Breaking Down the Month of June

On June 1, the Yankees were 30-21 and 1 game up on the Boston Red Sox for first place in the AL East. Today the Yankees are 44-32, but they fell to 2.5 games behind the Red Sox. They went 15-11 and are 12 games over .500, but they fell out of first place. So was this a successful month for the Yankees? Let's break it down.

The Negatives:

• They were swept by the Red Sox and lost 2 of 3 to the Nationals and Marlins.
• Their record is not as good as it looks. They should have been 13-13 and lost the game to the Rays when Willie Aybar made a costly error in the eigth, and of course, the infamous Luis Castillo game.
• They scored 140 runs, 15 less runs than they did in the month of May.
• The team hit .253/.354/.433, all lower numbers than May and April.

The Positives:

• The Yankee pitchers allowed 102 runs, 25 runs less than May, and 34 runs less than April.
• A.J. Burnett and CC Sabathia are earning their paychecks. Despite a 3-2 record, Burnett gave up 7 earned runs in 30 innings pitched (2.10 ERA), and struck out 35 batters. Sabathia was 2-1 with a 3.77 ERA, striking out 22 batters, and only gave up 7 walks.
• Coke, Aceves, and Hughes all had ERAs lower than 2 coming out of the bullpen.

Overall, this was a weird month for the team. Basically the pitching was good, the hitting was not. If it were not for ending the month on a 6-game winning streak, it probably would have been a bad month. You would have to think that they won't go into many slumps with this lineup, and they just hit a bump in the road in the middle of the month. As long as they carry the momentum they have gained at the end of June into July this team should be able to hold the wild card spot and start to close in on the Red Sox.