 When the baseball season begins, every team has hope and every clubhouse is filled with optimism. Sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly, we discover which teams really should have that hope and optimism. With the 2022 Yankees, we learned that answer quickly. They were good, very good. The Yankees had Aaron Judge, the best player in baseball, and a man who would hunt down Babe Ruth and Roger Maris to become the American League home run king. They had a reliable rotation, a deep bullpen, a much better defensive team, and they ran the bases smoothly. By early June, they were being compared to the 1998 Yankees, perhaps the best team of all time. The Yankees kept cruising other impactful players producing around Judge. Was there a cooler pitcher in baseball than Nestor Cortez? He's a 36th round pick, and he throws his fastball in the low 90s, but he's also smart, fearless, confident, and funky, oh so funky. Jose Trevino was a seemingly minor acquisition, and he morphed into the best defensive catcher in the American League. Like Cortez, Trevino was a first time All-Star. So was Clay Holmes and his demon sinker, the Yankees were soaring. But alas, the Yankees' wonderful ride hit some potholes in the second half when they played under 500 for two months. Judge was still doing otherworldly things to cement his status as the most valuable player, but the Yankees offense sputtered, they endured some injuries, and their once bulky lead shriveled to three and a half games in September. The doubts crept in, but good teams, which the Yankees are, steady themselves. And they won 18 of 24 games in September. They benefited from Judge's prodigious production, the all-around play of Anthony Rizzo, the reemergence of Gleiber Torres, and the arrival of an energizer bunny named Oswaldo Cabrera to clinch the AL East. For the Yankees, the mission is now to win 11 more games and win their first title since 2009. To do that, the Yankees need Garrett Cole to avoid the home run ball and pitch like an ace. They need Cortez and Luis Severino to flourish, and they need to figure out a bullpen that has been beleaguered by injuries and ineffectiveness. Aaron Boone's handling of his relievers will be vital in determining how far the Yankees advance. And of course, Judge will be a monumental factor in guiding the Yankees too, as will the hitters who succeed him in the lineup. Judge is the Yankees' all-world player, and if teams don't challenge him, Rizzo, Torres, John-Carlo Stanton, and others must spoil their strategy. It's October, it's fall ball. It's a place the Yankees expected to be because they call themselves a championship caliber team, and they are. The Yankees were right to have hope and optimism about winning a title. Very soon, we will find out just how accurate they were.