Chatelain: Counting Out Yankees Was A Mistake
By Ryan Chatelain
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A little more than three weeks ago, panic buttons were being pushed in the Bronx like they were game show buzzers in a lightning round.
The Yankees had an 8-16 record and were in last place. Many assumed the bottom had finally fallen out from under a franchise that had not experienced a losing season since George H.W. Bush was still president.
The critics said the starting rotation was a joke and the lineup was incapable of scoring runs. They thought Father Time had finally landed the knockout punch to the team's aging superstars.
The thing is, when a team starts a season in a slump, it's easy to define it as a disappointment because failure is all we've seen.
But even despite Wednesday night's 8-4 loss to the Blue Jays, which snapped the Yankees' six-game winning streak, the Bronx Bombers have proven in recent weeks they are anything but the disgrace many were chalking them up to be.
Did we forget this is an organization that can't stomach losing? Did we forget this was a playoff team and one of the American League's top scoring offenses just a year ago? Did we forget that Brian Cashman has four rings as a general manager? Did we forget that Joe Girardi is one of the brightest skippers in the game? Did we forget these players earned their enormous paychecks for a reason?
Even if you thought the Yankees might be destined for a down year, you didn't honestly think they were that despicable, did you?
The truth is there were plenty of signs to suggest the Bombers would reverse their fortunes, at least to some degree. Half the lineup opened the season in deep ruts. Jacoby Ellsbury hit .235 in April. It took Chase Headley until mid-May to hit his first homer and finally get his average over .200. Alex Rodriguez was hitting below .200 when he strained his hamstring in Baltimore on May 3. And Mark Teixeira is still trying to find his groove. Meanwhile, the starting pitchers were leading the majors in early showers.
The Yankees would had to have been cursed to stay on such a bleak course for six months straight. The question was only whether they had it in them to climb all the way back into playoff contention. With a 14-7 record in their last 21 games, that answer seems to be trending toward yes.
Because it turns out those hitters weren't as hopeless as some once thought. Ellsbury is batting .327 and has a .422 on-base percentage in May. Carlos Beltran was hitting a whopping .440 with 10 RBIs during the Yankees' recent six-game winning streak. Headley, who was called out by Cashman earlier this month for his struggles, is now hitting .316 with three homers since May 12.
And it turns out that rotation isn't as dreadful as many believed, either. Despite the early-season woes, Masahiro Tanaka, CC Sabathia, Ivan Nova and Nathan Eovaldi -- perhaps baseball's most underrated hurler -- all have ERAs in the 3s.
And then there's the Yankees' new not-so-secret weapon of relievers Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman, who routinely convert sixth-inning leads into surefire W's.
"It allows you to shorten games even more than you were able to before, and really that's how it changes," Girardi told WFAN on Wednesday. "If you get six innings out of your starter and his pitch count is somewhat up there, it's really easy to make a change because we have so much confidence in these three guys."
The Yankees are still far from a perfect team. A-Rod, who is set to return to the lineup Thursday, and Teixeira, who is battling neck spasms again, must get going sooner than later. The concerns over the team's age, health and stamina aren't going anywhere. And Michael Pineda and Luis Severino, once he returns from his triceps injury, might be auditioning to keep their spots in the rotation if they don't turn things around quickly.
But the AL East is hardly a Mount Everest to climb. The Rays aren't relevant. The Blue Jays, while still dangerous, have been one of baseball's bigger disappointments. At the rate both teams have been going lately, it could only be a matter of time before the third-place Yanks overtake second-place Baltimore -- the gap is currently 4½ games. That leaves the first-place Red Sox, who are 6½ games up on the Bombers.
However, there's still plenty of time to gain ground. No one knows that better than a Yankees team that led the Blue Jays by seven games late last July and finished six games behind them in the final standings.
Maybe the Bombers will catch Boston. Maybe they won't. Regardless, it's a much more pleasant question for Yankees fans to ponder than the ones they were asking just a few weeks ago.
Follow Ryan on Twitter at @RyanChatelain
