Yankees are ready and excited as exhibition games end

TORONTO — When the collection of reserves who finished Monday night’s spring training finale against the Braves were concluding the long walk visiting teams at SunTrust Stadium in Atlanta make to get to their clubhouse, a receiving line of enthusiastic big-league regulars greeted them.

“It’s go time!” CC Sabathia could be heard exclaiming as the group fist-bumped the reserves after a 5-1 victory in windy and cold conditions. Sabathia was at the front of a line that included Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, David Robertson, Aaron Hicks and Luis Severino.

It was a scene first-year manager Aaron Boone took in with a smile.

“That makes your hair on your neck stand up when you see that,” Boone said. “When you see that they’re ready to go and hooked up. We’re excited.”

Soaring expectations accompany the 2018 Yankees, who have done the opposite of run from them. The message, repeated often throughout the spring by his players?

Expect to be great.

The process of the Yankees trying to be exactly that starts for real Thursday afternoon when they open the regular season against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. Ace righthander Luis Severino, who finished third in AL Cy Young Award voting last season, will make his first Opening Day start, opposed by lefthander J.A. Happ.

“The guys are ready, the guys are hungry, you can feel it in the dugout,” said Boone, whose club arrived here from Atlanta in the early-morning hours Tuesday. “The guys know what’s ahead of them.”

What’s ahead is a season of unrelenting expectation and hype, mostly because of what is anticipated to be an offensive juggernaut. After losing to the eventual World Series champion Astros in the seventh game of the ALCS, the Yankees added Giancarlo Stanton, who hit 59 homers last season in winning NL MVP honors with the Marlins. He joins an already loaded lineup that includes two of the most feared righthanded hitters in the sport: Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez.

As Brett Gardner, likely to lead off much of the time, put it: “I think being able to add the NL MVP to an already really good lineup is exciting. It has potential to be pretty special.”

Gardner is part of a clubhouse that spent spring training getting to know a new manager and vice versa. Shortly after the start of camp, Boone said a common theme kept coming up in individual 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 [last year],” Boone said Feb. 13.

As his team departed Atlanta after the official end of the exhibition game schedule, that feeling has been reinforced.

“There’s no doubt in my mind the hunger of this group and the understanding of the opportunity in front of them,” Boone said. “From the leadership of the guys in that room, they understand there’s a special opportunity in front of them.”

Indeed, as Sabathia said, it’s go time.

Bird has surgery. The Yankees announced that Greg Bird’s surgery to remove a bone spur in his right ankle Tuesday “went as planned.” Foot and ankle specialist Dr. Martin O’Malley, who operated on a different part of Bird’s right foot last July, did the procedure at the Hospital for Special Surgery.

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.