Marcus Stroman's reaction to elite Clarke Schmidt start sends Yankees' vibes skyward

The weirdest thing about the Yankees' collective dominance of the Minnesota Twins is that there's no good reason it's spanned 20+ years. None of this team's primary pieces (except Brian Cashman?) have been carried over from 2002. It has to end sometime. And yet...

Carlos Rodón allowed a leadoff home run in his first inning of work on Tuesday night. From that point, the Yankees allowed zero additional runs to the Twins in a three-game sweep, wrapping things with eight remarkable innings from Clarke Schmidt in a 5-0 victory Thursday. Remember when Schmidt couldn't get through the order three times? Remember when he couldn't put away lefties? They were 2-for-19 (two errors) with 8 Ks against him in this finale. Evolutionary dominance, and it did not go unnoticed by his jacked-up rotation mates.

After grabbing the torch from Marcus Stroman (six shutout frames on Wednesday), Schmidt returned to the dugout after the eighth on Thursday to a hero's welcome from the Stro Show himself.

After the game, Stroman quote-tweeted a clip of him providing Schmidt with said dugout welcome, noting, "Nothing better than seeing my brothers be great." He also posted the Yankees' full clip of Schmidt's strikeout reel with a very appropriate caption.

Yankees' Marcus Stroman, Clarke Schmidt shut out Minnesota Twins for 14 innings

This rotation vibes off one another in a way we haven't seen the Yankees operate in years -- and Gerrit Cole's just a coach right now.

The Yankees might not get as much mainstream media shine as the Boston Red Sox and their revamped rotation under Andrew Bailey, but Matt Blake getting production this exquisite while Cole rehabs deserves at least six or seven additional Stroman tweets.

There's no better problem to have than, "We've got a lot of good pitching, maybe too much, and we have to figure out where some of it goes." Yankee fans whine about a lot of things, but even they have to realize that Gil and Schmidt emerging as viable No. 2s, let alone effective rotation members, has completely changed this team's ceiling. Eventually, that depth could be highly necessary in a tight postseason series, regardless of who's technically in the rotation.

Expect whoever gets bumped to return Stroman's favor and cheer on their teammates from the top step. That's just how this team operates these days.