What if I told you … the Yankees, without Gerrit Cole and DJ LeMahieu, and with Aaron Judge batting just .178, Gleyber Torres .192 and Alex Verdugo .200, would begin the season 10-3?
Even the greediest of Yankees fans would have signed up for that kind of start by the time the team broke camp in Tampa two and a half weeks ago.
The Yankees are by no means firing on all cylinders in the early going, yet they have won each of their first four series by leaning on a few hot bats, a renewed offensive approach to grind out every at-bat, some encouraging starting pitching and a strong bullpen despite only two arms being left from last year’s relief corps.
“You can’t take ’em [wins] off the board and they matter now as much as any time,” manager Aaron Boone said this week. “I would say it’s early. It is, and there’s a long way to go. But any time you can play a stretch of games like this, you sure sign up for that and you take it. More than anything — wins, losses, whatever — at this point in the season, I’m just pleased with how the group is competing and how they’ve come together, their purpose. We gotta keep that same focus going.”