CLEVELAND – Here’s the resume of an era for a certain big league baseball team.

It is a period of fourteen years. The team had a winning percentage of .566 during that period, the most in the league and second highest overall. It never finished below .500. It has the second most wins at home and on the road. No team had more comeback wins. Only one team scored more points, and only one had a better series differential. No one was hitting home runs anymore, and it wasn’t particularly close.

Sure, that’s all regular season stuff – what about the playoffs? The answers are not as glowing, but they are still impressive. Only three teams played more postseason games. Only five won more postseason games. Only two teams hit more home runs.

These are all facts from the New York Yankees pennant drought, the period from 2010 through 2023, which finally came to an end on Saturday evening. The drought – a description some woeful franchises would dispute – came to an end thanks to a mighty swing from Juan Soto that punctuated one of his signature meat grinder at-bats. The Yankees are back, returned to the pedestal where their fans have historical justification for their sense of belonging: at the top of the American League.

“It’s been a conversation every year,” ALCS MVP Giancarlo Stanton said. “We’re here now.”

The level of success outlined above would be impressive for virtually any franchise, even if no fanbase will ever be fully satisfied without the payoff of pennants and World Series titles. But for Bronx residents, flags are the only currency that can be exchanged for respect or validation. Those are the standards of a franchise and fan base that has now celebrated 41 pennants and four victories toward a 28th championship.

Saturday’s win over Cleveland ended a streak of five ALCS losses during the drought, the last two of which came during current manager Aaron Boone’s seven-year tenure. The other three came under Joe Girardi, the only other skipper New York has had during the drought.

Meanwhile, the man running the front office, Brian Cashman, has been around so long that he might have been the guy who traded for Babe Ruth, although we’ll have to check the historical record to see if that’s the case.

“I’m proud of these guys,” Cashman said at the post-match trophy presentation. “And I’m proud that we earned the right to go to the World Series.”

Behind Boone, and Girardi before him, and the still-present Cashman, not to mention the ownership of the same family from 1973, the Yankees, even during one of their dark times, have remained remarkably stable. It’s not like there was a major clean-up from top to bottom somewhere along the way.

So what is different about this bunch, the 2024 Bronx Bombers, that after so many recent disappointments in October, they finally broke through on Saturday?

The Soto-Judge pile

During the regular season, Aaron Judge enjoyed one of the best offensive performances in baseball history, but as incredible as it is, he’s done this before. He’s also had to contend with a lot of hand-wringing and widespread theorizing throughout October. Still, you could argue that even as Judge slumps, he has remained a fearsome presence in New York’s lineup, and he’s been able to do that because he’s allowed Soto to beat in front of him.

The most tangible way to illustrate this is simply to point out that Judge has struck out 353 times with at least a runner on base this season, second-most in baseball behind Atlanta’s Matt Olson. Judge scored a career-high 144 runs this season — a product of his level of play, yes, but also because he was always hitting with someone on base. Often it was Soto, chewing up the opposing pitcher the same way Cleveland’s Hunter Gaddis did on Saturday.

“I tell myself, ‘I’m everywhere on every pitch, I’m everywhere on every pitch,’” Soto said of his pennant-winning explosion. “So be prepared. Be prepared. He’s going to make the mistake. He did that. And I understood.’

Soto took the spoils on Saturday, but often he just takes a walk (129 of them on the season) to set the table for Judge and those behind him. Judge had an astronomical 1.237 OPS this season when batting with at least one runner on.

The Soto-Judge stack, by some measures the most productive one-two duo for a single season since the days of Ruth and Lou Gehrig, is an exhausting prospect for any pitching staff to navigate four or five times a game, even as a of them (The judge in this case) doesn’t hit very well.

“He carries pitchers,” Stanton said of Soto. “It doesn’t matter if he gets out. The stress of getting him out, then you have to deal with Judge… and then you have to deal with everyone behind them.”

The metric for runs created had Judge at 183, Soto at 147. The Yankees haven’t had two hitters in the top 140 in the same season since Jeter and Williams in 1999. That’s the biggest difference between Yankee teams over the past 14 seasons. and this one. In other recent years they’ve had one mega-hitter, but not two.

Stanton, for example, knew what the effect would be as soon as he heard that Soto would be his new teammate.

“I thought he was going to do something like he did tonight,” Stanton said. “And in pure Juan Soto fashion.”

The Stanton-Torres wrapping wound

Stanton has had his ups and downs since coming to the Yankees, but he was often at his best in October – and Tare October might be his best yet. His four home runs against Cleveland earned him the MVP award. He has made five in the 2024 playoffs, one shy of the Yankees’ record. And only three Yankees have hit more playoff homers for the franchise: Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter and, gulp, Mickey Mantle.

“The physicality of what he does is different than pretty much anyone in the world,” Boone said Sunday before Stanton went out and homered again. “He’s just incredibly disciplined: his approach, his process, how he studies guys.”

Stanton doesn’t always clean up, as Boone usually likes to get a lefty bat between Judge and Stanton. But this also ties into the Soto-Judge stack, because when Stanton is hitting and cleaning up his at-bats like he did Saturday, those worn-out pitchers must feel like the life is being sucked out of them.

This also puts extra pressure on taking out the hitter that precedes all of this, Gleyber Torres. That did not happen consistently in October. Torres has reached base in his first at-bat eight times during his postseason, a Yankees record. Suddenly there’s a runner on base, and there comes the smiling, nodding Soto walking toward the dish.

“It’s common for starting pitchers to need one or two hits to settle in,” Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt said. “And those are two guys you can’t settle for.”

The Yankees didn’t light up the scoreboard when they came through the AL bracket, but no one did. Runs in general were just very hard to come by. New York averaged 4.78 runs per game to lead the six AL postseason participants, a group that otherwise averaged just 2.93. Through that prism, the Yankees offense was dominant even without Judge putting up big numbers.

The frightening question for whoever comes next for the Yankees – whether it’s the New York Mets or the Los Angeles Dodgers: What happens when Judge starts hitting too?

The Astros are out

We won’t go into this further as there isn’t much more to say other than pointing it out. But the Yankees’ last three ALCS losses — 2017, 2019, 2022 — all came at the hands of the Houston Astros, who were eliminated in the wild-card round by Detroit this season. New York may have beaten Houston this time, and one wonders if the ship has sailed on the Astros dynasty. But the fact remains: the biggest obstacle to the World Series for the Yankees in recent years wasn’t around this time standing in their way.

Patience

The tension is greater in October. The moments are more intense, the crowds higher and lower, the consequences of each victory or loss exaggerated. You might think that, from the hitter’s perspective, this might lead to a bit of overaggression. Not these Yankees.

New York walked just one batter in their clincher in Cleveland, but struck out on 13.9% of their plate appearances in October. That’s more than any other playoff team this season and more than all but five of the 512 playoff teams in baseball history.

Plate discipline has been a hallmark of Cashman-constructed teams, and the Yankees also led the majors in walks drawn during the season. In October they took it to another level.

“That’s why it’s a very difficult setup to navigate,” Vogt said. “You’ve got to get in the zone and you’ve got to get them out in the zone, and they’re all really good hitters.”

An infusion of youth

The Yankees, at their most decadent, have had too many expensive players on the wrong side of 30 with big names and waning athleticism. This has been the case for decades. But the Yankees’ position group has gotten younger in recent years, going from a playing-time-weighted age of 30.3 in 2022, according to baseball-reference.com, to 28.5 last season and 28.0 this season.

Necessity was part of that due to injuries to older stars like Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu. But New York has gotten meaningful contributions from young players on the batting and pitching sides. Game 4 featured an all-rookie battery: righty Luis Gil and catcher Austin Wells, both leading AL Rookie of the Year candidates.

Shortstop Anthony Volpe just completed his second season and was nominated for what would be his second straight Gold Glove. He has also improved his consistency at the plate, although he still has a lot of work to do in that area. He has a .459 OBP in the postseason.

The Yankees are still a star-driven team, but they have better balance in the clubhouse. If we go back to the history of baseball’s most successful franchise, it’s usually when they win big.

“We’ve had some great groups, some great camaraderie, some great clubhouses,” Boone said. “This group is as close-knit as I’ve ever seen, and they trust each other. They lean on each other. They love each other. They play for each other. Those are special things to have in a team sport.”

This team has won a lot so far, but the ultimate goal has not yet been achieved. And that goal – in the Bronx – is truly a goal that matters, the goal that will truly extinguish this drought.

“Getting there doesn’t mean much,” Stanton said. “We have to win it.”