twilightdawning

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

Toronto Trip Up the Yankees

Posted on September 19, 2018 by twilightdawning

Who: New York Yankees

What: versus Toronto Blue Jays

Where: Yankee Stadium, Bronx, New York

When: 14 to 16 September 2018

The plan must have been fairly simple as the Yankees returned to the Bronx for a nine-game home-stand – take 2 or 3 from Toronto, beat Boston 2-1 and blast past Buck Showalter’s weaker-than-ever Baltimore Orioles where a sweep seemed more than possible. What could go wrong?

Well, first of all, the Yankees evidently didn’t reckon on a gutsy, scrappy Blue Jays’ performance and their own all too apparent second half failings.

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in July (2017)

Posted on August 12, 2017 by twilightdawning

In July, the Yankees strengthened their bullpen by adding David Robertson and Tommy Kahnle although these moves meant they had to subtract Tyler Clippard. Then right on the deadline they strengthened their starting rotation with the addition of Sonny Gray from Oakland and Jaime Garcia from the Minnesota Twins.

Whilst it would be in August that we will see whether Gray and Garcia provide an upgrade, the arrival of Robertson and Kahnle was evidently a master-stroke especially since Clippard’s season was falling apart at the seams.

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The New York Yankees – The Batters in July (2017)

Posted on August 6, 2017 by twilightdawning

The second half of June was a disaster for New York. After the twelfth of the month they suffered a huge slide which saw them go 8-17 between then and the 14th of July. However, in the second half of July they turned that around with a sequence of 12 wins out of 17 games which saw them return to the head of their division. A lot of the success was led by the pitchers but which of the batters were also at the forefront of the turnaround?

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in June (2017)

Posted on July 9, 2017 by twilightdawning

The Yankees pitching in June finally settled to a level much closer to what might have been expected when the season began. Add into the mix a few significant injuries and it was not a sweet recipe that was cooking as the month went along.

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in May (2017)

Posted on June 7, 2017 by twilightdawning

As we pointed out in our last column, the Yankees are having a steady, productive and successful season so far. The same can be said of their pitching. With the exception of Aroldis Chapman whose struggles led to further medical examination and then to the 10-day disabled list, most everyone is living up to or exceeding expectations. Let’s look in a little more detail:

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in April (2017)

Posted on May 8, 2017 by twilightdawning

The Yankees’ pitching rotation, going into the season, looked quite evidently their greatest weakness.

By contrast, their bullpen looked like their greatest strength.

What would happen if the bullpen lived up to its billing and the rotation was more consistent than expected?

That would be April 2017, which is the way that it has worked out in practise!

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The New York Yankees in Spring Training (2017) – Part Two

Posted on March 28, 2017 by twilightdawning

The New York Yankees’ pitching situation in 2017 is complicated by their failure to sign a new starting pitcher in the off-season.

Last year, they had Nathan Eovaldi and Ivan Nova to add to their supposedly “big three” of Masahiro Tanaka, CC Sabathia and Michael Pineda. Now Eovaldi is injured and has signed for Tampa should he return to the Major League level and Nova was given away very cheaply to Pittsburgh (where he has performed well). Of the three write-ins, Sabathia is stumbling towards the end of his career and Pineda was hideously inconsistent last season. Tanaka, if he can stay free of injury, is a true ace but this only points up what is the real weakness of the Yankees’ roster.

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The New York Yankees in Spring Training (2017) – Part One

Posted on March 25, 2017 by twilightdawning

The Yankees have to this point in Spring Training (22nd March) achieved more wins than any other team. On one hand this could be due to the fact that they have lost less players to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) nations than most teams, but, on the other, winning games can never be a bad sign. Spring Training is no great way of measuring the outcome of the regular season but being top of the Grapefruit League beats the heck out of being at the bottom.

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The New York Yankees – Off Season Part 2 (Jan – Feb 2017)

Posted on February 16, 2017 by twilightdawning

The Yankees said, as the 2016 season came to an end, that they were targeting pitching for the coming season and that particularly strengthening their bullpen was their big target. As Spring Training approaches, it would seem that they have failed to even come close to meeting either of those two inter-related targets.

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in September and October (2016)

Posted on October 19, 2016 by twilightdawning

The New York Yankees started the season with the best bullpen in baseball. When they gave up expecting to make the playoffs at the trading deadline, they gave up much of what gave them that quality. They stripped the bullpen bare and further weakened a starting rotation which hadn’t look good when the season started. Surprisingly, despite all of this, they didn’t do too badly over the last weeks of the season. On the other hand, they didn’t do too good.

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