Two weeks ago, the Yankees’ record, coming off three miserable losses to the Devil Rays, was 11-19. At that time, I suggested that while they could be expected to play well against the A’s and Mariners, two bad clubs whose weaknesses made them particularly susceptible to the Yanks, the real test of whether this team will make a run at the pennant would come with the stretch that begins tomorrow night at Shea.

Ten-game winning streak or no, I stand by that. But the Yankees did what they had to do against two weak teams, and that shouldn’t be brushed away. Just as their poor start was the result of bad decisions, so has their hot run been the result of good ones.

The best have to do with two prospects actually being given shots to perform. Robinson Cano is probably not a .327 hitter, but inserting him at second base was the right move, and the Yankees are justly reaping the rewards of taking a risk.

Similarly, I’m not sold on Chien-Ming Wang, but he’s performed well as the fifth starter, and the Yankees certainly deserve credit for taking a risk with a young, homegrown player rather than hauling in some terrible veteran to replace the injured Jaret Wright. Yankee fans must hope that the success of Cano and Wang will encourage more such risk-taking in the future.

Still, one suspects Tino Martinez will not hit eight home runs in eight games again, and the concerns about the starting pitching are only somewhat allayed by their strong performances against two teams with poor offenses. Even if the problems aren’t really so grave as they seemed in April, Joe Torre’s aging team still suffers from essentially the same flaws it had two weeks ago.

Over their next 15 games, they will play three games apiece against the Mets, Red Sox, and Twins, all of them good clubs, and another three against the occasionally dangerous Tigers. The only real patsies they’ll see in the next two weeks are the Royals, the worst team in baseball.

If they do well over this time, it will be easy to write off the beginning of the season as a bad run rather than an apocalyptic implosion. If they do poorly, it will be easy to write off the winning streak as the result of meeting up with bad teams playing like horrible ones at just the right time. Concretely, there are three things I’d like to see out of the Yankees before I’ll really believe they’ve turned the corner.

First, I’d like to see Hideki Matsui begin to hit, and Jorge Posada to continue hitting. Much of the success of the last few weeks has been largely the result of unsustainable hitting from Martinez. Someone else will need to pick up the slack as he cools off, and these two are the likeliest to do it.

There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly wrong with Matsui, who was hitting .250 with only three home runs going into last night’s game. His approach is pretty much the same as it was last year – he’s driving the ball, not topping it as he did in 2003, while hitting for doubles power and drawing plenty of walks. Still, he needs to produce. The team needs more than a .250 AVG/.318 OBA/.391 SLG line out of its cleanup hitter.

Posada is another key driver of the Yankees offense. In April, he hit .244/.330/.333 and looked worse than that, as if the rigors of a brutal workload behind the plate had caught up with him and permanently slowed his bat. So far this month he’s hitting more like he usually does – .313/.364/.604. Even a happy medium will do a lot for the team’s attack.

Second, I’d like to see the starters have some success against a disciplined lineup. Among the many problems with the Mariners and the A’s is that they have a lot of contact-type hitters who don’t make much contact. Kevin Brown, Mike Mussina, Carl Pavano, and Wang all pitch to contact, throwing balls just on the edges of the strike zone that they intend batters to find difficult to square up on.

There’s nothing wrong with that strategy, but none of these pitchers have shown the kind of stuff this year to really make it succeed consistently, nor is the defense doing them any favors. A patient team like the Mets or Red Sox, or a team like the Twins, full of quality line-drive hitters, might well look quite a lot better than the A’s did.

Third, I’d like to see the Yankees win some close ones. The rotation has been strong through its last few turns, but the reason the team has been winning is that opponents are being bludgeoned – the Yankees scored fewer than six runs just twice in their winning streak, and in those two games they scored five and four. Over 10 wins they played one one run game and one two-run game. The rest weren’t really close.

That means that a bullpen in which Tanyon Sturtze still mysteriously maintains a crucial role hasn’t shown it can succeed in tight spots against good hitters. Buddy Groom has been pretty good so far, but it will be interesting to see him against Cliff Floyd or David Ortiz in a tight spot in the seventh inning in a playoff-type atmosphere.

Should all these things happen, it won’t mean the Yankees should start printing playoff tickets. Conversely, should they not, it won’t mean it’s time to trade Derek Jeter and cash for prospects. If the Yankees go 8-7 or 9-6 in coming weeks, they’ll still be well positioned to get hot again in the summer and make a run at a playoff berth. But whatever they do, it will be more telling of what kind of team this really is than a hot streak driven by Tino Martinez turning into Lou Gehrig and the A’s turning into the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.