Not that you’d necessarily know it, but the Yankees went into last night’s game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as the best team in the American League by a wide margin, despite having only the fourth-best record. Baseball is about winning, but over a period of a few weeks, the breaks go either way, and so rather than won loss records you’re better off looking at a team’s underlying numbers to get a gauge of where they stand relative to the competition.

The Yankees are bludgeoning everyone. Their 115 runs were tied for second in the league, and given that the Chicago White Sox and Texas Rangers play their home games in much more forgiving parks than the Yankees do, you’d have to say their respective offenses are less impressive. More notably, coming off a stretch of four games in five in which they allowed only one run, the Yanks had given up fewer runs than any other team in baseball save the Mets.

You can’t do much better than having the best offense and the best pitching in the league – and I mean the best pitching, because it sure isn’t the defense that’s preventing runs. If the Yankees keep this up, they’re going to start winning a frightening number of games. So in the big picture, the question is whether they can, and if not, what they need to do.

On the offensive side of the ledger, there’s not much reason for doubt. Jason Giambi (.347 BA/.535 OBA/.857 SLG), Derek Jeter (.391/.494/.681), and especially Robinson Cano (.349/.369/.462) are going to come down to earth a bit, but then Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui are hitting a bit less than one might expect, and the team’s designated hitters have done nothing at all. On balance, the Yankees should remain the best-hitting team in the league or very close to it. The hot starts from Giambi and Cano should be particularly reassuring, since because of age and injury in the one case, and age and impatience in the other, they were two of the more questionable players on the roster entering the season.

On the pitching side, things are a lot fuzzier. Yes, the team has been good in the aggregate, but that’s down to some unsustainable performances. I like relievers Scott Proctor, Mike Myers, and Ron Villone just fine, but one would guess they’re not going to end up throwing 200 innings of 1.38 ERA ball. Similarly, I like Mike Mussina more than the next man – a couple of years ago I wrote a column arguing he’d already earned his way into the Hall of Fame – but it isn’t 1996 and he’s probably not going to keep pitching like Chris Carpenter. (On the other hand, he might.)

Since this troika of obscure relievers and Mussina have been the ones keeping runs off the board, it’s understandable that the city hasn’t exactly been abuzz with tales of the team’s moundsmen. Shawn Chacon (5.59 ERA) and Chien-Ming Wang (5.48) have inspired more anxiety than the aforementioned pitchers have confidence. Randy Johnson’s magically disappearing fastball (the man’s barely breaking 90 these days) has people realizing he’s really, really old. And Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright, having gone last year from being figures of comedy to being figures of tragedy, have again become figures of comedy. This might not be fair to Wright – he may not be able to pitch more than two innings at a time (inconvenient for a starter), but at least he doesn’t have a bruised buttcheek.

The thing is that none of this is really relevant. With his short fastball and pitching in front of the semi-competent Yankees defense, Johnson has been the same guy he was last year – a 3.70 ERA pitcher who, on his good days, will blow people away. That’s pretty good for the American League, and it’s exactly what Roger Clemens, whom Johnson was essentially brought in to replace, did while he was in the Bronx. Chacon and Wang might be putting up ugly numbers, but they’re pitching well enough to win on a team with an offense and bullpen of the Yankees’ quality.

It’s also worth noting here that none of these guys are pitching as badly as their ERAs make it look. Scoring is up half a run over last year; adjusting for that, everyone save Mussina is pitching in line with reasonable expectations.

Past the starters, while the obscure relievers probably won’t keep it up, Kyle Farnsworth is quite capable of being dominant and Octavio Dotel, once he returns from injury this summer, is as well. I’d expect that what Mussina loses will be picked up by slightly better performances from the backend pitchers and Johnson; while they’re not going to be the best staff in baseball, even with bad pitching from lots of guys they look like they have more than anyone thought they would.

Some tinkering around the edges wouldn’t hurt – a DH and a fifth starter are good for any team to have – but even should Joe Torre and Brian Cashman leave things alone, this team is good enough as constituted to run up the best record in the league. We’ll see if it happens, but some (including, well, me) may have been more than a bit premature in appointing the Mets the best team in the city.

tmarchman@nysun.com