If the Yankees batting fell apart in June (with the exception of Juan Soto and Aaron Judge – it’s becoming like a mantra), then the pitching, particularly the starting rotation also hit massive problems.
The New York Yankees’ performance in the season to the end of May is better than any of us had a right to expect.
Part of that is due to the batting performances of the likes of Juan Soto and Aaron Judge, but that is not the whole picture. The pitching arms have been an essential part of the growth.
Continue readingAnd so we turn our attention to the Yankees pitchers. The starting rotation has had some necessary changes. The bullpen has changed beyond recognition.
Obviously, the major need is to cover for the absence because of injury of Gerrit Cole. He’ll be out until June.
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 readingHere we go… Harrison Bader, Lou Trivino, Tommy Kahnle, Carlos Rodon, Luis Gil, Frankie Montas, Scott Effross, Luis Severino, Ben Rortvedt, Jonathan Loaisiga, Giancarlo Stanton, and Josh Donaldson.
This is the shortlist of players that the Yankees had to place on the injured list through March and April in 2023. It is fair to say it left them with a much weakened team.
That they managed to come through to the end of April with a record of 15-14 was no mean achievement. But a 3 game losing streak against the Texas Rangers at the close of the month meant that they were 4th in the division table, albeit that the American League East is by the far the strongest of the divisions.
The Yankees’ pitchers are on-the-whole doing amazingly this season. If at this time last year, we would have predicted that Clay Holmes would have signed with the Yankees from Pittsburgh and would have the record that shows in our table below, across a whole calendar month, then you would have been convinced that I was fooling. And I would have never have been that foolish.
Furthermore, after two months we are talking about Nestor Cortes as a possible Cy Young candidate, and yet there are 6 members of the bullpen (Nestor has the best May ERA of the starters) who have ERAs superior to his and some of those are people who you’d expect to be in the relief corps all season long. Strange days indeed.
The New York Yankees starting rotation rather fell apart in September.
Towards the end of August, they had given up on using Andrew Heaney as a starter – in September he didn’t do any better as a reliever.
Luis Gil, who had an astonishing start to his career in the majors in August, didn’t even come close to repeating that form in the following month.
Jameson Taillon spent time on the injury list. Clarke Schmidt became available but struggled. Luis Severino was available for the first time in the longest but the Yankees weren’t willing to risk him as a starter given all of his injury difficulties. Domingo German was added to the roster but wasn’t chosen to play until October. Thankfully, the bullpen regulars performed extremely well…
The Yankees’ pitchers were a major part of why they managed to transform their season by the upturn in their form in August.
Both starters and relievers hit a rich vein of form which made it much easier to turn runs into wins.
However, not everybody rediscovered their form. Let’s see who were those pitchers who led the way in August:
