After last season’s surprising run, Yankees’ expectations are through the roof in 2018

TAMPA, Fla. — Aaron Boone gave an easy-to-understand message to his new team when he stood in front of it for the first time as Yankees manager Feb. 19.

“The expectations are huge,” he said of the message, delivered in the Steinbrenner Field clubhouse before the club’s first full-squad workout of spring training. “And we will embrace that.”

The theme was similar to the one Joe Maddon adopted while talking to his Cubs when they gathered for spring training in 2016. Maddon’s was “embrace the target” for a team entering the year not only as the overwhelming National League favorite but the favorite to win the World Series.

Expectations for the 2018 Yankees aren’t quite in the World Series-or-bust category, but they’re far beyond what they were in 2017, when — at least from the outside — a playoff berth would have been considered a success.

But after going 91-71 to earn a wild card, making a run to Game 7 of the ALCS — they lost to the eventual World Series champion Astros — and adding 2017 National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton to a lineup that already had Aaron Judge, the Yankees have created grand expectations.

The hype around the 2018 Yankees is at a fever pitch not seen and heard since probably 2010, when they were defending World Series champions and considered a strong favorite to repeat (they lost to the Rangers in the ALCS that year). And the players are just fine with that.

“We’re on the map,” said Greg Bird, whose seventh-inning home run off Cleveland’s Andrew Miller in Game 3 of the Division Series might have been the Yankees’ biggest hit of last year’s postseason run. “We said we were going to surprise people last year, that was our thing, and this year it’s not a surprise anymore. We’re a good team and people know that, so they’re going to be coming after us, and we’re going to go after them, and that’s how it’s going to be.”

Late in camp, of course, Bird started feeling pain in the same right foot that needed surgery last season, though in a different area. He underwent surgery March 27 to remove “a small broken spur on the outside aspect of his right ankle,” according to the club, which is expected to keep him out six to eight weeks.

The Yankees have long had high hopes for Bird, but he has played a combined 94 games the last two years because of an assortment of injuries.

Still, the Bird setback doesn’t do much to dampen the enthusiasm level for the club. Brian Cashman, the general manager since 1998, took note of that early in the offseason.

“No doubt the buzz from the winter and coming into the spring is a lot louder and more positive, and that’s our job,” he said one spring morning. “Our job is to put ourselves in position to be relevant and be considered championship-caliber and a contender. But Houston’s a great champion, so it’s going to take a lot to take them out.”

The Yankees entered spring training with few questions, and just about all of those were answered in the ensuing six weeks. Among the most significant were who would start at third and second after Chase Headley and Starlin Castro, who got most of the playing time last season, were traded in the offseason.

Opposing team scouts and executives were skeptical of Cashman’s oft-repeated statement that he was comfortable with the thought of potentially starting rookies Miguel Andujar and Gleyber Torres at third and second, respectively. The expectation was that Cashman eventually would land veteran help, and that indeed is what occurred with Brandon Drury and, about a month later, Neil Walker. Tyler Wade’s standout spring training also made him very much an option at second as camp broke.

Regardless, fairly or not, none of those players will be at the forefront of most people’s minds as keys to the season when things start for real Thursday in Toronto. It will be about whether Bird can stay healthy, whether the somewhat under-the-radar rotation can be as solid as it was last season and, of course, just how devastating a lineup featuring Judge, Stanton and Gary Sanchez can be.

When Yankees pitchers and catchers reported Feb. 13, Dellin Betances, an All-Star four straight seasons and with the organization since 2006, said the season will be a “disappointment” if the team doesn’t win the World Series.

It is an attitude that Boone, himself a question mark simply because this is his first coaching job of any kind in a life spent in baseball, found early on in his conversations with players.

“I think what stands out being in that room is, really, each guy I’ve spoken to, the hunger is there and there’s no satisfaction with what they were able to accomplish [in 2017],” Boone said. “From what I can tell, the hunger in these guys is real.”