A good method for avoiding panic early in any baseball season is to try the Washington Senators test: Pick any historic pennant race at random and pretend the season ended after a dozen to 15 games, then see if the Senators won it. In the real world, the Senators won just three pennants — in 1924, 1925, and 1933 — in 60 seasons before they decamped to Minnesota and became the Twins. In 1951, the Senators led the American League with a 10–3 record on May 3. They finished at 62–92. The Yankees were the ultimate winners. In 1947, the 15-game mark rang down not with the Senators in first place, but with a team that was often just as hopeless, the White Sox. They took a 10–5 record on May 5 and turned it into a 70–84 finish. The Yankees won the pennant that year, too. If you wanted to leave the Yankees out of it, you could probably have a grand time trying this with the Cubs in any season after 1945.

The point is that a team’s record doesn’t attain real meaning until roughly the one-fifth mark of the season. After 30 or 35 games, teams have firmly established their capabilities, and short of making significant changes in the form of trades or promotions, in most cases their final record won’t be too different from what it is at that moment. Prior to that point, teams are still in a period of early-season fluidity and their records aren’t necessarily indicative. This is the prayer of many teams in the 2008 season, the Detroit Tigers and the Yankees among them.

The Yankees have twice shrugged off what would have seemed to be damning starts in recent years. In 2005, they were in fourth place in the AL East, 16–19, 6.5 games behind the Orioles on May 12 — the same cheesy Orioles team that is in first place now. The Yankees finished 95–67, good enough to share first place with the Red Sox. The Orioles finished fourth with a 74–88 record. Last season, the Yankees hit May 12 in third place, seven games behind the front-running Red Sox, with a 17–18 record. They went 77–50 the rest of the way and captured the wild card.

In both cases, the Yankees responded to a series of lineup and pitching changes, including some designed to heal self-inflicted wounds. Early on, Brian Cashman and Joe Torre had saddled the team with the declining Tino Martinez at first base and the pointless Tony Womack at second. As time went by, both of these players were eased out of the lineup — Womack painfully slowly — with Jason Giambi taking over at first and Robinson Cano establishing himself at second. At the same time, the pitching staff, which had been a patchwork of rotting vets such as Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, and Kevin Brown, was stabilized with the addition of Chien-Ming Wang, Aaron Small, and Shawn Chacon. Last season, the Yankees were rescued by, among other things, getting Doug Mientkiewicz out of the lineup and swapping Johnny Damon and Melky Cabrera from center to left and vice versa, greatly shoring up the defense.

It’s not yet clear just what will “fix” the 2008 Yankees. It’s not even clear that the Yankees need fixing. The team has had injuries to key players in Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada, but these seem to have been transient. Old men Giambi and Damon have started poorly. While it seems possible, if not likely, that at least one of them has come to the end of the line insofar as productive regular work goes, it’s still a bit early to write them off (Damon is especially difficult to sit down due to a contract that runs through 2009; Giambi could be bought out at the end of the season). Should the Yankees chose to do so, they have the option of promoting the sensation of spring training, outfielder Brett Gardner, who is burning up the International League at .400 AVG/.407 OBA/.800 SLG. Heretofore a punchless singles hitter, Gardner needed to show consistency and an improved ability to drive the ball before he could be taken seriously as a regular. He seems to be doing that now, but it’s too soon to make any judgment about him, either.

As for the pitching staff, no pitcher has been an irredeemable disaster to this point, and should Phil Hughes prove unable to fix his location problems, or Mike Mussina unable to succeed at a top speed of 85 mph, they still have Joba Chamberlain in reserve (pending what one hopes is his return from the happy resolution of his father’s health crisis). The bullpen appears to be deep enough to withstand the recasting of Chamberlain as a starter, a move potentially equivalent to trading for an ace. In short, the Yankees have a history of recognizing where they’ve erred and applying fixes necessary to salvage the season. The crisis, though, is not yet here. Another 20 games should tell the tale.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.