A dialogue about the Yankees’ annual slow start has taken place in the comments section of my recent post on CC Sabathia’s 2nd spring training start. The crux of the discussion is simple, it seems to me and my co-conspirators that the Yankees have become a team that doesn’t play to its potential in April, and at times in May as well. We believe this trend takes place, regardless of who plays for the team and who manages it.
To investigate this further, I took a look at the team’s record from the month of April for the past several seasons:
2009 – 12-10
2008 – 14-15
2007 – 9-14
2006 – 13-10
2005 – 10-14
2004 – 11-10
2007 and 2005 were poor starts to be certain, but more than anything else these results tell me that the team’s reputation for starting slow is undeserved. For example, the 2009 team’s 12-10 start translates to a record of 88-74 over the course of 162 games. The team’s April start didn’t leave them on pace to win their eventual total of 103 games, but that’s not a bad pace to open the season, particularly when one considers all the roster changes that occurred between April and June.
Furthermore, with the exception of October, the 2009 Yankees played above .500 baseball every month of the season. They went 17-11 in May. Looks, therefore, can be deceiving. I would have guessed that the team would have been .500 or worse in April for most of the recent seasons. I would have been wrong.
It may not seem like it, but if the Yankees go 12-10 in April then they’re on the same pace they set in 2009. 24 days to the start of the season!
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4 Responses to Not as slow as we thought
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TIQ IQ
I'll start by saying that the Yankees have low win totals for April by the Yankees standards. The Yankees we know and love don't usually show up till May – which has become true of myself; I doubt you'll see me at a game before May 1 this year. It might not be fair to say the Yankees are awful in April, but I dont think its fair to say they're great starters. They're usually right around .500 and as a fan, i tend to over react when they're UNDER .500. The yankees are like my car in the winter: i start the engine, let it warm up for a minute, then it kicks butt all the way to work. it just needs to warm up for a second; its not a bad car. Fortunately, Brian Cashman drives a Porsche, so he doesn't have any trouble playing catch up!
i think a 12-10 start is a realistic goal for this April. I'm counting on the Yankees playing well in Tampa (they usually do, right?) and the Angels not being as good this year as they were last year.
~jamie
I wouldn't say they're great starters. Frankly, I wouldn't want to. Last season the Yankees got off to a modest start (impressive when you consider Wang, Tex, CC and A-Rod were all hurt or performing below expectations) and then turned it on. I'll take that every year.
However, when I did the research for this post I thought I would see a lot of 10-12's, 9-14's. In fact, I was certain the team had posted a sub .500 record in April. I was wrong. It just goes to show that sometimes our eyes can trick us.
3 years under, 3 years over .500 – certainly nothing to get too upset about.
I think we had this expectation that they would be under .500 for all 6 of these years because we tend to let April magnify itself, which makes sense to me – we're excited for the season to start and then boom – ARod had surgery. Wang was terrible (the pounding by Cleveland). Teix wasn't getting it done. Getting swept @ Boston. I think the only highlight of April was that point when Swisher went on a tare and Girardi briefly had him batting clean up. And still, they finished 2 games over .500. but its easy for all of that to linger in your mind and think, "Man, what a terrible start to the season."
Could be worse – Jeter could have an over active thyroid.
~jamie
finishing April barely over .500 would be much better than in years past, as this is the toughest April schedule I can remember them having. Their first nine games are against Boston (on the road), Tampa (on the road) and the Angels (at home) and they go out to Anaheim later in the month. They get Texas too, for good measure. Only 7 games out of 23 are against teams that finished under .500 last year (and the White Sox finished barely under). If they are over .500 by the end of April, they are winning more games than they did last year