You know what baseball is lacking this season? A bad guy. Who are we supposed to root against? The Red Sox are dead, the Cardinals are scuffling along and while the Dodgers have a huge payroll that fans love to despite, I find it hard to root against seeing Clayton Kershaw and Yasiel Puig in the postseason.

Of course, lurking there, as always, are the New York Yankees. Back in January, after the Yankees had spent nearly $500 million in the offseason to lure in Masahiro Tanaka, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran, plus a fewer other lesser parts, I wrote that they're still baseball's evil empire. In sports, we need a bad guy, and the Yankees' free agent orgy created another reason to root against them, even after they missed the playoffs last season.

The Yankees are 68-62, 3.5 games behind the Mariners for the second wild card. They've hung in there despite the injuries to the starting rotation, despite being outscored by 30 runs so far. Still, they're a pretty mediocre team, even with some of the deadline acquisitions. Tanaka was fun, the way he burst on to the scene. The Michael Pineda pine tar incident in April was amusing. But the thing with the 2014 Yankees? They're not in the least bit compelling. Even last year's patchwork squad of Triple-A retreads was sort of intriguing in a train wreck sort of way, amazing that such a depleted roster remained in the wild-card race most of the season.

This year's team is simply boring. Tanaka was great until he got injured, Ellsbury has been OK, but nobody is having a memorable, MVP-caliber season. It's mostly a roster of past-their-prime vets on the downward slope of their careers. Even the whole Derek Jeter retirement saga has grown tedious. Watching him play certainly isn't that interesting: He's an old, singles-hitting shortstop without any range. Yes, respect the amazing career he's had, but this isn't 1996 or 2004; it's 2014, and he's no longer a captivating player to watch except as a memory.

So I ask: Do you want the Yankees to make the postseason? Is October better with them in it, giving us that necessary foil? Plus one last swan song for Jeter? Maybe the return of Tanaka? Maybe Pineda pitching a playoff game in the cold autumn air with a big blob of pine tar on his neck?

My answer is no. And not because I'm a Yankees hater. There are simply teams with better October stories to tell. Jeter's has already been told, legend intact. I'd like to see Felix Hernandez or Mike Trout or Alex Gordon tell theirs.