Kevin Youkilis, one of the Red Sox’ many young, talented players, is quietly having a great season.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

Five end-of- summer observations:

•RED SOX

They have become baseball’s model franchise, and it’s more than just the two World Series titles in the last four years, more than the face that here it is another September and if the season ended today they would be in another postseason.

It’s because they keep bringing a succession of young guys into the major leagues who can flat-out play, guys they signed and developed in their system. Jonathan Papelbon and Jon Lester, Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury and Justin Masterson, Jed Lowrie and Manny Delcarmen.

Those players have become what has kept the Red Sox in this playoff chase in this season when David Ortiz and Mike Lowell both missed time and Manny was sent packing and it all could have unraveled if not for this infusion of youth.

More important, the Red Sox have managed to do two things at the same time, things in baseball that usually exist in parallel universes: win, and keep replenishing the team with young talent. It is how dynasties are made.

It is also the mark of a great franchise, one that is using its vast resources extremely well, one that’s positioning itself to be good for a long time, something to remember, regardless of how the rest of this season plays out.

•A-ROD

He is the worst great player I’ve ever seen.

He is one day going to be in the Hall of Fame, and he might have been what the baseball gods had in mind when they dreamed up the classic baseball player, someone with all “five tools,” someone who seemingly was born to play in big arenas and hear big cheers.

But there’s something missing.

And it’s more than the fact that he’s driven in only a handful of runs in the ninth inning this year, or that we are all aware of his failure in the clutch. It’s the indefinable message by the baseball gods that it takes more than natural ability and great talent; it takes something Rodriguez lacks.

So far, anyway, that is his legacy, like a basketball player who keeps putting up great numbers but never seems to make a big shot, the great quarterback who never seems to be able to get his team into the end zone when it counts the most.

So far, he’s been the ultimate tease.

The worst great player I’ve ever seen.

•DUSTIN PEDROIA

He looks like he should be playing in some softball league somewhere, some guy who was a good middle infielder in college somewhere before he hit his baseball ceiling. Instead, he is making a bid to be the MVP of the American League, leading the league in hitting and having one of the best seasons of anyone in the game.

Is there a better story in baseball than Dustin Pedroia?

It’s hard to think of one.

He was supposed to be in some sophomore slump, the old baseball adage that there’s inevitably a letdown after a great rookie year, but Pedroia has shattered that old adage. He is having an amazing season, one in which he is making a case that he’s one of the elite players in the game, however improbable that once might have seemed.

•KEVIN YOUKILIS

Big Papi gets more love; Manny used to get more attention; Mike Lowell gets more respect, Pedroia now gets more cheers, and Youkilis?

All he gets is better.

It is his fate to fly beneath the radar screen in Boston, but he is quietly having a great season — 24 home runs, hitting over .300 and closing in on 100 RBI. All that, and he’s also played an excellent first and third base. In short, he’s having a season to die for, the new Boston dirt dog, even if all the love seems to go to others, the kind of season we have all but taken for granted, even though we shouldn’t.

•YANKEES

How can they be so mediocre?

How can a team with the biggest payroll in the game, one that dwarfs the payroll of the first-place Rays, be in the situation they’re now in, about to miss out on the playoffs for the first time since 1993?

Has so much money ever gotten back so little?

These are the questions that surround this team, this underachieving group whose season never really caught fire and now seems on life support, essentially playing out the string and waiting for the end, already talking about the offseason and next year, like some carnival barker trying to lure people back into the big tent, even if it looks a little leaky.

The failure of young pitchers Philip Hughes and Ian Kennedy, and the stress that put on their pitching. The loss of Jorge Posada. The subpar production from an offense that was supposed to be the best in the game. Too many injuries and not enough backup. Go right down the list.

So now we have A-Rod getting booed, general manager Brian Cashman saying this year is his fault, Hank Steinbrenner talking about next year, the Yankees in the last days of the House That Ruth Built, too many guys who keep getting older while too many younger players fail to live up to expectations, and the unrelenting reality that right now Tampa Bay is better.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

And Joe Torre, too?

breynold@projo.com