Yanks’ Escarra is a great story, but highlights a problem

J.C. Escarra, the Yankees’ Uber driver turned backup catcher, made his first big-league start on Thursday night against Arizona at Yankee Stadium.

In terms of human-interest stories, you can’t find one better than the 29-year-old, whose journey from doing odd jobs to independent ball to the Yankees’ Opening Day roster is the stuff baseball movies are made of.

But the Yankees are about winning. That’s the story their fans signed up to watch. Leave the movies to Lifetime.

There’s another side to Escarra’s story: One that has to do with why the Yankees, with a recent estimate by Forbes of an MLB-record $8 billion franchise value, have a 29-year-old former Uber driver as their backup catcher.

And it’s not just that bench position.

The Yankees turned off the payroll spigot at some point in this offseason – about the time they realized they couldn’t unload Marcus Stroman and his $18-million salary in a trade – and have gone into the season with a bench that is unbecoming for team with a $305-million payroll and World Series aspirations.

The Yankees’ bench, to be kind, is inexperienced, mismatched and not at all imposing. The dollars saved and the talent not acquired to support Messrs. Judge and Volpe and Bellinger et al could come back to bite the Yankees over the long season.

The shaky bench doesn’t include Oswaldo Cabrera, a popular reserve who is being pressed into nearly everyday duty at third base because the Yankees passed on more experienced and expensive options such as signing Alex Bregman or trading for Nolan Arenado.

Cabrera is a switch-hitter, but he is so weak from the right side that he sometimes bats lefthanded against lefties. The Yankees have twice pinch hit for him in five games this season against lefties, using Pablo Reyes.

Reyes is a 31-year-old infielder/outfielder who made the team mostly because the Yankees couldn’t locate and acquire a better righthanded hitter. Reyes went into Thursday hitless in six at-bats and in his only start made two errors at third.

Oswaldo Peraza made the team mainly because he is out of options. Once a bright enough prospect to start a postseason game, Peraza is hanging on to his big-league life by a thread.

And main backup outfielder Trent Grisham – a lefthanded hitter on a roster that already tilts leftward — went into Thursday with a career .214 batting average in nearly 2,000 at-bats.

It’s unclear why the Yankees decided Grisham was worth a one-year, $5-million contract in the offseason when they could have non-tendered him and used the cash for a more useful, righthanded bench piece.

You’d have to assume the Yankees will fortify as the season goes along. General manager Brian Cashman admitted in the waning days of spring training that he was trying to acquire at least one upgrade from the right side.

“I feel like I’d be happier if I can line up some choices for our manager,” Cashman said. But he didn’t, and the Yankees’ only position-player transaction since then has been to re-sign former Mets first baseman Dom Smith – a lefthanded hitter – to a minor-league deal.

Catching up again with Escarra: He went into Thursday with a total of one big-league game and two hitless at-bats. Those ABs came on Saturday, when he entered as a pinch hitter and caught the final two innings of the Yankees’ 20-9 victory over Milwaukee.

“It worked out perfect,” Escarra said before Thursday’s game. “Just getting the jitters out of the way.”

Escarra might work out to become the best backup catcher in baseball. What a happy ending that would be. But what would happen if Wells became injured and Escarra became the No. 1? Remember, it was the Yankees’ choice to go into the season with an inexperienced No. 2 after they traded Jose Trevino and his $3.4 million salary to Cincinnati.

Does having a good backup catcher matter? Well, ask Mets fans how they felt during spring training when they learned Francisco Alvarez would miss at least the first month of the season with a broken bone in his hand.

Then ask them how much they have enjoyed the early-season work of Luis Torrens, who as fortune would have it was traded to the Mets by the Yankees for cash considerations last May.

In the Mets’ 6-5, 11-inning victory over Miami on Wednesday, Torrens – who is batting .313 — started a three-run eighth-inning rally with a pinch hit single. In the bottom of the inning, he made a sweeping tag of an off-line throw to record a (replay assisted) out to keep the game tied.

Pete Alonso’s three-run, game-tying home run in the eighth was the big blow. But without Torrens’ contributions, the Mets might have been coming back home for Friday’s Citi Field opener with a 2-4 record instead of 3-3.

The Yankees need more than great stories on their bench. They need production. For Escarra, that part of the story began for real on Thursday night.