And so we turn our attention to the Yankees pitchers. The starting rotation has had some necessary changes. The bullpen has changed beyond recognition.
Obviously, the major need is to cover for the absence because of injury of Gerrit Cole. He’ll be out until June.
Continue readingSo, continuing on with this theme of the Yankees appalling collapse in July – It is not appalling because the Yankees have a divine right to success. It’s is appalling because the Yankees’ roster is not the roster of the Kansas City Royals, or the Oakland Athletics. It is appalling because going into the season, it appeared that the Yankees had a roster which was the envy of everyone, and had a starting rotation which looked like one of the best, if not the best in the Majors.
Gerrit Cole – Carlos Rodon – Nestor Cortes – Luis Severino – Frankie Montas — and if injuries arose Domingo German and Clarke Schmidt to fall back on.
Injuries came – and too many. Even then the bullpen held up the weight, but by July the relievers were over-tired, and with Aaron Judge injured the team was going nowhere but down.
The Yankees went from one game over .500 to ten games over .500 in the course of the month of May – rising from 15-14 to 34-24.
In the process, they moved from 4th in the division to third and remained in close contention for a wild card spot, moving between 2nd and 3rd in that particular race. They were close and back-and-forth with their modern era fierce rivals, the Houston Astros.
None of this could hide the reality of just how far they are behind the Tampa Bay Rays, who were quickest out of the traps and have not slowed to any considerable extent.
The New York Yankees starting rotation rather fell apart in September.
Towards the end of August, they had given up on using Andrew Heaney as a starter – in September he didn’t do any better as a reliever.
Luis Gil, who had an astonishing start to his career in the majors in August, didn’t even come close to repeating that form in the following month.
Jameson Taillon spent time on the injury list. Clarke Schmidt became available but struggled. Luis Severino was available for the first time in the longest but the Yankees weren’t willing to risk him as a starter given all of his injury difficulties. Domingo German was added to the roster but wasn’t chosen to play until October. Thankfully, the bullpen regulars performed extremely well…
As previously noted, the New York Yankees have not had the start to the season that they expected in 2021. However, it is the start of the season that they deserved. With the season a third complete, they finished May at 29-25 and in third position.
Instead of hoping to win the American League East, they are more likely to be targeting the second wildcard spot and only then if their bats begin to do their work.
In May, their pitching was less culpable than the batting line-up in adding to their woes.
Let’s survey the strengths and weaknesses of the players who took the mound:
The Yankees used 6 starters and 1 “opener” in April. It is fair to say, in that regard, it was a very mixed month. Some good, some bad, some indifferent. We’ll come to that in a moment.
They used thirteen relievers in total. Nick Nelson was used both as the one time opener and a reliever. Those who were solid out of the bullpen were pretty consistent.
There were those who bounced between the major league roster and the alternate training site. Most peculiar of these was Michael King who was excellent but couldn’t seem to do enough to rise in the pecking orderabove those who were struggling.
Let’s survey the whole of the pitching part of the roster:
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