And 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 readingAs we have seen in the analysis of the batters’ statistics the Yankees really over-depended on the pitchers in June, and in particular their bullpen.
Obviously, this cannot continue. In a peculiar way, the steady drip, drip, drip, of pitchers returning from injury means that fresh arms are being made available. Some have been out all season (Tommy Kahnle), others for a shorter time (Ian Hamilton). And the return of Carlos Rodon is not too far away.
It seems likely that before the trading deadline, the Yankees will need to bring new offensive and pitching stars. Let’s hope they are able to do so without giving too much away.
The Yankees in the month of June have run 11-12. During that time, they have four new faces added to the injured list.
Crucially, Aaron Judge went in that direction. When he made an amazing fielding play whilst crashing into the wall in front of the bullpen, it seemed both amazing and humorous. Now, it doesn’t seem so funny anymore. Judge is injured, with no timetable for his return. And the form of others has nose-dived as the team in general seem to feeling his absence psychologically.
Also newly injured and unavailable are Nestor Cortes, Greg Allen and Willie Calhoun.
Returning? Ian Hamilton, Harrison Bader, Giancarlo Stanton, Tommy Kahnle, and Josh Donaldson.
Ryan Weber went from the 15 day injured list to the 60 day list.
On balance, if it wasn’t for the Judge injury, you’d think that the Yankees’ roster had gained in June, but if you consider that some of the returnees are notorious under-performers in recent times, then it doesn’t look quite that good.
The Yankees went from one game over .500 to ten games over .500 in the course of the month of May – rising from 15-14 to 34-24.
In the process, they moved from 4th in the division to third and remained in close contention for a wild card spot, moving between 2nd and 3rd in that particular race. They were close and back-and-forth with their modern era fierce rivals, the Houston Astros.
None of this could hide the reality of just how far they are behind the Tampa Bay Rays, who were quickest out of the traps and have not slowed to any considerable extent.
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.
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 Yankees pitching in June was nothing short of amazing. Having 22 wins in a calendar month is one thing, but when 10 of the pitchers your team used have a WHIP of less than one on the month, it is easy to see where the lion’s share of the credit might lie.
The starters underwent a wobble or two, but the bullpen were there to keep the wins coming in. As we survey the statistics of the month, we’ll see very clearly why they kept winning.
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