[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.

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Of all Major League teams, thus far, the Yankees rank just twelfth (as of this writing) in hits.

That’s almost as middle-of-the-pack as you can get, given the thirty teams in the league over all. Not all that remarkable, one would think–certainly, one might expect a team which hits so, well, averagely, to be closer to the middle of the pack in the standings.

If, however, you learned baseball fan (which, by this point, you probably are), visit the stats page, and then move to the column third from right, labeled OBP, and click that to sort, you’ll see that the Yankees rank not 12th, but second.

On a team where Mark Teixeira and Nick Johnson are both hitting under .150, and Robinson Canó, albeit briefly, had a higher batting average than an on-base percentage, it can occasionally be hard to believe that the team has not yet had a game where they’ve scored less than three runs, or that they’ve scored five in nine of 12.

Still, if one really wants to know what’s gotten into the Yankees this season, all one has to do is look at the just-completed series with the Texas Rangers to get some idea.

The Rangers are not supposed to be a poor team, pitching wise, yet in this series only one of the three starters pitched more than four innings.

On the flip side, the Yankees starters all went at least six innings–and Sabathia, who threw 73 pitches and had a staggering 58 of them count as strikes, would have certainly pitched longer had not the game been called due to rain. AJ Burnett pitched seven innings; today Andy Pettitte has, despite not having his greatest ‘stuff’, pitched eight.

One can’t discount the Texas offense, either–a team with Michael Young, Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz and Vladimir Guerrerro is hardly the Pittsburgh Pirates or the San Francisco Giants of recent memory.

So here you have it: the Yankees aren’t (necessarily) blowing teams out 10-0 every game, but with the way the starters are throwing and the bullpen is not making headlines (because it is, by and large, doing its job), four runs begins to feel like twenty.

It’s been a while since the Yankees have had this good of an April–not only are they winning, but they are winning against teams that should shape up to be among the league’s elite–so there is certainly a temptation to let it go to one’s head.

Yeah, this team is good, but Yankee fans should know better than most that the baseball season is a marathon (yeah, yeah, cliché and all that). A hot April can turn out to be insignificant if the team levels off in June and July.

That said, the more last season progressed, the better the Yankees became. Right now, the Yankees are pretty darn good, but some of their best hitters aren’t even hitting the Mendoza line, and Javier Vazquez has, well, not been great. So, as good as the Yankees are, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

That’s reason enough to be optimistic, if ever there was one.

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(with thanks to Jonathan Mayo)

There’s a proud man.

He was once (and presumably still is) a millionaire.

He had a fantastic job, one which many young children dream that they might one day be able to do.

Alas, this November he lost his job.  He wasn’t fired, he didn’t do anything wrong, but his skills were not what his company needed at the moment, and, well, with the economy the way it is, his salary was a little too extravagant for what his performance warranted.

His company decided that they would prefer younger, fresher talent–talent that was not too far removed from training, and thus cheaply obtainable.  In an economy such as this, any dollar saved was supremely beneficial.

As autumn turned to winter, he looked everywhere in his industry, with all the competitors of his former company, his career counsellor advised him that there was no reason for him to ever consent to a salary or employment contract inferior to his previous one.  His career counsellor had long given the same advice to others in the same industry, but niether seemed to grasp the difficulties and the climate of the current economy.

And so, as our hero continued to look, the opportunties disappeared:  in LA, in St. Louis, in Atlanta, in New York and in others, the position was filled by others with either better skills or less pride, and sometimes both.

Soon the new year came around, and not so long after that the proud man found himself only a few weeks before the High Season still seeking employment.

Could he, one must think, return to his previous employer?  Though they have filled the void, they have not done so to the degree that their shareholders had come to expect.

The company, however, is not in the same state that it was when our hero was first employed by them–they can no longer pay him the salary he so desires; out of choice or necessity is known only to those executives, so we must only speculate.

One thing, however, remains clear:  the witching hour grows nigh and our hero is still without a job.

What’s the moral of the story?

Swallow your pride, Damon.  I am about to lose all the credit in the world of Yankee blogging for saying this, but swallow your pride and come back to the Yanks.  Not for your defence, but because Nick Johnson being Nick Johnson is probably going to get hurt at some point and we will need a decent DH and besides do we really want Brett Gardner playing left field every day of the season when a better option is available?

I realize it’s a lot to ask, but you’ve got at least one good year with the bat left; NYS is perfect for your swing and don’t tell me you’re mulling retirement, either….

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