twilightdawning

A writer's thoughts – mainly about music, sport and theatre. Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, live shows, New York Yankees

The New York Yankees – The Batters in September and October (2016)

Posted on October 11, 2016 by twilightdawning

The New York Yankees surprised us all by how long they stayed in contention for the second wild card before slipping away in the final week or so of the regular season. However, in reality they didn’t really maintain the momentum that they had worked up in August and the team both in terms of their batting and pitching struggled over the last few hurdles and the much vaunted Baby Bombers began to look a little more ordinary after the initial excitement around the call-ups had settled down…

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in August (2016)

Posted on September 7, 2016 by twilightdawning

The Yankees had more outgoing pitchers than batters in the trade deadline clear out but there were less new faces on the pitching staff than there were batters with starters, Luis Cessa and Chad Green who had been around on and off since the beginning of year suddenly thrust into the limelight. Let’s see who over-achieved and who under-achieved…

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The New York Yankees – The Batters in August (2016)

Posted on September 4, 2016 by twilightdawning

I would be the first to admit that I didn’t expect to see the Yankees have their best month of the season in August. With the departure of Andrew Miller and Carlos Beltran it seemed so unlikely. Just as unlikely as Ronald Torreyes leading the team in batting average. Who could guess?

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in July (2016)

Posted on August 14, 2016 by twilightdawning

If the Yankees made some radical changes to their batting line up in July with the departure of Carlos Beltran that was nothing to the way that they changed their pitching staff around.

Let’s recap… At the end of last year, the Yankees signed Aroldis Chapman for 4 minor league prospects including Caleb Cotham who had seen some action in the Majors in 2015. Now, Cotham has hardly set the world alight since joining the Cincinnati Reds (0-3, 7.40 ERA) but even so Chapman was a controversial signing. He was being investigated under the Major Leagues’ domestic violence ruling, was likely to be suspended and anyway, he was a closer – and the Yankees had one of the finest closers in all baseball, in 2015, in Andrew Miller.

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The New York Yankees – The Batters in July (2016)

Posted on August 13, 2016 by twilightdawning

When I was writing my coverage of the New York Yankees in Spring Training and April, I mentioned that this team looked like it could be an echo of the team that represented the Bronx Bombers in 1989.

(see for example my article “And on the Eighth day the Yankees did nothing” https://twilightdawning.com/2016/03/04/the-new-york-yankees-off-season-update-january-february-2016-and-on-the-eighth-day-the-yankees-did-nothing/ )

Little did I realise how much…

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in June (2016)

Posted on July 19, 2016 by twilightdawning

In June, some of the pitchers that the Yankees felt they could rely upon started to creak. Meanwhile, some of those who looked like they weren’t going to perform began to improve. Rollercoaster. The team ERA during June increased from 3.75 in May to just below 5. No point in your batters improving if this is going to happen!

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The New York Yankees – The Batters in June (2016)

Posted on July 6, 2016 by twilightdawning

The Yankees bats finally began to break out in June but their win/loss record on the month wasn’t much different from how it had been in May. We’ll see to what degree the pitchers were responsible for that in our next article. In the meantime let’s survey the batters and see who was responsible for a month that saw them surge to a .278 BA on the month against May’s .232 and .424 SLG against the previous month’s .385.

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New York Yankees (June 2016 Update)- Just passing through…

Posted on June 29, 2016 by twilightdawning

There has been an extensive list of players who have passed through the New York Yankees’ pinstripes between April and the 24th of June. In this article, I am going to survey the players who have spent at least 1 day on the roster for the Bronx Bombers but are no longer on the 25 on that date in June.

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in May (2016)

Posted on June 4, 2016 by twilightdawning

So if the batters were worse than terrible, it must have been the pitching staff who picked up some of the slack and gave the team a chance in the May games – leading to the Yankees achieving that surprising 16-13 record on the month.

12 of those 16 wins came from the starting staff so we’ll be considering them first.

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The New York Yankees – The Batters in May (2016)

Posted on June 3, 2016 by twilightdawning

A few months ago I talked in this column about two perils that the Yankees faced in the 2016 season. The first possibility was that the senior players would prove to be well past their sell-by date and would under-perform. The second possibility was that although those senior players would perform, they would be laboured by injury. In reality, I overlooked the third possibility – that they would under-perform AND carry injuries.

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