The Yankees’ bats finally have broken out in Minnesota. Apparently, for this franchise, there is no better cure to anything than the Twins. The Yankees have scored a mind-blowing (for the time) 17 runs in the first two games of this series. They also became the last team this season to win when allowing five or more runs (thanks Brooks Kriske!). When was the last time they have had this kind of offensive production this year?
To find the last time this team has scored at least 17 runs in a whole series, we have to go back to last month from May 14-16 when they put 19 runs on the board in Baltimore. They scored at least 17 runs over three games against the Astros earlier in May, 18 in the preceding series in Detroit, and 17 in a four-game set the series before that against the Orioles. They also did it in the second series of the season, also against the O’s. They did it seven times in the 60-game season in 2020.
The 17 runs the team has put up in back-to-back games is the most this season. The second most are 16 back when they pummeled the Tigers in the Bronx on April 30 and May 1 (we will erase the time they got pummeled in Detroit just a week or two ago from our memories).
The Yankees still rank 26th in the league with 3.87 runs per game. For reference, we are allowing the sixth-least amount of runs at 3.82 per game. On average, we should be winning each game by a razor-thin margin. Before this series, we were at 3.72 runs per game, good for 27th in the league. So slowly but surely, we are moving up the board!
Are the bats back? Who knows? I think we all thought the Yankees were back when they went 22-8 from late April to late May after starting 6-11. Then, most recently, came the 3-10 stretch. Hopefully, they don’t continue this yo-yoing throughout the rest of the season — one, because it will further expose them as a flawed team, and two, I will run out of things to throw against the wall in my house as the team I love drives me into madness. They have one more game in Minnesota before two this weekend in Philadelphia followed by a three-game set in the house of horrors that is Sahlen Field in Buffalo. Let’s hope things continue to go up from here.
