Yankees" Season Beginning With Rays and Other Contenders TAMPA, Fla. - The stinging disappointment the Yankees felt last October when they lost the American League Division series to the Detroit Tigers has not been forgotten. On Friday, a new Yankees campaign begins where last year's regular season ended, at Tropicana Field. Brian Cashman, the general manager, made moves to fortify the roster, and the players, almost to a man, came to spring training in better shape and with a quiet resolve to take themselves much further than last year's club. "We've got that hunger back," Nick Swisher said. When you are in a situation where you don't reach the goal that you set out for, you want to bust your butt to get back there again. In New York they expect it, and rightfully so. We want to be holding that trophy again. And I want to win another, and another and another and another. The Yankees" 110th opening day game will be played against the Tampa Bay Rays, last season's surprise wild-card winner. C. C. Sabathia will face James Shields. As one of six teams favored to compete for the American League pennant, the Yankees join the Rays, the Tigers, the Boston Red Sox, the Los Angeles Angels and the Texas Rangers with World Series ambitions. All of those top adversaries are on the Yankees schedule in April, for a total of 15 games. "You don't want to make too much out of the first month," Manager Joe Girardi said, "but it's a great measuring stick of where we're at, that's for sure." After facing the Rays, the Yankees will host the Angels from April 13-15, then play three games at Fenway Park and three games in Texas before the Tigers visit the Bronx. That stretch should give the Yankees, if nothing else, a good sense of their main opposition as the season progresses. "It's hard to draw any conclusions from April, but you definitely want to get off to a good start," Mark Teixeira said. The fact of the matter is, in the American League there are very few teams that you just expect to beat up on, and we definitely don't have any of those the first month of the season. But of those six teams, at least one of them isn't going to make the playoffs. With the new playoff format, five teams from each league, including a second wild card, will make the postseason. Last year the Yankees clinched early and were practically bystanders to one of the most hectic season-concluding days in history, when the Rays beat them to clinch a wild-card berth that the Red Sox had also hoped to win. Most of the teams expected to contend for the American League pennant made significant improvements, with two of the best players in the National League coming over: Albert Pujols to the Angels and Prince Fielder to the Tigers. The Rangers added pitcher Yu Darvish, and the Red Sox have Bobby Valentine at the helm, trying to clean up the mess left from their collapse last year. The Yankees were not idle, either. They added starting pitchers Hiroki Kuroda and Michael Pineda, who begins the season on the disabled list but is not expected to miss much more than a month. Alex Rodriguez spent time in the off-season in Germany receiving advanced treatment on his right knee, while Teixeira and Swisher came into camp looking noticeably more fit. Sabathia, too, lost weight and will try to keep it off all season, and Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera appear as ready as ever. And this season will feature the dynamic combination of Curtis Granderson and Robinson Cano hitting back-to-back in the lineup. All of that should be enough to keep the league's other contenders equally concerned about the Yankees. "It's a long season," Cashman said. Obviously it's a tough schedule on the front end. But hopefully people feel it's tough to be playing us, too. Michael Pineda, who has right shoulder tendinitis, threw a ball for the first time Thursday and reported no problems. Pineda made 25 throws off flat ground and passed the first step in his recovery from the injury. ... Catcher Chris Stewart joined the team for Thursday's workout after being traded from the San Francisco Giants in exchange for pitcher George Kontos. Francisco Cervelli was sent to the minors to make room for Stewart, but Joe Girardi said that if Russell Martin were injured, Cervelli would be recalled and would become the primary catcher. To replace Kontos, the Yankees claimed the right-handed pitcher Cody Eppley from the Texas Rangers. Eppley will be assigned to Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.