For all the drama that surrounded the Yankees through the first three months of the season, they’ll enter the second half just 2 1/2 games out of first place in their division and 2 games out of the wild-card lead. Measured against the unrealistic expectations with which they were saddled coming out of spring training, that isn’t particularly impressive. But measured against just how far they could have fallen, it is. The story of the Yankees’ first half isn’t about catastrophic failure – it’s about a team dodging a bullet.

That the Yankees are within striking distance at the All-Star break is a testament to the extraordinary talent of their core players. Alex Rodriguez and Mariano Rivera, both of whom would be Hall of Famers if they retired tomorrow, are enjoying perhaps the finest seasons of their distinguished careers. Derek Jeter, Gary Sheffield, Jorge Posada, and Hideki Matsui are putting together typically fine campaigns. These are the players around whom the team is built, and had any of them failed to live up to the enormous expectations placed on them, the Yankees would not be within hailing distance of an 11th consecutive playoff berth.

Others, of course, have made positive contributions. I was convinced after the first six weeks of the season that Jason Giambi had nothing left to offer a contending team; as his recent power surge and .278 AVG/.426 OBA/.463 SLG batting line have shown, I was wrong. Randy Johnson (9-6, 4.16 ERA) hasn’t been the pitcher we saw in the 2001 postseason, but it wasn’t fair to expect that out of a 41-year-old coming to the American League and facing some serious health issues. Mike Mussina (9-5, 3.97) has quietly returned to form as an excellent no. 2 starter, and Tom Gordon (2.79) and Tanyon Sturtze (3.91) have done fine work anchoring a suspect setup corps.

Perhaps the most impressive Yankees of all, though, have been the youngest. Chien-Ming Wang, of all people, leads the team’s starters with a 3.89 ERA in 83 1 /3 innings. Robinson Cano has surprisingly staked a claim as the most promising young second baseman in the league, hitting .288/.313/.459 and playing adequate defense.

Their immediate and considerable impact on the Yankees’ fortunes have made Wang, 25, and Cano, 22, valuable players in their own right. But their success has also paved the way for the Yankees to bring up a variety of youngsters, including outfielder Melky Cabrera and relievers Scott Proctor and Jason Anderson; in that sense, Wang and Cano are probably the two most important members of the team.

The only reason these young players were even given a chance, of course, was the unfathomable situation in which the Yankees found themselves coming out of April. Entirely predictably, a raft of veteran players had utterly collapsed. Giambi and Posada looked done. Bernie Williams and Tony Womack looked worse than that – historically bad, in Womack’s case. Kevin Brown and Jaret Wright were injured, Carl Pavano was ineffective, and in general the team had succumbed to a drifting listlessness, reeling off wins against weak teams like the Mariners and A’s while crumbling before competition capable of putting up a fight.

In responding to the crisis by simply turning to farmhands like Cano and Wang, the Yankee management did something more than simply save the season: It hinted at a brand new organizational philosophy in the Bronx.

It has been clear to everyone for years that the team’s practice of simply buying as many free agents as necessary every off-season to fill its holes was the equivalent of using one credit card to pay off another. The sight of Williams and Womack feebly waving their gloves at yet another shot scorched up the middle off an errant Brown sinker was the sight of the bill finally coming due.

For once, the Yankees realized that the answer wasn’t star power, but patience and simple competence. The patience was rewarded when players like Matsui, Rivera, and Mussina broke out of early-season slumps, as was more or less inevitable. Competence came with the young players.

With the type of frontline talent the Yankees have on the team, not every player needs to be an All-Star for them to win. But no team can afford to run out several players worse than typical minor-league veterans or waiver-wire pickups, as the Yankees were doing when Womack, Williams, and a depleted Giambi were taking the field every day. In this light, the call-up of Cabrera may be the most encouraging of all – all the Yankees need out of their center fielder is someone who can catch the ball. No one has any illusions that Cabrera, who just arrived in Double-A this season, will be a force offensively, but he can do the job the team actually needs done.

The Yankees may or may not make the postseason this year. In the long run, that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that the organization has finally begun to actually address the problems that need to be addressed, rather than hoping that money, fame, and the ghost of Mickey Mantle will chase down fly balls and induce double plays. Should the Yankees actually keep that in mind the rest of this summer, they may even do what so many assumed they’d do,and bring another world championship to New York.