2009 MLB season in review: New York Yankees
The final piece of the 2009 MLB season in review is the World Series Champion New York Yankees. In 2009 they won their 27th World title, opened a brand new stadium, had a steroids controversy, had day to day operational control of the team pass from George Steinbrenner to his son Hank, and had a typical Yankees season in front of the New York media. What else can we say, the Yankees are the premier baseball organization, and with their ownership of the Yes Network, they have a near bottomless source of cash to spend on their payroll. Many say that is unfair, but they have got the business side of baseball figured out.
Their final record was 103-59 and they easily won the American League East. In all they spent 91 days in first place and by early September they have built a 10.5 game lead over the Boston Red Sox. As typical of the Yankees they got off to a fairly slow start and by mid May were 6.5 games behind. After the All Star break they won eight consecutive games sweeping both the Detroit Tigers and the Baltimore Orioles. The crazy thing about this season was the Yankees actually shed 89 million dollars before the 2009 season by letting a good number of free agents leave including, Ivan Rodriguez, Carl Pavano, Jason Giambi, and Bobby Abreau, on top of the retirement of Mike Mussina.
The Yankees offense was led by Captain Derek Jeter who hit .334 with just 18 home runs and 66 RBI’s. As a unit they batted .283 second best amongst AL teams. They drove in 915 runs, had 1,604 runs, hit 244 home runs, and basically led the AL in most statistical categories. They struck out 1,014 times and drew 663 walks. Their pitching staff featured three starters with double digit victories, and their staff ERA was 4.28. They gave up 753 runs, while striking out 1,260 batters and issuing 574 walks.
In all 3,719,358 fans came to new Yankee Stadiums to see the Yankees play. For their 81 home games they averaged 34,475 fans per game and that was good enough for second amongst teams in the MLB. However they only sold 87.8% of their 2009 ticket inventory.
