(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.
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
