Yanks may walk tightrope with current rotation
GIVEN that Giancarlo Stanton was a Miami Marlin just one month ago, this might not be the optimal time to argue the Yankees of recent vintage often go quiet when we expect them to go big. Nevertheless, history speaks for itself. And for all of the chatter about the Yankees acquiring someone such as Pittsburgh’s Gerrit Cole or Arizona’s Patrick Corbin, the team’s track record of the last decade shows it’s just as likely to start a new season without a significant addition to its starting rotation as with one. The results of such decisions reveal the secrets to justifying them. Let’s look at how the Yankees have operated since their last championship in 2009, a title won in large part thanks to huge expenditures on free agents CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. In four subsequent offseasons, they acquired one or more starting pitchers from whom they expected significant contributions: Javier Vazquez for 2010, Hiroki Kuroda and Michael Pineda for 2012 (plus Andy Pettitte’s springtraining return from retirement), Masahiro Tanaka for 2014 and Nathan Eovaldi for 2015. Let’s score that as 2-for-5, with Kuroda and Tanaka as the successes, or 3-for-6 if you want to count Pettitte. By studying the four low-volume offseasons and comparing the peripherals to this one, we can get a better feel for the current plan: 1. 2010-11: After whiffing on their attempt to sign Cliff Lee to a nine-figure commitment, the Yankees went dumpster diving and saw it pay off handsomely. Veterans Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia signed minor league contracts and combined for a respectable 3.82 ERA in 311 innings. And rookie Ivan Nova shined with a 116 ERA+ in 165 ¹/3 innings, allowing the Yankees to win the AL East.
2. 2012-13: Kuroda and Pettitte returned as free agents, and the Yankees, as part of a plan to get under the luxury-tax threshold in 2014, stopped right there. While massive injuries to their lineup led the ’13 Yankees to miss the postseason for the first time in five years, their rotation underperformed, too, thanks to the start of Sabathia’s three-year blue period and Phil Hughes’ dip.
3. 2015-16: On another austerity kick, the Yankees traded for Aroldis Chapman in the hopes a super-bullpen of Chapman, Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances would cover up for their rotation’s inadequacies. That bullpen didn’t get nearly enough leads to protect thanks to the offense’s cratering along with Luis Severino’s sophomore crash and the continuing mediocrity of Eovaldi, Nova and Pineda, and Chapman got traded as the Yankees sat home in October for the third time in four years.
4. 2016-17: Chapman returned from the Cubs for a big free-agent deal, and the Yankees didn’t touch their rotation … until they traded for Sonny Gray and Jaime Garcia in July to complement the resurgent Severino, the surprising Jordan Montgomery and the revitalized Sabathia.
The big lefty Sabathia has returned on a one-year contract, joining Gray, Montgomery, Severino and Tanaka as the primary starters who guided the Yankees to Game 7 of the American League Championship Series.
If you write off 2011 as fluky, then farm-system depth becomes the key to overcoming the absence of a highprofile acquisition.
You wonder how Severino will return from a career-high 209 ¹/3 innings pitched, and Montgomery a careerhigh 163 ¹/3 (including the minor leagues)? How Sabathia’s right knee and Tanaka’s right elbow will hold up? How Gray will do in his first full New York campaign? Maybe those questions get answered by guys like Chance Adams, Domingo German and Justus Sheffield, or by another July trade.
Time still exists for the Pirates, Diamondbacks or another trade partner to bend, or for a Jacoby Ellsbury trade to turn on the spigot for a free agent like Alex Cobb or even Yu Darvish. Don’t be surprised, though, if the Yankees bring this group into spring training. They’ve acted similarly before and thrived, and they have the ingredients to pull off that tightrope act again.