Top Five Bright Spots of the Yankees 2016 Season

While the New York Yankees will not make the postseason for the third time in four years, there was plenty for Bombers fans to celebrate during the 2016 season.

The 2016 season somehow managed to be both crushingly disappointing and completely reinvigorating for many fans of the New York Yankees.

All of the key players returned from the 2015 team that earned a surprise postseason berth, but father time caught up with several key contributors simultaneously, rendering one of the league’s most dangerous offenses from the previous season more or less toothless.

While their rotation was one of the most talented units in the American League, the group underachieved badly, with no one aside from ace Masahiro Tanaka putting up a clearly above-average season. The bullpen was a clear strength for much of the year, but without leads to protect it couldn’t be put to much use.

On the plus side, even with everything that went wrong, the Yankees managed to play meaningful baseball games surprisingly late into the season. They weren’t mathematically eliminated until game 159. If you remove a miserable 3-11 stretch from the middle of the September that followed the loss of several regulars to injury, the season would look very different.

The following are the top five bright spots from the Yankees roller-coaster 2016 campaign: