Yankees looking like the best team in baseball
Yankees relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman and catcher Jose Trevino celebrate their 5-3 win against the Blue Jays in an MLB game at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Yankees, on a 119-win pace after completing a two-game sweep of the Blue Jays with Wednesday’s 5-3 victory, already have us thinking about magic numbers.
No, not that Magic Number. Let’s not get crazy. We’re still three weeks short of Memorial Day.
But there’s a few other noteworthy statistics about the Yankees’ 22-8 start, the best record in baseball, that provide enough evidence to suggest this is shaping up to be a special season. To wit:
-- Wednesday’s win, with Gleyber Torres driving in all five runs, was the Yankees’ 10th comeback victory, the most in the majors.
-- This is just the ninth time in franchise history, and third since Dwight Eisenhower was president (1959), that the Yankees won 22 of their first 30 games. Each of those previous eight teams made the World Series; only the 2003 team, despite Aaron Boone’s legendary ALCS homer, lost it.
-- They improved to 16-7 in games decided by three runs or fewer (bullpen anyone?) and are tied with the A’s for playing the most of those nail-biters.
-- Torres hit the Yankees’ 40th homer Wednesday, a three-run shot that dropped into a youngster’s glove in the first row of the rightfield seats (somewhere Chris Woodward weeps). They’ve also launched 29 in the last 17 games. Only the Angels (44) have gone deep more.
-- The Yankees’ rotation remains the stingiest in the AL with a 2.77 ERA after Jameson Taillon weathered a bumpy first inning and allowed only two runs over 5 1/3 innings. The bullpen is nearly airtight, and with Clay Holmes providing five more outs of scoreless relief Wednesday -- he hasn’t surrendered a run in 15 appearances -- the relief corps has a 2.38 ERA, the lowest in the majors.
In other words, the Yankees are frustrating their opponents in myriad ways, and especially the Blue Jays, who already have people (myself included) jumping off the preseason World Series bandwagon. And while we’re at it, maybe we owe general manager Brian Cashman an apology for all the rip jobs both he and Hal Steinbrenner absorbed throughout the winter.
“Criticism comes with the territory,” Cashman said Wednesday before the Yankees improved to 6-3 against the Jays. “The only thing that matters is going out there and winning. These guys are winning their games right now. It’s great to see and makes it easier to sleep in April and May, so hopefully we can keep the healthy side of it going and the good mojo going.
“I know we have a good crew. We knew that before the season started. But it’s nice to see these guys have come together really well and do what’s necessary, which is finding every which way to win on a consistent basis.”
Toronto was the flavor of the month in March, back when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was making bold proclamations about last year being the “trailer” for this season’s blockbuster movie. But so far, the Yankees are stealing the show in the AL East, and they pantsed the Jays over two days in the Bronx.
In Tuesday’s opener, Boone & Co. fought back from a 3-0 deficit on the strength of a Giancarlo Stanton homer, were on the brink of a benches-clearing melee when Josh Donaldson got drilled, then walked it off with Aaron Judge’s second-deck blast into the leftfield’s second deck. That had to be humbling for the Jays, particularly after the umpiring crew tossed three of them in the fallout from that controversial Donaldson plunking.
But if they came out Wednesday on a payback mission, it fizzled surprisingly fast. The Jays loaded the bases with none out in the first inning, but only scraped up one run against Taillon, who didn’t get pinned with another until Michael King allowed his inherited run to score on Matt Chapman’s sacrifice fly in the sixth.
In the meantime, the Yankees took the lead for good in the fourth inning with a rally started by a pair of soft singles and punctuated by Torres, who smacked an 0-and-2 fastball from Jose Berrios into the short porch. Torres struck again in the sixth with a two-run single, and the Blue Jays had no answer.
They got one back on a sacrifice fly in the ninth, but that was too little, too late against Aroldis Chapman, who cranked it up to 100 mph to whiff Bo Bichette and retire Guerrero on a meek pop for the final out. For the record, the Jays are six games back, and the Yankees have showed no signs of slowing down.
“I think the thing for me is we’re just able to beat teams in so many ways this year,” Taillon said. “On any given night, it can any player, in any situation, who can come through. As far as being the best team in baseball, I’m not sure, but I really like where we’re at.”
As of now, in mid-May, the record says the Yankees deserve that title. Until the numbers say otherwise.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
