Mike Celizic

It’s been a cruel spring in New York, short on sunshine and long on raw days and bone-chilling nights. It is perfect weather for lousy baseball.

The Mets and the Yankees are hardly out of it. The Mets are just 1 game out in the NL East and the Yankees, although in last place in the AL East, are just 6 games behind Boston. Neither deficit is anything that can’t be overcome with more than four months yet to go.

It’s no time to panic, and New York fans know that. Just the same, there’s an unfamiliar feeling of doom in the air, a sense that the teams aren’t just going through a couple of rough patches but are fatally flawed. The fear is that neither team will make the playoffs.

Neither team is particularly fun to be around. The Mets were once the whackiest — and in 1986, the best — team in baseball. Now, they’re a fractious, dysfunctional mess; a house divided against itself.

They often don’t seem to care. Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran, who are supposed to bring big bats to the mix, are both limping along. Jose Reyes, New York's most talented shortstop, still plays as if it’s his rookie year. He has no discipline at the plate and doesn’t seem interested in acquiring any; he’s a leadoff hitter with a .330 on-base percentage. That’s not bad. It’s atrocious.

The manager, Willie Randolph, is one of the most popular players New York's ever had, and was a member of the championship Yankee teams of the 1970s. But his popularity hasn’t saved him from a growing chorus of criticism. Despite general manager Omar Minaya’s assurance that Randolph’s job isn’t in danger, even he recognizes that the axe is poised above his head.

And well it should be. As manager, he’s got to pound some plate discipline into Reyes’ head. He’s got to make Delgado and Beltran understand that there’s some urgency to the situation. He’s not going to ever get his players to join hands before the game and sing “Kumbaya,” but he can’t have them taking shots at one another in the newspapers.

Last year, the Mets pulled off history's greatest choke jobs, and this year they swore it was going to be different. This year, they were going to come hard out of the gate and play like they’re capable of playing.

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And if this is what they’re capable of, it’s going to be a long and frustrating summer.

Over in the Bronx, the Yankees, at least, have an excuse for staggering through the season’s opening months — injuries. Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and catcher Jorge Posada all have missed games.

But the team’s fans know the team’s problems have deeper roots than a couple of injured stars. Only Detroit, Texas, Los Angeles and Seattle have worse team ERAs than N.Y.'s 4.32. Add to that an offense that is scoring just 4.12 runs a game, and you have a recipe for disaster. Sure, the Yankees will score more runs when A-Rod and Posada return, but without decent pitching, they’re still in trouble.

And there are no easy solutions for their pitching problems. Chien-Ming Wang is their only reliable starter. Andy Pettitte has sputtered for several weeks, Mike Mussina is a good No. 3 starter, but second-year men Philip Hughes and Ian Kennedy have been major disappointments.

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The new manager, Joe Girardi, hasn’t seemed to have helped matters. A lot of Yankee fans were glad to see the phlegmatic Joe Torre leave and welcomed the fire-and-brimstone Girardi as his replacement.

It’s a case of being careful what you wish for. Girardi trots out a new line-up almost every day, constantly searching for one that works. In one way it’s understandable — if it’s broke, fix it. But it’s also hard for a baseball team to find its groove when there’s no consistency. Torre’s strength was never overreacting; if anything, he under-reacted. Girardi’s weakness is his impatience.

How you finish a season is more important than how you start it. That was true last year, when the Yankees started worse than they’ve been so far this year but clawed their way to a wild card, and the Mets started great and finished horribly.

And, as this is baseball, anything can still happen. Just the same, the signs aren’t hopeful, and neither are the fans. It’s not that the teams stink, but that they lack verve. They leave you feeling like the weather most days — cold and uncomfortable.

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