Bronx Bomber Ball

  The Yankees remained hot against the second-best team in the AL East this week, extending their winning streak to 11 before dropping the final game of the series last night. Coming into the off day, the Yankees are tied for the most wins in the MLB with the Mets and hold the best record in the league courtesy of the Mets’ two extra losses. Photo Credit: AP Photo

  Photo credit: Lineups.com

  Opening Day is finally here, and boy are those words so sweet.   Major League Baseball battled through a pandemic last season which shortened the season to just 60 games and had empty stadiums throughout the regular season, but we’ve finally turned the corner in this fight against COVID-19 and MLB clubs will welcome back fans (albeit in limited capacities) starting tomorrow, April 1st.    The Yankees are locked and loaded and ready to finally achieve their decade-long goal of bringing home World Series title number 28.

Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen… after a rather depressing dry spell, it is fun to be a Yankees fan again in 2020.  The Bombers just came off a ten-game winning streak, are locked in to complete their 28th winning season in a row and have clinched a postseason berth in the shortened 2020 season.  In spite of Sunday’s loss to the Boston Red Sox, they showed some fight in late innings in an attempted rally.  They swept the Toronto Blue Jays.  They set MLB records for most home runs hit in one game on consecutive days.  They came back from behind to beat the Red Sox in extra innings on Friday.  They’ve made such a comeback to the point that losing on Sunday did not hurt their playoff chances.  But there’s still something to play for in the upcoming regular season games. With one week to go, the Yankees sit 3.5 games behind the Rays for the division lead. With playoff rankings and home field advantage at stake, the Yankees will return to Buffal...

After landing the biggest fish in Free Agency this past Winter, the Yankees enter 2020 as the clear favorites in the American League East.  That is not meant to suggest that they have no competition, however, as New York was not the only team to improve during the offseason, with the Rays making their usual under-the-radar moves that will help them win and the Blue Jays made a big splash signing with Hyun-Jin Ryu.  Let’s dive into the predictions. Photo Credit: New York Post

Last year we delved into various trade opportunities for the Yankees, and they ended up acquiring one of our proposed targets of J.A. Happ. In 2019, the first place Bombers will again look to the trade market for rotation help. The IL-Yankees of 2019 have lost Luis Severino, Domingo German, James Paxton, and C.C. Sabathia to injury at some point this year, and Severino is still on the IL. With the uncertainty of Severino's return to form and the heaps of question marks surrounding the rest of the rotation, it is obvious the Yankees could use another arm to the rotation.  AP

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that something very exciting is happening down at third base at Yankee Stadium. Among the “replacement” Yankees who came up to join the team in the wake of half the team finding itself on the Injured List was Gio Urshela.   However, f ans expected the 2019 season to be another great one for 2018 Rookie of the Year contender, Miguel Andujar.   Not to mention, there was hope that the issue of his less than stellar fielding would resolve itself because his bat was too good to lose. Photo Credit: Newsday/Jim McIsaac

The New York Yankees entered Tuesday as the hottest team in baseball having won nine of ten ballgames. Coming into the night they had a five-game lead on the Rays, an eight-game lead on the Red Sox, and were a half-game back of the Twins from holding the AL’s best record. Their hot play continued as the Bronx Bombers topped the Toronto Blue Jays 4-3, clinching a series win ahead of Wednesday’s matinee.

The Yankees are rolling, having won eight of their last nine games as they welcome the Toronto Blue Jays to the Bronx for a quick three-game series. The Yanks are 1-2 so far against the Jays, having last played them in early June. It’s worth noting, however, that this is a very different Yankees team than the one that started out this month.    Toronto comes in struggling, as they come in at 8-13 in the month of June and are currently a whopping 20.5 games back of first place in the American League East. However, they did just take two out of three from the Boston Red Sox, which gives them a bit of momentum heading into this series. They are a slightly better team on the road than at home, with a .385 winning percentage in away games as compared to .342 at the Rogers Centre. Hitting has been an issue for Toronto, as they are well below league average in most major hitting categories and dead-last in team batting average. Pitching has also not been a strong suit, as they...

The Yankees head to Toronto for their first meeting of 2019 with the Blue Jays. New York is looking to win their 10th consecutive series while Toronto attempts to right the ship after losing six straight and 10 of their last 11. The Yanks are currently 18-5 against division opponents so they will look to keep that success going. Photo Credit: Yankees.com

It is something that can be said about a lot of Sonny Gray starts in a Yankee uniform, it was short, and not sweet. Gray was pulled after just two innings of work leaving the Yankee bats 21 outs to try and overcome a 5-0 deficit. The bats did not come alive when they needed to (0-6 with RISP), and the Yankees fell 6-2 in the first game of a three-game set against the Blue Jays. Photo Credit: AP Images

With the Yankees tragic number at one, the Bombers need a lot of help from the Houston Astros to have any hope of forcing a tiebreaker game with Boston for the division. In a beautiful day game in the Bronx, the Blue Jays came to the stadium to face Masahiro Tanaka and the Bombers. Tanaka started off as superb as could be, and the offense did enough to complete a 4-0 shutout. @Yankees Twitter

Entering their last series of the 2017 regular season, the Yankees are holding on to very slim division hopes as they need the Red Sox to lose their last three games and need a sweep of this series just to secure a division tie. Otherwise, the Yankees will enter the playoffs as the first Wild Card team and will face off against the Minnesota Twins at Yankee Stadium with an ALDS berth on the line. Even if the Yankees can’t manage to tie up the division, these three games could provide the Yankees with solid momentum going into the Wild Card matchup, and should be treated as a time to build this momentum, for whatever playoffs await the Yankees, against a Blue Jays team which has struggled all season and is going to finish the season under .500.

The Yankees would look to stay hot behind the arm of Masahiro Tanaka, who has been fairly consistent in the second half of the season. His split finger fastball, which is his go-to with two strikes, has been very electric. Coming into the game, the Yankees could clinch a playoff spot with a win, an Astros win, and an A’s win.  Unfortunately, Tanaka didn't have anything going for him tonight and buried the Yankees early en route to a crushing 8-1 defeat, all but ending any remaining chance this team had at snatching the AL East title from Boston. Photo Credit: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press

A night after an offensive explosion where the Yankees scored 11, they come back and struggled against the ever mediocre Marco Estrada. Estrada seemingly always has the Yanks number and tonight was no different. Early on they had the extra base-hit stroke, starting off the game with three doubles over three innings, but the issue that has been looming over the Yanks for weeks now with runners in scoring position came back to haunt them, ultimately going 0-9. Photo Credit: Fred Thornhill/ The Canadian Press via AP

Behind yet another dominant performance by the recently resurgent Masahiro Tanaka, the Yankees picked up a victory to begin their last homestand before the All-Star break. The Bombers were able to scrape together two runs against Blue Jays starter Marcus Stroman, but they were able to break it open against the Jays pen in the bottom of the eighth to cap off an important win in the Bronx. Photo Credit: Kathy Willens/AP

The Yankees return home to the Bronx following a disappointing series in Houston, in which they dropped two out of three to the American League’s best team. After an impressive 13-4 victory Friday night, the Bombers collapsed on Saturday, and were shut down on Sunday, falling to three games behind the first place Red Sox. The Yankees hope to put together their first series victory since the disastrous West Coast trip that began their recent fall from grace. The last place Blue Jays are 2-8 over their last ten games so this might be the perfect club for the Yankees to play at a time when wins are hard to come by.

Having split the first two games on Monday and Tuesday night, both the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees sought a win on Wednesday night to claim the series over their division rival.  The Yankees looked to build off a strong win last night and remain atop the AL East standings while the Blue Jays were hoping to take their second consecutive series as they attempt to climb out of the AL East basement. It was fireworks early on in the Bronx as both starting pitchers struggled right out of the gate in this one.  CC Sabathia was on the hill for the Yankees, coming off two very disappointing performances. He was opposed by Marcus Stroman who, aside from one bad start in Boston last month, had pitched very well on the young season.   Rich Schultz/Getty Images

Seeking their first three game winning streak of the season, the last-place Toronto Blue Jays invaded Yankee Stadium for a  matchup  against  Luis  Severino and the Yankees in the first game of the season  between these two heated rivals.   Severino was not sharp in this one and more closely resembled his 2016 self tonight rather than the version we had seen from him his last few times out.  Toronto came into this game with one of the lowest scoring offenses in Major League Baseball, but were able to break out tonight and coast to an easy win behind home runs from Ryan Goins, Chis Coghlan and Jose Bautista, as well as a strong seven inning performance from Marco Estrada. AP Photo/Kathy Willens

Coming off a  tough extra-innings loss yesterday , but an ultimately successful  week in which they went 4-1 against the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles, the Yankees look to close out the  homestand  against another division  foe : the  surprisingly  struggling Toronto Blue Jays.  The strong week propelled the Yankees into a first place tie with the aforementioned Baltimore Orioles in the American League East at 15-8.