By Dan Groob, TiqIQ

After rattling off five consecutive wins on the road, the New York Yankees find themselves in familiar territory — first place in the AL East. The Yankees return to New York for a six-game homestand at Yankee Stadium to take them through the weekend. The Yankees will open the homestand with a three-game set against the Seattle Mariners, the third lowest scoring team in all of baseball. Runs will likely be scarce in Tuesday’s series opener, as Yankees ace CC Sabathia takes the hill against Felix Hernandez.

Aiding the cause for the Yankees will be the likely return of outfielder Curtis Granderson, who has been on the disabled list all season long due to a broken forearm suffered when he was hit by a pitch in Spring Training. Granderson will add some pop to a Yankees lineup that led all of Major League Baseball in home runs last year by a whopping 31 taters, but has slipped to fifth in his absence this season.

Despite the series opening pitching matchup of aces and the presumed return of Granderson to the Yankees lineup, ticket prices for the Mariners series are among the lowest priced tickets at Yankee Stadium this season. According to TiqIQ, the Yankees tickets for this series carries an average price of $84, 27% below the season home average of $115.

All three games of the Mariners series check in at average prices between $82 and $86, with Wednesday evening’s contest being the highest priced, and Thursday’s the lowest. Tickets to get in the Stadium on Tuesday or Wednesday are available for as little as $3, while Thursday carries a get-in price of just $4.

• Home Avg: $115
• 5/14 vs Mariners: $85/$3
• 5/15 vs Mariners: $82/$3
• 5/16 vs Mariners: $86/$4
• Series Avg: $84 (27% below season avg)

Following the three game set against the Mariners, the Toronto Blue Jays come to town for a three-game set of their own. The Blue Jays also visited Yankee Stadium for a four-game series back in April, which the Yankees swept. With the Blue Jays struggling a bit in the early going, and playing well-below expectations, all three games of these series also check in with average ticket prices below the Yankees home season average.

Friday night is the least expensive ticket of the bunch, averaging just $83 with a get-in price of $13. Saturday and Sunday are both 1:05pmET matinees, and carry slightly higher average ticket prices of $107 and $111, with get-in prices of $17 and $16, respectively. The series as a whole checks in with an average ticket price of $98 dollars, 15% below the Yankees home season average.

• 5/17 vs Blue Jays: $83/$13
• 5/18 vs Blue Jays: $107/$17
• 5/19 vs Blue Jays: $111/$16
• Series Avg: $98 (15% below season avg)

Following the six-game homestand, the Yankees will hit the road for eight games before returning home to close out May against the New York Mets and Boston Red Sox.

As is to be expected against these two teams, the next homestand will carry a ticket price premium to the season average. The Mets set checks in at an average ticket price of $130, a 13% premium to the season average, while the Red Sox series holds an average ticket price of $141, a 23% premium to the season average. It’s a good bet to check out and buy Yankees tickets from the official Yankees Ticket Exchange for the homestand.

• 5/29 vs Mets: $132/$31
• 5/30 vs Mets $129/$30
• Series Avg: $130 (13% above season avg)

• 5/31 vs Red Sox: $143/$33
• 6/1 vs Red Sox: $140/$30
• 62 vs Red Sox: $139/$29
• Series Avg: $141 (23% above season avg)

By Dan Groob, TiqIQ

Given the Yankees’ large market and devoted fan base, it is always expensive to procure New York Yankees tickets. Although this season seemed to begin a bit unenthusiastically, the Yankees fast start still has them right among the league leaders in average attendance and as April comes to a close, the New York Yankees appear to have silenced their critics by surging to the third best record in all of baseball. Despite playing the first month of the season without arguably their three best power hitters in Curtis Granderson, Mark Teixeira, and Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees have done significant damage with the long ball. Paced by Robinson Cano (7), Vernon Wells (6), and Travis Hafner (6), the Bronx Bombers’ have smacked 33 home runs so far, good for first in the American League.

Coming off a four game sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays, the preseason favorites to capture the AL East crown, the Yankees look to keep things rolling through a three game set with the Houston Astros. With the worst record in baseball at 7-18, the Astros essentially represent a polar opposite team from the Yankees. Much has been made of the Yankees possessing four players—Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia, and Vernon Wells—who will make more than the entire Astros 25-man roster this season. Additionally, the Yankees are Major League Baseball’s oldest team, with an average age of 30.9, while the Astros are the youngest at 27.2. Those Astros come to town this week, with their lack of star power, are one of the lesser road draws this season. That creates an opportunity for cheaper tickets in major markets such as New York, even as the team heats up into the summer months.

According to TiqIQ, the three game set with the Astros that kicks off tonight is the least expensive series of the season at Yankee Stadium. Games 1 and 2 of the series are the two cheapest individual games of the season. While the Yankees carry an average home ticket price of $110 dollars, the average ticket price for tonight’s game checks in at just $40 dollars—a 64% discount to the season average.

Yankees home avg: $110

• Game 1: $40/$4
• Game 2: $43/$5
• Game 3: $56/$5
• Series Avg: $46

Game 2 of the series doesn’t command much of a premium to game 1, pricing at an average of just $43 dollars. Prices receive a slight bump for Wednesday night’s game, the first game of May, but only to $56 dollars—still roughly half the season average. With tickets available for as little as $4 or $5 dollars depending on the night, this Houston series represents a tremendous opportunity for fans to catch some action at Yankee Stadium on the cheap.

A guest post from Dan Groob at TiqIQ.

It’s no secret the New York Yankees have struggled to fill the new Yankee Stadium since it opened its doors for the 2009 season. What many folks on the couch don’t realize however is that the Yankees haven’t had a problem selling tickets in the slightest — they’ve just had a really big problem selling the extremely high-priced seats you see while watching a game on television.

Many of the empty seats behind home plate at Yankee Stadium carry face values of over $2,000 dollars. Generally speaking, such seats tend to belong to season ticket holders who typically do not attend every game.  However, in the post-2008 economy, it has been near impossible for anyone to resell these tickets on the secondary market at anything close to what was paid for them. As a result, fans have begun to give up their season tickets to those seats while nobody has stepped in to replace them. Thus they remain vacant.

Though the Yankees have always sold out the rest of the stadium, the higher-priced ticket sales are largely responsible for driving the team’s average ticket price figure. This is particularly true on the secondary market. Because more fans have given up these seats every year, fewer have hit the secondary market, while fewer still have sold. As a result, the Yankees average ticket price has declined steadily in each of the past three years. According to TiqIQ, the average seat at Yankee Stadium in 2010 came in at $85 dollars on the secondary market. In 2011, this declined to $81 dollars. Last year, you could find a ticket on the secondary market at an average price of just $75 dollars.

Currently, New York Yankees tickets in the Bronx for the 2013 season run about $114 dollars on average. While this figure seems promising on the surface and indicative of a rebound in demand for Yankees tickets, the underlying details actually seem to suggest a further decline in Yankees ticket prices. Typically, the market exhibits some downward pressure on ticket prices between the beginning of Spring Training and the start of the season. At this time last year, the average ticket ran about $135 dollars — an 18% premium to where they are now — before settling at the average of $75 dollars once the season began.

Of course these are still the Yankees, and certain games will carry elevated demand for any and all seats. Most notably, three of the top five highest-priced series of the season include a common opponent — the Boston Red Sox. Although this could be one of those rare seasons when the AL East does not come down to New York and Boston in the final month, the September 5-8 series against the Sox is the most expensive of the season, with an average ticket price of $171 dollars and a get-in price of $39. The Red Sox are also responsible for the season’s second highest priced series on May 31-June 2, also at an average of $171.

The third most expensive series of the season will be the Subway Series against the New York Mets on May 29-30. These tickets are going for an average of $157 dollars, and $41 bucks just to get in the stadium. Following the Mets, the fourth most expensive series will be another interleague matchup, this one against the defending World Series Champion San Francisco Giants. This September 20-22 series against a Giants team, which formerly resided a subway ride away from Yankee Stadium, holds an average ticket price of $149, with a get-in price of $29 dollars.

Rounding out the top five most expensive series of the 2013 season will be the opening series against the Boston Red Sox on April 1-4. While this series checks in at an average price of $144 dollars, it actually contains the single highest-priced individual game of the season. This is of course the Opening Day afternoon game, which currently prices at a whopping $279 dollars serving well to exemplify how high a game average can go at Yankee Stadium when the home plate seats are selling.

Just missing the cut for the top five most expensive Yankees series? A two-game interleague series against the Los Angeles Dodgers on June 18 and 19. These two teams have met in the World Series a ridiculous eleven times, more than any two teams in baseball history.

However, this certainly isn’t your grandfather’s skip school to snag an Ebbets Field bleacher seat for a nickel game — a ticket to this series will put a little dent into grandpa’s pension at an average cost of $142 dollars. If your grandpa is an old Dodgers fan, do right by the man and take him to the ballgame. Just don’t tell him how much the tickets cost if you don’t feel like getting an earful on inflation and the good old days.

Remember, for the best deals on MLB tickets throughout the season, visit TiqIQ.com. TiqIQ has also teamed up with SeatCrunch to bring you additional options for New York Yankees Tickets.