline before they played their last series of the regular season -- three against the Red Sox at Fenway -- they would be looking to bring in another hitter and starting pitcher. They are all in, as usual, because they simply can't afford to get knocked out in a Wild Card Game, or a round earlier in the postseason than they were in 2017.

It wasn't so long ago that Brian Cashman referred to his two kid infielders, Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar, as the "booster rockets on the space shuttle we've built." Now because of injuries, and because the Red Sox have been 8 1/2 games better so far, Cashman has had to rebuild the space shuttle on the fly: Happ, Britton, Lynn, now McCutchen. Judge got hit on the wrist over a month ago, fracturing a bone. New York originally thought he'd be back in three weeks. It might end up being six or more. McCutchen is insurance against all that. All Rise insurance, if not Allstate.

It is at least somewhat ironic to note that the Yankees announced they were getting another bat after their bullpen couldn't make seven runs stand up against the Tigers on Thursday night, amid a stretch in which they have lost three of four games to the White Sox and Tigers. This on a night when the Red Sox survived another sketchy, shaky start from Rick Porcello and came back from 4-0 down to beat the White Sox, 9-4.

The Red Sox are going to win the six-month season in the AL East. But the Yanks think they can play with anybody when they have Stanton, Judge, Gregorius, Sanchez, Torres, Andujar and McCutchen in the same batting order. They think -- believe? -- that if they can get past the A's -- or the Astros, if the A's can still find a way to catch the Astros in the AL West -- they can do to the Red Sox in the ALDS this year what they did to the Indians last year.

"We handled Judge in that series," Mets manager Mickey Callaway, then the Indians' pitching coach, said. "But they still had enough in that batting order to beat us."

When whole, the Yankees obviously have a lot more in that batting order now. They also know that the career October pitching resume of Chris Sale, David Price, Porcello is a sparkling 2-13. They know how ordinary Craig Kimbrel, the Sox's closer, has appeared lately. The Yanks will absolutely take their chances in a five-game series, if they can make it to one.

They add a former MVP to the mix now in McCutchen. More repairs to the space shuttle. It's not nearly as easy as it once was at Yankee Stadium building rockets to the moon.