Almost every team in Major League Baseball has played 30 games in 2017, and yet here we are, with just one squad still without double-digit losses.
Winners of their last six straight, the New York Yankees are baseball's most surprising team this season. Of course, one could argue that the demise of the Toronto Blue Jays or San Francisco Giants is more surprising, but let's try and stay on the positive side.
Let's break down the Yankees' performance in a variety of ways to test whether or not these Bronx Bombers are for real, or if they'll run out of gas down the stretch.
The reflexive analysis will be to go back and notice that the Yankees were already trending upward. From August on last season, the Yankees posted a 32-26 record - a decent stretch for a team that was .500 through the first half of the year, but nowhere near this 2017 start.
The Yankees' pitching staff - led by no single ace - somehow finds itself in the top five by WAR. In fact, the rotation has been such a by-committee effort that a reliever is actually the team's second-most valuable pitcher this year.
Luis Severino reigns supreme at 0.8 WAR, even though he has a home-run-to-flyball rate above 20 percent. Despite pitching just a third of the innings, Aroldis Chapman sits in a virtual tie with Michael Pineda at 0.6 WAR for second place on the team. Pineda is having yet another up-and-down year and, like Severino, also has a high home-run rate, giving up dingers in 25 percent of his flyballs.
As a starting staff, just two teams are giving up home runs at an unluckier clip: the Colorado Rockies - predictably - and the Houston Astros. If you had to pick some regression candidates in that category, you'd probably pick the Astros and Yankees to keep it in the park a tad more for the rest of the season.
However, by BABIP, the Yankees are right in the middle of the pack. The starting staff is giving up hits on 28 percent of balls put into play - which might even be a bit below the league average.
Typically, teams with good infield defense can sustain a lower BABIP. The 33-year-old Chase Headley is a bit below average and likely in his decline phase, Starlin Castro has never been employed for his defensive acumen, and Didi Gregorius is a tick above average by the metrics. To cut through subtleties, the Yankees do not have an infield defense capable of sustaining a low BABIP - but it's not as though they've been lucky either.
They do seem to have some good luck on the other side of the ball, though. The team's .317 BABIP on offense is tied for the second-best in all of baseball, behind the otherworldly Washington Nationals.
The Yankees as a whole are also depositing flyballs into the seats at an unsustainable rate. Their 17.3 percent home-run-to-flyball rate is second-best in baseball despite a hard-hit rate that ranks eighth-worst.
Remember too, that the Yankees have done this largely without their slugging catcher Gary Sanchez, who missed nearly a full month with a biceps strain.
Instead, they've relied on Aaron Judge and Aaron Hicks to be the team's OPS leaders - something that seems at least half unsustainable. Not to mention, the resurgence of Matt Holliday, a player picked up off the trash heap this past offseason for less than the cost of a qualifying offer. It opens up a variety of questions, chief of which being 'how good actually is Aaron Judge?'
Related: Rushing to Judge-ment: Projecting the Yankees phenom's 2017
Even further, are Castro and Headley this good at the plate? Castro typically hovers around the league-average mark, but is somehow posting a 165 wRC+ in 2017. Headley has had seasons like this at the plate, but not since 2012, which was probably an outlier.
Of course, many hitters have been overhauling their swings lately to much better results. Take Ryan Zimmerman for instance, who will surely regress somewhat, but who - under the tutelage of teammate Daniel Murphy - seems to have turned his career back around at 32 years old.
So, maybe there's something to the unpredictable late-career breakout of Headley. And maybe Castro has found something extra - but not this extra, especially buoyed by a BABIP at .400 - heading into his prime.
Between a pitching staff that could actually perform better, and hitters that are benefiting from way too much luck, the Yankees are likely for real - just not to this level.
According to FanGraphs' rest-of-season projections, the Yankees have a 72 percent probability of making the postseason. It's May though, and a .700 record is unsustainable no matter how good a team is. The Chicago Cubs had a .640 record last year, and that was incredible.
We're not even a quarter of the way through the 2017 campaign, and the American League East is far from decided. In fact, the 17-14 Boston Red Sox still have a higher probability of winning the division. It's also worth mentioning that the Baltimore Orioles are one of just four other teams to join the Yankees in the 20-win club this early in the year.
The divisional race is far from over, but the Evil Empire certainly appears to be a force to be reckoned with for the remainder of the season.
