NEW YORK -- The New York Yankees' day started off with the worst possible news, the word that Masahiro Tanaka -- their best and, really, only reliable starting pitcher -- would miss at least one start, and realistically more, with a hamstring strain.

That took Tanaka out of the crucial series against the Toronto Blue Jays that starts on Monday night, the one the Yankees hope will catapult them back atop the AL East. Not even the fact that the Blue Jays lost to Boston earlier Sunday could fully mitigate that loss.

But as we've seen all season with these Yankees, when one player goes out the door, another one comes in, and more often than not the replacement has made you hardly miss the original.

With ace Masahiro Tanaka injured, the Yankees' CC Sabathia showed on Sunday that he can still deliver in the clutch. Anthony Gruppuso/USA TODAY Sport

So it has been with Greg Bird playing in place of the injured Mark Teixeira, Luis Severino stepping in for the injured Nathan Eovaldi, and Dustin Ackley leapfrogging the season-long slumping Stephen Drew.

Now, it is CC Sabathia's turn to step in for Tanaka, and judging by his performance in Sunday night's series finale against the Mets, recent Yankees history may repeat itself once again.

Wearing a new knee brace but flashing his old stuff, Sabathia overcame a rocky first inning to turn in six strong, allowing five hits and one run in the Yankees' 11-2 victory. It was Sabathia's first win since July 8, but hardly his first good performance over the past month. In fact, since coming off the disabled list on Sept. 9, Sabathia has now turned in three consecutive good outings, and his resurgence could not have come at a more opportune time for his club.

Add in the fact that at the time Sabathia went on the disabled list, after lumbering off the mound on Aug. 28 just 2⅔ innings into a start against the Cleveland Indians with his degenerative right knee aflame with pain, neither his manager, one of the most positive thinkers in the game, nor his GM, one of the most candid and pragmatic, gave any reason to hope we would see the pitcher back out there again this season, or possibly ever.

"I felt bad about it," Sabathia said of hearing the pessimistic prognoses of manager Joe Girardi and general manager Brian Cashman. "I didn’t know how serious it was."

But this much Sabathia says he did know: "No matter what, I was coming back. For sure."

On paper, his matchup against Matt Harvey looked like a mismatch, and on grass for the first five batters of the game, it looked even worse. Harvey breezed through a 10-pitch 1-2-3 inning; Sabathia was tagged for back-to-back doubles by Mets leadoff hitter Ruben Tejada and third baseman David Wright, and quickly found himself behind 1-0.

But then something remarkable happened. Sabathia, who missed high with pitches to each of the first two Mets hitters, began to locate his fastball and curve down in the zone. He struck out the next two batters, walked the two after that, and then got Michael Cuddyer to foul out, stranding the bases loaded. And that, basically, was that. Sabathia retired nine in a row, gave up a double, retired three more, gave up another double, struck out three in a row, allowed a single, and finished up his day with a ground out and a line that looked like this: 6 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 7 Ks.

And, one long sought-after victory when the Mets, bowing to pressure from Harvey and his super-agent, Scott Boras, pulled the righty after five innings and 77 pitches despite his having allowed only an infield hit all game. Harvey's departure opened the floodgates for an 11-run outburst against the Mets' bullpen. Now, the Yankees go to Toronto with the improbable chance of wiping out the Blue Jays' 2.5-game edge, and the even more improbable chance of having a reliable, and even formidable, CC Sabathia back in their starting rotation.

"I think if anybody knows me, it hurts me more to let the team down than for myself," Sabathia (5-9) said. "To be able to help the team out and try to get wins, just to be healthy enough, first of all, and to be able to go out and do it, it feels good. And at this stage of my career, having a chance to go back to the playoffs, its huge."

"CC is a veteran guy, he's the leader of the rotation," said Carlos Beltran, who knocked in two runs with a sixth-inning double and drove in five runs in two games against his former team. "Today, what I saw was a guy going out there and even though he's had a few knee issues, he was able to go out there and fight. I think that's a great message for the younger guys, to look up to a guy like that and understand that this time of the year you've got to focus on going out and performing and trying to help the team win."

The injury to Tanaka could have cast a pall over this team heading into its biggest series of the year, but in truth, the Yankees have suffered, and survived, some killer body blows all season long and have yet to come undone. They survived the losses of Teixeira, and of Jacoby Ellsbury for seven weeks, and of closer Andrew Miller for a month, and of every one of their starting pitchers with the exception of the 21-year-old Severino at some point in the season.

And here they are, with 14 games left, well within striking distance of a younger, seemingly more powerful, but no more resilient Toronto Blue Jays team.

"I think all you want is a chance," Girardi said. "That’s all you can ask for in this game, to have an opportunity that’s in front of you. And now we have one."

If Sabathia can remain as healthy and effective as he was Sunday night, the Yankees may have more than a chance. They may even have an edge.