[All individual player stats are as of before today's game].

As of Cinco de Mayo 2010, the Yankees are eleven games over .500. They’re only a half game behind the Tampa Bay Rays, a team that’s prompted comments by the likes of Buster Olney about similarities to the 1998 Yankee squad.

Four of the Yankees’ five starters have ERAs under 3.00, and there had only be one game–one, out of 27 played–the entire season in which the Yankee offense has failed to score three or more runs. Only one starter not named Vazquez has a loss on his record–and that’s CC Sabathia.

Mix those two things together, and, injury concerns not withstanding, good things are probably going to happen.

Here, however, is the kicker: the Yankees are finding ways to win–pending the outcome of the Rays/Mariners game, the Yankees could end the evening in first place–and they are doing such while the 2-3-4 hitters in their lineup have an average OPS of .653.

For comparison’s sake, the Pittsburgh Pirates, a team that’s, as of this posting, scored 93 runs (the Yankees have scored 151) have a team OPS of .677. (Since you’re probably interested, Johnson, Teixeira and Rodriguez have combined to score 36 runs, not including today’s game.)

If we break it down individually, we can find the following:

Nick Johnson might only be batting on the interstates, but he has an on-base percentage near .400. He might not be tearing the cover off the ball (though this is exactly what he did in the first inning of today’s game, holy bejaysus that was a monster shot), but he’s not exactly making outs, either.

Johnson’s also been tremendously unlucky–with a BABIP of .182. There is almost no conceivable way he can remain that unlucky all season.

Mark Teixeira’s also been unlucky, but he hasn’t been unlucky, and while he is drawing some walks, it’s not nearly enough to make up for a batting average of .175 (just ask my fantasy team). However, slow starts for Teixeira are nothing new–thus far this season, Teixeira has had three multi-hit games; last season, on May 5th, Teixeira had had four.

Since Alex Rodriguez didn’t make his 2009 debut until May 8, it’s hard to compare his stats this year with those of last season, but here we may have the most cause for pause–he hasn’t hit a home run since April 20th at Oakland, no small thing since he’s the Yankees’ clean-up hitter, and since then he’s batted to a tune of .204/.226/.265/.492. That’s a slump if ever there was one.

Even so, there’s a very good reason to remain optimistic about Teixeira, A-Rod and Johnson: long histories of producing. Logic and statistics tell us that the three of them will recover and play to something more similar to the back of their baseball cards–we perhaps saw some of that with Johnson today.

When they do that, it’s entirely possible they take an offense already on pace to score 907 runs (they scored 915 last season) and turn it from being merely good into something bordering on historic.

At that point, the Yankees could very well be unstoppable.