Late inning Yankee heroics are not your imagination.

Since last night's seven run ninth-inning brings the issue up, check this out:

In innings 7-9 the Yankees are batting .297/.383/.517/.900 as a team. It's more drastic if you look at innings seven and nine individually: in the seventh the Yankees are batting .314/.403/.528/.930 as a team.

That's right, in the seventh inning, the Yankees as a team are batting .314 (guys that bat .314 generally contend for the All Star team) and OPSing .930. To compare, Mark Teixeira is OPSing .920 for the year.

The ninth inning numbers are similar: .311/.399/.528/.927.

The difference here, however, is that while the Yankees always play a seventh inning, they don't always play the ninth (if they're winning and at home). So that makes the seventh inning numbers all that more insane.

The Yankees have scored 271 runs in the 7th-9th innings; they have not scored 250 in either the 1st-3rd or 4th-6th.


We knew the Yankee offense was good...really good...but their numbers in the latter innings are kind of insane.

Maybe this is why the Yankees have 12 walk off wins and g-d-knows-how-many come-from-behind wins. It's the mark of a team that keeps fighting.

Boy, is it fun to watch...