Closer to truth
Time will tell if Robertson is fit for 9th
TAMPA — Larry Rothschild has clocked 23 years on a Major League Baseball coaching staff — 1990 to 1993 and 1995 to 2013. From Reds bullpen coach to Reds pitching coach to Marlins pitching coach to Rays manager to Cubs pitching coach to his current gig, Yankees pitching coach. Twentythree years. As he prepares for his 24th season, his fourth with the Yankees, I asked Rothschild to guess how many different closers — team leaders in saves — he has coached or managed. He thought for a moment, and then he gave up. He couldn’t even venture a guess. The answer is 15, going alphabetically from Antonio Alfonseca (2002 Cubs) to Esteban Yan (2001 Rays, who fired Rothschild in April) and statistically from Mariano Rivera (652 saves) to, well, Yan (51), again.
As the Yankees begin Life After Rivera, who led the club in saves from 1997 through 2011 and then again in 2013, care to guess how many closers they’ll utilize over the next 23 years?
David Robertson represents a great first option to succeed the best closer ever. He also kicks off a new era for the Yankees. One in which they’ll treat their closer position like a job, rather than an honor with lifetime tenure.
One in which, come the ninth inning, they’ll be like any other team. We saw in 2012, when Rafael Soriano replaced the injured Rivera, they can survive. Yet it’s undeniably different.
The Yankees didn’t do much Monday, as manager Joe Girardi took them on a teambonding session to a nearby pool hall. Still, two small news items exemplified the Yankees’ new world order: Andrew Bailey arrived in camp, set to spend most of this year rehabilitating his right shoulder but looming as a closing option for next year. And the Yankees announced the fouryear extension for Brett Gardner, their other successful homegrown product facing his walk year.
General manager Brian Cashman, while not ruling out future discussions, admitted Sunday he had not engaged Robertson, a year out from free agency, in talks for an extension. Since Cashman and Girardi won’t even formally anoint Robertson as their closer — although Girardi said on Sunday, “think there’s a really, really good chance he’s going to be our closer” — it appears the club is content to wait out Robertson’s campaign before deciding on the future of the pitcher and the position.
That speaks more to the volatility of the closer role than it does anything about Robertson.
“I think he’s apprenticed about as much as you can,” Rothschild said. “He’s been through some highpressure situations. Playoffs, World Series, through it all. Now it’s just a matter of going out there and understanding that what you’re doing is good enough no matter what.”
Robertson knew all of last season Rivera would be retiring, though he had no inkling over the winter whether the Yankees would try to sign a veteran freeagent closer such as Joe Nathan or Grant Balfour. Robertson did nothing different over the offseason, he said, besides “a lot more duck hunting.”
While he will be a rookie closer, as a soontobe 29yearold (April 9) and someone who already has a nickname — “Houdini” — for his ability to get out of trouble, some of his own making, Robertson will go in with more readiness than some of the closers Rothschild has culti vated. Accordingly, he will be given some more room for error and growth.
“There might be a few adjustments in the ninth as, they’re going to save matchups more often for him because it’s the ninth inning,” Rothschild said. “When he’s throwing the ball the way he can, it doesn’t matter what the matchup is. It’s a situation where it’s more that he needs to do what he does well and he’ll be very successful. That’s good enough.”
Rivera, Rothschild said, was his easiest coaching assignment in the big leagues, ever.
“He just knew himself so well,” Rothschild said. “Even though you’d expect that a veteran will, but the extent that he did, he was very unusual.”
Robertson naturally will require more care. And the Yankees’ closer position will need more monitoring. Probably forever.
“I know I’m here for another year,” Robertson said, “so even if I’m not throwing in the ninth inning, I know I’m still effective in the eighth. I’m going to help this team win ballgames.”
If he’s pitching the eighth instead of the ninth, then something has gone quite wrong. Then again, the Yankees have to condition themselves for ninthinning turbulence and fluidity they avoided for virtually an entire generation.