Yanks need to figure out Betances
THE boos rang loudest.
The Yankees edged the Twins on Monday night, 2-1 at Yankee Stadium, in this potential American League wild-card preview, and by doing so, they increased their wild-card lead over Minnesota to five games. Jaime Garcia struck out nine while giving up only an unearned run in 5 2/3 innings. Aaron Judge clubbed home run number 44. Aroldis Chapman registered a dominant 1 2/3 innings to close out the victory in style.
Nevertheless, the excitement over the Yankees’ eighth win in 10 tries couldn’t match — volumewise — the groans that filled the Stadium when Chapman entered in the eighth … to bail out a wild Dellin Betances.
The question filled the air: With the Yankees hoping to participate in their first postseason series since 2012, can they count on the increasingly erratic Betances?
“I can’t put my team in a situation like I did tonight,” the always accountable Betances said.
“We’ve got to get him straightened out,” Joe Girardi said, “because he’s very important to us moving forward.”
He is, and yet he isn’t. The Yankees can boast of their greatest bullpen depth in Brian Cashman’s 20 years as general manager. Just as they’re best built with Chapman as their closer — a construct that took a hit when Girardi temporarily demoted Chapman in August — their optimal alignment has Betances pitching the eighth inning, thereby allowing David Robertson, Chad Green and Tommy Kahnle — and Adam Warren, if he can make it back from the disabled list — to freelance and pitch multiple innings.
This is why the Yankees should not give up yet on Betances serving as Chapman’s setup man. They have the margin for error, given their lead over the Twins, to try to make this work. And they possess the manpower to easily cover for Betances — and lift him before he creates too much damage — if he falters again.
That’s what happened Monday. Inserted to start the eighth and protect his team’s one-run lead, Betances loaded the bases by hitting Robbie Grossman, allowing Zack Granite to sacrifice Grossman to second (a questionable decision by the Twins) and walking Max Kepler and Brian Dozier.
“I felt like my timing was off,” Betances said. “I yanked a bunch of pitches there. Yanked some breaking balls. I can’t give free passes. It’s been hurting me all year.”
It sure has. Betances’ 43 walks and 10 hit batters both mark singleseason highs.
September historically has been Betances’ worst month — thanks to Chapman’s bailout, he lowered his career September ERA from 4.56 to 4.53 and lowered his September 2017 ERA from 8.53 to 8.10 — and it calls into question whether the right-hander is just exhausted from the extensive workload he has clocked. Although, as Betances pointed out, this actually has been his least strenuous season. With 62 appearances and 56 2/3 innings, he’s on pace to record his lowest totals in four years.
October? Betances has only one postseason game on his ledger, the 2015 American League wild-card game, when he gave up a run over 1 2/3 innings in the Yankees’ 3-0 loss to the Astros. In that season, too, just like last year, when he took over the closing duties after the Yankees traded Chapman to the Cubs and Andrew Miller to the Indians, Betances appeared more cooked than the meal Ricky’s mother served in “Better Off Dead.”
It has been the fear all along, that pushing Betances so hard — he now has 311 ¹/3 career innings — would create consequences down the road. Are we down that road now? The Yankees have to wonder that.
“It’s hard to say,” Girardi said of Betances’ rough night. “[Sunday], he located extremely well [in throwing a perfect eighth inning against Baltimore]. I thought it was a game that got him back on track. Today it reared its ugly head again. So we’ll keep trying to figure it out.”
They should keep trying that in the times that matter, for a little longer. If he can’t figure it out by October, though? Then they’d need to change it up. To do everything in their power to prevent those boos from showing up in The Bronx.