Yanks Need a Plus, Plus, Starter Pronto

The Yankees need a starting pitcher at the deadline, and I don’t mean a half measure, innings eater – I mean a good one who scares the bejeesus out of other teams. Because right now, the Yankees’ starting rotation is closer to Gerrit Cole and cross all your damn fingers than you realize.

Let’s take a closer look…

Coming into this season, Marcus Stroman had one superpower: keep the ball in the damn ballpark. Well, he’s lost that ability because he’s given up more HR per nine innings than every Yankee except the BP pitchers on the coaching staff and Carlos Rodon. Of course, as the type of pitcher who doesn’t avoid contact, his underlying numbers will always have an asterisk on them, yet still he’s allowed a lot of hard contact (higher than league average in both exit velocity and hard hit percentage) and yielded far too many comfortable PAs (2^nd highest xwOBA against on the Yanks). Perhaps most disconcerting is his personal career high walk rate, which also comes in at the second highest among MLB starters – more on that in a minute.

Speaking of easy at bats…

Carlos Rodon has spent the better part of a season and a half making me wonder if we’re going to see him on a breaking news report as part of a betting scandal, because his superpower is consistently throwing the ball right down the middle of the strike zone.

Opponents are slugging .465 this season against the perpetually scowling, petulant one, and that’s with the benefit of good batted ball fortune over the season’s first two and a half months. Currently, Rodon has yielded the 3^rd highest percentage of fly balls in MLB and the 4^th highest exit velocity and 4^th highest hard-hit percentage – I mean, what the hell did everyone expect to happen when this guy started getting bombed?

To be fair, Nestor Cortes isn’t that much different as a pitcher, he’s just more likeable. Nestor leads MLB pitchers in fly ball rate, and although the rest isn’t as ugly as Rodon, it’s not good as he’s yielded the 11^th highest exit velocity and is in the top third of the league in highest barrel percentage allowed. That combination of numbers isn’t good and when you consider despite all of it, his HR/FB ratio is still lower than league average, at least one of your eyebrows should raise.

That brings us to Luis Gil, who obviously has nasty stuff and is an easy player for whom we can root. That said, he hasn’t been that good, despite what Yankees state TV tells you.

Gil is in the wrong third (or worse) of MLB average in xFIP, exit velocity, and barrel rate, and leads MLB in BB rate. When that’s combined with his proclivity for yielding fly balls (10^th highest %), we have a lit match and kerosene can kind of situation on our hands. I promise you that Gil’s comically low BABIP (2^nd lowest in MLB) and HR/FB ratio (11^th lowest in MLB) have more to do with his good results in ’24 than he does.

Yes, there is Gerrit Cole and hopefully the absurdly underrated Clarke Schmidt will return soon, but to me that’s not enough to win a World Series. Exactly who the Yankees should target is a discussion for another time, but they need to make a serious run at a legit starting pitcher sooner rather than later.

Did I miss something? Let me know. Leave a comment below or yell at me @mybaseballpage1 and/or the “My Baseball Page” on Facebook.

PS: I started reading “The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City” and I’m very pleasantly surprised. I thought it would be a whitewashing of many hard truths, but it is not – well researched and an interesting read – check it out.

(I also just added “The Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City” to my next up pile. I’ll circle back on that…)