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.
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.
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
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.
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.
It was October and the Yankees’ starting rotation was struggling.
While Gerrit Cole was on the active roster, the Yankees elected to not use him in the series with Tampa Bay in order that he might be ready for the Wild Card game.
Jameson Taillon was back from injury and a rehab assignment and ready to go but, as already noted in last month’s report, the Yankees had sent Andrew Heaney to the bullpen and now assigned him outright to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Railriders (Triple-A) – an assignment he would decline and so elect to become a free agent.
Let’s see who rose above the challenges of the end of the year:
Pretty much every baseball season ends in October – although there have been exceptions: one of which comes to mind all too easily and painfully. This year’s was scheduled to possibly run into November…
The Yankees’ season ended way too early in October. They had a three game series against the Tampa Bay Rays to round out the regular schedule and that qualified them for the one game wildcard playoff where they would face the Boston Red Sox.
And that’s where it all came to a premature end. To be frank, whilst it would have been nice to beat a great rival, the Yankees didn’t deserve much more. They had a season where they bounced between simply horrible and very good. Were the best bad team? Or the worst good team? Either way they didn’t deserve to be taking home any pennants this year. We have two tables for you – the stats for the last regular games and then the stats for that one post-season game. Let’s take a look at who did what:
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 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-
twilightdawning 