Bronx Bomber Ball

It’s the matchup we’ve been waiting for, the matchup we’ve been anticipating all year long. The 3 rd  entry into a so far closely contested but one-sided playoff rivalry. Its Yankees – Astros Part 3 in the 2022 ALCS. The Astros posted the best record in the AL this season and swept through their ALDS series against the Seattle Mariners. The Yankees struggled through much of the second half of their season, squandering their chance at home field advantage in the process, and were pushed to the brink in their ALDS series against the Cleveland Guardians. In spite of the trials they’ve endured so far, the Yankees have made it to where they wanted to be, with a chance to avenge their previous losses and get over the mountain they have not yet been able to scale. The Yankees take the field tonight in game 1, with a chance to beat the Houston Astros and advance to their first World Series since 2009. The Astros will likely be regarded as a comfortable favorite heading into the series, let...

Happy July! As the season nears its halfway point, the Yankees have exceeded even the highest of expectations at 56-21 and I for one am having fun. The Bombers were baseball’s best team in the month of June, cruising through just about everyone in their path en route to a 22-6 record. Even after a head-to-head loss last night, they stand seven games above the Houston Astros for the American League’s best record. Photo Credit: Peter Aiken, USA TODAY Sports Rolling into Cleveland to meet the Guardians for a weekend set, they’ll be joined by none other than Aroldis Chapman, who’s been sidelined with left Achilles tendonitis since May 24. Oh, how we missed him. When asked about the team’s plan for the ninth inning moving forward, Aaron Boone reiterated that Chapman is the closer. Clay Holmes will become the “fireman” – entering as necessary in the highest leverage spots against the toughest parts of the lineup.  Photo Credit: Getty Images It’s hard to find words to describe how good Ho...

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We've finally arrived. Opening Day is upon us.  It's coming a week later than expected. The team doesn't look the way we expected them to when the offseason began six long months ago.  But here we are.  The Yankees chose not to make any of the marquee acquisitions Twitter lost their mind over all Winter, but at the end of the day they plugged some holes, and bring a much more versatile and athletic club into the 2022 season.  Did they do enough to dethrone the likes of Boston or Tampa or keep the quickly ascending Toronto Blue Jays at bay? Only time will tell.  In "The Late Show with David Letterman" fashion, here are our Top 10 factors to the Yankees getting off to a fast start. Photo Credit: Adam Hunger/Associated Press 10.      Playing strong defense It’s no shock that the New York Yankees were a defensive nightmare at times during the 2021 season and they made a point of addressing those issues in the offseason.   According to...

  With mere hours to go before the Yankees kick off their 2022 campaign, we’ve reached the point that even a few weeks ago we thought may never come. We finally get to witness Yankee baseball today! An added bonus on top of that is that today’s season opener comes against the rival Boston Red Sox, the team that booted the Yankees out of last season’s playoffs. The Yankees’ season begins with a tough 10 game stretch against division opponents and this season opening series against the Red Sox at home provides the Yankees with a golden opportunity to make a statement and get off to a great start. The team has come under scrutiny for their approach to free agency and team building this offseason. In spite of all that noise, the team performed well this spring and now stands ready to take the field in the Bronx. Lets take a look at some matchups. NY Charles Wenzelberg Friday 4/8. 1:05pm EST: Gerrit Cole vs Nathan Eovaldi   The Yankees will step into the batters box on Friday again...

The New York Yankees entered the 2021 season as World Series favorites but struggled through mediocrity and general malaise over the course of the entire season before fizzling out well short of their goal in the American League Wild Card Game at the hands of hated rivals Boston Red Sox.  Two weeks after their playoff elimination, it was announced Manager Aaron Boone's contract would be renewed for three more seasons with a fourth-year option.  Writers of the BBB weigh in on both below:   Photo Credit: Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post

Photo credit: Washington Post

 

  How Luis Severino has looked and how the Yankees should use him the rest of the way Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images

  The Yankees have been the hottest team in baseball for a decent while now, extending their winning streak to 12 late last night in Oakland. The hitting has become more consistent with clutch at-bats taking place now that were missing earlier in the year. The starting pitching has been perhaps the biggest surprise, pitching as well as any other staff across the league, and that’s without Luis Severino and Corey Kluber.

  The Yankees are heading to the west coast, and they head off on this seven-game west coast swing as the hottest team in baseball. They are the owners of an 11-game winning streak and have won their last 10 consecutive series. It has been a remarkable turnaround for a team that looked like it was asleep for the first half of this season, but there is still work to be done. The Yankees current 11 game winning streak is their longest since 1985 and it has seen them go from trailing both the Red Sox and the Oakland A’s in the Wild Card standings, to leading both by four and five games respectively in the loss column. The Yankees flipped a switch in mid-July and now have ridden an impressive white hot winning streak into the driver’s seat for a playoff stretch as we head to the stretch run of the regular season. The first series up in this all-important stretch run, is the aforementioned Oakland A’s. The A’s are a talented team that had an impressive 13 game winning streak of their ow...

The Yankees have chosen to Get Higgy with it -- as they’ve made the decision to largely start Kyle Higashioka as their starting catcher. Photo credit: MLB.com

Photo credit: Rome Sentinel

The Yankees offense looks f***ing dead. Every single one of them. Even DJ LeMahieu, the Yankees’ best hitter by leaps and bounds, is in the middle of an uncanny stretch of bad hitting. Of the Yankees every day starters (Higgy is 4-for-13 for a .308 avg  and also Tyler Wade is 1-for-3 apparently lol ), the three highest batting averages are: DJ (.277), Gio Urshela (.276), and Aaron Judge (.268). The next highest… Gary Sanchez with a .200 average, unless you want to count Brett Gardner as every day, in which case the next highest is a .214 average (which props up the team average of .205). And that isn’t even a knock on Gardy, who still puts up Gardy at-bats whenever he’s in the lineup (plus, of his six hits, two of them are doubles) or Gary, who I think has actually put up some really nice at-bats; and, of the team’s 17 grounders into a double play (tied for 3 rd worst in the league), he has grounded into zero (also Gary has walked 7 times and has a .321 OBP, which is third among ev...

  We are approaching the end of our first full week of the 2021 season now as the Yankees have completed two series against the Jays and Orioles. While the results have been mixed and at times very frustrating to watch, the Yankees are sitting at 3-3. They now head to Tampa, to face the team that eliminated them from last year’s playoffs. The Rays are coming off of six straight games on the road to open the season and just finished getting swept by the Red Sox in three fairly non competitive games earlier this week. A strong weekend could vault the Yankees into first place in the early goings of the season, lets take a look at the matchup. Credit: ESPN

It’s been a long winter but opening day is approaching fast. We are most of the way through spring training at this point and because of that, we’re getting to the point where we can probably make some solid predictions about roster decisions that will be made soon. While the Yankees outfield on paper seems pretty set, this is a group that has not been easy to predict the last few seasons. Injuries have played a big role in determining playing time with this group and while that will remain a concern until it is proven to not be an issue anymore, there is real reason for optimism heading into this season. Let's take a look at how the Yankees might line up their outfielders this season.   Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Wiliiams Jr. 

Photo credit: Brendan Kuty

One of the last pieces to fit into the Yankees' 2021 puzzle, before today, could be stated along the lines of... "What about Brett Gardner?"  Photo credit: NorthJersey.com

It's winner take all between the Yankees and the Rays tonight, lets discuss what the Yankees need to do to bring home the win. Credit: Jim McIsaac Getty Images

This feeling is familiar.  Photo credit: ESPN