Early-season success a relief for Yankees
Two towering pitchers make up best reliever combination in the game
They arrived in Washington with one regular position player younger than 30, and that guy, Didi Gregorius, is being asked to replace an icon, failing miserably along the way. Their best starting pitcher, Masahiro Tanaka, is on the disabled list. Their most accomplished starting pitcher, CC Sabathia, is constantly battling a chronic knee problem and no longer averages 90 mph with his fastball.
These are the New York Yankees, and they reside in first place in the American League East in the first season the Core Four is no longer.
Yes, Derek Jeter was a drag on the New York’s offence last year, the first time in his career in which the Yankees failed to reach the playoffs in consecutive seasons. And when Jeter departed — joining Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera in retirement, finally putting to rest what likely will be the last dominant era for a single major league team — the Yankees didn’t undergo some overhaul.
They traded for his replacement, Gregorius, and marched forward with what appeared to be a decrepit lineup set up to fail. The 2014 Yankees scored fewer runs than any pinstriped team since 1990, and they were supposed to return to the postseason by adding 39-year-old, what-do-we-have-here Alex Rodriguez, back from suspension? No off-season splash? How un-Steinbrenner of them.
We’re a long way from putting the Yankees back in the playoffs, for sure, though the stench around the rest of the AL East makes anything possible. This week’s two-game test against the hottest team in baseball — the Washington Nationals — will provide another check point.
Yet it’s not too early to decipher why this group entered this series in first place: 13 feet, three inches of reliever.
These Yankees don’t appear to do much with domination. They’re fourth in the AL in runs scored, fifth in on-base-plus-slugging percentage, fifth in ERA. But when they get to the eighth inning with a lead, the first 6-feet-8 of reliever emerges from the bullpen in the hulking form of right-hander Dellin Betances. And when Betances holds that lead, here comes 6-foot-7 lefty Andrew Miller, built like a beanpole who owns the ninth.
They are not only the strength of the Yankees, but they are, for the early part of 2015, the best reliever combination in the game.
Here is the number of earned runs Miller and Betances have combined to allow in 2015: zero (0). Yes, there are plenty of peripheral numbers to show how that’s happened.
And there are other reasons the Yankees are 22-17. The two hitters at the top of the order, Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner, rank fourth and 16th in the AL, respectively, in on-base percentage (. 411 and .380). Michael Pineda, the 26-year-old right-hander whose greatest adversary to this point has been his own health, has anchored a rotation currently without Tanaka, going 5-1 with a 3.31 ERA and 55 strikeouts in 51.2 innings. And the Yankees have clubbed 46 homers, more than all but four teams in the game, with 10 from Rodriguez and 11 from first baseman Mark Teixeira.
But the Yankees’ latest dominant back end of the bullpen has given this team its identity. The Yankees’ record when they lead after seven innings: 18-1. Their record when they lead after eight: 22-0.
These two towering characters took circuitous paths to get to this point. Start with Betances, because he is the rarest of Yankee commodities: a homegrown product. Selected out of high school in Brooklyn in the eighth round of the 2006 draft, he eschewed a scholarship offer to Vanderbilt to try to make it in the Bronx. But as a starter in the minors, he couldn’t consistently corral his stuff. In 653.1 minor-league innings, he walked 350 men, an average of more than 4.8 per nine innings pitched.
The Yankees finally moved him to the bullpen in 2013 at Class AAA, and last year — New York’s first without Rivera — he became an all-star. Over 90 dominant innings, he struck out 135 men — breaking Rivera’s club record for a reliever. He posted a 1.40 ERA, and opposing batters hit .149 with a .224 slugging percentage against him. Thus, when David Rob- ertson departed for a four-year, $46 million deal to close for the Chicago White Sox, Betances seemed to be the obvious candidate to become the next Rivera, developed in-house. Of the players regularly appearing for these Yankees, only Betances, righthander Adam Warren and Gardner were drafted and developed at home.
But then, because they’re the Yankees, New York signed Miller to a four-year, $36 million deal. A first-round pick in that same 2006 draft, he too was a failed starter, and he entered this year with one career save. Miller started pitching the ninth inning. And manager Joe Girardi kept him there. Betances has never entered a game in the ninth inning all season.
Their numbers individually are impressive. Miller has 29 strikeouts in 17.2 innings and has allowed three hits to rack up 13 saves; Betances has 32 strikeouts in his 21 innings. Combined, and they’re ridiculous. Together, they are allowing opposing hitters an .087 batting average.
The small-market Kansas City Royals made their way to a pennant by shortening games. Maybe the biggest-market Yankees could do the same.