Yankees, well on the road to recovery at 6-1, look forward to warm welcome home

PHOENIX — It didn’t take long in the spring for players to grow tired of one phrase in particular when used by reporters.

“Last year.”

The Yankees were coming off an embarrassment of an 82-80 season, a playoff-less season felt from the top — starting with managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner — to bottom in the organization.

Although players were professional in dealing with questions about it, DJ LeMahieu gave voice before the calendar flipped to March on the clubhouse’s overall view of it.

“I don’t want to talk about last year anymore,” the soft-spoken veteran told Newsday’s David Lennon Feb. 23.

LeMahieu was hardly alone in that regard.

New players to the organization such as Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo had nothing to do with it and those returning from the horror show that was 2023 lived it the entire offseason.

It spurred more players than ever to report to the club’s minor-league complex well before the start of spring, with some arriving by late November to begin daily workouts.

Throughout the spring there was a palpable confidence 2024 would be different. No guarantees of a World Series, the ultimate goal, but no repeat of 2023 either.

And then the Yankees fell behind their nemesis of nemesis, the Astros, 4-0, after two innings in the season opener.

Exactly the kind of game the Yankees lost once, twice, 10, 20 times last season.

But, behind Soto primarily, they grinded out a 5-4 come-from-behind victory, the first of three comeback wins at Minute Maid Park, the Yankees’ version of the exact opposite of heaven the last decade.

Now they’re 6-1 after taking two of three from the Diamondbacks, including Wednesday’s wild 6-5 victory in 11 innings at Chase Field, which the throng of fans rooting for the visiting team made sound like Yankee Stadium Southwest all three games.

They get Yankee Stadium for real on Friday for the home opener and one can imagine how that might have sounded had the home team stumbled out of the gate instead of storming from it.

“I think it’s going to be rocking, the guys are going to be excited,” Aaron Judge said. “The fans, we’ve got a division rival coming in with the Blue Jays so I think the boys are going to be ready to go.”

Verdugo, a key offseason acquisition because of his lefty bat, added to a lineup desperately needing diversification and his defensive abilities as well. He didn’t throw cold water on the hot start. Far from it. But the outfielder also understands the realities of the six-month season.

“Obviously, everybody wants to start off good, right?” Verdugo said after hitting his first homer as a Yankee, a two-run shot in the 10th that gave his team a 4-2 lead that Clay Holmes, with Anthony Volpe’s throwing error playing a supporting role, blew in the bottom half.

“In the grand scheme of things, a week doesn’t really do too much when it’s a whole 162 games, but to start off this week like this and keep the momentum going is huge. Everybody in here knows we’re talented and knows what we can do. It’s one of those things that you just have to go out there every day and have that dawg mentality. It’s not always going to come easy, you’ve got to sometimes fight and I think we’ve been doing a really good job of that this whole run.”

Verdugo dropped the “dawg” reference first in Houston and it has started to take hold in the dugout with the requisite barking and woofing one would expect to come with it in some big moments since.

That kind of color assuredly will be quickly beaten into the ground by some media to the point of cliché — see, Anthony Volpe, Chicken Parm, 2023, as the most recent example.

But within the clubhouse those are the kinds of things that can bond a group, a theme — and others will crop up along the way — that can break up the monotony of the long season (though the Chicken Parm story would not be an example of that).

General manager Brian Cashman has a go-to phrase he uses regarding a given season, one he uses behind the scenes as well: “The storm’s coming.”

Adversity, usually in the form of injuries but not always, hits every team and the good ones — the best ones — find ways to overcome it.

It will come for the Yankees this season, too. It’s just a matter of when.

Last year, for a variety of reasons, they could not overcome it.

It’s too soon to tell if this year’s edition will be able to, but the early signs at least indicate they can. A 6-1 record seven games in, as Verdugo said, assures nothing.

But given how 2023 played out, it obviously beats the alternative.