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Yankees: There’s Something About This Team That Just Feels Right

By Steve Contursi

Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports
Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Yankees may or may not make something out of the 2017 season. They’ve made some noise while the Blue Jays have crashed and the Red Sox are finally waking up. But no matter how it ends, this team just feels right.

The Yankees, like everyone else in the AL East, will play 162 games in the 2017 season. Against all practical odds, the team became the hottest team in baseball only ten games into the season, warranting face time on ESPN’s national telecast on Sunday Night Baseball.

But whether it’s a mirage or real, it doesn’t matter because there’s something about this team that just feels right.

The Cleveland Indians last season, just felt right. Under the leadership of Terry Francona, they took on the defending champions in the division, Kansas City Royals, and proceeded to slowly but surely eliminate any and all rivals, until no one was left.

And a quick glance at the Indians lineup that took the field for Game 7 of the 2016 World Series against the Chicago Cubs reveals no Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, or Miguel Cabrera as “The Face” of the team that would carry them to victory.

Sometimes, it’s the intangibles about a player that count more than his physical ability. And the same can be said for a team as well.

Instead, they were guys like Jason Kipnis, Mike Napoli, and Francisco Lindor who took the field that night in search of a win that just wasn’t in the cards in the face of the Cubs steamrolling trip to destiny.

The Yankees remind of that team this year. There is, for instance, no one on the team who you could label as the one guy you can’t can’t let beat you, and that includes Gary Sanchez who still has a lot to prove when he returns to the lineup.

Instead, you have guys like five-foot-five Ronald Torreyes filling in for Didi Gregorius and Chase Headley, who was all but given up for dead, leading the team to an improbable start to the season.

Contributions come from everywhere on any given day, and of late it’s the much maligned starting pitching staff carrying the load as the offense shows up one day, but not the next. Jacoby Ellsbury wakes up and answers the call of Joe Girardi who tells him all he has to do is do what he is capable of and everything will be all right.

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Aaron Judge applies himself after receiving the call from the Yankees that he will be their right fielder this season over Aaron Hicks, and suddenly balls are screaming off his bat, and his strikeouts are down.

The team wins eight in a row, taking nearly everyone by surprise. But when you think about it, it was in the cards all the time.

All it took was a few masterful strokes by Joe Girardi in selecting Jordan Montgomery to solidify the rotation and for CC Sabathia to deliver what Girardi always believed he was capable of, and for Michael Pineda and Luis Severino to step up with starts that surprise no one because they were capable all the time.

This is not high school yea rah, sis boom bah stuff. I get that. But over the long course of a six-month season, it’s bound to be much more fun for a team that likes each other and plays together as a unit, than to come to the ballpark, as in Pittsburgh right now, wondering what’s going to happen next to drag us down.

Sometimes, it’s the intangibles about a player that count more than his physical ability. And the same can be said for a team as well.

The trick, of course, is carrying that spirit through the grind of 162 games. The Indians did it last year. Why can’t the Yankees do it this year?

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