SLOW RETURN TO NORMALCY
After a season like no other, Yanks hope pitching depth makes things right again
TAMPA — For Matt Blake, the most important stretch of the year will come early in the 2021 season. The Yankee pitching coach would normally be watching for fatigue issues late in the summer or September. After 2020, the weirdest year in baseball — a nearly four-month shutdown in the spring, a three-week ramp up and a 60-game regular season — Blake and other pitching coaches come into 2021 uncertain of how the pandemic season will affect them.
“This is a pretty traditional progression and I think once we get out of the gates we’ll have a pretty good idea where guys are in April and into May. I think June and July are where things start to get a little bit more murky for us as far as how guys are getting past last year’s 60 games, or 70 games if you had a postseason,” Blake said. “I do think there is some extra cushion in there that maybe isn’t appreciated, but I do think that unknown of what it looks like when we get to June, July, August is a real concern. That’s where I think we try to be flexible with our plans going in and be willing to adjust and adapt as we go.
“That’s why we have the depth that we have here, which is obviously critical.”
All spring, Aaron Boone has been preaching about pitching depth not just among starters, but also in the bullpen. The Yankee manager has repeatedly talked about the number of talented arms in camp; all the way from No.1 Gerrit Cole to youngsters like Deivi Garcia, or Nick Nelson in the bullpen and even free agents in camp on minor-league contracts like Lucas Luetge.
Having quality depth to plug into the rotation, and to get multiple innings out of the bullpen, was the script every front office in baseball was following this winter. That ability to have pitchers who can step into the role of starter or long man, set-up man or even occasionally closer, without much of a dropoff, is going to be the thing that makes or breaks teams this year.
“The quality of the belly of your pitching, the guys from your No. 1 to your 15th guy, is going to be so important,” one American League front-office executive said. “Usually you can expect your top three starters to give you 500 innings. I am not sure any starter will get to 200 innings this year after last season.
“So, those guys who come up and pick up a start or the middle reliever who can bridge a shorter start to the back end are going to be that much more important this year.”
The Yankees will most likely get what they paid for in Cole, their $324 million ace, but they have to hope they have found bargains in Corey Kluber, a two-time Cy Young winner coming off a shoulder injury, and Jameson Taillon, who is returning from his second Tommy John surgery. They have Jordan Montgomery looking ready to be a consistent bigleague starter and then Domingo German coming back after missing the 2020 season having served a suspension under the MLB/MLBPA domestic violence policy.
They have to feel good about the guys who could step in to fill some of those innings. Garcia, Mike King, Clarke Schmidt (who was injured at the start of spring training and will have a delayed start) and Nelson all had a chance to gain experience because of last year’s weird season.
“One of the good things that came out of last year was some of our younger pitchers who have a lot of promise got to get their feet wet, and to varying degrees had a lot of success,” Boone said. “(They) came up and showed that they can pitch at this level.”
And the Yankees will have some built-in help coming right around the time Blake is worried about. Luis Severino, throwing off a mound last week for the first time since Tommy John surgery, is scheduled to return in June or July. While the Yankees won’t commit to a timeline, Zack Britton, who had surgery to remove a bone chip from his left elbow on March 15, should be returning in late May or June.
“There’s going to be the inevitable unknowns that come up throughout the course of any season,” Boone said. “But certainly still being in the midst of a pandemic and all the challenges that creates, and coming off a season in which we played only 60 games, I think depth is obviously going to be important.
“We feel like we have 10, 11, 12 pitchers that aren’t just capable of going out there but are capable of going out there and thriving.”