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Yankees manager Aaron Boone

The New York Yankees are off to a 9-7 start and, ahead of Tuesday’s games, hold the top spot in the American League East, albeit by just a half-game over the 9-8 Toronto Blue Jays. While their start has not exactly been torrid, the results show that at least so far, the Bronx Bombers have been good enough.

But their season is only 16 games old — so is the Yankees’ current level of success sustainable?

That was the question asked by MLB insider and New York Post columnist Jon Heyman on Monday.

“Considering the temperature has been consistently unbearable, the bats aren’t quite as blessed as it appeared in that first series vs. the Brew Crew, and they’re missing former MVP Giancarlo Stanton (one of their four former MVPs) and of course the $765M man Juan Soto, the offense is doing its part,” Heyman write. “They look dangerous now, but you still have to wonder whether it’s enough.”

The Yankees offensive attack has indeed been the best in the Majors with a 142 OPS+, a stat that measures how a team’s (or player’s) OPS compares to the league average, which is always fixed at 100. In other words, the Yankees have been producing at the plate 45 percent better than an MLB average team.

To put that performance in perspective, the second-best offense in MLB prior to Tuesday’s slate of games was the St. Louis Cardinals with an OPS+ of 128. Only six of the 30 teams registered an OPS+ above 120. With their bats, torpedo or otherwise, the Yankees are lapping the field.

The same cannot be said about the Yankees’ pitching. That is why, as Heyman notes, the Yankees current pace is simply not sustainable without a serious upgrade to their pitching staff — starting rotation especially. As a staff, the Yankees’ ERA+ (a metric using the same principles as OPS+) stands at 93, seven percent below average and seventh-worst in MLB.

Yankees lefty Max Fried — who inked an eight-year, $218 million free agent deal with New York over the offseason — has been stellar, with a 2-0 record allowing just three earned runs over 17 1/3 innings for an ERA of 1.56. But incredibly, Fried is the only Yankees starter with an ERA under 5.00.

Judged by standard ERA, the Yankees’ starters have been second-worst in the Majors, at 5.17. Yankees relievers have been better but still far from elite at 3.50, 12th in MLB.

While the Yankees expect to get injured starters Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil on the mound sometime before the end of May — Schmidt expected sooner than Gil — Empire Sports Media founder Alexander Wilson proposed what could be at least a partial solution to the defending AL champs’ starting woes.

His proposal — trade with the slumping Minnesota Twins to obtain ninth-year, 29-year-old righty Pablo López who before being sidelined with a hamstring issue was on a sparkling season-opening run, compiling a 1.62 ERA in 16 2/3 innings over three starts.

According to Wilson, López also has “a 77.5 percent left-on-base rate, and a ground ball rate just over 52 percent. He doesn’t walk batters. He doesn’t give up homers. He simply attacks the zone and gets results. López ranks in the 97th percentile in breaking run value, 87th percentile in chase rate, and 93rd percentile in walk rate. That combination — getting hitters to chase while rarely issuing free passes — is exactly what the Yankees need.”

With the Twins struggling mightily at 5-12 and already 5 1/2 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers in the AL Central, they may be willing to sell off high-priced pieces such as López who is still owed $65.25 million from 2025 to 2027 on his four-year, $73.5 million Twins contract.

But as Wilson recognizes, a pitcher the caliber of the Cabimas, Venezuela, native — a 2023 AL All-Star — will not come without a painful price. The Yankees will have to at least partially mortgage their future by surrendering a top prospect — at least one — in return.

Wilson’s suggestion is infielder George Lombard Jr., the Yankees 2023 first-round draft pick, 26th overall, out of Gulliver Preparatory School in Pinecrest, Florida. Lombard, the son of Detroit Tigers bench coach George Lombard, currently ranks as the Yankees’ No. 1 overall prospect, according to MLB Pipeline, and 98th overall among all prospects.

“It would be a tough pill to swallow,” Wilson wrote. “But prospects are never guarantees — and if the Yankees want to push deep into October and stabilize their rotation for years to come, Pablo López might be worth the gamble.”

Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. Vankin is also the author of five nonfiction books on a variety of topics, as well as nine graphic novels including most recently “Last of the Gladiators” published by Dynamite Entertainment. More about Jonathan Vankin