What you witnessed from the Yankees was a rare thing these days and that is not just a series victory against the Angels in Anaheim.
The rarity is the Seattle-Oakland-Anaheim trip and making all those stops on the same trip. That trip is rarity because of things like having to play six series against division rivals and having to play interleague games.
The unbalanced schedule has been in place since 2001 and interleague play has existed since 1997, meaning that the three city West Coast trip is mostly a thing of the past. It usually gets combined with something strange like Chicago-Seattle-New York, which the Yankees did in 2007 or Anaheim-Seattle-Toronto, which the Yankees will do in the middle of September.
The last time the Yankees had a trip that actually was scheduled in this manner was July 28-August 5, 1998 when the destinations were Anaheim-Seattle-Oakland. During that trip won seven of 10 games, doing so in a different manner than this successful trip.
While these Yankees won six of nine games and six of the last seven in mostly low-scoring affairs, that trip saw 65 runs cross the plate.
This trip was different but in a good way besides the wins, the Yankees pitched and hit enough when various moments called for it, especially against a high caliber of starting pitching.
"I don’t know if we’ll ever face a nine-game stretch of that kind of starting pitching," Mark Teixeira said to reporters following Sunday's 5-3 win. "To win six of those games is big."
They won on days like Sunday when relief pitchers did not have their best stuff. They won on days like Saturday with an ace (CC Sabathia) nearly going the distance and getting timely home runs.
They also won by getting a complete game from Bartolo Colon, a 10-run display by their offense and two big home runs from Nick Swisher, who has struggled through a significant portion of the first two months.
And in case you might be wondering, how each player did on this trip, keep reading the list below.
Derek Jeter 10-for-35, batting average increases from .255 to .260
Curtis Granderson 9-for-37 with one home run and five RBI, batting average drops from .280 to .274
Mark Teixeira 10-for-35 with five home runs and nine RBI, batting average increases from .253 to .258
Alex Rodriguez 10-for-35 with one home run and seven RBI, batting average stays at .287
Robinson Cano 10-for-37 with three home runs and six RBI, batting average dips from .279 to .277
Russell Martin 1-for-22 with one RBI, batting average drops from .266 to .236
Nick Swisher 8-for-29 with three home runs and five RBI, batting average increases from .204 to .215
Jorge Posada 3-for-20 with one RBI, batting average decreases from .183 to .178
Brett Gardner 5-for-30 with one RBI, two out of three stolen base attempts, average decreases from .270 to .258
The Yankees actually batted .231 (71-for-307) with 13 home runs, 41 RBI and 43 runs scored but when 3-4-5 combine to go 30-for-107 with nine home runs and 22 RBI, that is one of the ways a team wins six games on this trip.
It also helps when your team ERA decreases from 3.66 to 3.45, continuing its drop since the night of May 15, which happened to be the last time the Yankees faced the Red Sox. In the last three weeks, the Yankees have won 13 of 19 games while seeing their ERA drop from 3.81.
The trip began with concerns over the good pitching facing the Yankees, starting with Michael Pineda and Felix Hernandez in Seattle; followed by Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson and Gio Gonzalez in Oakland and Jered Weaver in Anaheim.
It turned out that as the Yankees welcome themselves back to the Bronx, they also pitched fairly well, return in a fairly good state and now that they survived the three city West Coast trip, they can float on with the next phase of the season.
