It's hard to believe, but these Yankees are awesome

It was easy, during spring training, to underestimate the New York Yankees, who arrived in Florida awfully young and inexperienced, with question marks abounding following general manager Brian Cashman's off-brand overhaul of his roster eight months earlier.

It was easy, in April, to discount the New York Yankees, whose confounding 15-8 start amounted to small-sample randomness, the result of hot starts from the likes of Chase Headley, and that big kid, Aaron Judge, that were undoubtedly unsustainable.

It was easy, in May, to discredit the New York Yankees, who continued to win despite an increasingly homer-prone Masahiro Tanaka, an increasingly old CC Sabathia, and a virtually anonymous Jordan Montgomery comprising three-fifths of their rotation.

It was easy, in June, to delight in the predictable collapse of the New York Yankees, who unraveled on a road trip to the West Coast and kept on losing following their return to the Bronx, at one point dropping 12 of 16 games.

It was easy, in July, to retire any delusions of a division title for the New York Yankees, whose uneven play at one point relegated them to third place in the American League East, the gulf between them and the first-place Boston Red Sox widening.

It was easy, in August, to bask in the frustration of the New York Yankees, whose burgeoning star, Judge, floundered, as all rookies do, hitting just .185 for the month, his contact woes now more essential than incidental.

It was easy, in September, to predict a hilariously brief October run for the New York Yankees, who appeared destined for a wild-card berth, somehow, but were no match for the behemoths of the American League, lying in wait.

It was easy, as the AL wild-card game loomed, to believe that Ervin Santana had it in him to humiliate the New York Yankees, the wily veteran having crafted a 3.12 ERA over his final dozen starts of the regular season.

It was easy, on the eve of the American League Division Series, to foresee an ignominious ousting for the New York Yankees, who lost five of seven contests with the Cleveland Indians during the regular season, including all three of their games at Yankee Stadium. It was even easier when the Yankees coughed up the first two games of the best-of-five series.

And in spite of it all, it was still easy, after they clawed their way into the American League Championship Series, the ostensible culmination of a season of improbabilities realized, to chalk up the Yankees' defiant survival to serendipity, to a doubly ineffective Corey Kluber.

Now, though, with the Yankees boasting a 3-2 lead over the Houston Astros in the ALCS after dropping the series' first two games, having been pushed to the brink of an American League pennant Wednesday by, of all people, Tanaka, the scourge of the Bronx in April and May, it is no longer easy to cast aspersions. It'd be easier sneaking a fastball by Gary Sanchez or scoring a run off Tommy Kahnle. (The Astros haven't done either of those things well at all.)

"This series isn't over. This game is," Astros manager A.J. Hinch told MLB.com following his club's 5-0 loss Wednesday. "We're going to get back to Houston and get to an off-day with our families and come back ready to play."

This, seemingly, augurs well for the Astros. The Yankees have had minimal success at Minute Maid Park this year, after all, losing two of their three regular-season contests in Houston, then eking out just two runs over the first ALCS games, successive 2-1 losses. Still, though, even with the data pulling for Houston, to believe that the Yankees won't somehow squeeze out a win in one of their next two games feels foolish, willfully ignorant, even, despite being intellectually sound at the same time.

Obviously, you should believe in Justin Verlander, who so thoroughly overmatched the Yankees in Game 2, fanning a baker's dozen while allowing just one run in a complete-game masteripiece. You should similarly trust that Houston's lineup, one of the best in history, can snap a collective funk that has yielded two runs or fewer in four of their past five games. Ultimately, even in a game as wonderfully unpredictable as baseball, you should trust that the better team will win.

Considering how awesome these Yankees are, though, that would be too easy.