A week ago, just after the Yankees had lost the final game of their set with the St. Louis Cardinals, dropping their record to 30-32, I was thinking about what a great story they were becoming. The season had only 100 games left, and the Yankees would have to play .600 ball over those games just to reach the 90 wins that would give them a decent chance at the wild card.

The team, and the city, finally realized that the season wasn’t young anymore, and that all the negativity surrounding the Yankees wasn’t just more of the same old melodrama, but a cold reflection of the fact that the $200 million team was turning into the biggest disaster in the history of American professional sports.

Then last week, General Manager Brian Cashman made the surprisingly candid admission that “this is not a flexible roster. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to look to do as much as I possibly can. But I’m being honest. Our options are very limited.” Trade rumors swirled around everyone from Gary Sheffield to Tony Womack. Columns were written about the historically poor performance of players like Womack and Jason Giambi. With moderately convenient timing, the Yankees announced plans to build a new stadium, which for a couple of days drew attention away from the team on the field and toward the crumbling monstrosity in the Bronx.

All this while, of course, the Yankees were playing their best ball of the year, sweeping two successive series against teams with superior records – first, the Pittsburgh Pirates, then the Chicago Cubs. Randy Johnson pitched his first dominant game of the year and Hideki Matsui raised his average to .286 from .270 and clouted three home runs. Mike Mussina dazzled, throwing 15 1/3 innings and allowing only two runs. Even Giambi began to look like his old self, hitting a walk-off home run into the upper deck on Wednesday and generally looking confident swinging his bat.

Most impressive, the games weren’t even close – the Yankees outscored the Pirates 22-6, and the Cubs 23-10. With a four-game series against the woeful Devil Rays starting tonight, there’s little reason to expect the Yankees to go into the weekend series against the Mets on anything less than a monster tear.

I have to admit I may have underestimated the Yankees. I was unconvinced they were a good team before the season, I dismissed their 10-game winning streak against Oakland and Seattle as an example of a mediocre team getting fat on bad ones, and I fully expected them to be walloped by the Cubs. Now, for the first time this year, I must admit that I wouldn’t be surprised if Joe Torre’s men made the playoffs.

This first occurred to me on Friday, when the Yanks tagged Cubs starter Carlos Zambrano for six runs on nine hits and six walks. Aside from Johan Santana, Zambrano is the best young pitcher in the game, ranking second in ERA since 2003. He throws a 98-mph fastball high and a sinker that comes in like a bowling ball low, and he has a mound presence of which Sal “The Barber” Maglie would approve. Unfortunately for the Cubs, he also has as much trouble controlling his emotions on the field as any player in the majors, and he had injured his foot in his previous start.

Injury aside, Zambrano offered up his hardest stuff to the Yankees with a malicious glare, daring them to do their best. He threw his 98-mph fastball, his tough sinker, his devastating slider, and he even unveiled an eephus pitch that came in around 55 mph. He threw the ball right down the middle of the plate to Alex Rodriguez in the first inning and struck him out on three pitches.

This is just the sort of thing the 2005 Yankees haven’t been able to deal with, and yet they absolutely hammered Zambrano. They took disciplined at bats, let him miss wide with his assortment of running, tailing, and breaking pitches, and hit the ball where it was pitched when he came in the zone. They knocked him out in the seventh inning and came back from a 6-4 deficit as Matusi cracked a two-run homer.

It was a victory taken straight out the old Yankees’ textbook: They chipped away at a very fine pitcher, let him undo himself, and then feasted on a weak bullpen. Even a typically unimpressive start from Carl Pavano and the hilarious sight of the Cubs’ Corey Patterson stopping at second on a liner in the gap, realizing Bernie Williams was still chasing after it, and then jogging to third base, couldn’t take away from the win. A young, exciting Cubs team looked callow and inexperienced, and the Yankees didn’t look old at all.

This game was hardly atypical. Kip Wells, a fine Pirates starter who came into his start against the Yankees with a 3.39 ERA, was whacked for seven runs in 4 2 / 3 innings. Oliver Perez, a tough lefty who led the league in strikeouts per nine innings last year, gave up six runs in five innings. Glendon Rusch, who has a 3.26 ERA since last year, was knocked all over the park on Saturday and was charged with four runs in 5-plus innings.

Rusch’s early exit opened the door to the weak end of the Cubs’ bullpen; a few minutes later, Derek Jeter had hit a grand slam. Yesterday’s victim, Sergio Mitre (5 2 / 3 innings, six runs), was coming off a shutout of the NL’s best-hitting team, the Florida Marlins. The start before that, he’d thrown seven innings of two-hit ball against the Blue Jays.

This is as diverse an array of good pitchers as you can find. The Pirates and Cubs trotted out flamethrowers and crafty lefties, change-up artists and slider specialists, composed veterans and headstrong upstarts, and the Yankees not only handled, but brutalized them.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the Yankees’ hitters are back, but you couldn’t possibly ask for a more encouraging sign that they are. And because the pitching is what it is – fitfully excellent and completely unreliable – the Yankees will need the offense to carry them if they are to make a real run at October.

There are still plenty of reasons why the Yankees could fail, but this last week was not a mirage, and there is at last real reason for cautious optimism. It may not hold up, but for now at least, it may be time for everyone to put down the knives and stop calling the Yankees the biggest failure in baseball history.