Each season, we award to players rankings according to outstanding performances during the season. Using this system, here’s how the Batters and Pitchers of the New York Yankees placed:
Batters:
Each season, we award to players rankings according to outstanding performances during the season. Using this system, here’s how the Batters and Pitchers of the New York Yankees placed:
Batters:
When it comes to a situation like the Yankees face most every season these days, – getting ready for the post-season – they can make one of two choices. They can maintain momentum by choosing their best lineup every day, or they can rest the regulars and use the players off the bench. The latter is not as easy these days, because roster expansion is much lower numerically than it used to be a few years ago, but that still seems to be the route that the New York team chooses.
The thing that the Yankees would gain if they maintained that momentum, is that they would build the confidence of a line-up of a team who seem very, very conscious that they are likely to face the Houston Astros in the post-season. And the Astros, regardless of how they achieved some of their previous winning seasons, seem to have a hoodoo over the New York team which inhibits the Yankees performance.
So, once again the Yankees made their choices, and one again the season came to an earlier than hoped for end. The fans ran out of patience. They wanted to see the back of Aaron Boone, they treated Isiah Kiner-Falefa and his family badly. Hey, they even booed Aaron Judge.
Well, after August it had to get better right? Well, thankfully, it did! Winning 17-8 on the month, it was the best month that the Yankees had since June. July had been ordinary. August was appalling, but September was just what the Yankees needed to head into the post-season.
Some new faces settled into the squad. Some players came back from injury.
August 2022 was a nightmare month for the New York Yankees. If the New York Yankees hadn’t had such a good first half of the season, they would have been dead and buried by the end of August.
it still meant that the huge gap that the Yankees had opened prior to August was reduced from over 11 to 6. It meant that there was a genuine need for the New York team to snap out of it or one of the two pursuing team (Tampa Bay and Toronto) might catch them
Something was not quite right for the Yankees in July. After going 22-6 in June, they produced a mere 13-13 record in the month that followed.
On one hand, they suffered injuries to important players like Giancarlo Stanton and Michael King.
On the other, they brought in new signing Andrew Benintendi from Kansas City for a clutch of players from their farm system – Chandler Champlain (RHP), Beck Way (RHP), and T.J. Sikkema (LHP)
The Yankees had a tremendous month in June. Any team who can bring together a 22-6 record in a calendar month are going to be out there in the lead and the Yankees expanded their lead in their division from 5.5 to 12.5. A truly impressive series of performances.
Also, to this point in the season the Yankees are managing to remain injury free. They have had relatively few new injuries and some of their long time unavailable players are working their way back.
The New York Yankees were 19-9 in May. Their form is astounding. If the batters are off-the-pace, then the pitchers are phenomenal. And vice versa. If the starter crumbles than the bullpen is everything they need to give them the opportunity to get back in the game.
Occasionally, the run support is not there for the pitchers – as indicated in our table, where 10 batters had batting averages below .230 on the month.
The Yankees were able to call on their main five starting pitchers throughout April, without any of them suffering injury. Gerrit Cole, Luis Severino, Jordan Montgomery, Jameson Taillon and Nestor Cortes were available from Opening day, and remained that way.
Domingo German remained on the injured list but the Yankees had anticipated that. There were no new faces amongst the starting pitchers and only a smattering among the relievers. Based on last season, the fanbase wouldn’t be too sure what to expect from this arrangement but as we have already suggested in our article about the batters, things worked out just fine as, after a few bumps, the team cruised to the head of the division.
The 2022 season, as you will be aware, started late because of the dispute between the owners and the players. Once an accord was reached, everybody worked really hard to pretend that there’d never been a problem.
But there are some things you cannot cover up, so the Yankees’ season started on April 8th rather than a week earlier.
The world of baseball pitching began to be shaken up in late-May and early-June as MLB announced that it would be checking the hats, gloves and belts of pitching staff during games.
Rumours had begun to spread about the use of a substance called Spider Tack which was allowing pitchers to get a better grip on the ball and consequently increases spin speeds. Players like Josh Donaldson of Minnesota became very vocal in their criticisms of pitchers including, for example, the New York Yankees’ Gerrit Cole.
Now, there have been allegations like that. There also been suggestions that spin speeds for certain pitchers have dropped since the announcement of the rule-enforcement may have caused some pitchers to relearn their craft but so far that’s all we know.
So as we examine these statistics for the month of May, let’s consider those pitchers whose performance seems to have varied most dramatically – but I’ll go no further – the jury is still out – and we may never really know.
Here’s the stats for the whole team and then we’ll begin with a closer analysis of the starting rotation: