The New York Yankees’ 2022 ALCS defeat to the Houston Astros was a series to forget for the Bronx Bombers. The Yankees did not have a single starting pitcher tally at least 6.0 innings pitched in any of the four games in the series, and they also struck out a total of 50 times.

The Yankees and the Astros each did not go all out to bring in new faces during the offseason. For the reigning American League East champions, they shifted much of their attention to re-signing both Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman did at the least win the Carlos Rodon sweepstakes in December.

The main storyline for the Yankees' 2023 campaign will center on whether they will be able to finally dethrone the Astros — a team that sent them home in four out of the last eight postseasons. For Yankees manager Aaron Boone, he is unsure on whether the “gap” has closed between his squad and the reigning World Series champions.

“How much we’ve closed the gap, I don’t know,” Boone said during a press conference on Wednesday. “We’ll see. We’re in February. We got a long way to go to even get that opportunity to find out if we get to play in the playoffs and have that crack again. I feel like that’s our expectation.

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“There’s been some teams, namely the Astros, that have been a nemesis that have knocked us off a couple times. They’ve set the standard right now, certainly in the American League. But that said, we’ve got a bear of a division we’ve got to go through. In a lot of ways, a number of teams in the American League are better.”

Boone also took some time to look back at the Astros’ sweep of the Yankees last year.

“We ran up against a bit of a buzz saw, and we were a little depleted,” Boone said. “That said, if we’re going to win it all, [if] we’re going to win the prize, we gotta find a way to get by these teams that in a given year really got it rolling on the mound.”

The Yankees will kick off their spring training schedule with a road contest against the Philadelphia Phillies on Feb. 25.