Davidoff: Yankees' depth being tested, again and again

BOSTON

With two of his position players already out of the game, and with the one remaining guy, Jorge Posada, far from 100 percent, Joe Girardi steered his gaze toward struggling pitcher Javier Vazquez Friday night.

"I looked at Vazquie and said, 'You played infield, right?' " the Yankees' manager said, laughing before adding this note of gravity:

"Yeah, I'm a little bit concerned."

The Yankees pounded the rival Red Sox Friday at Fenway Park, 10-3, and improved their record to 20-8. Phil Hughes pitched a fabulous game, and Nick Swisher crushed a three-run homer to continue his outstanding season.

Amid all this reason for good cheer, however, is the reality that the Yankees are losing players to injury at an alarming rate. Hence Girardi's concern.

This game featured two casualties. Nick Johnson injured his right wrist on a first-inning swing and is headed for the disabled list. Robinson Cano took a Josh Beckett fastball to the inner part of his left knee in the sixth, and at the very least, he probably won't play Saturday. The Yankees will call up an infielder - Kevin Russo is the leading candidate - to take Johnson's roster spot and Cano's playing time.

With Posada (right calf) not quite ready to start Friday, Andy Pettitte (left elbow) set to miss his next turn in the starting rotation, Mariano Rivera (left flank) working his way back into game action and Curtis Granderson (left groin) already on the disabled list, the Yankees have become a traveling clinic.

So now their depth will be tested. The Yankees have seen one group of their players (think Cano, Swisher, Derek Jeter and Brett Gardner on offense, and CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Pettitte and Hughes on the pitching side) perform so well that another group - Johnson, Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira as well as Vazquez and David Robertson - has largely skated. Well, maybe not Vazquez.

The Johnson injury sets off the loudest alarms because he couldn't even remember that he missed the entire 2000 season with a right hand ailment. He'll get an MRI at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, meeting with team physician Christopher Ahmad and hand specialist Melvin Rosenwasser.

"We'll just see what the doctors say," said Johnson, who explained that he lost strength in the wrist after his first at-bat Friday. His replacement, Marcus Thames, has been one of Brian Cashman's better offseason acquisitions.

Whereas Johnson has underperformed, Cano has been the Yankees' best offensive player. So when he got hit by Beckett and then had to leave the game because it hurt too much to stand on first base, he created a void in the Yankees' lineup.

As of late Friday night, however, the Yankees didn't plan to have any tests conducted on Cano, who had the area iced. Said Cano: "I can't tell right now. It hurts a little bit. I want to wait until the morning."

When Beckett hit Derek Jeter later in the sixth, players screamed at the Red Sox starter. After the game, some cooled-off Yankees acknowledged that Beckett couldn't possibly have been throwing at them.

"When the game is still tight, you're not going to hit a person with the bases loaded on purpose," Girardi said.

Calm prevailed in the Yankees' clubhouse, and why shouldn't it? They need not rush back any of their wounded players, not at 20-8.

At some point, however, logic dictates that they're really going to start missing some of these guys.

If they don't have answers, and if Johnson doesn't heal quickly, then Yankees fans will start missing the departed Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui.