“This is crazy. This is crazy. This is crazy.” That’s what Clark Griswold said to himself as he tried to decide whether or not to skinny dip with The Girl in the Ferrari (as if there was anything to decide) and here I am saying the same thing to myself as the Yankees keep winning and keep inching closer to the postseason.

The Yankees weren’t supposed to be here. Not when they were 9-17 on May 5, or 24-28 on June 1, or 44-46 on July 16, or 52-52 at the trade deadline. They weren’t supposed to be here when they traded their closer to the Cubs, or when they traded the best reliever in baseball to the Indians or when they traded their best hitter to the Rangers. They weren’t supposed to be here with the kind of year A-Rod had and Mark Teixeira is having. They weren’t supposed to be here with the kind of year Brett Gardner and Jacoby Ellsbury are putting together at the top of the order. They weren’t supposed to be here with Chase Headley and Starlin Castro’s struggles or Brian McCann’s decline in production or all of the wasted at-bats given to Aaron Hicks. They weren’t supposed to be here with the inconsistencies of Michael Pineda and Nathan Eovaldi before his injury and Ivan Nova before he was traded. And they certainly weren’t supposed to be here when they called up three rookies in Gary Sanchez, Aaron Judge and Tyler Austin to become everyday players when the three of them had four combined plate appearances (all Sanchez’s) and no hits before Aug. 3. But here they are.

The Yankees have gone 21-13 since they “gave up on the season” and traded their three best assets not named Masahiro Tanaka. They have closed the gap in the division to four games in the loss column and the gap in the wild card to two games in the loss column. They have kept Yankees fans interested and intrigued into the second week of September when Yankees fans were supposed to turn to their NFL teams and start to countdown the days until the NHL and NBA seasons start. In a season in which nearly every preseason concern and question mark didn’t work out the way they did a year ago, the Yankees should have been buried long ago. But despite being a .500 team through 104 games and a team that hasn’t seen a positive run differential since the eighth game of the season, they are still in it.

I have given up on this team countless times this season only to be pulled back in and devastated only to be in on a potential playoff race again and again and again. It’s a vicious cycle that coupled with last season’s one-game playoff loss, the two postseason-less seasons in 2013 and 2014, the way the 2012 season ended and the recent retirements of Number 2, Number 42 and A-Rod has certainly deteriorated my health. Two nights ago, I was ready to be out on this Yankees team once again when Joe Girardi tried to manage the team to a loss with his bullpen decisions, only to have them come back on a Tyler Austin oppositie-field bomb, only to have to Dellin Betances nearly rip my heart out, only to have Blake Parker and Brett Gardner save the season.

Save the season. That’s been my motto all year. Carlos Beltran was the leader of the “Save the Season” campaign along with the Big Three in the bullpen and Didi Gregorius for a while. But with Beltran and two-thirds of the Big Three gone and Didi coming back down to earth somewhat, “Save the Season” has become a team effort. It was all Gary Sanchez for a couple of weeks. It has included Masahiro Tanaka for his last six starts (the Yankees are undefeated over those six starts). Luis Cessa and Bryan Mitchell have contributed, as have Tyler Clippard and Luis Severino. Starlin Castro has been involved when he isn’t swinging at pitches in the other batter’s box and Brian McCann has showed up from time to time. Even Jacoby Ellsbury, The Thief himself, and Chase Headley, The Bum himself, have had their moments. This Yankees team has gone from the most hated in my lifetime to one worth rooting for in a little over a month.

If the Yankees fall short of the postseason now, it will suck, but it won’t be lock-myself-in-my-room-for-the-offseason depressing like it would have been last season if they had (and they almost did). I have grown somewhat immune to bad seasons thanks to 2013 and 2014 and the majority of this one. This was supposed to be a lost season before it started and many times it was nearly finally lost, but each time, the Yankees came storming back. They aren’t in win-now mode the way most of the division is, and making the postseason this year would be a shock, but it would also be a bonus. (That’s a sentence I never envisioned myself writing four years ago.) The Yankees are playing with house money and as long as Joe Girardi doesn’t hit stay on a 16 with the dealer showing a 10 the way he did the other night with his bullpen management, the Yankees can’t lose.

Everyone knew the Yankees were going to do everything possible to sign CC Sabathia after the 2008 season. Once they missed the playoffs for the first time since 1993, they were going to sign him no matter what. So they offered him the most money for any pitcher in history and when he waited and waited for more because it was going to cost a lot to pry him from going home to the West Coast, they offered him even more. They did so because they needed an ace.

For the three seasons before Sabathia became a Yankee, Chien-Ming Wang was the Yankees’ No. 1 starter. Whether or not he was an “ace” was debated each and every start even though he won 19 games in both 2006 and 2007 and had started the Yankees’ only win in the 2006 ALDS against Detroit in Game 1. But in the 2007 ALDS, Wang gave the “not an ace” crowd all the fuel they would need in any debate when he got rocked in Game 1 of the ALDS and again in Game 4 with a chance to send the series back to Cleveland for Game 5.

The following season, Wang’s career would never be the same when in the middle of a five-inning shutout of the Astros, he hurt his foot running the bases. The Yankees were forced to put Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson(!) into the rotation for the rest of the season and missed the playoffs and Sabathia got his seven-year contract and $161 million.

To me, Wang was a No. 1, but he wasn’t an ace. When his bowling-bowl sinker wasn’t working, he wasn’t working. He couldn’t adjust on the fly and grind through a start without his best stuff and we saw it on the biggest stage in the 2007 ALDS when he allowed 12 earned runs in 5 2/3 innings over those two disastrous starts. Yes, his 2006 and 2007 seasons were underrated and underappreciated with back-to-back 19-win seasons, but he was given an average of 5.70 runs per start in 2006 (from a team that should have won the World Series) and an average of 6.47 runs per start in 2007. Kei Igawa might have won 19 games in 2007 if he had gotten that type of run support, or if he had actually been on the team and not in Triple-A.

But when it came to the Yankees’ expensive left-hander, it was the opposite. Sabathia and “ace” were synonymous for his first four seasons with the Yankees. From 2009-2012, Sabathia went 74-29 with a 3.22 ERA in the regular season and 7-2 with a 3.50 ERA in the postseason. In 2013, all of those regular-season and postseason innings finally started to catch up with Sabathia, his velocity began to diminish and he went 14-13 with a 4.78 ERA. The Yankees missed the postseason for the first time since they signed Sabathia and that coupled with the Red Sox winning the World Series destroyed the Yankees’ payroll plans. They once again needed an ace, so they turned turned to the free-agent market and gave Masahiro Tanaka and his zero career major league starts a seven-year, $155 million deal, which was nearly identical to Sabathia’s originial Yankees deal.

On Jan. 23, 2014, I wrote The Mystery of Mashiro Tanaka to pump the brakes on everyone who assumed Tanaka’s success in Japan would translate to the majors. With more than two months until Tanaka would actually pitch in a regular-season game, I said:

I’m not ready to give Tanaka the potential “ace” status that so many other people are willing to even without knowing what will happen when he pitches in the majors.

For now, I’ll have to spend the next 10 weeks imagining how Tanaka will pitch for the Yankees because for now, it’s the best anyone can do.

I was right to take a wait-and-see approach with Tanaka, but everyone who assumed greatness all along had a headstart on falling in love with Tanaka. Through Tanaka’s first 16 starts, he was 11-3 with a 2.10 ERA and the Yankees were 12-4 in his starts. But then after getting hit around by Minnesota and Cleveland in July, he landed on the disabled list with an elbow injury that took nearly every orthopedic surgeon’s opinion to come to the conclusion that he needed rest and rehab over surgery.

In 2015, we saw what life was like post-elbow injury for Tanaka with a drop in velocity and strikeouts and with another early-season trip to the disabled list for an elbow injury. I spent every day waiting to find out that Tanaka would be out for a year-plus due to needing Tommy John surgery. The old New York media tried to play doctor and suggest that Tanaka should just get it over with and get surgery, which was still not recommended by doctors, acting as if getting Tommy John surgery has been 100 percent successful for all pitchers who have undergone it.

Tanaka finished the season 12-7 with a 3.51 ERA in 24 starts and though at times it seemed like he would never be an “ace” or a real No. 1 again, he was given the ball for the one-game playoff and he turned a solid start: 5 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 3 K, 2 HR. It was good, but not good enough, though in reality, nothing would have been good enough. It didn’t matter if Tanaka pitched nine shutout innings, gave the start he did or got rocked, that Yankees team wasn’t going to score that game.

This season, Tanaka has learned how to pitch in his post-elbow injury career and with his elbow problem, if it’s even a problem anymore. He’s 12-4 (and has no-decisions in five starts in which he pitched at least six innings and gave up two earned runs or less) with a 3.11 ERA and the Yankees are 21-7 in his starts and 50-58 in all other games. In his 28 starts, he has allowed two earned runs or less in 21 and has pitched at least six innings in 22. He has one loss since July 27, and in the middle of this late-season postseason push, the Yankees have won his last six starts. He’s already thrown a career-high 179 1/3 innings and has at least five starts left if he stays healthy. (Knock on all the wood in your house.) If Masahiro Tanaka isn’t an ace, then the term shouldn’t exist. If Masahiro Tanaka isn’t an ace then who is?

There’s one Clayton Kershaw and he isn’t just an ace, he’s on pace to be the best pitcher in the history of baseball. The history of baseball. Everyone else who is considered an ace is in a tier below him and that includes Madison Bumgarner and Jake Arrieta and Chris Sale and Jose Fernandez and Max Scherzer, and it includes David Price and Felix Hernandez when they were still great, and it includes pre-2013 CC Sabathia. Tanaka is in that tier.

Tanaka has a career 3.14 ERA and .698 winning percentage in 72 starts, in which the Yankees are 50-22 (they are 192-196 in all other games since Tanaka joined the team). He has been their best pitcher for nearly three seasons and has lived up to his $155 million deal. He’s not just a front-end starter, he’s not just an elite starting pitcher and he’s not just a No. 1. He’s an ace.

I have always supported and even defended Michael Pineda. I was going to say minus a few “Ladies and gentlemens” along the way, but in searching, I only found one “Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Pineda!”, which came on April 6 in the second inning of the second game of the season. It came when Pineda allowed a two-out grand slam to George Springer immediately after the Yankees had scored six runs in the bottom of the first inning to take a 6-1 lead. That’s where my past criticism of Pineda starts and ends.

I should have criticized Pineda a lot more in the nearly three years he has pitched for the team and the five years he has been with the team. But I have always believed that the 22-year-old rookie All-Star for the Mariners in 2011 or the 25-year-old with a 1.89 ERA in 13 starts for the 2014 Yankees or the 26-year-old who was 5-0 with a 2.72 ERA on May 10, 2015 after striking out 16 Orioles will show up and actually stay. I have denied that Pineda is actually the pitcher who missed 2012 and 2013 due to injuries from overthrowing because Yankees beat writers questioned his spring training velocity or the pitcher that got suspended for being unable to hide his pine tar and then got hurt while suspended or the pitcher who pitched to a 5.22 ERA over his last 14 starts in 2015 and has a 5.12 ERA through 26 starts this season. I believe Pineda is the pitcher who put up this line in six June starts: 36 IP, 27 H, 12 R, 11 ER, 8 BB, 49 K, 2.75 ERA, 0.972 WHIP. And not the pitcher who put up this line in five May starts: 26.1 IP, 38 H, 22 R, 22 ER, 7 BB, 29 K, 7.52 ERA, 1.709 WHIP. Maybe it’s time I change my stance.

Michael Pineda is essentially A.J. Burnett. For some reason though, I have let Pineda go unscathed over his Yankees tenure, and more importantly, those last 40 starts, while I probably have written more words about Burnett since 2010 than anyone and he hasn’t been on the team for five seasons now. But like Burnett supporters (if there really were any) did for him, I have done for Pineda by letting the bad days, two-strike daggers and two-out rallies go because of what happens when he isn’t being the most frustrating and inconsistent pitcher in the league. Monday night in Kansas City was the latest example.

An odd-hit ball with a lot of backspin to second base put Jarrod Dyson on first to start the bottom of the first. A wild pitch moved Dyson to second though he probably would have gotten there on his own with a stolen base against Pineda. Pineda struck out Cheslor Cuthbert for the first out and then Dyson stole third on the first pitch to Lorenzo Cain. Cain singled and Dyson scored. Cain then stole second on the second pitch to Eric Hosmer before Pineda retired Hosmer on a fly ball. Two outs, runner on third and one run in. Nothing terrible, but then again, two outs is usually when it starts against Pineda. Kendry Morales singled home Cain and then Salvador Perez singled to move Morales to second. Alex Gordon singled home Morales with Perez moving to third. And then, thankfully, Gordon was caught stealing second base to end the inning. Three runs on five hits and two stolen bases against Pineda (neither of the steals were on Gary Sanchez). Here’s what happened over the next five innings:

Strikeout swinging
Strikeout swinging
Flyout
Strikeout swinging
Groundout
Flyout
Groundout
Groundout
Strikeout swinging
Flyout
Strikeout swinging
Lineout
Strikeout swinging
Groundout
Strikeout swinging

Pineda retired the next 15 batters he faced from the second inning through the sixth inning, striking out seven, all swinging. Why isn’t that the guy who shows up in the first inning of every game? And I’m not asking for Pineda to be perfect like he was, I’m just asking him to not pitch to a 7.62 first-inning ERA where batters are hitting .369/.400/.640 against him. Maybe he needs to throw a simulated inning in the bullpen before the game. Maybe the Yankee Stadium scoreboard operator needs to change the inning to “2” on all the boards or turn the inning off on all the boards completely, so there’s nothing visible to remind Pineda what inning it is (though this doesn’t take care of the problem on the road). Or right before Pineda takes the mound before his first inning of work, everyone in the dugout congratulates him on his quick 1-2-3 first inning that didn’t happen to make him think he’s going out for his second inning of work the way Jim tricked Dwight into thinking it was Friday when it was Thursday, so he wouldn’t show up to work on Friday in The Office. Pineda’s first-inning struggles are a big enough deal that it’s time to get creative and do something about them.

There were times in 2012 and 2013 when I thought he would never actually pitch for the Yankees. There were times in 2014 when I thought he was the Yankees’ ace. There were times in 2015 when I thought he should start the one-game playoff if the Yankees had to play in one (which they did). There have been times in 2016 where I wondered if he would just be a near-5.00 ERA pitcher forever and there have been times where I have thought maybe it would be better if the Yankees traded him and moved on despite the lack of starting pitching in the league and in free agency. There was a time on Monday night in the first inning when I was finally ready to give up on Pineda and put an end to believing he could ever put together a good, consistent, healthy full season rather than a guy with all the talent in the world who could never put it all together. But like Burnett, he put together those five innings to pull me back in and make me believe once again in his ability.

Joe Girardi and the Yankees broadcasters would always talk about A.J. Burnett’s “great stuff” and I always laughed at that phrase. How could a pitcher who went 13-9 with a 4.04 ERA on a 103-win team, 10-15 with a 5.26 ERA on a 95-win team and 11-11 with a 5.15 ERA on a 97-team win and who won two of his seven postseason starts in three years and only pitched in Game 4 of the 2010 ALCS (and lost) out of necessity and pitched in Game 4 of the 2011 ALDS (and won thanks to an amazing Curtis Granderson catch) out of necessity have “great stuff”? Pitchers who have “great stuff” win and are consistently good. Clayton Kershaw has “great stuff”. Jake Arrieta has “great stuff”. Roy Halladay had “great stuff”. A.J. Burnett had “inconsistent stuff” and Michael Pineda has the same. But whenever I would argue about Burnett and cite his shortcomings (and it was easy to do so), his supporters would say, “Game 2 of the 2009 World Series.” Yes, he’ll always have that Game 2 performance (7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 9 K) to fall back on as an example of his contribution to the championship and as an example of his so-called “great stuff”.

Pineda doesn’t have a dominant World Series performance or even a single postseason start as an example of his “great stuff”, and he’s nearing the point where he might never get that chance as a Yankee if his last two starts are how he finishes this season. All he has are a few good regular-season stretches, a couple double-digit strikeout games and innings like Monday’s second through sixth scattered throughout his Yankees tenure. The rest is a lot of disappointment much like Burnett gave Yankees fans, and the last former Yankees pitcher Pineda should want to be compared to is Burnett when it comes to having the ability, but not being able to put it together.

When the Yankees signed Brian McCann for five years and $85 million on Dec. 2, 2013, it was expected. Like the CC Sabathia signing in 2008 and the Jason Giambi signing in 2001, everyone knew it was going to happen. The Yankees had played with a revolving door at catcher since Jorge Posada’s retirement and after grinding through a year with Francisco Cervelli, Chris Stewart and Austin Romine, the they weren’t going to do that again. Add in that the Yankees had missed the playoffs for the first time since 2008 and the Red Sox had won the World Series and it made it even more of a sure-thing.

The Yankees didn’t need the career .277/.350/.473 hitting 30-year-old McCann at the time. But there have been a lot of times when the Yankees didn’t need a a free-agent star and got him anyway. They had a 28-year-old Cervelli, 25-year-old Romine, 22-year-old John Ryan Murphy and 21-year-old Gary Sanchez. McCann would just block their paths to the majors and be another high-paid player nearing the wrong side of 30 in the long list of high-paid players on the wrong side of 30 that have defined the Yankees over the last decade-plus. The Yankees didn’t need Brian McCann and the $85 million would be better spent elsewhere (ROBINSON CANO, cough, cough), but they signed him anyway.

When rumors surfaced leading up to the trade deadline that the Yankees could move McCann back to his former team in the Braves and all it would take is eating a combined $10 million of his remaining $34 million over the next two years, I may or may not have danced around the room, and I don’t dance. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen though I’m holding out hope it still might this season or in the offseason. Fortunately, McCann’s presence and contract didn’t stop Brian Cashman from calling up Gary Sanchez for good.

Sanchez was hitting .282/.339/.468 with 10 home runs and 50 RBIs in Triple-A at the time of his call-up and he had been a .275/.339.460 hitter in seven minor league seasons. He had gone hitless in two at-bats for the Yankees in 2015 and went 0-for-4 in the only game he had played in this season back on May 13. He went 1-for-4 with two strikeout and a run in his return on Aug. 3. He got hit first career extra-base hit and multi-hit game the next night against the Mets going 2-for-4. The following night he picked up his first career RBI with a pair against the Indians. But after the next two games, he was hitting a typical rookie-struggling-in-the-majors .217/.250/.348 after his first game in Boston. The next game, well, that’s when everything changed.

Sanchez went 4-for-5 with a home run, which was longest home run I have ever seen hit to straightaway center at Fenway as it hit the backwall of the park and might have hit Jillian’s if the wall hadn’t been there. Since that Aug. 10 game when Sanchez hit the mammoth home run, he’s hitting .469/.536/1.082 with nine home runs and 17 RBIs. He’s become a combination of 1998 Shane Spencer and 2007 Shelley Duncan except he’s 23, a catcher and the face of the franchise and not a career minor leaguer catching lightning in a bottle for a month.

This 13-game run has become laughable from an “I can’t believe he hit another one” standpoint. Every at-bat of his has been must-watch since his Aug. 3 call-up, but now they have become must-watch in a much different sense. That different sense is Spencer in September 1998 or Tino Martinez in May 2005 (10 home runs in 11 games as a 37-year-old) or Jason Giambi from July 4, 2005 to Aug. 4, 2005 (16 home runs in 26 games a few months after being asked to go to the minors by the Yankees) or A-Rod for all of 2007 (54 home runs) or Duncan from late July on in 2007 (seven home runs as a 27-year-old rookie). Sanchez made straightaway center at Fenway seem as close as the Pesky Pole. He made the seemingly-impossible-to-hit second deck in left field at Yankee Stadium look like the short porch in right, and over the last three days, he turned Safeco Field into Camden Yards with three home runs in 11 at-bats in Seattle.

I keep thinking about how this season could have gone if Sanchez had been here all along (or possibly in earlier seasons) along with other pieces of the future (Luis Severino, Chad Green, Luis Cessa, Aaron Judge and Tyler Austin). Maybe if the Yankees hadn’t wasted four of the six months of the season giving at-bats to dead-weight contracts and sub-.200 hitters they would be closer than five games back for the second wild card. I guess there’s no sense in looking back and wondering “what could have been” with yet another Yankees team, but instead it’s time to look ahead at the future and the future looks as beautiful as Sanchez’s first-inning home run barrage.

Earlier this week, Sanchez tweeted the following:

"Experts" say we @Yankees have no chance to make the playoffs…well we may just be young and naive enough to disagree. #NotGivingUp

— Gary Sanchez (@ElGarySanchez) August 20, 2016

Now it’s wishful thinking like Go West to think the Yankees are going to make the playoffs. Maybe if Joe Girardi hadn’t used Anthony Swarzak in two big spots over the last week and the team were now three games back instead of five heading into a three-game weekend series with the Orioles then we could get excited about a playoff berth. I don’t expect Sanchez to continue to put the Yankees on his back and save the season in terms of reaching the postseason.  He has already saved the season in terms of giving Yankees fans a reason to watch a current fourth-place team.

Over the last 22 days, Sanchez has become the starting catcher with Brian McCann still on the roster. He has become the Yankees’ No. 3 hitter with Carlos Beltran traded, A-Rod released and Mark Teixeira barely hanging on to his career. He has become a reason to watch the Yankees in a season in which they are going to miss the playoffs for the third time in four years. He has become the face of the franchise for a franchise that has always had one. He has become everything every Yankees fan hoped he would be and more. He has saved the season and the future.