YANKS LOSE ARMS RACE

Skimping on starters leaves Bombers just short of Series

The Yankees need to decide if winning is the most important thing in life.

The Yankees were good enough to win it all in 2019, but good enough wasn’t good enough.

Though many believed the Astros were the favorites to come out of the American Leaguethey only outscored the Yankees by one run in the ALCS. But while the allegedly rag tag Yankees kept it close, the loss amplified a serious deficiency with the roster, one the team has continuously failed to correct.

The Yankees actually did outperform the Astros with runners in scoring position, batting .171 to Houston’s .109. They also had a better team ERA, 3.13 to 3.44. But in the end, their fearsome pen was burnt out and overexposed, a casualty of a limited starting rotation. There’s always a limit to making grand observations from a short series, but what happened in Game 6 was an eminently predictable outcome of prioritizing a dominant relief corps over an upper-echelon starting rotation, as if the wealthiest team in baseball could not simply have both.

Chad Green opened Game 6 in lieu of a traditional starter and surrendered a three-run homer in the first to Yuli Gurriel. Tommy Kahnle made his fifth appearance in a series that went six games, and allowed the Astros to tack on an extra run. Both pitchers said part of their struggles stemmed from their opponent’s increased familiarity with their arsenal. Kahnle noticed that the Astros were “putting better swings on the changeup and everybody else’s off-speed.” Zack Britton survived his inning but told The Athletic, “everyone was running on fumes.”

Signing Britton and Adam Ottavino, as well as trading for arms like Kahnle to go along with Aroldis Chapman, who took the loss, was not a tactical failure in and of itself. It was arguably the Yankees version of a trend ushered in by the Royals as their troika of Wade Davis, Kelvin Herrera and Greg Holland helped them win back- toback pennants and a title in 2015. Starters throw fewer innings than ever before as teams look to avoid a perceived “third time through the order” penalty, meaning, batters increasingly comfortable with a starter’s stuff and approach.

On the Yankees, Masahiro Tanaka, allowed a .261 batting average against, but that spiked to .309 when the lineup turned over a third time. The same holds true for starters across the league.

But, the Yankees oversold on relief pitching, and this was evident by their late-inning arms citing a familiarity from the Astros bats. Some, like Baseball Prospectus’ Russell Carleton, argue the third time difference is, at least in the aggregate, a function of pitcher fatigue. Whatever it is, the Yankees pen indicated that both factored into their struggles.

James Paxton, Tanaka and Luis Severino are all above-average starters, but none of them have thrown a 200-inning season in the majors. (Tanaka came closest with 199.2, but that was in 2016). Tanaka and Paxton were the only Yankees to complete six innings in a start the entire playoffs, doing it once apiece, while the bullpen labored to salvage short start after short start. If the Yankees loaded up the bullpen seeking to avoid the third-time-through blues, their lack of starters who could go long saddled the team with a cruel irony: The entire bullpen was now facing its own version of the penalty.

But there’s something else at play: Starting pitching is expensive, and the Yankees repeatedly take themselves out the market. The best relievers tend to sign shorter deals that rarely exceed more than $12 million in annual salary. Aroldis Chapman, who signed a five-year, $86,000,000, is literally as expensive as it gets. Top starters, however, can expect to make upwards of $25 million a year in free agency.

The Yankees didn’t necessarily choose the best thing, but they absolutely chose the cheapest. They passed on Max Scherzer when the ace entered free agency after two consecutive dominant seasons, including a Cy Young win in 2013. And in 2017, they declined to trade for Justin Verlander before the August waiver deadline. GM Brian Cashman said of the deal that wasn’t, the Yankees “couldn’t financially make it work,” adding that “ownership’s not taking on that contract.” That “contract” won the ALCS MVP in 2017. Do you remember who he pitched against?

Then, last offseason, the Yankees chose not to match Patrick Corbin’s offer from Washington.Cashman would later say in the hours after a trade deadline when the Yankees again failed to add a frontline rotation arm, told reporters if the team concentrated money at Corbin, they would not have Ottavino as well as DJ LeMahieu. The press conference ended before any natural follow-ups about whether the richest team in baseball submitted themselves to their own false choice, driven more by luxury tax concerns than winning.

The Yankees continue to choose surplus value over being the last team standing. Their payroll is efficient; the team insufficient. Their failure to supplement their core of exceptional position players — impressive, talented, young, but older with every wasted postseason — cost them another opportunity to cross the finish line.

There was a time when winning was the most important thing, right after breathing. If they’re serious about returning to their glory days, they should remember what got them there.