Saturday was not a good day for the New York Yankees, but many days recently have been. The Bronx Bombers were no-hit by a gaggle of Houston Astros, whose starting pitcher, Christian Javier, pitched seven scoreless innings and whiffed 13. It was the first such blanking against the Yankees in 19 years.

It would be an error to focus on the fly at the expense of the ointment. The Yankees have been soaring, with a start to the season that has sent fans to the record books and back a century for apt comparisons. Like the 1998 Yankees, who ran roughshod over the league, this year’s outfit reached 50 wins in 67 games. 

That pace, 538.com notes, is the seventh fastest of any major league team since 1901. The website gives them an 8 percent chance to shatter the all-time record for wins, held by the 2001 Seattle Mariners, who won 116 games, even as they stumbled before reaching the championship.     

In respect of the Yankees, nothing in particular prefigured this excellence. This group of Yankees has largely been a disappointment, never quite cratering but not soaring, either. When their owner, Hal Steinbrenner, decided to bring back Brian Cashman as general manager and Aaron Boone as manager, the team had something of the whiff of mediocrity about it.

Within the Yankees’ division, the American League East, the Bombers looked to be superseded by the ascendant Blue Jays, whose infield features a clutch of young stars with fathers who were themselves standouts on the diamond. The Tampa Bay Rays do more with less than anyone, and the Red Sox are perennial pests. 

With the season within striking range of its midpoint, these Yankees have already begun to invite comparisons to their illustrious forebearers. The 2022 squad is on pace to allow the fewest runs to opponents of any iteration of the club back to 1918. They have won at a greater clip than all but three previous Yankee teams, and each of those won a World Series. 

If the Yanks fell a bit off the pace this weekend, it is no surprise that the culprit was the Houston Astros. Nolan Ryan’s onetime team has eliminated the Yankees from the postseason three times since 2015. 

Of particular notoriety was the 2017 clash between the Yankees and Astros. Houston would go on to claim the World Series, a triumph marred by the subsequent disclosures that the team employed an elaborate cheating strategy to steal signs and gain a competitive advantage. Firings, fines, and suspensions ensued, but championships, even tainted ones, are forever. 

Baseball fans often moonlight as catastrophists, always alert to the disaster just around the corner. Even on a magic carpet ride, they wonder about the rug’s fraying edges. As I write this, I am listening to the Cassandras of sports talk radio, steeling themselves for disappointment by indulging its inevitability.

These fans moved to the phone lines to worry over left fielder Joey Gallo’s microscopic batting average and the erosion of infielder D.J. LeMahieu’s — nicknamed “the Machine” — unprepossessing skill set. They see regular season excellence as a harbinger of postseason disappointment. The Astros’ ace, Justin Verlander, he of the blazing fastball and supermodel wife — has our number.

Perhaps the most unsettling threat to a pinstripe parade through the Canyon of Heroes will come not from the Coastal Plains of Texas or the Hollywood Hills, where the Dodgers pursue their habitual excellence, but rather from the resurgent Mets, in Queens.

The Amazins have the second best record in baseball even without their two best pitchers, Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer. 
The Yankees would do well to recall Hall of Fame hurler Satchel Paige’s wise words: “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”