The New York Yankees made news yesterday after they acquired reliever Zach Britton from the Baltimore Orioles for a package of prospects. It is no doubt a great addition because Britton has been amongst the three or four best relief pitchers (when healthy) over the last three-to-four seasons. But, it is still a bit of a surprise because bullpen arms are the last thing the Yankees needed.
The needed pitching, but they addressed the wrong aspect of it. New York is in dire need of starting pitching because that is no doubt the weakness of the team. The staff has a 4.03 ERA and the only reason it isn’t higher because Luis Severino is having an excellent season and who has been the only guy the Yankees could honestly depend on.
Without him, the starting ERA jumps up to 4.48. CC Sabathia has been a pleasant surprise, but he is due for regression. The lefty has been the team’s second-best pitcher, and ten years ago that would have been great. Today? Nope.
Sabathia has been roughed up his last two times out, allowing nine runs in 10.2 innings, bringing his ERA up to 3.51 and WHIP to 1.27. Age may finally be showing and will eventually catch up to him as the season goes on. He has a FIP of 4.55. It’s hard to envision him staying the number two behind Severino all season unless the rotation turns out to be that much of a mess.
Masahiro Tanaka has been excellent the last two starts, but before, was shaky all year. His ERA sits at over four and will need to show us more to settle us down.
But the biggest culprit of all may be Sonny Gray, who is not what we all thought he would be. After coming over to the Yankees in a trade last year, the righty was OK. But in 2018, Gray has been downright terrible with a 5.34 ERA and 1.49 WHIP in 96 innings, and it’s been hard to fathom a guy with his talent and role posting these numbers and being a staple in a rotation.
For a guy who doesn’t strike batters out, but relies on generating soft contact and groundballs, Sonny Gray is getting hit hard and allowing fewer groundballs, but worst of all, his walk rate is up to a horrific 9.8%. Nothing is going right. He’s been good last two starts, but he has teased us all year and then flop.
And their number five, Domingo Germán has been bad as well. In totality, he has a 5.68 ERA in 82.1 innings, as of the morning of July 25th. But, as a starter, Germán has a 6.18 ERA in 67 innings.
So, it is fair to be perplexed with the acquisition. The Yankees already have an elite bullpen, the best in the game with a 2.75 ERA after Tuesday evening, so they did not need to add-on even more.
They have seven ‘good-to-elite’ arms in the pen, and Tommy Kahnle is down in Triple-A striking out guys like no other. Kahnle started off the season slow but was excellent last year, and has filthy stuff.
Britton adds an eighth, or ninth depending on what becomes of Kahnle. But at the same time, it depends on how Britton looks. He is coming off an Achilles tear and in his return this year, the southpaw was terrible in his first 7.2 innings. But since then, Britton has thrown eight straight scoreless frames and is back to inducing more groundballs (13 grounders to fice fly balls)
The Yankees are taking an unorthodox, but progressive, approach to solving their pitching problem. They are building an actual super bullpen. They will not want too many innings out of bad starters, and the plethora of arms will help with that.
If the starters are rolling, then manager Aaron Boone can leave them in. But if they struggle, he can yank them early because of the of arms at his disposal. And because of the number of quality relievers, the workload will be spread out, keeping them fresh.
This will play up even more in the playoffs, where rotations are shrunk, and bullpens are used more. It will be more effective. The Yankees will not have to rely on a terrible Sonny Gray or shaky Tanaka as much. They have enough guys where, even if Sabathia struggles, the fort will be held down. And as bad as Germán has been as a starter, he’s been solid in 15.1 innings of relief, allowing six runs (3.52 ERA)
So the Yankees have options. Who knows, they may still go after a starter. But the starting pitching market is very mediocre, and this move shows that New York would rather spend resources on a relief ace instead of average SP like J.A. Happ and Nathan Eovaldi (who was traded to the Boston Red Sox).
