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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A New York Yankees Diary – Day Seventeen – September 27th, 2024

The Yankees now have a decisive lead over Baltimore, and Baltimore have a wild card qualification. The outcome of the series between the two teams could not really have worked out better for both participants. The Orioles really couldn’t expect to catch the New York team on the season, but just simply to leave town having taken the 3-game set, 2-1 gives them something of a psychological edge should the two meet again in the playoffs.

Really, only one matter remained for the New York Yankees. That was to clinch the top seed spot. This too seems likely to be the outcome, but the Yankees were balancing the need to do that with the need to rest players and keep them fresh. It is a difficult equation because the Yankees were likely to have the rest they needed if they did not play in the wild card series and rested everyone through that “bye” period,

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

As you will have seen in our batting coverage, the Yankees had another bad month in July. They are very thankful indeed for the start they had before June.

July was 11 wins and 13 losses. Imagine how it would have been if it wasn’t for the 5 straight wins they racked up between the 27th and the 31st of the month. They bounced back from a one game deficit in Boston to take the series 2-1, and then swept the National League’s strongest, Philadelphia 3 games to zero.

During that period the pifching started to bounce back after what had been otherwise a very weak month – especially for the starting rotation.

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New York Yankees Diary – September 9th, 2023

Mike Jerzembeck.

Mike Jerzembeck?

Mike Jerzembeck was introduced to the crowd at Old Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium, and a large percentage of the crowd (including those in the row near me) seemed to collectively go “who?”. Especially since Old Timers’ Day concentrated on the squad of players who played for the Yankees in 1998, and Jerzembeck was one of them.

Now, the 1998 Yankees are one of less than a handful of teams who are considered when the question is raised as to who is perhaps the greatest club Major Leagues history so to even be a minor figure in that story is quite something…

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The New York Yankees in August – Part Two – The Pitchers (2023)

So, we are thinking about the Yankees’ performance in August, and obviously based on their record during the month (10 wins – 18 losses), you wouldn’t expect an upswing in the quality of their pitching performances but in reality there were some positive signs.

Indeed, in the bullpen there were as many significant improvements as there were players who made a significant decline.

Let’s see who the strong performers were, and those who buckled under the strain:

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The New York Yankees in July – Part One – The Batters (2022)

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)

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The New York Yankees in June – Part One – The Batters (2022)

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.

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The New York Yankees in September – Part Two – The Pitchers (2021)

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…

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

The New York Yankees finished April at 12 wins – 14 losses and in 4th place in the 5 team American League East. For a team who were expected to dominate the division, things clearly were not going to plan. Noises were made about Kyle Higashioka becoming the first choice catcher and Gary Sanchez being seen much more often warming the bench. Tyler Wade and Wandy Peralta were added to the active roster. One or two things seemed to be falling into place.

By the middle of May, the team sat in second place with a record of 22-17. That’s 10-3 over that period.

And then things began to turn again. Gleyber Torres, Giancarlo Stanton and Rougned Odor had headed to the injured list. As a partial balance, 1b Luke Voit (last season’s leading home run hitter) was back.

But things were still not going the way the guys from the Bronx wanted. The second half of the month went 7-8 and the Yankees closed out the month with a run of 4 losses

Let’s see who was struggling and who was holding their own:

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