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Taking a page from the Rays’ playbook with Domingo German

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(Ronald Martinez/Getty)

It pains me to say it because I like picking on the Rays as much as the next guy, but Tampa Bay came up with a pretty good idea recently. Well, it wasn’t their idea, people have been talking and writing about it for a while, but the Rays actually did it. Last weekend they started a reliever for matchup purposes. Specifically, they started Sergio Romo against the Angels.

The thinking behind the move is pretty straightforward. The Angels stack righties at the top of their lineup — specifically Zack Cozart, Mike Trout, Justin Upton, Albert Pujols, and Andrelton Simmons in whatever order (usually that one) — so they sent out a righty specialist to navigate that difficult part of the lineup. And it worked! Romo struck out the side in order in the first Saturday, then threw 1.1 scoreless innings to start the game Sunday.

There is another layer to this, however. After Romo struck out the three men he faced in the first inning Saturday, the Rays brought in left-hander and quasi-starter Ryan Yarbrough, who allowed one run in 6.1 innings. Because Romo retired the Cozart-Trout-Upton portion of the lineup in the first, Yarbrough was able to throw those 6.1 innings without facing the top of the lineup a third time. He faced 23 batters, but Cozart-Trout-Upton only twice.

The plan didn’t work quite as well Sunday because the pitchers who followed Romo stunk. On Saturday though, it worked like a charm. Romo retired the top of the order in the first inning and the Rays got 6.1 innings and 92 pitches from Yarbrough without letting him face the Angels’ best hitters a third time. The Rays are a joke franchise (nice Corey Dickerson trade, guys), but I gotta say, the “start Romo” plan worked great Saturday.

You know what’s coming next: Should the Yankees employ a similar strategy? They are facing the Angels and all their right-handed hitters this weekend, after all. Two things to consider about this.

1. The Yankees have a veteran rotation. On the R2C2 podcast the other day CC Sabathia said he would be pissed if he got bumped back to “relief” so a reliever could start and throw one inning. Not insignificant! Sabathia, Masahiro Tanaka, and Sonny Gray have all been around awhile and I don’t think they’d appreciate having their pregame routines altered. Luis Severino is so good that I don’t think you mess with him at all.

Yarbrough is a 26-year-old rookie who is still in the “you’re going to work in whatever role we tell you” phase of his career, which is why he followed Romo out of the bullpen. It’s not like the Rays did this with Chris Archer, you know? The Yankees are sending Severino, Gray, and Tanaka to the mound against the Angels this weekend. I don’t think it’s fair to drop something like this on a veteran starter, and expect him to change his routine and show no ill-effects.

2. The Yankees don’t have a righty specialist. Romo is a low arm slot frisbee slider guy who is death on righties and ineffective against lefties, historically. He can (should) only be used against righties. The Yankees do not have a righty specialist. Their relievers are effective against both righties and lefties, or at least they have been throughout their careers. I mean:

  • Dellin Betances: .260 wOBA vs. RHB and .234 wOBA vs. LHB
  • Chad Green: .214 wOBA vs. RHB and .227 wOBA vs. LHB
  • Jonathan Holder: .302 wOBA vs. RHB and .312 wOBA vs. LHB
  • David Robertson: .297 wOBA vs. RHB and .241 wOBA vs. LHB

Robertson is struggling a bit right now, but, generally speaking, those four dudes can be used at any time. Platoon matchups are a secondary concern. There’s not that one guy who has to face righties, so you might as well use him to start the game to ensure he faces righties and can impact the game. In a normal game, the Rays would’ve looked for a spot for Romo to face Cozart-Trout-Upton. They decided to go for it in the first. The Yankees don’t have that guy.

Given the scheduled starting pitchers this weekend, I don’t think the Yankees should get cute and start a reliever against the Angels for matchup purposes a la Romo. There’s no sense in messing with Severino’s or Gray’s or Tanaka’s routine. Baseball players are creatures of habit and that goes double for starting pitchers. Those dudes set their routines down to the minute. Just let them be.

Now, that said, I do see an opportunity for the Yankees to use the Romo strategy in the near future: Monday against the Astros. Domingo German is scheduled to start that game and, like Yarbrough, he is a (soon-to-be) 26-year-old rookie still in the “shut up and pitch whenever we tell you to pitch” phase of his career. The top of Houston’s lineup usually looks like this …

  1. George Springer
  2. Alex Bregman
  3. Jose Altuve
  4. Carlos Correa

… or this …

  1. George Springer
  2. Jose Altuve
  3. Carlos Correa
  4. Yuli Gurriel

… and either way that’s four right-handed hitters. Four very good to great right-handed hitters. German hasn’t pitched all that well the last two times out, so the Yankees could send a reliever (Holder?) out there for the first inning to face those dangerous hitters, then turn it over to German and hope he can go six innings without facing the top of the lineup a third time like Yarbrough.

Know what the crazy thing is? The Yankees have already done this against the Astros this season. Inadvertently, but they’ve done it. A few weeks ago Jordan Montgomery started, threw a 1-2-3 first inning before having to be removed with his elbow injury, then German came in and fired four scoreless innings (on a limited pitch count) while facing Altuve and Correa just once. The Yankees could try to same thing Monday minus the injury. Have a reliever face the toughest batters at the top of the lineup, then turn things over to German.

I have zero expectation of this actually happening, of course. Aaron Boone does seem to be open-minded and willing to try different things, but this feels a little too far out there even for him. If the Yankees were ever going to do it, Monday would be the day, when German is scheduled to face the Astros. Otherwise it’s not worth forcing the team’s veteran starters out of their comfort zone and disrupting their pregame routine.

With his chase rate trending down, it may be time for Tanaka to throw more fastballs

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(Ronald Martinez/Getty)

For the second straight season, Masahiro Tanaka has pitched pretty poorly out of the gate. He’s had some good starts here and there, but overall, a 4.95 ERA (4.82 FIP) in ten starts is a 4.95 ERA (4.82 FIP) in ten starts. There are 92 pitchers with enough innings to qualify for the ERA title at the moment and Tanaka ranks 81st in ERA and 77th in FIP. The numbers don’t lie.

Tanaka’s slow start last season was much worse than this season. Through ten starts last year he had a 5.86 ERA (5.31 FIP) and we were talking about skipping starts and phantom disabled list stints and things like that. The Yankees never did any of that. They kept running Tanaka out there, and in his final 18 starts, he had a 3.69 ERA (3.54 FIP). Much better.

Tanaka was able to turn his season around last year by embracing the Yankees’ anti-fastball philosophy. He has really strong secondary pitches in his splitter and slider, so he threw a lot — a lot — of them and the results improved. His month-by-month pitch usage through last season:

Fewer fastballs, more bendy pitches, better results. We all know the story. Tanaka has continued with the anti-fastball philosophy this year — he’s thrown 27.2% fastballs this year, the lowest rate in MLB (Ross Stripling has the second lowest at 32.2%) — because hey, it worked last year, so keep doing it.

Lately though, it seems to me the anti-fastball approach is starting to lose some effectiveness, and I say this because hitters are not expanding the zone and chasing against Tanaka as much as they did last year and earlier this year. His chase rate:

See what I mean? Once Tanaka started throwing so many non-fastballs last year, his chase rate went through the roof. Now the chases are down. It was pretty obvious in his start three days ago, when he walked four batters in five innings against a Rangers team that generally doesn’t draw many walks. It’s not just the walks either. Tanaka was behind in the count a bunch and that created more problems.

Over the last few years Tanaka has been the best pitcher in baseball at getting hitters to chase out of the zone. That is not an overstatement. Last year’s chase rate leaderboard:

  1. Masahiro Tanaka: 42.1%
  2. Corey Kluber: 38.8%
  3. Chris Sale: 37.5%
  4. Zack Greinke: 37.3%
  5. Max Scherzer: 36.8%

Tanaka posted a 39.7% chase rate from 2015-17, which was the best in baseball. Michael Pineda was a distant second at 37.3%. Like I said, Tanaka has been the best pitcher in baseball at generating swings on pitches out of the zone. That leads to swings and misses and it leads to soft contact. If a guy goes outside the zone and makes hard contact, you just tip your cap. More often than not, good things happen for the pitcher when a hitter chases.

This season Tanaka has the second best chase rate (39.8%) in baseball behind Aaron Nola (40.0%), which is really good, but as the graph shows, Tanaka’s chase rate is trending down. That could be an indication hitters are beginning to adjust to the anti-fastball philosophy. Hitters aren’t stupid. Teams scout, teams do prep work. They know what’s up. Hitters know Tanaka doesn’t throw many fastballs nowadays and they’re beginning to adjust.

Because of that, it might be time for Tanaka to start working his fastball in a little more. I’m not saying he should throw heaters down the middle. But when hitters are thinking splitter down or slider away, you can get catch them looking at fastballs on the corners. We’ve all seen a hitter take a fastball in the zone for a strike and wonder what he was looking for. Well, he was looking for a non-fastball that would dip out of the zone.

Last year Tanaka struggled early in the season, so he made an adjustment, and in this case that adjustment that was throwing fewer fastballs. Now hitters seem to be adjusting to that adjustment, which means it’s time for Tanaka to adjust to their adjustment to his adjustment. Got all that? It’s a vicious cycle. It’s baseball. A constant game of adjustments. Now that hitters seem to be doing a better job laying off the splitter and slider, more fastballs could be in the cards.

Much improved run prevention is the No. 1 reason behind the Yankees’ recent hot streak

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(Presswire)

Sixteen games into the new season, the Yankees were playing thoroughly mediocre baseball, and their 8-8 record and +3 run differential reflected that. They had scored the fourth most runs in baseball at the time, so that was cool. They’d also allowed the seventh most runs, which was a big problem. Both the pitching and defense had gone bad.

Since then the Yankees have gone 10-2 and outscored their opponents 74-31, and they look very much like the team everyone expected them to be this season. The Yankees lead baseball in basically every meaningful offensive category and they’re second in many others. They rank first in runs (164), homers (41), wRC+ (115), so on and so forth.

The offense has really kicked it into high gear the last two weeks, but the single biggest reason the Yankees have gone on this recent 10-2 hot streak is the run prevention. It was a real problem earlier in the season. Now the Yankees are doing a much better job keeping runs off the board. Look at this:

A positive trend, that is. The Yankees have held their opponent to one run five times in the last ten games, and three or fewer runs nine times in the last ten games. Not once in those ten games did they allow more than four runs. At one point earlier this year the Yankees allowed 41 runs in a five-game span. They’ve allowed 41 runs in the 14 games since.

“Obviously the offense is a big story for us, but we’re not doing this without the starting pitching we’ve been getting,” said Aaron Boone to Erik Boland over the weekend. “They’ve for the most part been consistent and then turning it over to our bullpen, which is starting to find a good groove.”

Pitching and defense are the two components of run prevention and the Yankees have been greatly improved at both. I highlighted the run prevention issues a little more than two weeks ago, when the Yankees were 7-7 and mostly spinning their wheels. Here are the numbers then and now, with the team’s MLB ranks in parenthesis:

After 14 Games After 28 Games
Starters 4.83 ERA (22nd)  3.77 (10th)
Relievers 4.71 ERA (25th)  3.40 (9th)
Defensive Efficiency 0.684 (29th) 0.716 (7th)

Yup. We’re still in small sample size territory, and there are better ways to evaluate pitching than ERA, but the bottom line is the Yankees are allowing fewer runs. The rotation has been very good lately — even Sonny Gray turned in a quality outing last night — and the bullpen settled in a few weeks ago, even with Tommy Kahnle and Adam Warren hurt.

To me, the improved defense is the most noteworthy development here. The Yankees do still lead MLB in errors, which is annoying, but they haven’t been happening as frequently lately. They committed 17 errors in the first 16 games and have committed only seven in 12 games since, with four of the seven coming in one game. That’s … better? It is better. Still bad! But better.

I count three reasons for the defensive improvement. One, Aaron Hicks is back. He missed two weeks with an intercostal injury and getting him back in center field has improved the outfield defense overall. Two, Gleyber Torres has joined the Yankees. He’s already flashed some serious leather. How long has it been since the Yankees had a full-time second baseman who could do this?

Probably not since Robbie Cano. Gleyber, if nothing else, has been a defensive upgrade at second. And three, Giancarlo Stanton looks way more comfortable in left field. It was always silly to say he couldn’t handle left after watching him play like five minutes out there in Spring Training. He’s a good athlete and a good right fielder, and now that he has more experience in left, he’s handling it well. I’m not surprised. Hicks, Torres, and Stanton have all helped defensively.

You’re never really as good as you look at your best and never really as bad as you look at your worst. The Yankees couldn’t keep runs off the board earlier in the season and now they’ve turned into a run prevention dynamo. The real 2018 Yankees are somewhere in the middle. The Yankees did allow the fourth fewest runs in baseball last season with largely the same cast of characters. In terms of keeping runs off the board, the real 2018 Yankees are probably closer to the team we’ve seen these last two weeks than the team we saw at the start of the season.

Gray says he’s more comfortable with Romine at catcher, so the Yankees should stick with it

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(Presswire)

Last night, for the first time this season, Sonny Gray actually pitched well. He wasn’t lights out, but two runs in six innings against the Astros in Houston is nothing to sneeze at. Gray looked better too. He threw more strikes, got more swings and misses, and pitched with conviction. It was easily the best Sonny has looked this year. Easily.

It was also the second time in as many starts that Austin Romine, not Gary Sanchez, was behind the plate for Gray. Their first start together didn’t go so well (4.2 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 5 BB, 4 K). Nevertheless, Aaron Boone opted to pair Gray and Romine again last night, and the result was Sonny’s best outing of the season.

Following the game Gray came out and admitted he is more comfortable with Romine behind the plate than Sanchez. “Connection” was his word. Sonny told Erik Boland he has a better “connection” with Romine. “Ro, I think he does a great job. Yeah, I think so,” added Gray.

“I think it’s just confidence in general,” said Romine while speaking with Boland. “I can’t sit here and take any credit for a guy that has that kind of movement on his pitches. Really, it’s just me getting out of the way and allowing him to get into a rhythm.”

I’ve never been a big fan of personal catchers, or, rather, I’ve never been a big fan of the way personal catchers are supported. This pitcher has a great ERA with that catcher. That’s usually the personal catcher argument, right? Catcher’s ERA doesn’t adjust for ballpark, for defense, for opponent quality, none of that. Some numbers:

Gray with Romine: 2.75 ERA
Gray with Sanchez: 5.94 ERA

All Yankees with Romine (2017-18): 4.17 ERA
All Yankees with Sanchez (2017-18): 3.43 ERA

Beyond the small sample size noise involved here — Gray has thrown 39.2 innings to Romine and 53 innings to Sanchez, which is nothing — whatever “connection” Romine has with Gray hasn’t benefited the rest of the pitching staff. If you’re a catcher’s ERA believer, the results have been considerably better with Sanchez behind the plate since last season.

Now, that said, catcher’s ERA may be dumb, but absolutely do I believe some pitchers work better with certain catchers. It’s human nature. We’ve all had classmates or coworkers that we just work better with. Sometimes that chemistry is there and sometimes it’s not. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to be there forever, of course. But sometimes things just click.

“(Romine) just adapts to the game and flows,” said Gray to Coley Harvey. “There’s a great communication. In between innings there’s constant communication, which for me is extremely beneficial with everything I try to do with the baseball.”

Boone said he is not a fan of personal catchers back in Spring Training — “Bottom line is we’ve got an elite level catcher. We’re not going to sit down and get into the personal (catcher) stuff,” he said, specifically — but, not surprisingly, he is planning to stick with Romine and Gray for the foreseeable future after last night’s game.

“I think his next start is probably that Saturday when we’re at home, which will be a day game after a night game,” said Boone to Boland. “So especially in those kind of scenarios (we’ll stick with it). When it makes sense, at least in the short term we’ll do that.”

Three things about the Gray-Romine pairing. One, when the pitcher admits he works better with a specific catcher, you can’t ignore it. Especially when he’s struggling as much as Sonny has been this season. The Yankees have to get him right, the sooner the better, and if Romine helps him, so be it. Pair them together going forward.

Two, Sanchez is going to have to rest every so often anyway. Catching four out of every five games with Sonny starts being a regularly scheduled off-day from catching — Sanchez can still DH those games, like he did last night — is fine. Gary is going to have to sit sometime. Might as well sit him on the days the pitcher he doesn’t work well with is on the mound.

And three, at some point the Yankees are going to have to get Sanchez and Gray on the same page. Sonny did praise Sanchez back in Spring Training — “I love that guy. I mean he works so hard every day,” Gray said to Pete Caldera in March — and you can’t bank on Romine catching him forever. Injuries happen and the postseason happens. The two have to get on the same page eventually.

That’s a process that can happen later in the season though. Right now, the priority is getting Gray back on track and back to being effective every fifth day. Last night was a good first step. It doesn’t mean he’s completely fixed. Gray feels comfortable with Romine, so keep the two together until it seems he’s all the way back. Later in the season the Yankees might be able to work in some Gray-Sanchez outings to get the two reacquainted.

The Yankees have been pitching pretty darn well the last few weeks — they’re averaging 1.70 runs allowed per game in their last ten games — though Gray remains the weak rotation link, and I think getting him straightened out is the Yankees’ top priority right now. Sonny is the single biggest problem on the roster. Last night was a step in the right direction. And if being paired with Romine gets him on track, who am I to argue? Keep them together.

Masahiro Tanaka is taking the Yankees’ anti-fastball approach to the extreme

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(Maddie Meyer/Getty)

Later tonight Masahiro Tanaka will make his fourth start of the season in the second game of this quick little two-game series against the Marlins. Tanaka has a 5.19 ERA (4.34 FIP) in three starts and 17.1 innings so far this year, though those numbers are skewed a bit by last week’s rough outing in Boston. His first two starts of the season were quite good.

So far this season Tanaka has continued a trend that started sometime last June, when he was in the middle of the roughest stretch of his MLB career. Tanaka simply scaled back on his fastball, his worst pitch, and started to emphasize his slider and splitter. A graph of interest:

Tanaka throws other pitches (four-seamer, cutter, curveball), but those are his three main pitches in the graph. The slider and especially the splitter are his money pitches. That’s how he gets his outs. Whatever Tanaka was doing early last year was not working, so he changed it up, and he pitched pretty well the final few weeks of the season.

The Yankees in general are an anti-fastball team. Tom Verducci wrote about it last year and more recently Jeff Sullivan wrote about it as well. The Yankees collectively throw fewer fastballs than just about any other team in baseball. Last year they had the lowest fastball rate by nearly five percentage points. This year:

  1. Yankees: 46.1% fastballs
  2. Tigers: 51.1%
  3. Rays: 51.9%
  4. Angels: 54.2%
  5. Phillies: 55.7%

Intuitively, it makes sense. Breaking balls are harder to hit than fastballs. The numbers bear that out. Here’s what the league is hitting against various pitch types:

  • Fastballs: .261 AVG and .169 ISO (.368 xwOBA)
  • Breaking Balls: .198 AVG and .124 ISO (.268 xwOBA)
  • Offspeed Pitches: .227 AVG and .128 ISO (.292 xwOBA)

Throwing fewer fastballs means you’re throwing more pitches that are harder to hit, which will lead to more success (in theory). Every pitcher is different, so an umbrella one size fits all policy doesn’t make sense. Telling Luis Severino to throw fewer fastballs may not be such a good idea. In Tanaka’s case though, his slider and splitter are clearly better than his fastball, so he’s a good candidate for the anti-fastball approach. Here is the bottom of the fastball usage leaderboard:

  1. Masahiro Tanaka: 22.0% fastballs
  2. Alex Wood, Dodgers: 35.3%
  3. Jordan Montgomery: 35.4%
  4. Zack Greinke: 36.0%
  5. Lance McCullers Jr.: 38.3%

Given the team’s pitching philosophy and Montgomery’s arsenal, it doesn’t surprise me to see he’s near the bottom of the fastball usage leaderboard. Those five pitchers are the only starters who have thrown fewer than 40% fastballs so far this season. Clayton Kershaw (43.7%) has the seventh lowest fastball rate this season, so the anti-fastball thing is something bonafide aces do too.

The anti-fastball approach is relatively new, and I have two questions. One, does it put the pitcher at greater risk of injury? Popular belief is that bendy pitches are harder on the elbow than fastballs — Tanaka’s partially torn elbow ligament has widely been blamed on his heavy splitter usage — yet recent studies found conflicting results. One said throwing more fastballs leads to injury. Another said pitch type doesn’t make a difference. Who knows?

The Yankees (and Astros, another anti-fastball team) are one of the smartest and most progressive organizations in baseball, so they I’m sure they considered the physical ramifications of throwing fewer fastballs. They didn’t do this on a whim. The Yankees aren’t sending Tanaka and his $22M a year salary out there to do this without first thinking long and hard about it.

My second question is at what point do we start seeing diminishing returns? Tanaka’s slider and splitter are very effective pitches, but if he continues throwing them at this rate, will they eventually be less effective? Hitters aren’t stupid. They know about the anti-fastball approach, and the more they see Tanaka’s slider and splitter, the better they may get at hitting them. How well will this work the fifth and sixth time he sees the Red Sox and Orioles this year, for example?

There is a point of diminishing returns somewhere. I don’t know where it is, and for all I know, it could be years away. It could be so far away that it’s not worth worrying about. The Yankees are a win-now team that will (and should) prioritize the present over the future. If throwing fewer fastballs helps you win in 2018 but hurts in, say, 2020, so be it. You take the good with the bad.

Tanaka, maybe moreso than any other pitcher in baseball, is the poster boy for the anti-fastball movement. He’s thrown 54 fastballs total in three starts so far. Chad Green, a reliever, has thrown 104 fastballs so far this year. Nearly twice as many. The anti-fastball approach has mostly worked for Tanaka since he made the adjustment midway through last season. Will it work long-term? My hunch is yes, though I do think Tanaka and the Yankees will see diminishing returns at some point.

Run prevention must improve for Yanks to get on a hot streak

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(Gregory Shamus/Getty)

Fourteen games (and several postponements) into the 2018 season, the Yankees have yet to play up to their full potential, and the result is a perfectly mediocre 7-7 record. A 14-game sample is nothing, and going 7-7 is hardly a disaster, but the Yankees certainly haven’t looked the part of a World Series contender yet. We’re still waiting for the team to fire on all cylinders.

The offense has not been a problem so far. Even with Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez starting slow, and Greg Bird on the disabled list, the Yankees are hitting .244/.332/.423 (112 wRC+) as a team and are averaging 5.50 runs per game. They are seventh in team wRC+ and sixth in runs per game. Once Stanton and Sanchez heat up, forget it, the Yankees will score runs like crazy.

Run prevention has been a different story. The Yankees have allowed 5.50 runs per game in the early going — their run differential is exactly zero (77 runs scored and 77 runs allowed) — and things have been especially bad over the last ten days or so. They’ve allowed at least six runs in each of their last five games, and in six of their last seven games overall. Yuck.

There are three components to run prevention: Starting pitching, relief pitching, and defense. So far the Yankees have been below-average at each. Some quick numbers:

  • Starters: 4.83 ERA (22nd in MLB)
  • Relievers: 4.71 ERA (25th)
  • Defense: 0.684 Defensive Efficiency (29th)

Again, we’re only 14 games into the season, and there are better ways to evaluate pitching than ERA and defense than Defensive Efficiency (a fancy name for the percentage of batted balls turned into outs), but so far the Yankees aren’t pitching well and they aren’t defending well. I’m not sure I needed to give you the numbers to tell you that. We’ve all seen it.

Performing poorly in the first 14 games and performing poorly the rest of the season are two different things. The Yankees have performed poorly on the run prevention side of things to date and those games are in the books. Can’t take ’em back. Going forward though, things on this side of the ball can improve for several reasons, two of which don’t seem outlandish to me:

  1. Luis Severino and Masahiro Tanaka won’t continue to get bombed like they did in Fenway Park last week.
  2. The outfield defense will improve now that Aaron Hicks is healthy.

Both Severino and Tanaka were very good in their first two starts before getting rocked by the Red Sox last week, and they both have strong track records, so I’m willing to chalk last week up to “one of those series.” Maybe they’ll be bad now and forever. It could happen! I think we need more evidence before saying anything definitive though. Bad starts happen. Sometimes to good pitchers and sometimes in back-to-back games.

As for the defense, getting Hicks back means Stanton spends more time at DH than in left field, where he has been adequate rather than stellar. Giancarlo is awesome, but defensively I want Hicks in center and Brett Gardner in left field as often as possible. And remember, it’s not just less Stanton in left field either. Billy McKinney and Jace Peterson started two games apiece in left already. Less of that, please.

The bullpen is a different story. On one hand, the talent on the roster suggests the bullpen should be better going forward. A lot better. On the other hand, relievers are known to be volatile, and guys like Aroldis Chapman and Tommy Kahnle have yet to show their usual velocity. Dellin Betances has had his moments, but it always feels like the next meltdown is right around the corner. The bullpen has been dicey.

Fourteen games in, I don’t think there’s anything the Yankees can do other than give the bullpen more time. No one in the bullpen has thrown even nine innings yet. Given the talent in the bullpen, April 16th is no time to start ripping things apart and dumping guys who were great last year for depth arms. I’d like to see more of Domingo German and Luis Cessa in short relief. I also don’t think the Yankees should move on from their current bullpen core just yet. If the bullpen still stinks in a few weeks, the Yankees will make changes. I don’t think they’re at that point yet.

I know this much: The Yankees are allowing way too many runs at the moment. They’re scoring plenty and that’s good. But only six teams have allowed more runs in the early going, and that is no way to make a run at a postseason spot, even in a hitter friendly home ballpark. (The Yankees allowed the fourth fewest runs in baseball last year.) The Yankees need to improve their overall run prevention to go on any sort of hot streak. The rotation, the bullpen, and the defense all haven’t been up to snuff.

Saturday Links: Boone, Sixth Starter, Power Rankings, YES

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(Tom Szczerbowski/Getty)

The Yankees and Blue Jays continue their season-opening four-game series with the third game later today. First pitch is scheduled for 4:07pm ET. In case you’re wondering, the minor league regular season begins this coming Thursday, so that’s cool. Anyway, here are some links and notes to hold you over until first pitch.

Boone interviewed with Twins, Cubs

Prior to being named manager of the Yankees, Aaron Boone interviewed with the Twins for a front office job and the Cubs for a coaching position, reports Ken Davidoff. In the weeks after being hired, Boone admitted he was preparing to leave his ESPN gig to get back into the game, and hinted at interviewing with other clubs in addition to the Yankees. Now we know it was with the Twins and Cubs, for different roles.

I know Boone kinda came out of nowhere as a managerial candidate — it sure surprised me when the Yankees interviewed him — nevermind as a managerial hire, but it sure seems like he’s highly regarded within the game. Multiple teams were interested in bringing Boone aboard in a rather significant capacity despite his lack of experience. Smart teams interested in adding smart personnel to their organization. News at eleven.

Yankees have date in mind for sixth starter

The Yankees are targeting Tuesday, April 24th as a day to bring up a spot sixth starter, Boone told Billy Witz near the end of Spring Training. They’ll play the second game of a four-game series against the Twins at Yankee Stadium that evening. Boone and the Yankees have said they plan to use a spot sixth starter to give the regular starters extra rest from time to time. They’ve done that a whole bunch over the years. Nothing new here.

Thanks to April off-days, the Yankees won’t need a starter to make a start on normal rest until Monday, April 16th, and even then only Luis Severino and Masahiro Tanaka would have start on normal rest. There’s an off-day on April 18th, giving the other three starters an extra day. Weather could always throw a wrench into things, but right now, whoever starts the third game of the season for Triple-A Scranton would line up for that April 24th start. My guess is Domingo German is atop the sixth starter depth chart the moment.

Yankees top ESPN’s future power rankings

Earlier this month ESPN compiled their annual future power rankings, in which they rank the 30 MLB teams based on how they “will fare over the next five years.” The rankings are based on four components (MLB roster, farm system, finances, front office), which are weighed differently. The Yankees rank first. The Dodgers are second and the Astros are third. (The Marlins are 30th). Here is a piece of write-up:

A strong case could be made that the Yankees are better positioned than any team in baseball, because they have some of the best of all types of elements right now. They have a top farm system, including high-end infielders Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar; their major league team is loaded with young and old talent, from power-hitting outfielders Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton to 24-year-old ace Luis Severino; and they have the greatest payroll flexibility of any Yankees team since the early 1990s — right before the Paul O’Neill-Tino Martinez dynasty.

The Yankees’ biggest problem? Jacoby Ellsbury and his contract, according to the ESPN crew. And you know what? If Ellsbury and his contract are their biggest problem, that ain’t so bad at all. The big league roster is loaded, the farm system is loaded, the front office is shrewd as hell, and the Yankees have lots of money to spend. They’ll have even more to spend in the future, once they rest their luxury tax rate this season. Yep, the Yankees are in really great shape going forward.

YES Network ratings skyrocketing

The Yankees have a great team and they were one game away from the World Series last season, so, not surprisingly, television ratings are up big time so far this year. The YES Network announced Grapefruit League ratings were up 80% from last year even though only one of their eleven spring broadcasts was in primetime. The spring ratings were better than March Madness ratings, on average.

Furthermore, Opening Day was the YES Network’s highest rated season-opening broadcast in seven years, since the 2011 opener. The Opening Day broadcast drew more viewers in New York than all other sports broadcasts that day, including nationally televised NBA and MLB games on TNT and ESPN, respectively. The Yankees are good, they’re fun, and people are excited. I reckon attendance will be up quite a bit this year as well.