My Thoughts on the Yankees First Half

In about four or five hours the first half for the New York Yankees will officially be over as the team faces off with the Boston Red Sox in the first half finale. The Yankees are guaranteed to be in first place all by themselves no matter what happens in this afternoon's game which is a lot better placement then many, including myself, thought the team could be in on July 12th. How did the Yankees do it and can the Yankees sustain their success?

In the offseason the general line of thinking was if the team could stay relatively healthy and if they could get nice comeback seasons from Mark Teixeira and Brian McCann that the offense would be good enough to hang around. The same line of thinking went along with the return of Alex Rodriguez, if the team could get absolutely anything out of their former third baseman the offense would be exponentially better while the team enjoyed a full season of Chase Headley and officially said goodbye to Derek Jeter.  The team has been relatively healthy, Teixeira is back, McCann is better, Rodriguez is great and Headley has been as described offensively which is a great sign and could explain the first place Yankees success.

The bullpen was supposed to be a strength and after riding through some injuries to Chris Capuano, Masahiro Tanaka and others the bullpen is finally a strength with Andrew Miller, Dellin Betances, Adam Warren, Justin Wilson, Chasen Shreve and Bryan Mitchell all contributing. The starting pitching has held together and while the starting five is not giving the Yankees much length, either because of inefficiency or due to Joe Girardi's short hook, they have been good enough to keep the team in almost every single game this season, another reason the team is in first place as the first half comes to a close.

The team has been inconsistently inconsistent, they can beat the best teams in baseball handily and turn around and lose to the worst teams in baseball but I can't see that being a season long thing. This is a veteran team that had new faces in and out of the clubhouse almost every day for the entire first half. Now that everyone for the most part is back, healthy and being effective I think the Yankees can settle down and start picking on the teams they are supposed to beat. If New York can do that and hang around with the better teams in the league I don't see why we won't be talking postseason baseball in 2015. First things first though, let's not get too ahead of ourselves here, let's hope the team finishes off Boston this afternoon in the first half finale.