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 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 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 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-
With their surprisingly successful starting pitcher, Domingo German, headed for the injured list on the 9th of the month, where he would stay for most of the rest of June, it was up to the relievers to bolster the pitching staff, even more than they had needed to do in May. Thankfully, the bullpen were more than up to the task. And the arrangement of using Chad Green as an opener paid off even better than it had in May. Green had, by far, his best month of the season.
Again, let’s explore who else led the way:
The New York Yankees spent most of April buried in injuries. It didn’t get much better as the season rolled along but that didn’t stop the team from growing in confidence. With their young call-ups flexing their muscles, their May record was 20 wins to 7 losses. Ending April at 17-12 and in second position in the American League East, they scorched to 37-19, headed the table and were showing a one and a half game lead by the end of the month of May!
Continue readingThe New York Yankees had the most amazing start to a baseball season in their history but unfortunately, it wasn’t in the Wins column (although they didn’t too badly in that respect). Rather it was in terms of players heading to the (now renamed) injured list (IL). Let’s see what happened:
Continue readingWho: New York Yankees
What: versus Boston Red Sox
Where: Yankee Stadium, Bronx, New York
When: 18 to 20 September 2018
Well, surely the Yankees – after their disappointing series loss against Toronto – couldn’t bounce back and manage to win the series against Boston — and still allow the Red Sox to clinch the AL East in the Bronx? Well, if anyone could, these contrary Yankees could. Read on…
twilightdawning 