A 5-3 Yankees loss on Saturday afternoon means little when it’s game number two of 162.
But when it comes at home against the Baltimore Orioles, there are some lingering memories from last season when a 47-115 Orioles team won seven games against the Yankees.
The 108-win Red Sox went 16-3 against Baltimore while the 100-win Yankees were 12-7. Flip those results and there could have been a very different race.
“It’s such a long season and over 162, the ones you lose, there’s probably always things you can look back on and wish you did something a little different, wish you capitalized on something,” Aaron Boone said before Sunday’s game. “That’s the nature of the season whether you win 90 games, 100 games, 110 games.”
He added, “As long as our mindset is, in my view, in the right place, then I’ll feel good about what we do, where we’re at and what we’ll go out and expect to do today.”
Baltimore liked playing in the Big Apple last year, winning five of nine in the Bronx as well as both of their games in Queens.
Again, there’s no need for concern when it’s not even April. And last year’s Yankees started 9-9 before catching fire. But Aaron Judge said the team has to have the mindset that their backs are against the walls after Sunday’s loss. He also referenced coming back from deficits in the 2017 playoffs against the Indians and Astros.
Boone said one of the marks of the team is that you can’t tell how they’re doing just from looking at them and that emotional stability is needed so as not to “get on the rollercoaster ride.”
He did acknowledge that there is an expectation to win.
“But there’s an expectation that there’s urgency every single day,” Boone said. “And there’s an expectation in our room. But that doesn’t mean overreacting, underreacting to anything that goes on.”