From Bryan Hoch:
Even though the Yankees’ bullpen has quietly stabilized over the last several weeks, most industry sources expect general manager Brian Cashman to aggressively pursue upgrades ahead of the Trade Deadline.
The late innings on Thursday illustrated why.
Camilo Doval served up Andrew Benintendi’s eighth-inning pinch-hit grand slam on his first pitch of the evening, a drive that sent the Yankees to a 5-1 loss to the White Sox at Yankee Stadium.
“Slumps are part of the game as baseball players. We all go through them,” Doval said through interpreter Marlon Abreu. “I’m not exactly getting the results that I expect of myself right this moment, but I know they’re coming. I know a good streak is coming.”
Doval has displayed electric stuff at times since being acquired from the Giants last July but has largely been unable to recapture his one-time closer’s form. He owns a 5.08 ERA across 28 1/3 innings, with lefties hitting .368 (21-for-57) with a .979 OPS against him.
“Some of those lefties haven’t missed against him,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Benintendi went up there hunting very aggressively, first pitch, and pulled the ball down and in. He’s missed some spots in some situations that have hurt him.”
With each team held to one run through seven innings, Sam Antonacci ripped a pinch-hit double off Fernando Cruz. Tim Hill hit two of the three batters he faced, including plunking Tristan Peters on an 0-2 offering.
Benintendi then pounced on Doval’s 99.8 mph sinker, clubbing it into the right-field seats.
The bullpen had been quite good recently, so it’s hard to kill them too much, but this was a particularly bad outing.
First, you had Fernando Cruz allowing a leadoff double to the #7 hitter. Then, most importantly, with a runner on second and no outs, Tim Hill enters the game and promptly plunks the next TWO batters, including the #9 hitter, who was actively trying to BUNT! After Hill then struck out the next batter, Boone was in a pickle. Leave Hill in to face Grichuk, who has hit two home run off of Hill in his career, or bring in Camilo Doval to face Andrew Benintendi?
Boone went with the latter, and Doval grooved his first pitch, which Benintendi then hit for a grand slam.
Doval has been terrible this season, but had been on a strong streak lately, but mostly in low leverage situations. However, while I think Boone made the wrong call here, it is hard to give him too much grief, as the real problem was Cruz and Hill being so bad that Boone had to choose between two really bad options. He never should have been in that position to begin with. It was only due to Cruz and Hill sucking (especially Hill) that he HAD to make the call.
That said, Ryan Weathers was excellent tonight (he can only ever be excellent on nights the Yankees don’t hit it appears), so it appears clear that the bullpen WILL get better soon, if only because Ryan Weathers will soon be PART of it. Plus, Carlos Lagrange is coming, as well. Jake Bird will be sent to the minors, and they’ll probably finally make a decision on Paul Blackburn and Ryan Yarbrough. Does it suck that both Blackburn and Yarbrough have actually been quite good as long men this season? Yes, but you CAN’T keep carrying two long men!
The bullpen will likely look like this soon:
Bednar – Closer
Cruz/Weathers – 8th inning guys
Headrick/Lagrange/Hill – 7th inning guys
Doval – Middle inning guy
One of the long men – Long man
That’s a much better bullpen than the current configuration, where Boone clearly doesn’t trust either Jake Bird OR Camilo Doval. Doval, again, has been good in low leverage situations, so he’s fine to keep in the middle innings (and maybe he can again work his way into the high leverage spots), but he’s just SO fucking stupid. Boone even alluded to it by noting that he just missed his spot terribly, and Benintendi crushed it.
Of course, this shouldn’t disguise from the fact that the Yankee offense sucked tonight against a good reliever and a mediocre starter (albeit one the Yankees have somehow never seen before, so maybe that played a role?).
There were also a number of baserunning blunders in this one, including Volpe getting thrown out at third trying to stretch a double into a triple (something you should almost never do, since you can usually score from second as easily as third on a basehit).
Oh well, it was still a successful series, and it was great to see Weathers bounce back from 4/5 terrible outings. It gives me more hope that he can hold the fort until Fried returns, at which point he’ll be a very useful bullpen weapon.
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If weathers is in the bullpen there’s no reason he can’t pitch 2 innings at a time. No idea where the “one inning per reliever” business came from. It just increases your chance of losing since it increases the chance that one reliever won’t have it that night.
THIS!
If you pitch a guy one inning, you can bring him back sooner than if you pitch him two innings. You can pitch back-to-back nights, for instance, if you throw one inning each night. If you pitch two, you’re out for the next two nights. There is certainly some appeal to going that route on occasion, though, of course, and once you have Weather and Cruz splitting the 8th inning, you might see that more often (Weathers pitches 7th and 8th in Game A, then Headrick/Hill/Cruz split the 7th and 8th in Games B and C).
Several times last night they were on the verge of scoring, maybe scoring a lot.
It may just be a statistical thing, like BABIP..
Lagrange is far from a sure thing. PA “ Carlos Lagrange 1.2 IP 2 H, 4 R (0 ER), 2 BB, 0 K, HR — the runs might have been unearned, but the homer was tattooed; just a reminder to be patient with his bullpen conversion.” Also he faced 9 batters and had no Ks, he threw 32 pitches, only 17 for strikes, 53%.
Oh yeah, he won’t be coming for a while. But Weathers should be ready to be a dominant reliever in possibly less than a month.
But yeah, they probably should just send Bird down and see what Cruz can do.
Doval intrigues some because the radar says 99.8, but they often go out a lot faster. He really isn’t fooling too many hitters most nights.