Despite their recent struggles — relative struggles, to be clear — the Yankees woke up on Thursday morning with the best record in Major League Baseball.
No other team had reached 30 wins nor possessed a winning percentage over .700. At 31-13, the Yankees were off to their best start since 1998, when they won their first of three straight World Series titles. For a team that entered 2022 with questions about whether it had improved enough to make a deep playoff run, the Yankees, through a quarter of the regular season, had played like a championship contender.