The New York Yankees had a sensational month in May. They went 21-7 and dominated the league and their division.
Aaron Judge, who had struggled in April, bounced back with strength. Juan Soto continued at the high level he set in April. Their starting pitchers exceeded expectations. The bullpen had as much depth as anticipated.
Continue readingInjuries? The Yankees got ’em.
Nestor Cortes; Luis Severino; Albert Abreu; Anthony Misiewicz; Wandy Peralta; Tommy Kahnle; Ryan Weber; Luis Gil; Lou Trivino.
And Frankie Montas, and Keynan Middleton just made it back before the end of the season.
And Ian Hamilton by the middle of September.
No surprise then that the patched up Yankees rotation and bullpen struggled in September and in game 162 in October.
Thank goodness for Gerrit Cole.
Let’s take an overview of the stats…
Continue readingAnd there was more rain…
Thankfully, it was nothing like the day before. The delay amounted to only 16 minutes. But there was added time for the fans – this one ran into extra innings.
More surprisingly, the Yankees limited the Brewers who had so dominated them over the previous two days, to a mere three hits over the regulation nine innings. Even more surprisingly, the Yankees didn’t get a hit at all until the 10th.
And so much of the weight of the Yankees staying in the game fell upon the able shoulders of Gerrit Cole, who if there is any justice in the baseball world will walk away with the American League Cy Young award for 2023.
The New York Yankees had a 21-8 record on the month in August. It seems odd therefore, given that this was far and away their strongest month of the season, that I remain unconvinced about their potential to reach the post-season
On one hand, the vast majority of those wins came in consecutive games, when the momentum and positivity was spinning out of control. On the other hand, once that winning sequence was broken, they lost the four remaining games of the month – against the Oakland Athletics (a potential challenger for the New York team for a wild card spot) and against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim who went into their series with the Yankees below .500 on the season.
It is an interesting conundrum and it will be very interesting to see what September brings. Boston have remained in contention. Toronto are fast improving. Oakland will need to sort out some of their issues but could still challenge for a wild card spot and Seattle have also come into the reckoning.
The Yankees would need to maintain something like their August record to challenge the Tampa Bay Rays for the AL East division lead, which, frankly, I can’t see happening. This means that any two of five could capture the wild card route to the playoffs. The Yankees of August could do it. The Yankees of July will not.
Let’s see what happened in August-
A tale of three cities…
Surely, it could never catch on… could it?
The date: 29 & 30th June 2019
The place: Olympic Stadium, Stratford, London, UK
What: Major League Baseball
Who: The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox (with Boston playing as the home team).
Continue readingThe Yankees’ time in the playoffs was short and sometimes not so sweet. They beat the Oakland Athletics in the one-game wildcard game but then were out of their depth in the 5 games series for the American League Division Series (ALDS) losing 3-1 to the Boston Red Sox who would eventually go on to take the World Series.
The performances of the batting line up were not far from how the players had performed in the regular season. Let’s take a look:
Who: New York Yankees
What: versus Boston Red Sox
Where: Yankee Stadium, Bronx, New York
When: 18 to 20 September 2018
Well, surely the Yankees – after their disappointing series loss against Toronto – couldn’t bounce back and manage to win the series against Boston — and still allow the Red Sox to clinch the AL East in the Bronx? Well, if anyone could, these contrary Yankees could. Read on…
The Yankees’ pitching rotation, going into the season, looked quite evidently their greatest weakness.
By contrast, their bullpen looked like their greatest strength.
What would happen if the bullpen lived up to its billing and the rotation was more consistent than expected?
That would be April 2017, which is the way that it has worked out in practise!
In an earlier article. I pessimistically asserted that I saw similarities between the Yankees squad of 2016 and that of 1989. The 1989 team finished 5th in the American League East. That was pre-expansion when there were 7 teams in the division. Consequently, that would mean that it was likely that the Yankees would finish 4th or 5th in the 5-team division and be well out of contention.
However, there were a few positive signs in Spring Training which gave me pause for thought. And then the real season began…
The Yankees have got off to a surprisingly good start to the season with a 14-8 record in April. This becomes doubly surprising when we consider that they got off to a 3-6 run in their first nine games. Both the bullpen and large sections of the offensive line-up have done better than we had any reason to expect and whilst there are more than a few weak links, there is good reason to think they can at least stay with the pace of a division which doesn’t have a clearly outstanding team.
Let’s survey who is doing well and not so well…
twilightdawning 