And just like that, it’s over. The daily grind that started in Tampa back on Sunday, April 2 has ended.

Twenty-eight hours ago I was planning my trip to Los Angeles for the World Series for an event that I thought would never happen, let alone nearly happen this season: my Yankees against my girlfriend’s Dodgers.

Back then, all those 28 hours ago, it was win tonight OR tomorrow and the Yankees are headed to the World Series for the first time in eight years in the most improbable of ways by reaching the postseason as a projected 81-win team, by beating Minnesota in the wild-card game after falling behind 3-0 in the top of the first, by overcoming a 2-0 series deficit to top-seeded Cleveland after going off on Corey Kluber for the second time in five nights and by overcoming another 2-0 series deficit to the Astros after winning three straight at Yankee Stadium. But now, here I am, wondering how a dream so close to finally being realized ended with one run scored in 18 innings against an Astros team the Yankees had seemingly figured out for three straight days in the Bronx.

Saturday night’s Game 7 was the fifth time the Yankees played for their season in 19 nights, starting with the raucous night at the Stadium back on Oct. 3, before the wild Sunday night Game 3 against the Indians on Oct. 8, followed by the series-tying Game 4 against the Indians the next night on Oct. 9 and then the second batting practice in five days against Corey Kluber two nights later on Oct. 11. You could even count Games 3, 4 and 5 against the Astros as elimination games because if the Yankees had gone down 3-0, 3-1 or 3-2, their season would have been over as well. I didn’t think going back to Houston UP 3-2 would mean the same.

I’m not angry with the way the season ended. Not like I was after the 2010 ALCS when the failed trade for Cliff Lee was the sole reason the Yankees didn’t win the pennant (and likely didn’t win back-to-back World Series). And I’m not mad with the way the season ended. Not like I was after the 2012 ALCS when I had to watch Derek Jeter break his ankle in what would be his final postseason game, and really the end of his career, as the Yankees were swept by the Tigers.

Those two ALCS losses were different. The window of opportunity on those Yankees teams was closing … OK … slamming shut and those two series represented the last real chances for that group to add to their collection of five championships.

After 2012, with Jeter suffering a career-altering injury at age 38, and Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte entering their final season, half of the “Core Four” would be joining Jorge Posada in retirement following the 2013 season, and Jeter would follow after 2014. Aside from the Yankees who had been Yankees since elementary school for me, Alex Rodriguez was 37 and coming off a 3-for-25 in the postseason, in which he was pinch-hit for in the ALDS; Robinson Cano, coming off his own 3-for-41 in the postseason after hitting .313/.379/.550 with 33 home runs in the regular season was entering the final year of his contract in 2013; Curtis Granderson, who had hit 43 home runs in the regular season and 41 the year before, put together a nice 3-for-30 with 16 strikeouts in the postseason and was up for free agency; Nick Swisher, who made Brian Cashman look like a genius for acquiring him in exchange for Wilson Betemit, had hit 105 home runs in four regular seasons with the Yankees, but had been the worst postsesason player in history in those same four years, and played himself out of the team’s future plans as a free agent; Russell Martin had lessened the hurt of Jorge Posada retiring, but he was also up for free agency, and the Yankees’ catching depth (and by catching depth, at the time it was Francisco Cervelli, Austin Romine and John Ryan Murphy, not Gary Sanchez) meant he was gone.

The retirements, injuries, free agents and uncertainty following 2012 led to this Opening Day lineup in 2013:

Brett Gardner, CF
Eduardo Nunez, SS
Robinson Cano, 2B
Kevin Youkilis, 1B
Vernon Wells, LF
Ben Francisco, DH
Ichiro Suzuki, RF
Jayson Nix, 3B
Francisco Cervelli, C

If that didn’t make you sick, here’s who played the most games at each position that season:

C: Chris Stewart
1B: Lyle Overbay
2B: Robinson Cano
3B: Eduardo Nunez
SS: Jayson Nix
LF: Vernon Wells
CF: Brett Gardner
RF: Ichiro Suzuki
DH: Travis Hafner

Still haven’t thrown up? The following players played for the 2013 Yankees:

David Adams, Zoilo Almonte, Brennan Boesch, Reid Brignac, Luis Cruz, Alberto Gonzalez, Travis Ishikawa, Corban Joseph, Brent Lillibridge, Melky Mesa and Thomas Neal.

Somehow the 2012 Yankees played for the AL pennant against the Tigers and the 2013 Yankees went into a time machine to the Stump Merrill era and featured a roster that might not have won the Independent League. (Somehow, they won 85 games in Joe Girardi’s greatest accomplishment as a manager). The most highly-touted position player prospect to play for the Yankees in 2013 was David Adams, who will always be remembered as the player whose ankle nixed the Cliff Lee deal. The 26-year-old rookie hit .193/.252/.286 with two home runs and 13 RBIs in 152 plate appearances.

That’s why I’m not angry or mad or frustrated or disappointed or upset at the way this season. I’m sad that baseball is over. I’m sad that the young Yankees weren’t able to do the unthinkable and win it all well ahead of schedule. I’m sad that I won’t be going to the world in New York or Los Angeles. I’m sad that there isn’t a meaningful baseball game for me until March 27. But what I’m not sad about is that the dark days of 2013-2016 are over.

Gary Sanchez and his 53 career home runs in 175 games will be 25 in December. AL Rookie of the Year and possibly AL MVP Aaron Judge will turn 26 in April. Top 3 AL starting pitcher with the hardest fastball velocity for a starter in the majors Luis Severino will be 24 in February. Healthy Greg Bird, who hit three postseason home runs to go along with a .426 on-base percentage, will be 25 in November. Jordan Montgomery, who pitched to a 3.88 ERA in 29 starts as a rookie, will be 25 in December. Old man Didi Gregorius, who set the Yankees’ franchise record for home runs in season by a shortstop and saved the Yankees’ season in the wild-card game and again in Game 5 against Cleveland, will turn 28 in February.

There’s no more fake prospect hype and a long list of bad contracts. There are real homegrown stars, superstars even, on this team and when you figure that Chase Headley only has one year at $13 million left, the only real bad contract left on the team is Jacoby Ellsbury’s $63.4 million over the next three years and then the $5 million to buy him out of the 2021 season. One bad contract! That’s it! A-Rod’s $21 million to not actually play is over. There’s only $5.5 million left to pay Brian McCann to get big hits against the Yankees. Matt Holliday’s $13 million has cleared. CC Sabathia will return, but he won’t be making $25 million per season. And again, there’s just one more year of Chase Headley at $13 million. One. More. Year.

The future isn’t just bright for the Yankees, it’s you-have-to-buy-those-special-glasses-like-you-did-for-the-total-eclipse bright. The next core of the franchise is already in place and that’s before Gleyber Torres and Clint Frazier find their full-time place on the team with others like Miguel Andujar, Tyler Wade, Chance Adams and Justus Sheffield to follow. And if needed, that whole part about tens of millions of dollars coming off the books between this year and next will happen just in time for the 2018 free-agent class, which includes Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, who will both be 26 on Opening Day 2019.

All of this helped me as Justin Verlander pitched like Curt Schilling in Game 6 on Friday night, and it comforted me after Evan Gattis’ solo home run in the third inning in Game 7 on Saturday as I watched the outs go by knowing the inevitable: the 2017 Yankees would fall one win short of the World Series.

But this is just the beginning, the way the heartbreak of 1995 was the beginning for those Yankees. These Yankees won’t ever be the underdog again. The young, fresh faces in the Bronx soon won’t be likeable or easy to root for by the rest of the baseball world as they will enter 2018 as the favorite to win the AL East and will be picked by many to get the win they weren’t able to get on Friday or Saturday to win the AL pennant.

I’m sad the season is over, but I’m happy the Yankees are the Yankees once again.

Gary Sanchez is the AL Rookie of the Year. Not Michael Fulmer. Gary Sanchez. And it’s not even close.

In an ideal world, there would be one Rookie of the Year for pitching and one for hitting and then this wouldn’t be something to argue and I wouldn’t have to write this story. But this is baseball, where the All-Star Game determines home-field advantage in the World Series, the wild-card game turns a 162-game schedule into a nine-inning game and no one knows for sure what call is going to be made after every review. So complaining about an award that really only benefits the player who wins it, his family, his agent, his bank account and his team’s fans is his team had a bad season seems kind of pointless, unless you fall into one of those categories. For me, I’m a fan of a team that had a bad season and has a player in the AL Rookie of the Year conversation.

When Sanchez got called up for good on Aug. 3, the Yankees were 53-53 and had just given up on the season by trading Andrew Miller, Carlos Beltran, Aroldis Chapman and Ivan Nova. (Ivan Nova really wasn’t part of them giving up, but he was in the majors and still is.) In return, they got an abundance of prospects and Adam Warren back as well as Tyler Clippard in a separate deal. The Yankees traded their best two pitchers, who very well might be the best two relievers in baseball, and their best hitter. They waved the white flag as aggressively as they could and turned to Sanchez to begin the top prospect showcase that Yankees fans had been waited for and what should have been started two or even three years ago. Sanchez gave Yankees fans meaningful baseball up until the final weekend of the season and climbed all the way back into the postseason to at one point trail in the wild-card standings by one game.

This isn’t a knock on Michael Fulmer and it isn’t meant to take away from his season or say he had a bad season. He had a nice season, making 26 starts and going 11-7 with a 3.06 ERA and 1.119 WHIP. Those numbers are solid and good and all that, but they’re not historical like Sanchez’s are.

Sanchez finished the season hitting .299/.376/.657 with 12 doubles, 20 home runs, 42 RBIs and a ridiculous 1.032 OPS. He tied Nomar Mazara for the most home runs by a rookie in the AL in 315 less at-bats, had three multi-home run games and homered in consecutive games seven times. He became the fastest player in history to 20 home runs (along with being the fastest to nearly all of the other home runs totals along the way), hit third in the Yankees’ lineup, forced Brian McCann to the bench and hopefully soon to Atlanta, and did all of this while mostly playing catcher. He 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 he turned Safeco Field into Camden Yards with three home runs in 11 at-bats in Seattle. He single-handedly saved the Yankees’ season for two months, turned a lost season into an eventful one with real promise for the future and made every one of his 229 plate appearances must-watch TV.

The idea that Fulmer is more deserving of the award than Sanchez because he was in the majors longer and pitched a “full season” is as ridiculous as someone winning the Cy Young solely based on their wins total or someone winning MVP based on if their team reached the postseason or not. In a game now controlled by analytics, how is it possible that such archaic ways of thinking and reasoning can still be used to decide yearly awards.

There’s a very good chance Sanchez won’t win the award because Fulmer was in the league longer, even if he did only make 26 starts didn’t join the Tigers until one month into the season on April 29. But Joe Girardi said it best (I can’t believe I just said that Joe Girardi said something “best”) when he as nicely and as politically correct as possible said, “I think Fulmer’s had a great year, but if I had a vote, it’d be for Gary,” following Sanchez’s 20th home run in his 185th at-bat. And for someone who has heard nearly every word Girardi has said as manager of the Yankees over the last nine years, he basically said what I said earlier, “Gary Sanchez is the AL Rookie of the Year, and it’s not even close.”

“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.