twilightdawning

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

The New York Yankees in June – Part One – The Batters (2021)

Posted on July 15, 2021 by twilightdawning

The New York Yankees were a mess in June. You don’t have to take my word – no less luminaries than Brian Cashman and Giancarlo Stanton agree with me and the language they used was far less kind than mine.

Their record for the month was 12 wins and 14 losses. They lost 5 of the last 6 games in the month. At one point, they lost 7 of 9.

Their roster is full of batters who hover around the Mendoza line (.200). There are others who appear way beyond their sell-by date. Let’s survey the team’s performance on the month:

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The New York Yankees in July 2019 (Part One) – The Batters

Posted on August 5, 2019 by twilightdawning

July was a peculiar month for the Yankees. After going 17-9 in June, they found themselves struggling with injuries and below-par pitching and having to settle for a weaker record in the new month. They still, however, came out 14-11 and with a half game increase on their lead in the American League East. The two game series at the end of June in London with the Red Sox which was followed by a two-games series against the Mets at Citi Field can’t have helped – but somehow they got through.

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The New York Yankees in June 2019 (Part Two) – The Pitchers

Posted on July 6, 2019 by twilightdawning

With their surprisingly successful starting pitcher, Domingo German, headed for the injured list on the 9th of the month, where he would stay for most of the rest of June, it was up to the relievers to bolster the pitching staff, even more than they had needed to do in May. Thankfully, the bullpen were more than up to the task. And the arrangement of using Chad Green as an opener paid off even better than it had in May. Green had, by far, his best month of the season.

Again, let’s explore who else led the way:

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in the Playoffs (2018)

Posted on November 4, 2018 by twilightdawning

So, as we have seen there were some questionable decisions made by Aaron Boone, the Yankees’ manager, with regard to the batting line-up and substitutions. We, therefore, shouldn’t be surprised that those strange moments weren’t confined to the batting and the defence but affected the pitching too. Can anybody spell Austin Romine?

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in August (2018)

Posted on September 14, 2018 by twilightdawning

The Yankees used 8 starters in August. The bullpen was more consistent than the rotation but even there the Yankees lost Aroldis Chapman to the disabled list in the second half of the month. The Yankees had hoped to solve some of their pitching problems by the moves they made at the no-waiver trading deadline but whilst J.A. Happ exceeded expectations, Lance Lynn looked less and less reliable as the month went along.

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New York Yankees – The Batters in May (2018)

Posted on June 19, 2018 by twilightdawning

May 2018 was a strange month in the annals of the New York Yankees. They had a game which started on the 15th of May and didn’t finish until the 18th of June. To think that in my country of birth, they say that cricket Test matches are long because they end five days after they started.

When the game finally came to its conclusion the Yankees lost to a home run from a player for the Washington Nationals (Juan Soto) who hadn’t made his debut yet. All of this in what was a month which saw the Yankees become once again the lead team in all of Major League Baseball. As I keep saying, in these articles,…confused – you will be.

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The New York Yankees in Spring Training – An Overview – Part One (2018)

Posted on March 28, 2018 by twilightdawning

(Normally I would have far more coverage of Spring Training than I have this year but with Easter coming early, my other preoccupations have prevented that. My apologies to my regular readers).

If you would have asked me at the end of the 2017 which position the Yankees would sign someone new for in the off-season, my prediction would not have been rightfield. Rookie of the year, Aaron Judge, it seemed had that all stitched up.

Also, if you’d asked me who after Judge was the least likely player to leave, one of my first choices would have been 2b Starlin Castro who impressed so much at the plate and defensively and proved a fearsome double play combination with Didi Gregorius.

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The New York Yankees in Spring Training (2017) – Part Two

Posted on March 28, 2017 by twilightdawning

The New York Yankees’ pitching situation in 2017 is complicated by their failure to sign a new starting pitcher in the off-season.

Last year, they had Nathan Eovaldi and Ivan Nova to add to their supposedly “big three” of Masahiro Tanaka, CC Sabathia and Michael Pineda. Now Eovaldi is injured and has signed for Tampa should he return to the Major League level and Nova was given away very cheaply to Pittsburgh (where he has performed well). Of the three write-ins, Sabathia is stumbling towards the end of his career and Pineda was hideously inconsistent last season. Tanaka, if he can stay free of injury, is a true ace but this only points up what is the real weakness of the Yankees’ roster.

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The New York Yankees – Off Season Part 1 (Oct-Dec 2016)

Posted on January 5, 2017 by twilightdawning

The New York Yankees decided in the second half of 2016 that they were going with youth. It was a little surprising therefore, to see their two major signings in the first half of the post-season be a 36-year-old who would be designated hitter and one of the relief pitchers they traded away in the movements that took place around the trade deadline

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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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