A New York Yankees Diary – Day Twenty-Seven – September 27th, 2025

So, the Yankees steered their way into the last weekend of the regular season, knowing that if the balance of power stayed the same, the Toronto Blue Jays would take a tie in the division lead and therefore would be able to have a “bye” through the first round of the playoffs.

The tiebreak rules favour Toronto as they have won the majority of the games between the two teams this season.

On the other hand, The Yankees were facing the Baltimore Orioles – the weakest team in the American League East – so going into thi Saturday afternoon game anything could happen.

Cam Schlittler would start the game on the mound for the New York Yankees whilst for Baltimore, Tomoyuki Sugano would be the starting pitcher.

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A New York Yankees Diary – Day Twenty-Six – September 26th, 2025

And so, the Yankees had moved into the last series of the regular season as they faced the Baltimore Orioles. Baltimore were 75-84 and bottom of the division, compared to the Yankees who were 91-68. The Yankees therefore had more to worry about – specifically what was happening in Toronto.

There, Toronto would face the Tampa Bay Rays for three consecutive games and the Yankees knew that if the Blue Jays should win all of those games then because Toronto had won the lion’s share of the games between the Blue Jays and New York then it would just be as though Toronto had won the division.

They would take the “bye” through the first round of the playoffs.

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A New York Yankees Diary – Day Twenty-Three – September 23rd, 2025

And so back in NYC, the Yankees faced quite a comfortable run in. They would first face the Chicago White Sox – the worst team in the American League, second worst in all of major league baseball. After that they would face the Baltimore Orioles who have the poorest record in the Yankees’ own division – the American League East.

The difficulty is that, through these six games they will not only need to keep pace with the Toronto Blue Jays but surpass the Blue Jays record over the same period. They went into the first Chicago game two games behind Toronto and (because of Toronto having the advantage in the tie-breaker rules), they would need to finish one game ahead of the Blue Jays.

The tie-breaker stipulates that the team with most wins in the games between the two teams would finish top in event of a dead heat. And in this, Toronto have the clear edge – and the two teams will not play each other again in the regular season.

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A New York Yankees Diary – Day Seven – September 7th, 2025

And so, an afternoon game at Yankee Stadium with no seeming threat of the rain that drained the energy (in the Yankees’ favour) in the late innings of yesterday’s game. Today, Max Fried, who has bounced back well from the struggles that he had immediately after the All-Star game and has dominated in his last two appearances, took the mound. Versatile, veteran, Max Scherzer would be Toronto’s starter, and Fried would be first to take the mound.

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A New York Yankees Diary – Day One to Four – September 1st to 4th, 2025

So, as is my way, I have a writing commission to specifically cover the whole month of Yankees baseball in September. So, I headed out from England to take up my seat in The Stadium.

However, when I first arrived this year the Yankees were still on their road trip, so my opening article will just briefly cover that period.

It would be the 5th before the Yankees returned home and prior to that they had a series against Houston. We all know the rivalry that has existed between the teams and their fans for the last several year – they were charged with using artificial methods to steal signs in 2017 and 2018 and found guilty – and that is not easy to forget.

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The New York Yankees in August – Part Two – The Pitchers (2025)

The Yankees got better as August progressed. Part of this was due to members of the starting rotation getting into their groove after a rough stretch. The most notable of them was Max Fried who struggled throughout almost all of August, but then hit his stride in his last August appearance.

Alongside the other starters, the relief corps were much better than they had been in July.

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The New York Yankees in August – Part One – The Batters (2025)

For the last two months, the Yankees have been below .500 in win percentage each month. In August they have begun to turn that around. They lost the first five games in August and then went two-two in the next four. From there, they really picked up, and on the whole month, they went 16-12 which means they were 14-5 after August 10th.

Most of the improvement can’t be attributed to the new signings that they brought in or around the trading so we must think in terms of the return of Giancarlo Stanton, a career best season for Trent Grisham and continued good form from Cody Bellinger.

Sadly, Aaron Judge was still not playing his best game.

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The New York Yankees in September – Part Two – The Pitchers (2024)

The Yankees used 6 starters and 14 relievers in September. Marcus Stroman‘s continuing struggles made him look very much like the 6th starter for the future, which is not an enviable place to be in going into the playoffs.

All-in-all though, the team was looking strong in terms of pitching, and they had more than enough arms to give them confidence going forward.

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A New York Yankees Diary – Day Nineteen – September 29th, 2024

So, game 162.

And this would prove to be my last game of the season. The news agency had offered me a contract for the post-season, but the need to move house and start a new position in England, was going to mean that there was no way of taking that up.

As in 2023, the last days of the season were visited by blanket rain, which meant delays and just getting generally soaked to the skin. First pitch didn’t come around until 4:36 by my watch.

On the mound? Clarke Schmidt for the New York Yankees who entered the game with a 2.55 ERA and a 5-5 win – loss record which partially concealed that he hadn’t achieved a win since May 16 and had missed a considerable portion of the season through injury. For the Pittsburgh Pirates, it was Bailey Falter who had an 8-9 record. This was his rookie season and other than not playing in the majors for most of July, he had produced a reasonable season pitching to a 4.17 ERA.

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A New York Yankees Diary – Day Ten to Thirteen – September 20th to 23rd, 2024

So, having finished a successful series in Seattle, the Yankees moved on their road trip to Oakland to face the Athletics.

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