MAKESHIFT HAPPENS
Stitched-together lineup saves Yanks after pen implodes
THIS WILL get to the Yankees bullpen. For now, please forgive the scenic route. The detour begins at Most Valuable Pl ayer. Until t he award’s name is changed to Best Player, I am going to take “Valuable” seriously and part of value is rising when all around you is falling. To use Joey Votto as an example. The Reds have not been a good team, but any long-shot chance they have to surprise needs to come with a good start. They have not had a good start and neither has Votto for a fourth straight year. I suspect as always his numbers will be there in the end. However, when his club needed him to be Most Valuable, he again was not. So now the veer to the Yankees bullpen. These days the Yankees injury list gets used like the 4 train. That left the Yanks with the kind of lineup Sunday that an opposing spring training team complains does not have the required number of starters. Just this was not March at Joker Marchant Stadium. It was three weeks into April at Yankee Stadium. Yet, the offense, often lacking pedigree and fame, actually has performed. The 2019 Yanks have a better average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage than last season when they scored the majors’ second most runs. The rotation ERA is better, too, and in the last six games, the starters have a 1.64 ERA. That includes two dominant outings by James Paxton, against the Red Sox (eight shutout innings) and Sunday against the Royals (six shutout innings). The stuff was not as overpowering as against Boston. But Paxton struck out the same 12 despite two fewer innings by mes
merizing across the board — his whiffs finished with two curves, five fastballs and five sliders.
The Yankees were c r ui s i ng toward an easy win, up 5-0, when in a six-batter span of the eighth inning Chad Green and Adam Ottavino made a mess, giving away the lead. The Yanks rallied, particularly due to two huge hits from Austin Romine, to win 7-6 in 10 innings. They are 11-10 and portraying themselves as the $225 million Little Engine That Could due to the anonymity that has swept their lineup.
The bullpen group, though, is not anonymous. Even with Dellin Betances out, the thought was, poor Yankees, rather than five closer-quality relievers, they only had four. And, to a man the Yanks agree that eventually the relief crew will meet expectations as a force. As Romine said, “Our pen is going to be what they are, which is dominant.”
But back to timing. The Yanks need that pen to be Most Valuable now to cover for areas made weaker by having 13 players on the IL. Instead, early this season, the Yankees have followed the leaguewide relief trend of elevated walks and homers.
No one has been more troubling than Green. He has a 12.27 ERA and admits his mechanics are off, robbing his fastball of command and the late life that had made him an asset the past two years. Martin Maldonado blooped a single to open the eighth before Green walked No. 9 hitter Billy Hamilton — which he felt was unpardonable. A Whit Merrifield single loaded the bases.
Ottavino entered with good results (0.90 ERA), but even he conceded “I have a ridiculously unacceptable total of walks.” So he decided even with the bases full to avoid nibbling and falling behind in the count. Ottavino had not allowed an extra-base hit in his first nine outings and then Adalberto Mondesi doubled for two runs, Alex Gordon hit a three-run homer to tie and Hunter Dozier clobbered the next pitch for a goahead homer.
“I didn’t have a healthy enough level of fear because I haven’t been getting hit very hard,” Ottavino said. “I felt I needed to attack and get ahead and that my stuff would be better than their ability to hit it.”
Aroldis Chapman and Britton survived their own crises to give the Yanks the chance to win. Still, the pen has a 4.17 ERA, has already permitted nine homers and is averaging nearly four walks per nine innings.
Britton theorized that, “There is almost too many guys down there” used to pitching in late roles and that “everyone is jumbled up right now aside from Chapman.”
That has led to a transition period as guys try to find comfort with how they are being used. Britton, however, added, “We have to make the adjustment and be ready to pitch. There is no excuse for it. But I know as guys get comfortable with how they are being used it is going to settle in.”
It probably will. The Yankee pen probably has a terrific run in it. But this is the moment of crisis. To be at its Most Valuable, this pen has to pitch a lot better. Not in June or when Betances returns.
Now.