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Up until Monday, the Yankees’ prolific and powerful offense had scored at least one run and avoided being shut out in 220-straight games. This streak dated back to June 30 of 2018 when the Red Sox shut out the Yankees 11-0. After that, it took until September 2 of 2019 for a team to prevent the Yankees from scoring a run. This streak is the second-longest streak of all-time, second only to the 1931 Yankees who went 308 games scoring at least one run.
To celebrate this truly remarkable accomplishment, let’s take a look back at the best games and moments during this streak.
Yankees vs. Red Sox July 1, 2018
To begin, let’s go back to the very next day that started the streak after the shutout loss to the Red Sox. David Price, also known as the Yankees child, toed the rubber for the first-place Red Sox in a mid-season three-game series during a fairly competitive division battle. Price gave up five home runs and eight earned runs total over just 3.1 innings. The Yankees’ bats exploded off the veteran-lefty who has historically struggled against the Bombers.
Yankees vs. Orioles September 22, 2018
In this wild game, the Yankees walked off against the Orioles to clinch a Wild Card spot and a postseason birth. Lance Lynn started the game and pitched five innings while giving up only two runs (one earned). The Yankees’ bullpen stars combined to pitch six shutout innings to keep the Yankees in the game. In the bottom of the 11th inning, Aaron Hicks doubled to right field, scoring Didi Gregorius from first who slid into home sending the Yankees to the playoffs.
London Series - Games 1 and 2 - June 2019
The Yankees and the Red Sox put on a show for the fans in London in late June. In what were two days of just dreadful pitching performances, the Yankees and the Red Sox combined to put up 50 runs. The first game featured an offensive explosion like no other as the game was tied 6-6 after just one inning. The final was 17-13 Yankees, and there were 65 total bases between the two teams and five home runs hit. In the series finale, the Yankees tacked on run after run on all of Boston’s pitchers but two. It was the opposite for the Yankees as only two of their pitchers got hit. Unfortunately, they got hit badly giving up eight runs combined.
Yankees vs. Twins July 23, 2019
There is still some baseball left to be played this season, but in all likelihood, this will be the game of the year in 2019. There was plenty of hitting throughout the game—in fact, there was a run scored in every inning except the sixth and the seventh. In the sixth inning, the Twins were leading 9-5 and Cody Stashak prevented the Yankees from scoring with runners on first and third; this gave the Twins a 95% chance to win heading into the seventh inning. It wasn’t until the eighth inning when the Yankees put up five runs to take the lead that this game became a candidate for game of the year. After completing the eighth when the Twins re-took the lead off Miguel Sano’s second homer of the game, the two teams went back and forth giving up leads and ties in the ninth and tenth before the Yankees eventually won.
Yankees vs Dodgers August 23, 2019
In this battle of arguably the two best teams in baseball, the first-place Dodgers and Hyun-jin Ryu took on the first-place Yankees and James Paxton. Ryu, who came into this game with a 1.64 ERA on the season, was knocked around for 7 earned runs over 4.1 IP. Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and Didi Gregorius all homered off Ryu. After that, Brett Gardner and Gleyber Torres homered, then Gregorius hit his second home run of the game in the ninth to cap it off. In what was prime time baseball between to of the games best teams and most exciting franchises, the Yankees showed up and smashed the Dodgers.
These are just some of the Yankees’ most exciting wins over the course of those 220 games. Here’s a fun fact that makes all of this more impressive: If you take the part of the streak that existed in 2019, the Yankees only used the same lineup twice in all 139 of those games.