Over a winter that featured the end of the Joe Torre era, the beginning of the Joe Girardi era, the full-blown arrival of Hank Steinbrenner, unusually public negotiations for two-time Cy Young winner Johan Santana, the banishment and sudden reacceptance of Alex Rodriguez, and various other dramas great and small, the most consequential moves for the Yankees were those that weren’t made. Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, and Ian Kennedy are still Yankees, and so one can see in faint outline the beginnings of a new day for the Yankees, one in which they will be far less reliant on the few remaining holdovers from the dynastic teams of the late 1990s, and in which they will be far more reliant on a group of homegrown players who harbor such potential that it seems almost unfair that they’re the property of a team so rich.

This being so, the Yankees are basically the same veteran team they have been for the last several years. Last spring’s abrupt collapse, even if it didn’t, in the end, cost the team its customary postseason berth, vindicated all those who have been warning for some time that the Yankees’ collective experience was beginning to look a bit more like collective decrepitude. It took the signing of Roger Clemens to what was by some measures the most expensive baseball contract ever, historic seasons from Rodriguez and Jorge Posada, and the unexpected emergence of Chamberlain and Kennedy to salvage the year. If another collapse comes, the Yankees will be hard-pressed to enjoy such a string of good fortune.

Luckily, the team likely won’t need it. The veterans are a year older and that much closer to senescence, but between the young pitchers, Robinson Cano, and Melky Cabrera, enough of the roster is on the upswing to compensate for likely declines. This year’s Yankees are no sure bet to play in October, as they have been for most of the last decade, but it’s easy to overstate their weaknesses and underestimate their strengths. Probably no team in the game has a better lineup, and the rotation more than makes up in talent what it lacks in dependability. The chances of sending off the Stadium with yet another championship are high.

MANAGER

On September 12, 2006, Josh Johnson, a 22-year-old Florida Marlins rookie who would have ranked third in the league in ERA had he had pitched five more innings and qualified for the crown, threw 56 pitches after a one-hour-and-22-minute rain delay. In the process he strained his arm, which he blew out last year, necessitating surgery from which he still hasn’t recovered.

Joe Girardi, who managed that game, explained the decision at the time by noting that Johnson had told him his arm was loose. It’s a fair explanation, and one doesn’t need to reduce Girardi’s career in baseball to one iffy decision, but it raises a question: Will the man entrusted with the richest trove of pitching talent the Yankees have had in anyone’s memory be able to balance the needs of the individual game and the 2008 season against the longterm interests of the team? After all, whatever pressure there was to win that 2006 game, in which the Marlins were still alive in the wild card chase, it was nothing next to the pressure that will bear on the Yankees this season. If Girardi was at least mildly reckless in that one game, he could prove so again in the Bronx.

All this is merely a note of caution. Girardi’s background earned him the chance to manage this team, and whatever questions there are about him, it will be more of a surprise if he fails in replacing Joe Torre than it will be if he succeeds.

BENCH

In Wilson Betemit, Morgan Ensberg, and Shelley Duncan, the Yankees have three moderately powerful bench hitters, all of them more valuable contributors than their low batting averages would indicate. This is far better than what they usually have, and it’s hard not to approvingly note the roster’s relative dearth of low-impact slap hitters; with iron men manning the three skill positions in the infield, why bother to carry some Miguel Cairo-type on the off chance that a bowling ball will fall from the sky and land on Derek Jeter’s head? Still, bench hitters often come up when a single or a sacrifice fly is what is needed; it would be a good idea to add someone with some bat control at some point this season.

BULLPEN

While the bullpen should, overall, be an asset, that’s only because of Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera. Kyle Farnsworth and LaTroy Hawkins are outright arsonists, and more or less everyone else in the bullpen could be fairly described as a fringe major leaguer. This isn’t an inherently devastating or insuperable problem, but as the Yankees are relying greatly on various starters who can’t, or shouldn’t be, counted on to do much more than pitch six innings per start, the lack of middle relief could, and likely will, be a problem. This could be greatly offset by using Chamberlain for more than an inning at a time, but propping up the bullpen with a pitcher who will ideally crack the rotation at some point strikes one as a suspect plan.

Johnny Damon • LEFT FIELD 2008 Projection: .278 AVG/.355 OBP/.417 SLG, 77 R*

In today’s game, average left fielders and designated hitters usually hit about .270/.350/.450. Damon is 34, his career line is .288/.353/.433, and he’s coming off a season in which he slugged .396. (That he was injured is a lame defense; as players age, they are injured more often, which is part of why teams prefer younger players to older ones.) As he’ll be below average with the bat unless he hits better than expected, Damon is more of a liability than an asset. This is what happens when you sign minor stars in their 30s to long-term contracts — they lose a step, move to easier defensive positions, and act as a drag on the lineup.

Derek Jeter • SHORTSTOP 2008 Projection: .297/.365/.407, 97 R

Having racked up at least 188 hits in 10 of the last 11 years and played at least 148 games all but one year of his career, Jeter, 33, is within range of some really important records. With another six healthy years, he can set the all-time record for games played at shortstop of 2,583, now held by Luis Aparicio. (Omar Vizquel will break this record in April.) He also has an excellent chance at Honus Wagner’s 3,415 hits, the career record for hits by a shortstop. Jeter is currently at 2,356 — 19 more than Pete Rose had at the same age. There’s been so much emphasis through the years on Jeter’s more ethereal virtues that the tangible signs of his sustained, consistent excellence have, oddly, gone relatively unnoticed. Once the big records start falling, that will no longer be so.

Bobby Abreu • RIGHT FIELD 2008 Projection: .275/.401/.550, 69 RBI

Abreu has hit 31 home runs the last two years, which is downright weak for a left-handed corner outfielder playing in Yankee Stadium and Philadelphia. Naturally enough, he’s now a poor bet to draw his once-customary 120 walks. With no real reason to fear he would crank the ball out of the yard (and, of course, with Alex Rodriguez looming behind him), pitchers challenged him more often last year, and he drew 84 free passes, low by his standards. Abreu is still valuable for his patience and durability, but his ridiculous total of 123 runs scored last year reflected more on who was hitting behind him than on his diminished skills, and among the Yankees’ many aging and aged hitters, he’s one of those most likely to totally collapse this year.

Alex Rodriguez • THIRD BASE 2008 Projection: .294/.401/.550, 35 HR

Since integration, three American League players have scored more than 140 runs in a season. Ted Williams and Rickey Henderson each did it once, and Rodriguez has done it twice. That bit of trivia alone shows why, for all the alternately hilarious and interminable dramas associated with him, the most fascinating thing about Rodriguez, who will likely retire as the all-time leader in runs, home runs, and RBI, remains just how good he is. There have been no similar players in all of baseball history, but Mike Schmidt is reasonably close, and he didn’t show any real decline until he was 38; as Rodriguez is more athletic, and has access to better conditioning and training, it’s reasonable to expect as much of him. Having set new career highs in both on-base and slugging at 31, Rodriguez has many remaining years in which to reap the benefit both of his physical prime and the knowledge that comes with a full decade of major league experience.

Jason Giambi • FIRST BASE 2008 Projection: .234/.362/.453, 21 HR

One would assume Giambi is toast. He played four months last year, hit .177 and slugged .323 or below in two of them, and ran up a pathetic .255 OBA in a third. Still, Giambi has looked finished before and come back. His odd career shows just how mental a game baseball is; having endured every injury and public humiliation imaginable, barely able to bend over at the waist or step on the field without something snapping, Giambi is still capable of the odd hot streak where he’ll belt every other pitch he sees down the line or over the fence, based basically on nothing other than his timing and mastery of the strike zone. I completely understand why he exasperates Yankees fans, but his curious abilities should inspire at least as much hedged admiration as groaning.

Jorge Posada • CATCHER 2008 Projection: .287/.380/.479, 75 RBI

When a 35-year-old catcher who has never hit above .287 hits .338, as Posada did last year, something is obviously up. In this case it was his batting average when he put the ball in play, which was .386 last year, against .303 the year before, and .288 the year before that. This is completely unsustainable; Ichiro Suzuki, by way of illustration, has hit .356 on balls in play in his career. Posada is not going to repeat his trick. Still, it’s worth remembering that Posada has a long, long way to fall before he starts weighing down the Yankees; even a league-average batting line, which he’s never failed to greatly better since becoming a regular, would make him one of the game’s most potent backstops. His career will one day provoke some ferocious Hall of Fame debates.

Hideki Matsui • DESIGNATED HITTER 2008 Projection: .286/.367/.465, 80 RBI

If he never has quite lived up to the reputation he enjoyed coming over from Japan, Matsui has done well for himself in New York. Anyone who can be penciled in for an annual .300 average, 60 extra-base hits, and 75 walks is a good player to have around, and if he isn’t a Jose Reyes-caliber athlete, or a true star given the offensive standards that hold in left field and at designated hitter, Matsui still seems a reasonable bet to age gently over the next few years. Over the last two years, for instance, he’s walked more than he’s struck out, which he didn’t do in his first three years in the majors. As his bat continues to slow a bit, I’d expect him to compensate with a little more patience and a more strategic approach at the plate. That won’t hold off Father Time, but it will slow his advance. Robinson Cano • SECOND BASE 2008 Projection: .299/.340/.454, 79 RBI

Of the six middle infielders who had at least 1,500 at-bats and a batting average better than Cano’s career .314 mark through the age of 24, five, including Frankie Frisch, Eddie Collins, and Rogers Hornsby, are Hall of Famers. That’s good company, and there are even better signs for his future. Cano walked more last year than he had in the previous two seasons, for one thing, and improved what were already more than solid defensive skills, so that he was able to match his 2006 performance even while losing 36 points of batting average. Good as he is, we likely haven’t seen his best yet, and I like his odds of seriously competing for an MVP award at least once in the next three years.

Melky Cabrera • CENTER FIELD 2008 Projection: .283/.341/.404, 67 RBI

Cabrera is a victim of the unfair expectations that meet all Yankees. At 23, he has two full seasons as an essentially average center fielder under his belt. While this hasn’t done the Yankees an immense amount of good — average is average, and the Bronx demands more than that — any player who can hold his own in the majors has an excellent chance of developing into a real star. If he never improves at all, Cabrera will be a solid regular for a decade, and if he can do any one of a number of things, such as hit .300, develop double-digit home run power, or learn how to line the ball to the opposite field, he’ll be better than that. Bernie Williams, it’s worth remembering, didn’t do anything really special until he was 25; if not to the same degree, Cabrera will also reward continued patience.

Chien-Ming Wang • STARTING PITCHER (R) 2008 Projection: 11–9/4.40 ERA/185 IP

In 2006, Wang struck out about one man per three innings; his success was thus an unsustainable anomaly, a violation of baseball’s laws of physics. Last year, he struck out a man every other inning, which is on the low end of what a good starter can be expected to do, but isn’t unprecedented. In fact, it shows how Wang is — as other hard-throwing sinkerballers before him such as Kevin Brown and Scott Erickson did in their day — mastering the technique of doing something other than heaving bowling balls at the plate. Wang’s approach makes him badly suited for the first-rate and heavily prepared lineups one faces in October, but he’s quite capable of winning 19 for a third straight year, and pitching at this level for several years to come.

Andy Pettitte • STARTING PITCHER (L) 2008 Projection: 11–8/4.23 ERA/180 IP

Annually good for 200 innings and a 4.00 ERA, and a sure bet to keep his focus in key games, Pettitte has been one of baseball’s more reliable pitchers for a decade, and is counted on to help Wang anchor a young, unreliable rotation. This makes his recent back spasms worrisome — athletes are hardly exempt from the general law that there’s little good to be done for bad back muscles — and of course there’s no real way to know how the stress of one of the more embarrassing winters anyone in baseball has ever suffered will affect his performance. The betting here is that the man will be fine, but between the health issues and the pressure, there’s certainly a non-negligible chance of an inglorious and complete flameout.

Philip Hughes • STARTING PITCHER (R) 2008 Projection: 9–7/4.47 ERA/155 IP

Last year at this time, Hughes was (rightly) touted as the best pitching prospect New York had seen in a generation; now he’s not even the best on his own team. Such is life as a young pitcher. There are no real worries about his stuff or his approach, but having popped a hamstring while throwing a pitch last year, there are, and should be, worries about his health. Leg problems can be devastating for a pitcher, not just in their own right but because they can easily lead to arm troubles if they cause a pitcher to adjust his delivery to compensate for them. Days spent on the disabled list, rather than innings pitched, strikeouts, or anything else, should be looked at as the key metric in judging Hughes’s season. All is not gloom; given his health, he should be more effective than Wang or Pettitte.

Joba Chamberlain • SETUP MAN 2008 Projection: 10–5/3.47 ERA/125 IP

ERA+ is a statistic that indexes league- and park-adjusted earned run average on a scale where 100 is average. In 1990, when he posted a 0.61 ERA, Dennis Eckersley’s ERA+ was 606; in his debut last year, Chamberlain’s was 1,192, the highest in baseball history for any pitcher with at least 20 innings of work. It’s all downhill from there, but Joba should be able to get by, and perhaps even satisfy expectations, with a mere 800 or so. The fiercely debated question of whether he ultimately ends up in the bullpen or the rotation will almost certainly depend on his health. With his frame and his stuff, it would seem a tragedy to waste him in relief, but it just isn’t in the cards for some pitchers to make 35 starts a year, especially ones who had arm problems before they were even drafted. Whatever your opinion on the matter, you should assume that the Yankees are not in fact actively trying to sabotage Joba’s career, no matter what decision they end up making.

Mariano Rivera • CLOSER 2008 Projection: 2.60 ERA/30 SV/ 65 IP

Having, like everyone else, run out of superlatives with which to praise Rivera’s inexpressible brilliance, drive, and preternatural consistency, let me just state my belief, grounded in little more than mere awe, that the man will be able to keep pitching as well as he has for as long as he’d like. No one pities major league hitters, who make at least $400,000 a year and are after all major league hitters, but sympathy is in order for those who find themselves sitting on the bench in the late innings of a close game and realize that they’ll have to score on both Chamberlain and Rivera to win. Exactly how is one supposed to plan to do that?

tmarchman@nysun.com