Sweeny: Red-Hot Yankees Playing Like They Belong In October
By Sweeny Murti
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There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear.
When the Yankees hit the All-Star break, I thought this was a pretty good team. By winning five out of six to start the second half and opening up a decent lead in the AL East, the Yankees are making a statement that they don't intend to sit home in October for a third straight year.
I mentioned last week that we won't know for a couple months if this is a great team. That's still true. But this week's three-game sweep of the Orioles was fueled in part by Andrew Miller, Masahiro Tanaka and Jacoby Ellsbury, all of whom spent significant time on the DL in the first half of the season. Now they are all back and adding to a team that is as good as any in the American League.
The Yankees hit the dog days this summer as the lead dog. The last two years they have been putting sub-par lineups on the field and hanging in the race by their fingertips. Joe Girardi admits it's a different feeling playing from in front and feeling as though he has a regular lineup to fill out the card every day.
The last two years it was hard to pick any one position player and say they had a "great" year. Good, yes. But not great. And the Yankees have several of those right now, although there are still over two months to play. Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez have put up numbers you would have signed up for in a heartbeat in March. But now you want more -- and you need more if you want to see this team go places.
Tanaka and Michael Pineda are showing their dominance in spurts and they will be the ones who can make the Yankees a legitimate October force. The other starters have pitched well lately, and even CC Sabathia in this disaster of a year pitched toe-to-toe with Felix Hernandez last weekend. If he can't hold his own, Sabathia will not be in the rotation come October. Think back to 2000 when David Cone went 4-14 over 29 starts before being banished to the bullpen in the postseason.
Meanwhile, the bullpen is making Nathan Eovaldi, Ivan Nova, and anyone else you want to throw in there as good as any five-inning starter needs to be. The combination of Dellin Betances and Miller will shorten every playoff game anywhere from six to nine outs a night.
OK, I know I'm getting ahead of myself. But I've watched the Yankees slog through August and September the last two years with the faintest of hopes. I forgot what it was like to watch them play like they belong.
The 1996 Yankees made a similar statement out of the All-Star break -- remember George Costanza recounting at Susan's grave, "...then we swept the Orioles four straight." They used that run to build such a big lead that they needed to play just .500 ball the final two months to win the division.
These Yankees still have a long way to go, especially with a 10-game road trip looming now. (They're still under .500 away from Yankee Stadium.) But they ended June in third place in the AL East and now have left everyone else looking up with still more than a week to go in July.
If they go at least 6-4 on this upcoming trip, they will enter the final two months of the season 15 games over .500. I'll keep saying it until they prove us wrong: this is a good team; time will tell if they can be great.
Follow Sweeny Murti on Twitter: @YankeesWFAN
