Yankees' rotation not bad, but does team have enough depth?
Clarke Schmidt's 2021 season was short-circuited by an elbow strain suffered early in spring training. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
LAKELAND, Fla. – A little more than a year ago, Corey Kluber tagged a rotation pockmarked with question marks with a nickname that stuck throughout spring training and into the start of the regular season.
"I understand why it’s looked at as ‘Gerrit and the Rest,’ ” said Kluber, who threw a no-hitter last season but was injured for much of his only season as a Yankee. “Hopefully [we] pitch a lot and kind of take away those question marks at the end of the year."
This year’s projected rotation doesn’t have quite the same questions – at least not about health– but that certainly is the case when it comes to those who will get opportunities when the inevitable injuries occur to the first five.
Talk to rival scouts and executives about the Yankees’ rotation and, for the most part, it gets high marks. Barring injuries during the rest of spring training, the quintet will be Cole, Luis Severino, Jameson Taillon, Jordan Montgomery and Nestor Cortes.
But after that, there is a list of unproven pitchers.
Clarke Schmidt, who allowed two hits and struck out three in two scoreless innings in Thursday’s 5-3 loss to the Tigers at Publix Field, is among the group, which includes Deivi Garcia, Michael King, Luis Gil and JP Sears, to name a handful.
Schmidt is among the more interesting cases. The righthander came to the Yankees five years ago as a touted prospect after being taken 16th overall in the first round of the 2017 draft.
He entered last spring training poised to compete for a rotation spot, or at the very least put himself in contention for a bullpen spot or to be among the first called up when an injury occurred. But he suffered a right elbow strain early in camp, well before the exhibition games started, and it all but sabotaged his season. He appeared in only two regular-season games.
“It was really tough,” said Schmidt, who in the past has battled command issues. “I feel healthy, and today was a product of that.”
Schmidt, 26, could leave camp with the big-league team as a bullpen arm – especially with the rosters expanded to 28 through May 1 and the Yankees planning to take 15 pitchers – but if general manager Brian Cashman is unsuccessful in his ongoing efforts to get a rotation upgrade, he is likely to be on standby with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
“We’ve all seen it before,” Schmidt said. “It’s very, very rare you see a season where [a team] uses just five starters. We all know how the season works and how baseball works. It’s 162 games, so at some point, your name’s going to get called.”
The most intriguing of the aforementioned names is Garcia. The 5-9 righthander, who will turn 23 on May 19, showed glimpses in 2020 of the star the Yankees projected him to be when they signed him at the age of 16 out of the Dominican Republic in 2015. But despite Garcia’s success in the minors and briefly in the majors as primarily a fastball-curveball pitcher, the Yankees decided the latter pitch wasn’t good enough and had him incorporate a slider that hasn’t yet taken. Garcia went 3-7 with a 6.85 ERA in the minors last season and, tin the words of one rival evaluator, looked like “a complete mess.”
If Garcia – or Gil, King, Schmidt, etc. – can take that next step, it will go a long way toward answering the questions surrounding just how much depth the Yankees have when they face the injuries every major league staff has to deal with.
“I do believe one of the strengths of our organization is some of the pitching we have at the higher levels now, whether it’s guys on the roster or even guys not on the roster that I feel like could factor in in a number of roles, whether it’s out of the pen or even in a starting situation,” Aaron Boone said. “I do feel good about that depth.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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