Surely it’s too early to get excited, but ...
BOSTON — Sure, it’s early. Anything that happens in April is early. Anything that happens before Memorial Day, if we’re being honest, is early but April ... well, April is awfully early. It’s crazy early, absurdly early. Just so we’re in agreement on that. Still … Isn’t it refreshing to use that word as a way to manage enthusiasm rather than as a way to temper anxiety?
Isn’t it better to be — just picking a team at random here — the Yankees, winners of 13 of their first 20, playing .650 ball in a year when it was believed they’d do very well to play at .500, when they have to keep yelling over the blare of joyous postgame playlists “IT’S TOO EARLY TO GET TOO FULL OF OURSELVES!” as a couple of them did after Thursday’s 3-0 whitewash of the Red Sox?
As opposed to — again, just picking a name out of a hat — the Mets, losers of 13 of their first 21, who find themselves now kneeling before the calendar and offering thanks for the earliness of the hour, reassuring each other in hushed tones, “It’s too early to panic. Really, honestly, truly ... way too early. Waaaaaaay too early.”
“It’s only two games,” Joe Girardi said calmly, almost nonchalantly, in his office after the game, speaking of this mini-sweep of Boston. “But it does give our guys some confidence.”
It’s a good time to be confident, too. The Orioles come to Yankee Stadium this weekend, one game ahead of the Bombers in the A.L. East, playing with a heaping batch of confidence themselves. There are no showdowns in April, not for first place, not for anything. But there ARE statement series.
Preferred Orioles statement: “You are the team of the tomorrow. We are a team of today. Please behave accordingly.” Preferred Yankees statement: “Somebody’s got to be in first place on every day of the season. Might as well be us.”
The Yankees can afford to feel that way because just about every aspect of their ideal blueprint has played out perfectly in living color since that 1-4 start that included a couple of aggravating blown leads at Camden Yards the first week of the season.
They are 12-3 since then, their hitting has been prolific (even Matt Holliday seems to be coming around after a tough week, driving in two of the three runs Thursday). Their injured young stars — Didi Gregorius and Gary Sanchez — are on their way back, Gregorius likely to play Friday night, Sanchez, set to start his rehab assignment soon.
Most importantly — most remarkably — they mostly get a terrific effort from their starting pitcher every single night. On Wednesday it was Luis Severino, baffling and dazzling the Sox across seven shutout innings, bringing to its knees a ballpark he’d admitted he was less than comfortable working in.
And as good as Severino was, he was the warm-up band.
Because on Thursday, Masahiro Tanaka was resplendent, going the distance to earn the shutout on only 97 pitches, keeping the Sox off balance and off the basepaths, knowing he had to be perfect with almost every pitch because it was Chris Sale going for the other guys and Sale has been scary good — and was Thursday, too, allowing one run in the first eight innings on a botched double play, a passed ball and a sac fly before tiring in the ninth.
Girardi: “He went toe to toe with Sale, who’s been dominating everyone.”
Tanaka: “I knew we were facing a good pitcher. I knew how important one run can be. I knew I had to put up zeroes.”
Nine of them, in all. It’s April, and there’s nobody who knows better than the Yankees how little April has to mean; it was only a year ago they were 8-16, and scuffling badly, awfully hard on the eyes to watch every night, not unlike another baseball team we’ve seen staggering across April in New York. And they recovered to play plenty of meaningful games in August and September. Long season.
A year later they are clicking when they aren’t soaring, they’re playing good baseball, smart baseball, hitting plenty and pitching like sons of guns, getting ready for a full weekend of statement games at their home yard. Early? Sure. But that doesn’t mean April can’t be fun, too, right?