MIAMI -- The New York Yankees managed to win three fewer games this spring than they did last spring. Their collective team batting average for spring training 2016 was nearly 20 points lower than it had been in 2015. They hit four fewer home runs, they scored 22 fewer runs, their team OPS was down 50 points and their team ERA was up by more than three-quarters of a run.

And yet, as the team prepared to leave Miami on Saturday evening after a 2-1 loss to the Marlins in their spring finale, Alex Rodriguez said, “I think this team has the potential to be better than last year’s."

Despite seeing his team struggle to collect four hits and failing to score all day after Jacoby Ellsbury’s leadoff home run, Yankees manager Joe Girardi declared his team “ready to go," and general manager Brian Cashman said, “If we stay healthy, this team can make a lot of noise."

Alex Rodriguez managed to stay healthy this spring, but he was far from productive at the plate with just one extra-base hit. Reinhold Matay/USA TODAY Sports

Whether that is all just white noise or a cogent analysis of what the 2016 Yankees are or can be will reveal itself over the course of the next six months and 162 games.

But one common thread ran through to the optimism expressed by all three of those men, as well as many others in the Yankees' clubhouse: Despite so-so production out of all but a handful of Yankees -- most of them relatively new to the team -- Girardi, Cashman and many of the players considered this spring to be a success for one reason:

“Health," Rodriguez explained. “I just wanted to stay healthy."

For that reason, A-Rod tends to downplay his own quiet spring, in which he homered on his first swing back on March 2 and didn’t have another extra-base hit all spring. Last spring, coming off a year’s suspension and facing not only his 40th birthday but all sorts of doubts concerning his ability to be a productive player again, Rodriguez batted .267 with three homers and an .866 OPS last spring.

“That’s pretty good," he said then. It turned out to be a precursor to a surprising season in which he belted 33 home runs, the most he had hit since 2008.

This spring, he staggered home at .245, with just the one home run and a puny .608 OPS. He was not alone. Mark Teixeira, the club’s expected cleanup hitter, batted .140 with a single home run. Ellsbury came into the last game hitting just .185, but he had two hits on Saturday, including that leadoff home run, to finish at .225. Brett Gardner hit .250, and Didi Gregorius hit .239.

Only newcomer Starlin Castro, who batted .375 with two homers, and Brian McCann, who hit .333, had springs worth taking note of.

“I don’t make too much of spring training for the older guys," Girardi said. “You can’t. We had some guys that didn’t really hit too well in spring, but you can’t make too much out of that. If it happens in the regular season, then it’s a different story."

The manager then added what has become the team motto this spring: “From a health standpoint, we did really well."

That seemed indisputable until Wednesday, when both closer Andrew Miller and swingman Bryan Mitchell suffered fractures on freak plays facing the same obscure batter, Willians Astudillo of the Braves. But while the Yankees will lose Mitchell for an undetermined length of time, they apparently dodged a bullet with Miller, who pitched with the injury for the first time on Saturday and reported no problems.

Add his name to the list of reasons for Yankees optimism, along with Luis Severino, the 22-year-old right-hander who looked sharp in his five innings against the Marlins, despite taking the loss due to a third-inning unearned run.

Castro, making what appears to be a successful transition to second base, is a reason to believe the Yankees' infield will be a lot less leaky this season; along with Gregorius, Castro gives the Yankees two things they have not had in their infield since Robinson Cano was in pinstripes and Derek Jeter was in his 30s: relative youth and range.

With flamethrower Aroldis Chapman closing games, and Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller as setup men, the bullpen could arguably be the Yankees' biggest strength in 2016. Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports

There is still Dellin Betances, with his 98 to 100 mph fastball, to set up, and when Aroldis Chapman gets off his suspension on May 9, the Yankees' three-headed bullpen monster should be alive and breathing fire.

Those are all reasons to hope.

But there are still reasons to worry about the middle relief; aside from Betances, Miller and Chasen Shreve, there are a lot of unknown quantities out there named Luis Cessa, Johnny Barbato and Kirby Yates. Ivan Nova, the newest addition, has virtually never done the job before.

Then there is the rotation, which aside from Severino, is riddled with question marks. Masahiro Tanaka, the Opening Day starter, admitted on Saturday that he was worried throughout spring training about whether his surgically cleaned-out elbow would be ready to go, which explains a lot about why the Yankees delayed so long before making his start official.

Michael Pineda had an OK spring (4.50 ERA), but he has never remained healthy for an entire season. Nathan Eovaldi still has worlds of potential -- and allows worlds of basreunners. CC Sabathia was given the fifth rotation spot -- and a very short leash.

All of them have to perform well enough that Betances and Miller -- and, eventually, Betances, Miller and Chapman -- even get the opportunity to do what the Yankees are paying them to do.

And even the best of starting pitchers can’t do much if the offense doesn’t give them much to work with. That’s where A-Rod (41 on July 27), Teixeira (36 on April 11) and Carlos Beltran (39 on April 24) come in. They need to perform at or near the level they did last year, and Ellsbury and Gardner, both of whom had miserable second halfs in 2015, need to do a whole lot better.

Clearly, a lot of things need to go right for the 2016 Yankees to be better than the 2015 Yankees, and so far, through seven weeks of spring training, one thing has:

They have stayed healthy.

Starting Monday, it’s time for them to work on everything else.