Injuries? 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 readingAaron Judge…! Aaron Judge…!! The 17 games the Yankees won during September were primarily down to Mr Judge, their superstar outfielder, whose sixty plus home runs guaranteed them their place in the post-season.
But, it obviously wasn’t down to Aaron alone. We’ve already seen how much players like Gleyber Torres contributed to getting things rolling in September. And many of the pitchers, both starters and relievers, added great performances into this strong month.
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.
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 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 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:
The Yankees 14-9 record in July was due in no small part to their pitching. Their record improved after the All-Star break. They were 9-5 afterwards, 5-4 before.
The Yankees brought in two new pitchers at the trading deadline – Andrew Heaney (SP) from the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Joely Rodriguez (RP) from the Texas Rangers but neither of them made their debut for their new club before the end of July.
Heaney was traded for minor leaguers, Janson Junk and Elvis Peguero (both right-handers). Joely Rodriguez may be more of a make-weight, as there is no question that the Yankees main target in the trade was outfielder, Joey Gallo. The players who went in the opposite direction were right-hander pitcher, Glenn Otto and infielders Josh H.Smith, Ezequiel Duran and Trevor Hauver.
In addition, they had added Clay Holmes (RP) from the Pittsburgh Pirates on the 26th of the month in exchange for Hoy Park and Diego Castillo. A curious move saw relievers Luis Cessa and Justin Wilson join the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for a player to be named later. It was no surprise that the Yankees wanted to offload Wilson because the veteran has struggled all season long but giving up Cessa who has had a solid year and been with the Yankees for a number of years when they weren’t particularly targeting anybody in return is strange.
Let’s look at the pitchers who play in July, beginning with the starters…
Continue readingThe New York Yankees seemed to begin to turn a corner in July and their results improved – particularly in the second half of the month.
It is difficult to analyse exacly why but strangely the results started to improve when many of their first choice roster members became unavailable and were replaced partially by untried players and partially by journeymen, perhaps spotting one final opportunity to breakthrough.
Some of those regulars were unavailable because of conventional injuries. Others were forced into isolation by positive Covid tests which hit the roster in ever-increasing numbers.
On the face of it, having to subtract Aaron Judge from the selection of available outfielders and add in Greg Allen, who in four previous stints in the Major Leagues (with Cleveland and San Diego) had managed to hit around .230, was not a recipe designed for success – but somehow the energy and enthusiasm of the new faces seemed to work.
Let’s survey the statistics of the offensive players in the month of July…
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