Pressure on: Yankees the talk of the Big Apple

As magical as spring training can feel, it is still a distant, dreamlike place, where everyone believes that “Wait ’til next year” is finally now, where every arm feels strong, and not-ready-forprime-time prospects show hints that seem bound for glory.

It is now when it becomes reality as the teams ready for the real thing. With the freshly-cut grass and the crisp chalk lines set in place, the red, white and blue bunting hung at stadiums and opening day looming, there are also the expectations.

While the Mets have been the darlings of opening days of late in the Big Apple, the lofty dreams powered along by the potential of the arms of the starting pitchers, it is the Yankees who now carry the great expectations, and the power is in the bats.

These lofty standards have placed the Yankees on the cover of Sports Illustrated, prompted the team to open the gates to the stadium early to allow an opening act — batting practice — to lure fans in as rabidly as the game itself. With Giancarlo Stanton joining Aaron Judge in the Bronx, the Yankees have embraced the long ball, perhaps in a way no team in history has done.

“If you’re asking me if I really like our team, the answer is yes,” Yankees firstyear manager Aaron Boone said. “But there’s always concerns, there’s always things that I’m thinking about. I talked early with you guys about being really good at the details and the margins that I think help good teams become great teams. That is the difference in those games that are really tough and allow you to win games. Are we prepared? Are we buttoned up as we need to be on the little things as we get ready to break camp?

“Those are the things I’m constantly worried about, but I love our team.”

There is good reason for that optimism, more in the Bronx than just about anywhere in baseball, and more than the Yankees have been able to feel in recent seasons. Taking a team that already was one of the best in the league, adding Stanton, along with Neil Walker and Brandon Drury, merits a lot of attention, and the Yankees have that.

In Boone they have a calm hand at the helm, the sort of manager who, like Joe Torre once did, provides an ease in a locker room that will have pressure on from the first pitch. It doesn’t hurt that he arrives with a résumé that includes one of the biggest home runs in Yankees’ postseason history.

But home runs don’t equate to wins, not Boone’s blow to the rival Red Sox in 2003 or the record-setting numbers the Yankees might put up this season, so there is much more to the game than what the predictions might hold.

The Yankees, for all the hype, are not the favorite to win the American League — still having to get past the team that knocked them out last season in the playoffs, the world champion Astros. Jose Altuve might stand a foot shorter than Judge or Stanton, he is the reigning MVP and he has plenty of company.

The Yankees, for all of their muscle, have already lost first baseman Greg Bird to injury once more, the starting rotation has some age and uncertainty and even Stanton, after a 59-home run season in Miami last year, has to prove he can do it in the unflinching spotlight he will find himself immersed in now. Did we mention Jacoby Ellsbury and the way that big acquisitions don’t always work out?

“Sure. I tussle with a lot of things on a daily basis,” Boone said. “You’ve got to have some degree of health. You’ve got to be able to protect our starting pitchers. For our bullpen to be what we think, you’ve got to have relative health down there. At this point in the spring, you worry about as manager, I worry about having our guys have the right number of at-bats, reps, to where I feel like they’re in a really good physical place going into the season. I think for the most part we have and they are in a good place, but those are things that we constantly struggle with and toil with, and, in a way, worry about.”

In Queens, where the Mets will open the season Thursday afternoon, there is hope, but it is laced with caution. That’s what a 70-92 season will do to a fan base. There is a new manager in Mickey Callaway as Terry Collins — along with the medical team — was saddled with the blame for last season’s disappointment.

It’s hard to imagine that the Mets are just a few years removed from a World Series berth and from the sort of expectations the Yankees carry now. There were five power arms in the system, aces in waiting. And now, just as every year, they are still waiting.

But after finishing off a successful spring training, Matt Harvey, who once was supposed to be the best of them, promised that the time is here.

“Sky’s the limit,” Harvey said. “I think the biggest thing is staying healthy and we all are right now, for the most part, and we’re going to be really good. We’re going to shock a lot of people, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

The Mets are certainly underdogs, not expected to be anywhere near the Nationals and not possessing the talent of the Cubs or Dodgers, and maybe not the promise of even the Phillies’ young talent. But they believe, and as any longtime Mets follower knows, as Tug McGraw once said, “You gotta believe.”

“I think they feel like they have something to prove because things didn’t go their way last year,” Callaway said. “And if you get a team full of guys that have really good talent and they work hard and they feel they have something to prove, you can go do something special and shock some people. I think that’s where we’re at.”

Where they are at — and the Yankees are with them — is at the start. For all the expectations, it’s 0-0 and the standings are all even.

Hope springs eternal, or at least until Thursday night.

KIM KLEMENT/USA TODAY SPORTS Expectations are high as Aaron Boone leads a young, loaded Yankees lineup in his first season as manager.