***Official 2018 New York Yankees Thread***
- Thread starter Cy$
- Start date
Well it's no secret the starting pitching was by FAR the weakest link on the team. That's where the Red Sox and Astros just wear teams out.
Boone also didn't help. He gave both Severino and Sabathia way too much leeway with the bullpen he has. If you have to shoot for 2 from Green, Robertson, Betances, Britton, and Chapman that's what you have to do (especially in a case like last night). Neither Severino nor Sabathia looked good at all (missing spots, unable to control fastball, getting hit hard, throwing a ton of pitches) and the Yankees were out of the games in NY before they even had a chance to be in them.
I am a Sox fan. Yankees just keep adding bats. That is all. No starting pitching. It's decent at best. Cashman always builds teams like this. Boston has 3 Cy Young winners (Even though Price Sucks). Pitching wins the series almost every time.
Yankee talking heads agree...Boone didn't use the bullpen.
Excuse #2 is that Cashman should have never fired Joe Girardi.
Bull **** they don't have starting pitching. There are a bunch of teams that would love to trot out Tanaka and Severino. Jordan Montgomery went down and was expected to be #3 or #4. CC is a solid guy for the back of the rotation. Sonny Gray on paper was a solid back of the rotation guy. Comparing to the Red Sox or Astros who have arguably the two best in baseball is a bit disingenuous.
They basically rebuilt starting with the farm system and replenishing after always trading away their talent for established big leaguers. Now they have a bunch of younger guys (some home grown, some acquired via trade) that allows them to accomplish their second goal, which was to get under the luxury tax threshhold and drop from 50% to 20% while still competing.
Another rebuild step was getting Teixiera, Rodriguez, Ellsbury, Burnett, Sabathia, etc. off the books. That's done now with exception of Ellsbury. Stanton's will probably be terrible at some point but it isn't now.
Spending money in the bullpen was a stopgap to get the starting pitching squared away. Severino, Tanaka, Montgomery is a very solid foundation. They have a couple guys in Triple A right now they'd like to be MLB ready but we'll see.
Starters next year
C - Sanchez
1B - Voit/Bird
2B - Torres
SS - Gregorius
3B - Andujar
LF - Frazier
CF - Hicks
RF - Judge
DH - Stanton
is a pretty damn good place to start. Boston could afford to take on salaries...the Yankees haven't been able to. That changes now.
Yanks made a decision to stay under the luxury tax and stuck with it. It's a biz decision they made not because they cannot afford it. There was not a lot out there for starting pitching so they took a hard pass. They did pick up Happ and without him they maybe were not the home team in the wildcard. Doesn't look like much out there again this year for pitching either. EVERYONE is looking for pitching.
They still won 100 games while being plagued with injuries all year long. And if Sanchez got a fraction more of that ball everyone would be hyping a game five.
Still think they are junk. You had every single hitter In the lineup hit at least 20 home runs and could not win the division. Why? because Boston had Price, Sale, Porcello, Eovaldi and Joe Kelly.
Kinda wonder who will take a run at Eovaldi. Seems this is the year that he learned to pitch rather than just throw. He's always had good stuff and a good attitude. Mixed results when he was with the Yankees prior to blowing his elbow up but people liked him a lot as a person IIRC. I was pretty impressed with him this year with both AL team he pitched for (of course I only saw his games vs Yanks).
I don’t think he’ll want to go back. Matt Harvey intrigues me as a 5th starter, though maybe too much risk compared to the reward for him
