This is a story about a moment in time. The story of the 2016 Yankees, and how a lackluster season on paper profoundly changed the organization. The story of how an uninspiring, inconsistent, middling campaign actually reversed the team’s fortunes, how it took a declining club and sent it hurtling back towards its rightful place as the Evil Empire.
The story doesn’t begin in 2016, however. The Yankees didn’t just appear that year with an uneven roster that was aging in some areas and promising in others, a team with no obvious path to greatness, but without the recourse to bottom out.