The inexplicable, ailing Yankees still have a chance to win the AL East

The Yankees are in trouble. Nathan Eovaldi and Mark Teixeira are both possibly out for the season, with Brett Gardner ailing. For a team that is trailing a surging first-place rival, it’s bad timing slathered with more bad timing, stuffed between two slices of bad timing.

They’ll be fine.

They shouldn’t be, of course. But this is an annual tradition, in which the Yankees are much better than expected, and I apologize for being dumb. I picked the Yankees for last place this season, using logic and reason, searching for facts and applying theories. That was my problem. These are antiquated notions of how the world works, piffling ideas the Yankees have no use for. In those predictions, I listed the reasons why I was skeptical of them this year. All of those dire predictions came true, and the Yankees are still going to at least the Wild Card Game.

At the end, hedging my bets and winking to the studio audience, I included a postscript:

(You know Alex Rodriguez is going to hit 30 homers and the Yankees are going to win the division, right? Just making sure.)

Well, now. And for all the justified hubbub about the Blue Jays, the Yankees still are a threat to win the division. Even without Eovaldi and Teixeira, even though most of their expensive players aren’t performing nearly as well as the Yankees paid them to, the Yankees are still one of the only second-place teams with a chance to win their division.

Did we mention there’s a four-game Blue Jays/Yankees series this weekend? Seems like a good time to mention that.

The Yankees are the most inscrutable, fascinating team in baseball. The Twins and Rangers are trying to out-shock the world, the Mets are scintillating, and it’s amazing how quickly we got used to the Astros being talented. But for the most part, I understand those teams, the mix of good fortune and good players that got them where they are. The Yankees have baffled me all season, and I need to write my way through this.

Last year’s team was 84-78, and they were outscored by a bunch, so even getting there was a minor miracle. What did the Yankees change to help them make the postseason this year? Let’s go through the problems of the 2014 Yankees and see how they were fixed.

Problem with the 2014 Yankees: They couldn’t hit
Solution for this season: Acquire Didi Gregorius

Last season, the Yankees hit .245/.307/.380 as a team. Considering their home park -- and the parks in the AL East, in general -- that’s pretty ghastly. They couldn’t get on base, and they finished in the bottom half of the league in slugging. Of the hitters under contract, all of them were over 30. Brian McCann struggled mightily, and he was going to be 30, on the older side for a catcher. Carlos Beltran (38) was hurt and mostly ineffective, as was Teixeira (35). The trend lines were digging into the ground, disturbing the sand worms that eventually rise up and devour every last baseball player.

So the Yankees rolled up their sleeves and acquired Didi Gregorius.

That’s an oversimplification -- McCann and Teixeira at least had a history of being elite hitters for their position. And the most important addition to the lineup was the player the Yankees most wanted to throw in the ocean, Alex Rodriguez. Still, the Yankees’ lineup was bad, hurt, and old last year, and their solution was to a) re-sign Chase Headley, b) trade Martin Prado, c) get a light-hitting shortstop, and d) reluctantly welcome back a 39-year-old DH.

A common movie trope is where a bad ass character starts walking toward a hail of bullets, picking people off while the bullets miss him entirely. It’s a winking part of one of my favorite movies ever. That was the Yankees’ offseason. The difference is that a couple of the bullets just hit them in the elbow and leg, but they’ll keep walking.

Problem with the 2014 Yankees: Lack of rotation consistency
Solution for this season: Allow two of their better pitchers to leave in free agency

Brandon McCarthy was a revelation after the Yankees acquired him last year. The Yankees’ bold strategy of “letting him use a pitch he’d been successful with in the past” paid off, and McCarthy helped the team contend deep into the season. With Masahiro Tanaka’s injury concerns and CC Sabathia ineffective, Hiroki Kuroda shouldered a huge 199-inning burden that the Yankees were desperate for.

Both McCarthy and Kuroda left in free agency.

Now, McCarthy got hurt, and Kuroda has been just a little above average in the Central League this year, so this isn’t to say the Yankees would have been immeasurably better with them under contract. It’s just to point out their strategy was to trade for Nathan Eovaldi and hope for the best. Maybe Sabathia will rebound, maybe Michael Pineda and Masahiro Tanaka will be healthy, and maybe Adam Warren and Ivan Nova could pick up the scraps. That was the plan.

Collectively, it’s almost sort of kind of worked out. Ten different pitchers have started a game for the Yankees, and they’ve been about league-average, collectively. With a boffo bullpen and resurgent lineup (because of Didi Gregorious, probably), that’s more than enough to help them contend. With a concentrated offseason effort to dump money into the rotation -- something you know the Jaret Wright-era Yankees would have done -- they might have a slight lead on the Blue Jays, but somehow their Eovaldi-and-done strategy didn’t backfire on them.

Problem with the 2014 Yankees: Injuries, older players breaking down
Solution for this season: Acquire Didi Gregorius, continue breaking down, continue cycling through players

In 2014, the Yankees used 33 different pitchers, the most in franchise history. Consider the 1980 Yankees, who won 103 games using only 13 pitchers, and imagine how they would have fit an extra 20 onto the roster. Different eras, sure, but it’s still impressive for a contending team to cycle through 33 different pitchers.

In 2015, the Yankees have used 33 different pitchers.

They’ve used only the third-most position players in team history, but they’re still predictably dealing with injuries from the over-30 set. Even one of the guys who hasn’t been hurt, Headley, is suddenly coming down with some throwing yips.

Didi Gregorius has been healthy, of course.

Add it up, and I have almost no idea how the Yankees have a chance -- a good chance -- to win the AL East this year. I’ve whittled it down to two factors:

The first one is self-explanatory. Andrew Miller, Dellin Betances, and Chasen Shreve are nasty, and they make it nearly impossible to beat the Yankees if they have a lead after six innings. That’ll make up for a lot, and there’s something to be said for the cumulative effect of a super bullpen.

The second one is harder to spot unless you really look for it. Other than Sabathia, almost every key player has done something. Headley hasn’t been great, but he’s been worth a win. Beltran has been hurt and abominable in the field, but he’s been worth a win. Jacoby Ellsbury hasn’t been the perennial All-Star the Yankees hoped for, but he’s still plugging away, helping a team more than he hurts it. Chris Young and John Ryan Murphy have contributed. Almost no one who has been trusted with substantial at-bats or innings has fallen completely flat.

In the middle of the lineup, there aren’t any MVP candidates, just a string of older, talented players reclaiming their effectiveness at just the right time.

And Didi Gregorius has been kind of good, you know. It was a fine move for a team with an obvious, desperate need.

Up there and in the past, it’s been easy for me to ascribe the Yankees’ continued success to witchery or the dark arts because it’s just the right combination of lazy and almost funny that I usually shoot for. But it’s clear the people running the team, who are making the decisions like, “No, Eovaldi should be all we need,” or, “Look these hitters all still have another year or two in them, they’ll be fine” have information that I don’t. They’re more informed than you and me, and they know what to do with that information. They’re not crossing their fingers and whispering wishes into the ear of Teixeira. They knew why he was bad last year, and why he had a good shot to rebound if he stayed healthy this year.

At some point, I’ll stop being baffled. Last year, I wrote:

The Yankees aren’t giving up on 2015, which means you should be scared of the 2015 Yankees.

Pretty much. Man, how this team fascinates me.