Yankees’ rotation has chance to be among their best ever — but it comes with so many ifs

This is a different kind of Yankees team that will report to Tampa this week. We know them — have known them forever — as the Bronx Bombers, after all, not the Bronx Buzzers. Yankees teams have come after you since the beginning of recorded time — or the arrival of Babe Ruth, which is one and the same — leading with their bats, their biceps, their brawn.

Not a lot of crafty among the various iterations of Murderer’s Row.

The Mets have always been the team in town that every few years assembles a coterie of starting pitchers to carry the day: Seaver/Koosman/Ryan. Gooden/Darling/Ojeda. DeGrom/Syndergaard/Harvey/Matz. When the Mets have been good, truly good, it’s usually built on the backs of arms.

The Yankees are all about — this is Gene Michael’s blueprint, and Brian Cashman’s words — “big hairy monsters who mash and are selective at the plate. There’s a reason we’re perennially at the top in runs scored.”