NEW YORK -- It is the biggest game of the season for the New York Yankees, their hopes for a 14th straight postseason appearance slipping from distant to desperate.

And on the mound for the Yankees, starting against the archrival Red Sox, is somebody with a career 6.92 ERA against Boston. If you're the New York Yankees, this is the kind of thing that cannot happen. But on Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium, it did.

The results were predictable. Sidney Ponson gave up four earned runs in 4 2/3 innings against the Red Sox. His ERA for the evening was 7.71, which was in the expected neighborhood. The net effect may have been worse, since these Red Sox were without the services of Mike Lowell and J.D. Drew, mainstays of the Boston lineup.

The Yankees went on to lose to the Red Sox, 11-3, with relievers Jose Veras and Dave Robertson getting torched in their eighth-inning turns. In the process, the Yankees fell seven games behind the Red Sox in the American League Wild Card race, not to mention 10 1/2 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the AL East.

This is not an attempt to single out Ponson, who, overall, has probably pitched as well as the Yankees had any reasonable right to expect, producing five quality starts in 11 attempts. But simply by saying that, the core issue is revealed.

There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth about the Yankees' offensive shortcomings. On Tuesday night, Alex Rodriguez's inability to come through in the clutch made him the target of some of the loudest booing an athlete playing at home could possibly receive.

It would be fair to say that the Yankees' offense has been less than expected, but since it was anticipated to be best in the game, there has been plenty of room for disappointment. That still isn't this club's central problem.

After 132 games, the Yankees have a team ERA of 4.35. Going into Wednesday night, the collective AL ERA was 4.28. What this means is that the Yankees are trying to be a postseason team with pitching that is a little worse than average.

There are no other teams currently in postseason contention whose pitching staffs have ERAs above the league average, or even close to the league average. None. In fact, in the National League, the seven leading contenders for postseason play rank first through seventh in team ERA.

There are excuses for the state of the Yankees' pitching. Some of the excuses are not particularly flimsy. The mid-June injury to Chien-Ming Wang, winner of 19 games in each of the past two seasons, was a critical blow to this team. More recently, the rotator cuff tendinitis suffered by Joba Chamberlain, just as he was coming into form in his transition to a starting role, was a major setback for the club. At the moment, the Yankees are attempting to reach the postseason without their most consistent winning pitcher of the past two seasons and a young pitcher who could develop into a dominant starter.

The Yankees put their faith in two other young homegrown pitchers this season, but Ian Kennedy was ineffective and Phil Hughes was hurt. The organizational direction was sound; the development of pitching talent within the organization being the time-tested route to success, a much surer bet than buying pitching on the open market's current, wildly inflated prices. It just didn't work this season in these two cases.

Elsewhere on the staff, closer Mariano Rivera is still incomparable, tested by time and circumstance, still the best in the business. Starter Mike Mussina (16-7) is having a superb season.

"You wonder where we'd be without Moose," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said on Wednesday. Fourth place appears to be the correct answer.

But Andy Pettitte does not seem to be producing one of his typically terrific second halves. The bullpen bridge from the starters to Rivera is not exactly a lock-down proposition. The renewed presence of Carl Pavano in the rotation is another sign that desperate times require desperate measures.

All of this doesn't seem to add up to a particularly plausible pitching "Plan B" for the Bronx Bombers. At the end of Wednesday night, Ponson was 3-13 lifetime against the Boston Red Sox. If the Yankees miss the playoffs, this will be, of course, a surprise to the baseball world. But their loss on Wednesday night was not surprising. And by now, the Yankees' pitching inadequacies are no longer shocking, either.

The Yankees' current situation is not yet officially hopeless, but it is also nothing like a contending team would want as August nears its end.

"It's not where you want to be, but no hole is too deep to climb out of, that's the bottom line," Girardi said, with the optimism that he must have in this situation.

It would not be impossible for the Yankees to reach the postseason for a 14th straight time. But based on the pitching numbers, the Yankees' postseason chances are residing in a suburb of impossible.