Yankees' best starts in franchise history provide unexpected pessimism

After a late-night win in the desert over the defending NL Champion Arizona Diamondbacks, the New York Yankees have started a nightmare Houston/Phoenix road trip meant to kick off their season in a hole 5-0, which is remarkable, any way you slice it.

Unfortunately, not all the Yankees teams that have tried to slice their hot starts in multiple ways have ended the year quite so enthusiastically.

5-0 is good. Banking wins is very good -- especially against the D-Backs and Astros, a team that has tortured the Yankees for over a half-decade, as well as a team the Yankees now own the playoff seeding tiebreaker over already. It's true; they play three more games this regular season, meaning the Yankees have already secured the season series. That matters.

But a 5-0 start -- even one as culture-changing as this -- is no guarantee of future success. Just ask the 1992 Yankees, the most recent Bombers team to open the season undefeated through five contests. They also just so happen to represent the most recent time New York finished a season under .500.

Yankees started 5-0 in 1992! Oh no, they were bad!

Those '92 Yankees posted a pythagorean record of 80-82 at the end of the year, meaning if they had luck on their side, they would've been basically as bad as last year's Yankees, the most disappointing edition of the club since that fateful early-90s year (a team that, again, started 5-0 in bone-chilling fashion).

In reality, they wrapped at 76-86. Their No. 4 starter, Tim Leary, posted a 5.57 ERA. Among their starters, only Danny Tartabull posted an OPS over .800 (yes, even Don Mattingly dipped). After their unbeaten start, which eventually stretched to six wins, they treaded water for quite a while, never falling below .500 until June 10. They were a roughly .500 club until things got bleaker in mid-July. In essence, they did not represent anything the current Yankees should shoot for.

Anyway, you know who else started 5-0? The 1988 Yankees, one of many solid teams that decade that somehow did not ... make the playoffs ... ok, scratch that, too. Did any dominant Yankees teams jet out of the gates like this?

2003. Making the World Series would feel awfully nice right about now. Oh, and 1927! Yeah, those Yankees were decent. Murderers and whatnot.

There's nothing wrong with winning every game you play, but the Yankees can't rest on their laurels just yet. One season after being compared to the 1992 club an awful lot, there's just no reason to let it echo once again.