twilightdawning

A writer's thoughts – mainly about music, sport and theatre. Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, live shows, New York Yankees

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

Posted on July 5, 2023 by twilightdawning

As 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.

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

Posted on June 7, 2023 by twilightdawning

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.

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The New York Yankees in September – Part Two – The Pitchers (2022)

Posted on October 10, 2022 by twilightdawning

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.

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The New York Yankees in August – Part Two – The Pitchers (2022)

Posted on September 12, 2022 by twilightdawning

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.

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

Posted on September 9, 2022 by twilightdawning

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

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

Posted on November 17, 2021 by twilightdawning

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:

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

Posted on November 4, 2021 by twilightdawning

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:

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

Posted on October 5, 2021 by twilightdawning

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…

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

Posted on September 4, 2021 by twilightdawning

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-

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

Posted on August 11, 2021 by twilightdawning

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…

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