No way to spin it: Yankees' rotation a roller-coaster ride
New York Yankees starting pitcher Clarke Schmidt delivers against the Baltimore Orioles during the first inning of an MLB baseball game at Yankee Stadium on Thursday, May 25, 2023. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Yankees’ No. 8 starter showed up in the Bronx clubhouse Thursday afternoon around two o’clock, newly arrived from Triple-A Scranton. A few minutes later, Randy Vasquez, a 24-year-old rookie who could be a mistaken for a high-school intern, was told he’d make his major-league debut Friday night against the Padres, a struggling but dangerous team.
This is not to suggest the Yankees are desperate when it comes to their fractured rotation, but already going to an eighth starter — in what will be their 53rd game — definitely puts them in that neighborhood. They used a total of 11 all last year, and the arms currently holding this rotation together, if that’s what you’d call it, are not exactly the most stable bunch, outside of Cy Young candidate Gerrit Cole.
Clarke Schmidt delivered a decent effort in Thursday’s 3-1 loss to the Orioles, but was doomed by a 29-pitch first inning, which manager Aaron Boone believed was the fault of plate umpire Edwin Moscoso. Boone was later ejected in the middle of the third for arguing with Moscoso, and Schmidt didn’t stick around much longer, lasting only through the fifth. On the plus side, Schmidt only surrendered one run, but the Yankees wound up using five relievers.
Entering Thursday’s series finale, the Yankees’ rotation had a 4.42 ERA, which ranked 16th in the majors (The Rays were tops at 2.92). They also had teed up 1.33 home runs per nine innings, landing them 19th on that list (The Mariners were No. 1 at 0.82).
But perhaps the most troublesome statistic, the canary in the coal mine for the Yankees’ early success, is the strain being put on the bullpen. With the rotation either ineffective or untrustworthy, Boone has now leaned on his relievers for 203 innings, the second-highest total in baseball.
Boone knew early on it was going to be a race to see what happened first: getting Luis Severino and Carlos Rodon up to speed or exhausting the bullpen beyond repair. At the moment, it appears to be coming down to the wire.
Severino turned in a solid 2023 debut last Sunday in Cincy (1 run, 5 Ks, 4 2/3 innings) and will make his first Bronx start Saturday against the Padres, but Boone admitted he’s still being built up from the strained lat muscle suffered in spring training.
As for Rodon, the manager won’t even speculate on his return date, but our educated guess puts him somewhere around July 1 as he rehabs from a forearm strain-turned-back-issue that happened during the first week of the Grapefruit League.
“It’s not fun,” said Rodon, who flew up from Tampa this week. “It’s been very frustrating having to sit and watch the boys compete when I want to be out there with them helping.”
The Yankees gave Rodon that $162 million contract so they wouldn’t be in this position — scrambling for starters and burning out their bullpen. But given the state of their patchwork rotation, it’s no small feat that Boone & Co. are eight games over .500 (30-22).
It’s all a chain reaction, stemming from the issues with the rotation, and the cumulative effect causes problems over time. Aside from Cole, Domingo German had been the most reliable starter and he’s now serving a 10-game suspension for last week’s sticky-stuff violation. Even Schmidt, owner of a 5.58 ERA, had to be considered on notice after being told by the umpires to wash his hands in his previous start.
Who’s left? Cortes, an All-Star a year ago, has a 5.30 ERA and mostly falls off a cliff after the fifth inning. He was in a good shape through six Wednesday — much like his May 18 win in Toronto — but Boone’s faith wasn’t rewarded. At some point, he’s got to get more length from the rotation rather than constantly needing to bail them out.
“We probably used our bullpen more than we anticipated when you looked at our starters on paper going into spring training,” Boone said Thursday afternoon. “That said,I also feel like we’ve been able to spread it out within the bullpen so we haven’t had to necessarily overuse guys.
“Getting Sevy back is huge. He’s obviously a stabilizer. Hopefully we get Carlos \[Rodon\] going here and he’s in play down the road. So I feel like the makings \[of a better rotation\] are there, but we’ve also got to get there.”
Schmidt was another part of that bridge Thursday, followed the next night by Vasquez, who had never attended a major-league game, in any capacity, before putting on his pinstripes that afternoon.
“It’s hard to explain how excited I am,” Vasquez said through an interpreter. “Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to pitch in the big leagues.”
Ideally, it’s not what the Yankees had in mind before Memorial Day. But they’ve been off script for a while now.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
