Wait, Are the Yankees Actually Good?

The Yankees are old and crappy. They're probably in last place. I mean, I assume. CC Sabathia either weighs 320 or 140 pounds and either way can't break sugar glass with his fastball. Mark Teixeria is a slow starter, which is fine except by the time he heats up he'll be injured again because Mark Teixeira has a rare and debilitating allergy to heat. Masahiro Tanaka and Michael Pineda might throw 200 innings but it'll be together rather than separately. Robinson Cano is quite good but also quite on the Mariners. The list goes on, caveats for all.

Before this season, FanGraphs asked their 38 writers to pick where the teams would finish; only two picked New York to make the playoffs. Baseball Prospectus asked the same of their 35 writers. Five picked the Yankees to make the playoffs. That's seven out of 73, or a bit under 10 percent, which, when phrased that way, sounds high.

So by now you have probably guessed that the Yankees are in first place. This is both an undeniable and very weird thing, and not just because of the consensus that the Yankees were headed for a crash and burn season; they do not look like world-beaters, but so far everything is going as well as everything could go, reasonably speaking. How did everyone get this so wrong? Let's let everybody who answered "anti-New York bias" wander off before we jump in.

The largest part of the reason everyone thought ill of this team is their age. They're not the oldest team in baseball, but they're close. The average age on the Yankees is either 29.4 or 29.6, depending on where you get your information. That's either the fourth-oldest roster or the sixth, respectively. But it's not the oldest, and it's not old-person-shouting-at-cloud insane. Here's what is old-person-shouting-at-cloud insane though: exclude bench bats and pitchers, and the average age of the Yankees starting lineup is 32.6 years old. The average age of all Major Leaguers in 2012 was 26.8, so presuming it's still around that mark, the Yankees starting nine are almost six years older than average. Six years! That borders on naked-old-person-shouting-at-a-duck-because-he-thinks-it-is-a-cloud insane.

You would think one of the consequences of having such an old roster, aside from the incessant beeping and costly upkeep of all those Life Alert bracelets, is injuries, and you'd be right. But despite older players and numerous players with histories of injuries, the Yankees have had few injuries to date. The only significant injury was to Masahiro Tanaka who strained his forearm and will miss a month. Tanaka was attempting to pitch through a partially torn UCL, which is a bit like trying to run with the bulls in Pamplona with a diaper glued to your face, both in that it's a weird thing no one does and it's not unsurprising an injury resulted from it. The two factors that make one more likely to get hurt are age and a history of injuries. Tanaka's pre-torn UCL qualifies as a "history of injuries," and as a team, the Yankees have both age and a history of injuries. So far, except in Tanaka's case, it hasn't mattered.

Aside from avoiding repeatedly stepping on an infinite number of garden rakes, what has been working for the Yankees? Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez—you were wondering when you were going to hear his name—have returned from various versions of baseball death to post productive seasons so far. In 2013 and 2014, Teixeira was worth, depending on your WAR metric, nothing or just slightly above nothing. Like barely something. Alex Rodriguez was… well, you know. Not playing for a year and then returning on two surgically repaired hips would not be advisable if you were playing Boggle in an old folks home. A-Rod is playing baseball, and not in an old folks home!

But Rodriguez and Teixeira are both baseball alive and hitting pretty well. This seems strange to say of two guys hitting .247 and .218, but we've come a long way since batting average meant squat beyond optics. Rodriguez and Teixeira are getting on base and hitting for power; that's what the game is about when you're not a pitcher.

The other aspect of the team working beyond anyone's expectations was thrown into stark relief Sunday when Michael Pineda struck out 16 Orioles without walking any in seven innings. The rotation has been quite good—the second best in baseball according to FanGraphs WAR—and that's before accounting for Pineda's brilliance yesterday. The combination of Chase Whitley, Adam Warren, and Nathan Eovaldi have been enough to offset the setting sun that is CC Sabathia and poor diaper-faced Tanaka.

The thing is, other than Pineda, Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) says all the Yankee starters have been below average. In other words, they are what we thought they were. FIP could be wrong, or at least I could be wrong in saying the Yankees starters won't be as good as they've been because they haven't really been as good as they've been. But given the track records of the people involved, there are a few steps backwards yet to take here. Also probably some rakes left to step on. It is a long, rake-strewn season.

For right now, the Yankees are running out Michael Pineda and four hitters against the rest of the AL East. That wouldn't have been a fight the Yankees would have been eager to pick before the season started, but it is shaping up as a fairer fight than anyone predicted.