It’s taken until now for Yankees’ glaring weakness to emerge
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — When the Yankees left spring training, the biggest question mark was the starting rotation. Almost two months into the season, nothing has drastically changed, and it was the major reason the AL East-leading Yankees had dropped six of nine entering Saturday’s game against the Rays at Tropicana Field.
In those nine games, Yankees starters were 2-5 with an obese 6.53 ERA. Those numbers are reason for concern, but most alarming was in that stretch no starter went seven innings, and the five totaled 45 ¹/₃ frames.
“It is what it does to the bullpen, that’s the biggest part of it,’’ pitching coach Larry Rothschild said of his starters averaging 5 ¹/₃ innings per start through the dry spell.
That came into play during Friday night’s 5-4 loss to the Rays. Luis Severino went five frames and left the final four to the bullpen. Adam Warren and Tyler Clippard, who have been very strong all season, weren’t Friday and surrendered four runs.
Another byproduct of the starters not going seven innings is there are likely a couple of rough innings before he departs.
“If you are not going seven, it means you had some tough innings,’’ Rothschild said. “It means you are putting [the Yankees] behind in games. It’s not necessarily the case all the time, but in today’s world, seven [innings] might be the old nine, I don’t know. We need somebody to step up.’’
Masahiro Tanaka was the first candidate to give the struggling rotation a lift when he faced the Rays Saturday afternoon at Tropicana Field. Though he is the Yankees’ best starter, the right-hander’s past three outings had not been good. And the last one against the Astros in the second game of Sunday’s doubleheader, on the day the Yankees retired Derek Jeter’s No. 2, was awful. In 1 ²/₃ innings, Tanaka gave up eight runs and seven hits, four of which were home runs.
Entering Saturday’s game, Tanaka was 2-1 with a 9.00 ERA in the three games since he beat the Red Sox with a complete game shutout at Fenway Park on April 27. In those three games Tanaka gave up 25 hits.
During this nine-game stretch, Michael Pineda went 6 ²/₃ innings and pitched into the seventh without registering an out and went 1-1. CC Sabathia worked 6 ²/₃ innings and six in another game. Severino lasted 2 ¹/₃ innings before the five-and-fly act Friday night. Jordan Montgomery went five and six innings in two defeats.
The poor work of the starters led to the staff ERA rising from 3.22 on April 29 to the 3.84 it was entering Saturday’s action.
The most logical candidates to lead the starters out of the wilderness are Tanaka and Sabathia, even if Pineda has been the best starter in the first 25 percent of the games. Severino is still learning, and Montgomery has seven big league starts.
Among the 15 AL teams, the Yankees’ starters were 11th with a 4.49 ERA.
So, what was the biggest question mark in early April remains so with a quarter of the season gone. While there are moves that can be made — Bryan Mitchell and Luis Cessa can be recalled from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and Chad Green moved from the bullpen to rotation — it’s likely the Yankees need more than one starter to get better to relieve the daily stress that has engulfed the rotation.