I left Yankee Stadium just before midnight on Oct. 3, 2006 as River Ave. filled with chants of “SWEEP! SWEEP! SWEEP!” The Yankees had cruised to an 8-4 win in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Tigers, backed by a 5-for-5, two-double, two-home run night from Derek Jeter and a two-run home run from Jason Giambi, and the 56,291 at the Stadium were pouring onto the street making it known how they thought the best-of-5 series would go.

The Yankees had won 97 games, easily winning the AL East by 10 games. Their starting pitching had been shaky all season, but their offense was so ridiculous and overflowing with talent that defending AL MVP Alex Rodriguez was batting sixth, Robinson Cano hit .342 in the regular season and was batting ninth and Gary Sheffield had to learn how to play first base to keep his bat in the lineup. Their lineup for that Game 1 win:

Johnny Damon, CF
Derek Jeter, SS
Bobby Abreu, RF
Gary Sheffield, 1B
Jason Giambi, DH,
Alex Rodriguez, 3B
Hideki Matsui, LF
Jorge Posada, C
Robinson Cano, 2B

The 2006 Yankees were the best team in baseball. They should have won the pennant and then would have faced an 83-win Cardinals team in the World Series, a team which started Jeff Weaver twice and Jeff Suppan once in the World Series. The Yankees should have won the World Series. They didn’t because they had been built only to win in the regular season, the same way they have been many times between 2004 and 2018. The Yankees had the league’s best lineup and one of the best of all time, but the organization failed to address their need for starting pitching, and when the bats went quiet, the season ended against Kenny Rogers and Jeremy Bonderman.

The Yankees could have won that World Series with a rotation that featured 43-year-old Randy Johnson and his 5.00 ERA and Jaret Wright and his 1.525 WHIP, just like they could have won any of the seasons between 2004 and 2018, when they were giving postseason starts to less-than-ideal options. Rarely during those 15 years did the Yankees go into the playoffs with a pitching edge, relying on their always-stacked offense and mediocre starting pitching to be enough, and only once was it enough. Since 2004, the Yankees have had many chances to win championships, but nearly every season, they have entered the postseason as just another team in the crapshoot that is baseball’s postseason, infrequently putting together the best possible team to give them an advantage over the rest of the field.

The Yankees have tried in recent years to build a team which can win in both the regular season and postseason by creating a super bullpen, capable of shortening games to four or five innings. The strategy nearly got them to the World Series in 2017 before the bats went quiet in Games 6 and 7 in Houston, and it might have worked in 2018 if the manager had used his best relievers with the season on the line. So far, the Yankees’ decision to focus and spend on building the best possible bullpen while piecing together a rotation filled with inconsistency and injury concerns hasn’t worked out, and there’s a chance they could be headed for the same fate this season.

The Yankees are once again the best team in baseball. The Dodgers’ win percentage might suggest differently, but the Yankees are tied in the loss column with the back-to-back World Series loser despite being without their best starting pitcher and best reliever all season, having their best player miss two months, losing their starting third baseman for the entire season, getting nine games out of last season’s leading home run hitter, playing without their starting centerfielder for the first six weeks and their starting shortstop for the first third of the season. They have also watched their catcher, first baseman, three other starting pitchers and their should-be fourth outfielder all also land on the injured list. Yeah, the Yankees are the best team in baseball.

The Yankees might be the best team in baseball, but as currently constructed, they aren’t the best team for October baseball. There aren’t many playoff scenarios in which they will have the edge with their rotation and there are lineups as good and possibly more balanced than theirs. Right now, the Yankees would be just one of the teams in the postseason, and not the team, with the same chance as any of the other teams to win.

There are three things that worry me about the Yankees for the 2019 postseason. They aren’t minor worries, they are keep-me-up-at-night worries.

1. The rotation. Last week, I wrote I want the Yankees to trade for Madison Bumgarner, and they should want to too. If Luis Severino is unable to return and be his old self, the Yankees would go with Masahiro Tanaka (who I trust as a much as anyone I ever trusted in October) in Game 1 and then the right-handed A.J. Burnett in James Paxton in Game 2. After that, maybe it’s Domingo German if his nonsensical innings limit allows, or it’s a combination of CC Sabathia, J.A. Happ and Chad Green the Opener. Excuse me, while I quickly search Amazon for a respirator.

2. The lineup. The Yankees’ lineup the last couple years reminds me of that Yankees lineup which lost to the Tigers. It’s a lot of power and a lot of big names that easily beats up on average starting pitching for six months, but when it sees good to great starting pitching every night in the playoffs, it disappears. I envision the lineup chasing sliders low and away in October because I watched it the last two Octobers. To make matters worse, the Yankees only left-handed bats are Aaron Hicks and Didi Gregorius, and neither belongs higher than sixth in the order, though I’m sure the Yankees will force them higher to break up the righties even though they are undeserving.

3. The manager. Brian Cashman built Aaron Boone a super bullpen for last October, featuring Dellin Betances, Aroldis Chapman, David Robertson, Zack Britton and Chad Green. But in the most important bullpen spots in the postseason, Boone either went to his bullpen too late or went to Lance Lynn instead. Buying someone a Ferrari doesn’t make sense if they either don’t know how to drive or are going to opt to drive their old, beat-up Acura anyway. Boone demonstrated all of last season he didn’t know how to manage a bullpen and it reared its ugly head at the worst possible time. This season, he has made the same egregious mistakes as last season, and I’m petrified he could be the Yankees’ most-feared opponent in October.

The Yankees could win the World Series with their current roster though their chances would certainly increase if Severino, Betances and Giancarlo Stanton all returned and all returned at their normal performance level. It’s quite possible the Yankees feel they are essentially acquiring an ace, the best reliever in baseball and the 2017 NL MVP at the deadline, and therefore, they will stand pat with their current roster. But Severino is one setback away from not being able to start a game this season and Betances is getting dangerously close to having his free-agent season be lost. As for Stanton, who knows if and when he will come back as the most recent update had him still not ready to resume baseball activities. Stanton’s situation is the least dire and least important, but with two weeks to go until the trade deadline, the Yankees have to plan as if they won’t have Severino or Betances this season.

The Yankees are going to the postseason and they are going as AL East champions. There are 70 games left for them to prepare for October, try to get and remain healthy and line up their rotation for the ALDS. Everything they do between now and Game 162 is for the playoffs. The first thing they have to do is address their rotation.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!

The last time Madison Bumgarner made a full season worth of starts was three years ago in 2016. That season, he threw 226 2/3 innings and led the league with 912 batters faced before pitching a complete-game shutout of the Mets in the National League Wild-Card Game. After adding to his historic postseason resume, the eventual champion Cubs beat him up for three runs and eight baserunners over five innings in the NLDS.

“Three years ago” is a long time in baseball. When you think about the Yankees, three years ago today, Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira were still on the team, the Yankees had given opportunities for playing time to Dustin Ackley and Ike Davis, Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi and Ivan Nova were in the rotation and Gary Sanchez and Aaron Judge had yet to be called up for good. A lot changes over the course of three calendar years in baseball.

Bumgarner is no longer the pitcher he once was, and the pitcher who made four straight All-Star Games from 2013-16, making 31-plus starts per season, pitching to a 2.86 ERA, striking out 9.4 batters and allowing 7.3 hits per nine innings. He’s still good, even very good, and at times dominant, though it’s not a given every time he takes the mound the way it was. But 1,750 career regular-season innings and 102 1/3 career postseason innings will do that to an arm, especially one that reaches the majors at the age of 19.

I believe Bumgarner is better than he’s pitched on the awful, crappy, losing Giants teams he’s been a part of since 2017. Since 2017, the Giants have lost 98 games, 89 games and are on pace to lose 87 games this season. Progress! They are buried in the NL East where they are 17 1/2 games back, and while they are only 5 1/2 games back of the second wild card in the NL, there are seven teams ahead of them and the only teams behind them are the Mets and Marlins. The Giants aren’t going anywhere this season, and in a division with the Dodgers, competitive Diamondbacks and Rockies, and on-the-rise Padres, they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Bumgarner is an impending free agent and has been the face of the Giants and a member of three championship teams. If I were a Giants fan, I wouldn’t want the team to trade him, and because of what he’s meant to the organization, he belongs in a Giants uniform for his entire career. But I’m not a Giants fan. I’m a Yankees fan. And I don’t care what Bumgarner has done for the Giants and it won’t bother me if he loses the only uniform he has ever known for the pinstripes.

I don’t care about money owed or years of control remaining. The Yankees haven’t won the World Series in going on 10 years and haven’t even been to it in that amount of time either. They have had several opportunities since their last championship to return to the World Series, and each time they failed to make the move to put them over the top.

The Yankees held on to Eduardo Nunez when they could have had Cliff Lee in 2010, only to release Nunez at the end of spring training four seasons later, and Lee proved to be the difference in the ALCS, shutting the Yankees down in Game 3. In 2017, they chose not to take on Justin Verlander’s contract in a straight salary dump from the Tigers and he went to Houston and beat the Yankees in Games 2 and 6 of the ALCS, single-handedly winning the series for the Astros. In 2018, a year after coming within one win of the World Series, the organization cut payroll by $50 million, only to then not go on the expected free-agent spending spree everyone had been anticipating they would for at least three years.

Nothing is guaranteed in this game. No one thought the Yankees would be without Luis Severino and Dellin Betances all season, lose Miguel Andujar for the year, get only nine games from Giancarlo Stanton in the first half, have Aaron Hicks miss the first two months, lose Aaron Judge for two months, be without Didi Gregorius for the first third of the season, and watch Gary Sanchez, Luke Voit, James Paxton, CC Sabathia, Domingo German and Clint Frazier all spend time on the injured list at some point. No one thought the Yankees could compete with a replacement lineup for the first six weeks and with players like Mike Tauchman, Mike Ford, Cameron Maybin and Kendrys Morales getting regular at-bats. Somehow, the Yankees have overcome every bit of adversity they have been faced with, including poor lineup and in-game decisions from their own manager (come on, I had to throw that in there), and have built a comfortable lead in the division, one in which it would take a catastrophic collapse to blow. But that doesn’t mean the Yankees would have the same season next season if this many injuries cropped up and it doesn’t mean they will have the same season next season if not a single player landed on the injured list all year. This level of success can’t be counted on from season to season.

The Yankees could win the World Series with their current roster the same way they could have won the World Series with their rosters in 2017 and 2018. But they didn’t in those seasons, and right now, there’s nothing separating them from the rest of the contenders. Unless Severino returns this season and is his usual self, there’s no potential postseason series in which the Yankees will have the better starting pitching. And if Severino doesn’t return, who’s going to start in the postseason? Sure, I trust Masahiro Tanaka more than anyone in October, but James Paxton in his first postseason after what’s been a disappointing first half? J.A. Happ after what he’s done since Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS? Domingo German, who will probably be shut down way before the playoffs because of his innings limit? CC Sabathia on the last legs of his 19-year career? An opener? No, no, no, no and no.

The Yankees need a starting pitcher and they’re going to add one, but it needs to be Bumgarner. Marcus Stroman is hurt, Zack Wheeler has impressive metrics but his actual performance has been anything but, and the idea of having to trust Matt Boyd in a short series doesn’t sit well with me. That leaves us with Bumgarner, the only one of the group who has actually has a resume worth trading for.

I realize the Yankees aren’t getting the unhittable World Series hero, who helped the Giants to three championships in five seasons. That’s not to say he won’t see a bump in production and some sort of career rejuvenation with the Yankees, pitching for a first-place team down the stretch and in October. There’s no way to measure how playing for a losing and last-place team for three straight years after having World Series aspirations for the previous seven impacts performance, but it must. It certainly did for Verlander. There’s no sure-thing in the trade market this season, unless Brian Cashman is able to pull off a deal for a pitcher whose name has yet to be mentioned by anyone.

I worry about this Yankees core and this current championship window frequently, fearful that 2017 might have been their best chance to win it all with this group, and they didn’t because they let the Astros take on Verlander’s salary. I pray my worrying is nothing more than me worrying about the Yankees like I always do and that one day I will look back and laugh at how ridiculous I was for thinking a championship might evade this group.

The Yankees need to stop playing the long game which cost them the last two seasons and focus on the season at hand, one in which they are the best team in baseball. Given the available names out there, Bumgarner is the best and most experienced option, and his price tag shouldn’t detract the Yankees.

Over the last decade, the Yankees have cost themselves trips to the World Series and potential championships by overvaluing their prospects and being unwilling to take on salary in July. They can’t do either this July or it could be a third straight missed opportunity at a championship and another year wasted with these Yankees.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!