For postseason openers, look to the Yankees
For a team with the best record in the American League and a 10½-game lead in its division entering Saturday, the New York Yankees have some unsettling questions to ponder about their rotation in the postseason, which looms less than seven weeks away.
Their first three starters in the American League Division Series probably would be some combination of righthanders Domingo Germán, Masahiro Tanaka and Luis Severino. But Germán is about to zoom past his career high (including his years in the minor leagues) for innings pitched, Tanaka carried a 7.16 second-half ERA into Friday night’s start against Cleveland, and Severino has yet to pitch in 2019 because of a shoulder injury.
And then there is Game 4, the starter for which probably would be officially listed as “TBA” at this point but very well could be reliever Chad Green, serving as an opener.
The opener — a reliever used in a starting role for an inning or two, then giving way to a more traditional starter — remains a subject of fascination and debate around baseball more than a year after the Tampa Bay Rays popularized the concept, paving the way for the Oakland Athletics and Milwaukee Brewers to deploy openers, with varying degrees of success, in the 2018 postseason.
This season, as many as a dozen teams, including the Yankees, have dabbled with openers, and a handful of playoff contenders could use one this October.
The logic behind openers is sound: A team deploys one of its top relievers, ideally with a platoon advantage, against the top of the opposing team’s lineup, which typically features its best hitters (the main reason the first inning is usually the highest-scoring inning), thus limiting the exposure of a weaker starting pitcher. With the top of the order (hopefully) cleared, the starter can then enter and (ideally) get through the next four to six innings while only having to face that segment of the lineup twice at most.
“The theory,” A’s Manager Bob Melvin said recently, “is to keep the starter off the top of the lineup one more time. It’s as simple as that.”
To put the equation into practical terms: In Game 4 of a postseason series, whom would you rather have face the first four hitters of the Houston Astros (George Springer, José Altuve, Michael Brantley and Alex Bregman) or the Atlanta Braves (Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies, Freddy Freeman and Josh Donaldson) — your fourth-best starting pitcher or one of your top setup men?
For the Yankees, who possess perhaps the best and deepest bullpen in baseball, it is increasingly apparent the answer would be the latter — and the likeliest candidate would be Green, a 28-year-old righthander who has served as an opener 12 times this season, with the Yankees going 10-2 in those games.
In the hypothetical case of a postseason matchup with the Astros, Green could navigate the Springer-Altuve-Brantley-Bregman segment of the lineup (three of those hitters are right-handed) before giving way to a starter such as James Paxton. Paxton, a lefty, has struggled in the first inning all season, posting a 10.71 ERA.
(Quick caveat: It is possible the optimum time for an opener is Game 3, not Game 4 — owing to the travel day that traditionally falls between Games 2 and 3, because it would ensure a rested bullpen ahead of a potentially taxing opener game.)
Not every contending team has the luxury of a deep and effective bullpen such as the Yankees’. In fact, the opposite is true: Almost every other contending team, including the National League-leading Los Angeles Dodgers, has had a tough time closing out leads in the late innings — which makes it dangerous to sacrifice one of your top setup men at the front end of a game.
What the Dodgers have, however, is a surplus of starting pitchers, with Hyun-Jin Ryu, Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler (not necessarily in that order) lined up for Games 1, 2 and 3 — which will allow them to shift a couple of extra starters (top candidates include Kenta Maeda, Rich Hill, Dustin May and/or Julio Urías) to the bullpen to be deployed creatively as long relievers or in a “piggyback” tandem in a Game 4.
Among wild-card contenders that could turn to openers in October, if they get in, are the A’s, Rays, Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals are an especially intriguing case: They have yet to try an opener this season but have publicly expressed an interest in doing so under the right circumstances — perhaps with Michael Wacha, a 2015 all-star who has shuttled between the rotation and bullpen this season.
“We have some possibilities,” Manager Mike Shildt told reporters this week. “Everyone has their own version of creativity, right? We’re going to continue to look at it and present the best opportunity to eliminate the other team from scoring.”
While the opener has a certain logic to it, to this point no one has proved it can be a successful strategy in the postseason.
Last October, the A’s got knocked out by the Yankees in the wild-card game after opener Liam Hendriks gave up a pair of runs in the first inning. The Brewers had mixed success. They won Game 1 of the NLDS over the Colorado Rockies by bullpenning — which differs from an opener, in that a procession of relievers (rather than a true starter) follows the designated starter. But in Game 5 of the NL Championship Series, they lost to the Dodgers when announced starter Wade Miley faced only one batter before giving way to Brandon Woodruff, who took the loss.
The obvious drawback of the opener strategy is illuminated by the Athletics’ experience last October: If your opener has a bad game, as Hendriks did, you’re behind from the start — and down one pitcher as well. The opener, by definition, requires multiple pitchers to be effective on a given day.
The best candidate to use an opener effectively in October would be a creative team with a weak spot in its rotation but a bullpen deep enough to sacrifice one reliever at the start of a game while retaining enough manpower to cover the back end — and possibly the middle as well, if it comes to that.
If that sounds a lot like the Yankees, you’re right. And this could be the year the postseason opener arrives at Yankee Stadium.