Midway

All right, ignoring tonight's contest, the Yankees are now at the halfway point.  Most signs are, obviously, very good.

The team is 54-27, on a 108-win pace (and it would be a 110-win pace, were it not for Tampa Bay's insane ground rules).

This weekend brought some signs of life from the hitters, but one of the most alarming trends over the last month has been the drop in production. Through the first third of the season, the Yanks were on pace to score 909 runs on the season, nearly the same as the 915 they scored in 2009, their last championship season.

After this last, dismal month of hitting, they have dropped to a projected 834 runs on the season—a pretty significant plunge.

On the other hand, the pitching has really picked us up. At the one-third mark of the season, the pitchers were a on a pace to surrender 690 runs for the whole season. That has now dropped to a pace for just 606 runs.

This is not only a dramatic improvement, obviously, but a great improvement over 2009, when the Yanks' championship staff allowed 753 runs on the year.

Once again, of course, it demonstrates the inanity of going full-bore after another pitcher, when the staff has been carrying the team for at least a month.

Which brings us to the relative burdens on the starters and relievers.

Here the news is good, too.  The Yankees' starters have now compiled 450 1/3 innings, which of course projects to 900 2/3 on the season—the first time all year they are on a 900-plus inning pace, if only just barely!

This is still below the 937 innings that the 2009 starters ran up, of course, and the 946 2/3, 984 2/3, and 1,036 that the 2000-1998 champions compiled, respectively. But at least we're in the same ballpark.

It's the same with the relief pitching, which early on was setting a killing pace.

Now, the Yanks' top five relievers in innings are on a pace to reach 352 for the season; the top six, 414.  These are still well above the numbers the totals for the last four championship teams—on none of them did the top five relievers throw more than 329 2/3 innings, or the top six, more than 366. But the 2018 projections are at least down steeply from where they were at the 54-game mark of the season.

All stats compliments of baseball-reference, of course.