The Yankees started their final spring training Friday around the rotation in – at the very least – a much better headroom than when they started this process five weeks ago.
The non-Gerrit Cole part of the rotation, which had raised concerns, has remained sane and thrown well, yielding the winning parlay of this Yankee spring workout. Things have gone so well that Deivi Garcia, who was selected for Triple-A on Friday, will likely start the year at the alternate venue in preparation for a minor league season or when the big team needs to be replenished.
The alternative is of course correct that the oeuvre and the bodies for the rotation are both valid. But there are two baseball statements that resonate right now that should at the very least dampen the runaway enthusiasm:
1. Don’t be fooled by the March results.
This is a month for deception. Major leaguers, minor leaguers, and non-roster desperation mingle in games at different levels of readiness. Veterans may be working on new swings or pitches. Again, it’s better that the Yankees startups performed well statistically. But if we’re going to take those numbers seriously, should we do that for a Yankees offense that’s been generally terrible in the Grapefruit League?
If you were a gambler, would you bet – with everything you know, including the March 2021 results – that the Yankees will be more concerned about their regular season rotation or lineup?
2. You never start pitching too much.
It should be noted how quickly the depth disappears. For example, the Rangers left spring training 2.0 in 2020 satisfied with their new addition, Corey Kluber. He started the third game. He threw one inning. He hurt his shoulder. He never thrown again.
Kluber is now part of a rotation in which that one inning represents one more than Domingo German or Jameson Taillon pitched last year.
Let’s play the gambler’s angle again: Would you like to bet that the Yankees will sit out the starting trading market in July or be deep in, say, the Reds ‘Luis Castillo and the Rockies’ German Marquez?
Avoiding rotational vulnerability in March is the only hurdle the Yankees could have crossed so far – and they have. Certainly a positive point. But when you consider how few Germans, Kluber, Taillon and even Jordan Montgomery have thrown in the last two years, the biggest barrier would always be June and July and August …
The whole sport is bracing for beating innings this year, unsure of the workload pitchers can handle after a 2020 COVID impact of 60 Major League games and none for the minors. The average team threw 516 innings in the regular season last year. In the 2019 season of 162 games, this was 1,447.
Boone said last week that he believes Cole can return to a 200-inning starter this year, a luxury – if fulfilled – but few teams will have. That would still be over 1,200 innings. Let’s go back to that gambler: Would you bet on someone from German, Kluber, Taillon – one inning combined last year – with 150 innings this year? How about 125? Is Montgomery, 17 starts combined over the past three seasons, ready for over 25s this year?
The Yankees have Garcia on speed dial. Maybe Clarke Schmidt will heal and become a factor at some point. The Yankees are aiming for about a return of Luis Severino in July, but he is another who was down to zero last year after Tommy John’s surgery.
Like any team, the Yankees need creativity. For example, the Mariners and Angels are already committed to six-man rotations, and others will use those or openers at least occasionally. The Yankees have four days off in the first 19 days of the season and want to work around them consciously, especially to protect them in expected cooler weather. I suspect hybrids, like Jonathan Loaisiga and Nick Nelson, who can give 80-100 innings in relief, will be huge.
Boone said he “doesn’t impose any hard restrictions on any of (the starters)” as far as innings are concerned. He noted that he has a general roadmap for how the Yankees would like to assign starts and innings in 2021, but admitted that it is “always an evolving and changing equation.” The whole sport will have to be ad-lib; the Yankees might be as much as any other club due to the lack of innings that so many of their starters have had over the years.
So yes, that Boone is satisfied with items beyond stats like things and recovery between starts is important. The new additions, Kluber and Taillon, have acclimatized well, and so has German, which has taken a tough road back to respectability after being suspended under domestic violence protocols. In fact, the German sense of pitching may have surprised the staff the most.
Again, it’s better the Yankees aren’t looking for reinforcements or cherry-picking for positives this month. It’s a positive first step. But it’s a long march from here.