The Tuesday Discussion: Fixing the Bullpen

August 20, 2024

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This week we asked our writers to respond to the following:

How can the Yankees fix their bullpen?

Here are their responses:

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Paul Semendinger - It is clear that Brian Cashman didn't plan well for his bullpen this year. He also failed to fix it at the trade deadline.

Of course I also remember 1996 when David Weathers was acquired, didn't pitch all that well, and then was great in the playoffs and World Series, so time will tell. Anything can happen...

But, hoping for anything to happen is a bad strategy for a baseball team hoping to win a World Series.

I think it is clear that so many have lost faith in Clay Holmes. People can throw around excuses and reasons or say he's better than he is, but the fact is he has blown 10 games this season. That's far too many.

Also, if the Yankees would get longer starts from their starters, they would have to rely less on the bullpen. By now, each starter should be able to get over 100 pitches per start. It's August. My goodness.

As far as the closer, I think that will be a problem the rest of the way. I wouldn't ask Luis Gil to do that after throwing so many pitches this year. For him to pitch multiple times a week is asking for trouble. I don't see any other starter who seems to be a fit there.

There also isn't a pitcher in the bullpen I trust. Clay Holmes is as good (or bad) as the rest. The Yankees have to hope he figures it out and has a great September and October.

On the other hand, I'm still piching. I'm 56-years-old. I wonder if Mariano Rivera would be able to give the Yankees a few weeks of quality pitching. He's only 54. My goodness, he's younger than me!

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Andy Singer - Is dynamite an option? I'm kidding (sort of), but there aren't any easy fixes right now. Part of the answer is very clearly to take Holmes out of the closer role, at least for now, and let Kahnle close. Going forward, I think they need to get Leiter some rest, and replace some of the easily replaceable relievers with Nick Burdi and one of the underperforming starters once the playoffs start... truthfully, I think the Yanks have a couple of starters built to make that transition on the fly before the end of the season.

Strategically, I also think Boone needs to be more careful about usage, chiefly bringing more of these guys in with a clean inning. They're allowing inherited runners to score, so give them more of a lift.

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Mike Whiteman - At this point of the season, the Yankees are limited in bullpen options to those on the roster and the organization. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't try to arrange the pieces into a more effective unit. 

1. I think Aaron Boone should consider replacing Clay Holmes as the closer with Tommy Kahnle. Now I get that Kahnle is flawed as well, but in my eyes he's the most logical potential closer replacement, and Boone seems comfortable using him in a high leverage role. Perhaps Kahnle could catch lightning in a bottle and stabilize the ninth inning for the rest of the season. Holmes moves into the seventh/eighth inning mix, and if he gets on a roll could certainly move back to the closer role. 

2. The Yanks should consider a higher leverage role for Jake Cousins. The righty is another bargain basement pickup, but in limited work has a 0.935 WHIP and strikes out 12.6 batters every nine innings. As of today, I would slot him with more higher leverage opportunities than Mark Leiter.

3. I don't see a long Yankee future for recent pickup Tim Mayza. It might be a good time to replace him with one of the group of Nick Burdi, Scott Efross or Ron Marinaccio. 

August is also not an optimal time to be experimenting with relief pitching roles, but it's not a disaster. I can still remember guys like David Weathers and Graeme Lloyd in 1996 and Damaso Marte in 2009 who came back from injury/poor performance to be significant postseason contributors. It can be done, even at this juncture of the season. 

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Ed Botti - It’s a big problem, as we have discussed all season. The building of the bullpen is the one component of the team that I have said in the past was the strong point for the GM. Not this year. They went cheap, and it shows. Where have you gone Johnny Lasagna!!

From just a closer perspective and although I am not huge fan of it, I may have to pull a Whitey Herzog and go with a closer by committee. They now have 16 blown saves this season (10 for Holmes), which might not sound bad if you’re the Dodgers who have 24, or the Orioles who have 19. But they aren’t the Dodgers or the Orioles. They are the Yankees who have a Legacy of great closers, and the all-time greatest closer. We as Yankee fans are not used to seeing 1 run 9th innings turn into nail bitters night after night. Yes, once in a while, but not every night.

In 1987 Rags blew 13 saves, and we watched the season go down the tank in the 2nd half after Steve Trout was brought over (bad memories for me). Since Rags moved on after 1990 (he had 36 saves), they have continued with a long line of very good to excellent closers that have been solid--- beginning with Steve Farr in 91.

I am so desperate for bullpen help, I am not against giving Brett Philipps a few inning to see what he can do. Who knows?

Envisioning Holmes close out a tight game in October keeps me up at night. When you go to extra innings (I know, they will not have the ghost runner in the playoffs), and have the ridiculous Manfred Mann on base, Holmes has no chance. He pitches to contact, and they are done. Another reason why that rule is asinine.

Part of the bullpen problem is workload. The Starters are hard pressed to go even 6 these days, meaning they need at least 9 outs (usually 12) almost every night of the season. That is too much of a stress on a bullpen. The Analytics people don’t get it. All they see is the short game. Yes, bringing in a fresh arm to go through the line up the third time around may seem good at that moment, until you factor in the stress on these guys over 162 games played in 180 days (then the playoffs). Starters need to go deeper, and relievers will benefit from it over the long haul. But that does not apply to Holmes, only the set up and long guys that are worn out by July. I have said it 100 times this season, Holmes is an effective pitcher, but he is not a closer. Analytics takes numbers into account. But since the beginning, the 9th inning has always been different: stress level, intensity and pressure, and those factors are not captured on a spreadsheet.

I lay the blame squarely at their feet, they asked a 6 cylinder to perform like a 427 big block, and they blew the head gaskets.

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Ethan Semendinger - The only options for the Yankees to improve their bullpen this season are: 1) Hoping that they can get lucky on DFA'ed reliever that they can fix, 2) Calling up guys in the minors with MLB experience (Marinaccio, Burdi, Effross, etc.) and hope they can find lightning in a bottle, and/or 3) Calling up some top pitching prospects to work in the bullpen (Hampton, Selvidge, Beeter, Gomez, etc.) and hope they are ready.

However, these are ideas that don't lead to true solutions. The relievers getting DFA'ed at this point in the season are not good, and would not help this team at all. (See: Enyel De Los Santos getting DFA'ed a week ago.) The relievers in the minors have all had troubles in the MLB or MiLB this year. And, the Yankees have shown a pattern of not being willing to start the clock on their prospects too early. (And, let's be fair: Do you really trust the Yankees prospect pipeline to be all that good right now?)

I agree with Ed, above, in that the bullpen is being massively overworked right now. The relievers on the team are being called to work far too often and the rotation does not have guys who can go on long extended streaks of pitching 7+ innings. While this is true of most teams in the MLB, this has also been the Yankees kryptonite for many years now, and it will rear its ugly head in the playoffs when the bullpen falls apart...again. This is indicative of a larger problem in the MLB, but that's not an excuse for the team with the largest amount of resources. This should've been planned for, and it wasn't.

When the Yankees bullpen was the best recently, it was because they had multiple stars at once (many of Betances, Miller, Britton, Chapman, Robertson, Ottavino, etc. played together) OR it was because they had a massive amount of good talent who would ride the "Scranton Shuttle". This team has neither a lot of bullpen stars OR a lot of good talent in Triple-A.

For now, I'd take Clay Holmes out of the closer role and host open tryouts for the rest of the guys on the team. (I don't bring back Holmes in free agency.)

When the offseason hits, I clear house and start over again by signing and trading for some bullpen stars to build around again, like in the mid-to-late 2010's.

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Cary Greene - This season, the Yankees bullpen is ranked 16th by FanGraphs, as the Yankees pen has accumulated a 2.4 fWAR to date. Glancing around at other postseason locks and contenders, nine of them have superior bullpens than the Yankees do as the Guardians pen has a 6.4 f-WAR, with the Braves (4.4), Padres (4.3), Twins (4.0), Brewers (3.2), Red Sox (3.0), Orioles (2.9), Cubs (2.7), Dodgers (2.5) all superior to the Yankees. This week's question is a loaded one, because at this season's MLB Trade Deadline, stud relief pitchers were scarce and almost every single contender was in the market for high-leverage relievers. 

Believe it or not, Mark Leiter Jr is an excellent high-leverage reliever and it's therefore not easy to criticize Brian Cashman for not going all in to land the best available closer - which A.J. Preller and the Padres accomplished when they paid a heavy price for the Marlins deadly lefty closer Tanner Scott, while also receiving middle reliever Bryan Hoeing in exchange for the Padres top pitching prospect Robby Snelling, right-hander Adam Mazur and infielders Graham Pauley and Jay Beshears. 

Where Cashman probably failed was when he failed to get strongly involved with the Marlins regarding A.J. Puk, who was dealt to the Diamondbacks for two of Arizona's Top 30 prospects - infielder Deyvison De Los Santos (14th) and outfielder Andrew Pintar (30th). Even if Cashman had obtained Puk, that still wouldn't have fixed the Yankees most glaring need at the back end of the bullpen, caused by Clay Holmes, who has blown more saves than any closer in baseball this season. 

Given that both Puk and Scott both were traded elsewhere, Cashman pivoted by trading for Enyel De Los Santos and basically electing to double down on the relievers that were currently on the team, in the Minor Leagues or due to return from the Disabled List as the season progressed. We're starting to see the writing on the wall as the Yankees continue to let late leads slip through their fingers, hence this week's question; How Can the Yankees Fix their Bullpen?

There does exist a fairly simple solution. Tommy Kahnle has been lights out ever since his late May return from a three month stretch on the DL due to shoulder inflammation.

Personally, I believe moving Kahnle to closer and flipping Holmes into the role of a bridge reliever might be a very sublime button that Cashman could push and it might really impact the Yankees World Series or bust push. It's a shame that Cashman failed to reel in a closer this past offseason and we all know that Hal Steinbrenner wasn't spending past a set point due to CBT implications. With that fact highlighted, playing a small game of musical chairs with Holmes and Kahnle is probably in order. 

For the record, I'm a thousand percent against moving Luis Gil into the bullpen and I have a few main reasons why. On the plus side, Gil has electric velocity, he's even tougher in high-leverage situations.

I'm a firm believer that good starters are more valuable than good closers. Yankees fans who remember Mariano Rivera might like to differ, but Gil is not Mariano Rivera. Though they have some things in common as they both toss(ed) right-handed, Mo was exceptionally tough on lefties due to the way his cutter moved and this made Mo even tougher on left-handed batters than he was on right-handers. Opposing GM's could bring left-handed pinch hitters in late in games with the game on the line and this could exploit Gil's biggest weakness. 

Gil is also still working on his control as well. The last thing a closer needs to have happen is to walk a base runner or two late in a game, in what was already a high pressure save situation with a lead he's trying to protect.  There's no doubt his control has improved a little bit but I just think the needle moves more if he can go six strong against a given opponent in the playoffs.