Twenty years ago, the Yankees went into the 2003 season with eight starters when they signed Jose Conteras and re-signed Roger Clemens to a lower contract.

These days the Yankees would love to possess eight starters anchored by David Wells, Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Mike Mussina like they did in the season when Aaron Boone’s homer off Tim Wakefield propelled them into the World Series for fifth time in seven seasons during a year with a roughly $153 million payroll.

The reality for the 2023 Yankees — a team that is more tedious than the 2021 group who two years ago were on the verge of starting a 13-game winning streak to gain separation from .500 – has two, maybe three starters on a team with a payroll well north of $250 million.

It is a tough way to operate even in an expanded playoffs and perhaps the toughest thing to watch is what happening to Luis Severino, someone who was a top prospect in 2015 and won 33 games in the 2017 and 2018 seasons when the Yankees won a combined 191 games.

Since 2018, Severino is 11-11 with a 4.66 ERA in 35 appearances. Over a full season those are numbers teams can live from a back end rotation player but the sinking of Severino’s performance is being exposed in the last month.

Even Wednesday they could not wait to expose Severino by using an opener for the first 10 pitches before using him for the next two innings and 48 pitches, a stretch where he allowed four runs and five hits. It might have been worse if the Yankees had let Severino continue to pitch.

Severino has thrown 1,183 pitches so far and the various advanced numbers are troubling to supplement to actual numbers. For example, hitters own an 11.2 barrel percentage and expected batting average of .300 and perhaps the most telling is the 46.2 hard hit percentage. By contrast in 2018, those numbers were7.7 percent, .240 and 34.7 percentage.

Another noticeable drop is the strikeout percentage, which is 18 percent this season as opposed to 28.2 percent in 2018.

Basic and advanced numbers tell the same thing in a troubling trend for Severino, whose splits in the following are highly disturbing for a team trying to get back in a crowded playoff race. Among them 0-5 with a 9.89 ERA in road games, 0-6 with an 11.05 ERA in night games and perhaps the most telling is the 11.71 mark over his last seven appearances, a stretch where Severino has allowed 36 runs and 53 hits (including 10 homers) in 27 2/3 innings.

Pulling Severino from the rotation is the obvious way to go and in theory Randy Vasquez and Jhonny Brito is a partial answer based on glimpses they have provided thus far but both may be needed to fill the spots left vacant by Carlos Rodon’s hamstring injury and Domingo German being out for the season to recover from an alcohol problem.

It’s a tough way to operate and the streak of winning seasons is suddenly in danger. The Yankees have a streak of winning seasons since 1992 when Buck Showalter’s first team had a 4.30 ERA. This team now holds a 4.56 ERA from its starters, a mark that ties with them the Dodgers, whose offense is way better than what the Yankees are demonstrating through their 115 games.

“We’re also having a little problem with enough bodies right now,” manager Aaron Boone told reporters about how much longer Severino can keep pitching. “We got to find a way and that means unlocking people who are going through scuffles. If that doesn’t happen, on some level, it ain’t happening. We need to get some guys turned around and (become) contributors. Sevy is part of that.”

Putting numbers aside and the reality of the lack of viable options, if you’ve seen Severino pitch over the years, there’s some empathy you can feel, especially from his last three sets of postgame comments.

After the July 30 start in Baltimore, Severino said he felt like the worst pitcher in baseball. On Friday after allowing five runs in four-plus innings to Houston, Severino said in a hushed tone of someone searching for answers: I’m not going to lie; every time I give up a homer or a run in the first inning, [I think] what am I doing? “I start looking at different stuff. Is this mechanical? Is this tipping?”

On Wednesday after showing a willingness to enter the game in the second inning, Severino said “it was his worst year of my life in baseball.”

Afterwards, Kyle Higashioka revealed the sad truth about the situation when he told reporters: “it seems like hitters aren’t really fooled by anything.”

And it seems like the Yankees aren’t fooling anybody flailing in the wild card race because of various ineptitudes that tend to occur when their pitchers are watching from the dugout.