"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

Bias, schmias. The Yankees are the best team in baseball right now, because they’re picking up right where they left off last year. After losing the first game of the season to the deplorable Red Sox, they’ve gone on win each series they’ve played, taking the next 2 against Boston and, most recently, sweeping the Rangers this past weekend.

The question that should harass most haters right now is: If this is the kind of quick work the Yanks are making of the best teams in the league, what are they going to do against the likes of Baltimore et al?

Of course, it’s too early to tell anything. Which is the official party line of fans of teams nestled in the league’s basement. (I’m also always amazed at how long we use this rationalization. I feel like every year the statute of limitations on “a lot of games left to play” extends further and further into the season.)

In the last week, while the Yanks were settling back into Champion Form, just about more seamlessly than I’ve actually ever seen done before in my tenure as a sports fan, teams like the Red Sox were struggling. Tampa Bay looked like the solid club that they are but rarely demonstrate. And bizarrely, terrible teams were playing like they were injected with immortality serums.

To shift gears briefly for the purposes of comparison, it reminds me of watching football last year. I spent most of the 2009 NFL season mumbling about how there were only 3 (tops) good teams, and that there was inexplicably a bevy of plain awful teams. Now it’s (mercifully) baseball season, and I’m thinking the exact opposite based on what I’ve seen of the American League. There are a frightening number of talented clubs, O’s notwithstanding…

READ ON FOR THE RANKINGS...