Tag: Bullpen

Sweet Relief

(This story originally appeared in the June 2021 edition of Yankees Magazine.)

Some stories age better than others. This wouldn’t end up being my most regrettable feature of 2021 (that would be a tie between my Deivi García feature from the spring, and my Gerrit Cole piece that ran on the morning of his disappointing start in the AL Wild Card Game), but it was a bit of a shame. About the only saving grace here is that the Corey Kluber no-hitter bumped this off the cover, as it would have been a bit embarrassing for this to be on sale all June, when the Yankees’ relievers were going through their roughest patch of the season.

New York Yankees 2021

With that said, I do think there’s some good stuff in here, a look at what makes a bullpen great. The Yankees spent 2021 deploying tons of different arms and arsenals, baffling opponents with arm angles and a rambunctious kindergarten class worth of breaking stuff. For all that we talk about speed these days, and all the relievers that throw in triple-digits (and the Yankees have plenty of those), the best recipe seems to be mixing approaches, changing deliveries and just throwing strikes. Up through the point when I wrote this, the Yankees were doing that at a pace about as good as any bullpen in history.

Baseball is changing, and bullpens are more important than ever. Clearly the Yankees have known this for a long time, which is why they had a bullpen with something like five guys who could probably close for a bunch of teams. While they fell off the historic pace, the bullpen was still an incredible strength for the team down the stretch, and figures to be for years to come.

https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-magazine-dominant-bullpen

End Game

(This story originally appeared in the September 2018 edition of Yankees Magazine.)

As the 2018 trade deadline approached, it seems that the Yankees were in desperate need of a starting pitcher. So general manager Brian Cashman went out and acquired one of the best … relief pitchers? … on the market? On the surface it made little sense. But baseball is changing, and all you need to do is look at the ways that the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays approached this year to see it. And sure, the Yankees are playing their part, too.

Starting pitchers are throwing fewer innings than ever, and since the game is still nine innings long, that means that managers and pitching coaches are being forced to rely on relievers more than ever before. So in Zach Britton, Cashman added a fourth elite closer to the Yankees’ bullpen, joining Aroldis Chapman, Dellin Betances and David Robertson.

For this story, I tried to introduce Britton to Yankees fans, while also looking at what the acquisition can tell us about the new team-building philosophies at play. I had never interviewed Britton before this, and we had a really fun chat. He’s incredibly honest and thoughtful in his answers. A highlight for me was when we talked a lot about all of the high-leverage situations he would face in his hybrid role on the Yankees’ roster. An experienced closer who wouldn’t be doing much ninth-inning work, he was excited about the change, anxious to add a new club to his bag. Britton is enough of a student of the game (in particular, of the ways that former Yankee Andrew Miller has thrived in a unique bullpen role) to know that the idea of the ninth inning being where all the money is made doesn’t really make sense anymore.

But at the same time, he admitted that he couldn’t really explain why it was still important to him, why he still expected that when he enters free agency after the 2018 season, he expects to find a job closing again. He was almost treating it like a thought experiment, brainstorming responses. “I have the American League record for consecutive saves,” he told me, more thinking out loud than anything else. It turns out, the game might be changing faster than even the players can comprehend (for more on this, ask Greg Bird about the shift. Then back away slowly).

I think it’s going to be fascinating to see how all of this develops in the coming years. In the meantime, I hope you’ll check out this story.

https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/britton-trade-added-to-yankees-deep-bullpen/c-294600990?tid=163658034