The Yankees have officially hit their stride.

Remember that this is a team that was under .500 at the All-Star break. They are 9-3 since the break, and even though they are trail the AL East lead by 7.5 games and the wild card by 6.5, c'mon these are the Yankees after all.

Led by former Trenton Thunder "Serpentine" Shelley Duncan and his two homers, the Yanks beat the D-Rays 21-4 yesterday, one day after a 17-5 whipping. The 38-run total for the two games is the most by New York in straight games since they took two from the Philly A's by a collective score or 40-3 in 1936 (i.e., 15-1 on May 23 and 25-2 on May 24, 1936).

The Yankees also collected twenty hits in two consecutive games (20 on 7/21 and 25 yesterday) for the first time since the franchise moved to New York in 1903. Elias reports that the franchise amassed twenty hits in two straight games 105 years ago (Aug. 23 and 25, 1902) when they were still know as the Baltimore Orioles.

The last time any team accomplished this feat was four years ago when the Cubs collected 20 hits on July 20, 2003 in beating the Marlins on the road 16-2 and then 21 more the next day, 15-6 at Atlanta. The first game ended Dontrelle Willis's nine-game win streak to start his career. The Cubs trailed the second game 5-4 in the fourth when starter Shawn Estes was pulled with the bases loaded and none out in favor of Dave Veres, who not only got out of the jam without allowing a run, but ended up winning the game.

A team has collected twenty hits in consecutive games seven times in the last twenty seasons. I could find only one game prior to that in Retrosheet's data:

The Yanks 38 runs in the two games are nowhere near the all-time "record". Here are all two-game totals of fifty runs or more. Note that Troy holds the "record" with 70 runs in two games; however, they lost one of those games and allowed 65 runs in the two games:

They do become just the ninth team since 1900 to score 38 or more over two straight games:

Also, there are just six teams since 1900 including the 2007 Yankees that have scored 38 or more runs in consecutives games against the same opponent:

The Yankees scored double-digit runs in the fourth inning for just the 29th such inning in their recorded history. Here are their highest scoring innings in Yankee history. They scored 13 in an inning in two separate games against the D-Rays two years ago:

The most runs scored in an inning from the Retrosheet data was by the Red Sox, 17, in 1953: