Aaron 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.
August…the New York Yankees. Two terms that in 2022 just didn’t go together.
Ten wins, 18 losses. Now, a large part of that as we have seen was due to the batters failing to hit, fielders failing to field. But the pichers were far from guiltless. far from faultless. Starters and relievers alike.
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
As we mentioned in our previous article, the Yankees just did enough to achieve a .500 win-loss record in July and as we survey the pitchers, we note that many of the starters began to buckle with only Nestor Cortes coming in at the end of the month with an ERA of less then 4.
Michael King was having another excellent month in July, but broke his elbow in the 2/3 of the month and is gone for the long term. You’d never want to see somebody go out with an injury like that, and in reality there is no compensation. However the Yankees did have longterm injuries Domingo German and Jonathan Loaisiga coming back this month. Clarke Schmidt who had been building up his stamina was recalled from Scranton, but oft-injured Luis Severino was lost to the team again.
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 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 New York Yankees of September were not the New York Yankees of August. From the 4th to the 10th of the month, they had a 7 game losing streak. However, later in the month (20th to 28th) they were to match this with a 7 game winning streak.
Inconsistency was their watchword.
This all meant that they only closed the gap on Tampa Bay by one game across the whole month and as the month came to an end, they were locked in a blockbuster situation with only three games to play. They still needed to head off Boston, Toronto and Seattle to earn one of the Wildcard places and this was going right down to the wire.
Most of the batters struggled. Some were pretty good…
The New York Yankees had a 21-8 record on the month in August. It seems odd therefore, given that this was far and away their strongest month of the season, that I remain unconvinced about their potential to reach the post-season
On one hand, the vast majority of those wins came in consecutive games, when the momentum and positivity was spinning out of control. On the other hand, once that winning sequence was broken, they lost the four remaining games of the month – against the Oakland Athletics (a potential challenger for the New York team for a wild card spot) and against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim who went into their series with the Yankees below .500 on the season.
It is an interesting conundrum and it will be very interesting to see what September brings. Boston have remained in contention. Toronto are fast improving. Oakland will need to sort out some of their issues but could still challenge for a wild card spot and Seattle have also come into the reckoning.
The Yankees would need to maintain something like their August record to challenge the Tampa Bay Rays for the AL East division lead, which, frankly, I can’t see happening. This means that any two of five could capture the wild card route to the playoffs. The Yankees of August could do it. The Yankees of July will not.
Let’s see what happened 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…
twilightdawning 