PITCHERS PERFECT o season worry, may e an ee s ren now
Rotation, big
If spring training is indeed a harbinger of what is going to transpire from April to October (which, of course it seldom is), Yankee legions have a lot to feel good about this coming season. So far, all they fretted about after a winter of so much uncertainty, all the potential negatives, have been nothing but positives with the opening bell beckoning.
To wit:
Corey Kluber and
Jameson Taillon both pitched well with no post-injury ill effects and appear to be ready to settle in nicely behind
Gerrit Cole in the starting rotation.
Gary Sanchez looked much improved both offensively (some monster homers) and defensively in his lower catching stance.
Clint Frazier had a particularly productive spring and looked like the Yankees’ best hitter in nailing down the left field job.
And lastly, neither Aaron Judge nor Giancarlo Stanton pulled any muscles.
Let’s start with the rotation because that was the only area where, with Cole the only certainty, the Yankees had legitimate concerns in their efforts to reclaim supremacy in the American League East and advance deep into October. It is after all the starting pitching where teams’ fortunes ultimately rise or fall and it just may well be the deepest rotation in the AL East and indeed the entire American League may actually reside in the Bronx! With limited financial resources this winter, after re-signing D.J. LeMahieu for $15M per year, Brian Cashman had to scramble to start filling in the rotation pieces. He gambled heavily with an $11 million investment on Kluber, the 35-year-old two-time AL Cy Young winner who’d thrown just one inning since being hit on the right forearm by a comebacker in May 2019 and tearing a shoulder muscle last July. Then he executed a trade with the Pirates for Taillon who showed much promise with a 14-win 191-inning season with the Pirates in 2018 before being felled by his second Tommy John surgery in 2019.
While Kluber looked mostly like his old self as he worked off the rust this spring, Taillon particularly brimmed with confidence after revamping his delivery, pitching up in the zone with his previously sparingly-used four-seam fastball to both sides of the plate. “It’s been really exciting getting those swings and misses up there where I used to just throw the four-seamer down and away and not put a lot of emphasis on it. I feel I’ve got a few more weapons under my belt,” he said.
Much as Cashman had to be heartened by the performance of Kluber and Taillon, however, he had to be blown away by the resurgent Domingo German, who began the spring having to make an apology tour in the clubhouse, uncertain if he was even going to be kept on the team after missing all of last year serving an 81-game suspension for a very public domestic violence incident. Once his teammates accepted his apology, German got down to work and looked every bit the dominant top-of-rotation starter who was 18-4 with 153 strikeouts in 143 innings in 2019, striking out 13 batters and yielding no runs in his first nine innings.
Scouts observing German were all in agreement. He may have supposedly been pitching for the fifth and last spot in the Yankee rotation, but in reality he might be their No. 2 behind Cole. So suddenly, the Yankees come out of spring training seemingly with a wealth of starting pitching behind Cole in
Kluber, Taillon, German, and the lone lefty Jordan Montgomery, with Deivi Garcia, who lost out to German, in ready reserve at the minor league camp and Luis Severino possibly ahead of midseas schedule in his comeback from Tommy John surgery Cashman and Aaron Boone can certainly be ho ful that Sanchez — with his shortened swing and bet plate discipline plus all the extra defensive work h done with Yankees catching coach Tanner Swanson is finally ready to live up to the promise they both ha long held for him. At the same time, they always w keep their fingers crossed that the two big guys, Jud and Stanton, can finally stay healthy over a full seaso It should be noted, however, the Yankees easily mad the postseason the last three years despite Judge mis ing large swaths of those seasons and Stanton missin almost all of 2020 and 2019.
W h i c h is why when assessing a team’s ques tion areas it is always wise t check out the opposition’ same places of concern
The fact of the matter is the Yankees’ two chief AL East rivals, the Blue Jays and Rays have far more problematic sta rotation issues beyond their respective No. 1s. The Blue Jays knew they had a rotation full of holes after Hyun-Jin Ryu and sought to remedy that by bringing back 2020 trade deadline acquisition Robbie Ray and ing s gn ng S even atz. ot ave p c e extreme y we this spring but neither has shown any consistency with their talents over a full season, and the Jays rotation took a big hit when top prospect Nate Pearson was felled by a groin injury that could keep him sidelined through the first month of the season. s for the Rays, who make a habit of getting rid of their highest paid players every year but always seem to figure it out, they will be severely challenged cobbling a rotation behind No. 1 Tyler Glasnow this year after letting Charlie Morton walk as a free agent to the Braves and trading Blake Snell for a bunch of futures. Ryan Yarbrough, their No. 4 starter last year, will slot in behind Glasnow but after that it could be a revolving door of “openers” in which the Rays conceivably could use as many as 20 different starters this year. We shall see how well that will work over the long haul.
Even before the spring, the scouts and pundits all agreed the Yankees, if healthy, had the best overall talent in the American League. Their only question was the rotation. Who’d have guessed come Opening Day that might even be their strong point?
A