This story was excerpted from Bryan Hoch’s Yankees Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

This Yankees rotation is an uncommonly close group. Watch the dugout after one of the starting pitchers exits a contest; the other four hurlers usually stand by to applaud the effort, then deconstruct it with some intense dugout chat that includes high-tech feedback on an iPad screen.

“It’s been fun to be a part of, coming off the field and having the whole rotation there to greet me, talk about my outing and stuff,” said right-hander Jameson Taillon. “It’s a tight-knit group. We watch each other’s bullpens, we play catch together; we’re always talking about our plans and scouting reports.”

They’re also feeding off each other, having tossed at least six innings in a season-high five consecutive starts, a string that began with Nestor Cortes’ eight-plus-inning gem on May 26 at Tropicana Field. Taillon said that the pitchers kidded each other during that outing: “Why don’t we all just go seven or eight innings this series?”

The next night, Taillon made good on that, hurling eight scoreless innings of two-hit ball -- arguably his best performance in a Yankees uniform. Gerrit Cole struck out 10 Rays over six innings the next day, a start impacted by a close pitch that could have been a called third strike, and Luis Severino finished the series with 6 1/3 strong innings in the finale.

“I feel pretty great,” Severino said. “Even me, I didn’t know how I was going to be [this season]. It feels awesome doing my work between starts. Every five days or six days, I feel pretty good. We’ve got a great team. The pitching has been great; the hitting has been great.”

That put pressure on Jordan Montgomery to keep the string going. When the Yankees backed their hard-luck left-hander with four first-inning runs against the Angels, Montgomery was able to cruise to his first victory of the season behind seven solid frames. Overall, New York's starters own a 2.78 ERA that is the American League’s best, behind only the Dodgers (2.62) in the Majors.

“I guess we could be proving some people wrong,” Taillon said. “And we might be proving the Yankees right for believing in us.”