As I’ve said many times, one benefit of working for Gannett is access to USA Today’s national baseball writers, and that’s especially true since Joe Lemire began writing for the newspaper. On Tuesday, USA Today ran a piece by Lemire all about the Yankees’ revolving door in the bullpen. This was even before yesterday’s moves in which Chris Capuano was designated for assignment (again) and Nick Rumbelow was optioned (again). It’s a good read, and a good way to wrap up this off day.
NEW YORK — Just inside the main entrance of the Yankees’ home clubhouse and to the right are a pair of lockers reserved for players occupying transient roster spots.
Residing there on a recent Monday were relievers Nick Rumbelow (on his third big league stint) and Branden Pinder (following his sixth promotion to the majors in this season alone). No fewer than a half-dozen players have occupied those stalls in rapid succession, enough that fellow reliever and next-locker neighbor Justin Wilson couldn’t begin to guess exactly how many.
“I don’t know,” Wilson said, shaking his head with a bemused grin. “A ton.”
There’s no team email blast about team transactions, so players find out upon arriving at the ballpark. “You just walk in and usually if you see a (new) guy’s here, then well, I guess we made a move today,” reliever Adam Warren said.
At any given time, seemingly one or two members of the Yankees’ 40-man roster and, in particular its bullpen, can be found on Interstate 80, making the two-hour drive between New York and Class AAA Scranton (Pa.).
The Yankees lead the American League with 106 options, recalls, contract selections and designations for assignment — the 29 other major league clubs average 67– and has used 51 players this season, including an AL-leading 22 relievers (23, if you count position player Garrett Jones) and 15 players who made their major league debuts.
The shuffling has paid off: New York entered Tuesday night’s play tied with the Toronto Blue Jays atop the American League East, and has spent 83 days atop the division.
All this in a season where it’s been a challenge identifying some of the players.
The franchise has retired 20 uniform numbers (with Derek Jeter’s No. 2 to make 21), so several digits have been recycled this season: Six players have worn No. 40; five have worn No. 64; four have worn two numbers.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman reckoned that his rotation — full with injury risks (Masahiro Tanaka, Michael Pineda), aging (CC Sabathia), switching to the AL (Nathan Eovaldi) and with innings limits (Adam Warren and Luis Severino) — might not go deep into games and be what he called “five and six and fly.” That precipitated the offseason signing of closer Andrew Miller and trades for Wilson, Chasen Shreve and David Carpenter, plus the promise of a farm system’s upper levels filled with competent and fresh arms.
Demoted players need to spend 10 days in the minors before returning, unless there’s an injury, and many have changed places just that often, usually after an outing lasts multiple innings and thus requires at least one or two days of rest.
“(We had) from Double A on up a lot of really interesting power arms from the left and right side that were under control, with options,” Cashman said. “We talked all winter about where we could be in a situation where we’re really taking a guy every 10 days. Call a guy up, max him out, send him back out and get a new guy up. It’s just kind of a revolving door.”
One veteran without options has been caught up in the fluctuating roster, too.
Veteran lefty Chris Capuano has been designated for assignment three times in less than a month (now four times) and returned to the big leagues all three times. He and his agent, Casey Close, now treat such transactions as part of the daily routine.
“We just send these short perfunctory texts now,” Capuano said, offering such examples as “DFA today,” ”Going to Scranton,” ”Stay ready” and “Coming back to NY today” without tipping his hand to possible emoji use.
When scanning a list of pitchers used this season, Miller confessed that he had forgotten one name who had shared the bullpen with him. He said it’s tough to watch young teammates shuttle back and forth, especially when they’ve been pitching well, but that the roster manipulation has helped the big league club.
“I think having that flexibility in the seventh spot has essentially given us an eight- or nine-man bullpen, which has been really huge,” said Miller, who called it an “underrated” part of the club’s first-place season.
For most of the season, Miller, Warren, Wilson, Shreve and Dellin Betances have held down steady bullpen roles for a unit that has thrown the majors’ sixth-most innings (400 1/3) with the eighth-best ERA (3.23). Miller, Betances and Shreve all have ERAs under 2.00; the other two have ERAs just north of 3.00.
The rotating cast filling in the other bullpen seats has largely proven interchangeable and durable in logging 167 2/3 relief innings. Of the 11 rookie pitchers to relieve this season, only two — Jacob Lindgren (No. 10) and Bryan Mitchell (No. 17) — rank among the organization’s top-30 prospects, per mlb.com.
Of the four veterans in the mix, Capuano keeps shuttling back and forth, and only one of the other three has shown post-Yankees success: Esmil Rogers has since thrown two complete games for his new team — in Korea.
All three of Capuano’s return trips to the Yankees have occurred the evening before he was to make a Class AAA start, complicating what is already a difficult chore of getting regular work. (Once, he had checked into his Scranton-area hotel for less than an hour before Cashman called to summon him back to the majors.) To keep his command sharp and his arm strength up, Capuano has taken to throwing a lot of live bullpens with reserve hitters standing in the box.
“It’s a little bit of a different formula they’ve applied this year, just making sure they always have fresh arms, but it’s part of it,” he said. “All I want to do is win a World Series and be part of it in some way.”
Sometimes that means being a bullpen martyr.
After Shreve threw 3 1/3 innings in April 10′s 19-inning game, he was sent down for 10 days. Similarly, on May 23, Pinder logged three innings in a blowout loss to keep the high-leverage-throwing core fresh; he was optioned to Scranton after that game.
“We all knew — and I’m pretty sure (Pinder) knew too — that he was going to be sent down,” Shreve said.
Pinder returned a few weeks later in place of right-hander Chris Martin, who threw 80 pitches in three appearances over a span of six days. Demotions around here aren’t farewells.
“Whenever somebody goes down,” Shreve said, “it’s ‘Hey, we’ll see you soon.’”
Associated Press photos
The post Cashman on Yankees’ bullpen: “It’s just kind of a revolving door” appeared first on The LoHud Yankees Blog.
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