I made a pot of coffee, sat down at my computer, and expected to write a post about how the Yankee bullpen is in trouble. Clay Holmes is wild again. Loaisiga and Kahnle have long-term injuries. Colter Brewer is already DFAed. They are relying on Ian Hamilton, Jimmy Cordero and Albert Abreu to be effective middle relievers.
But then I looked up the stats. I expected to find the Yankees in the bottom-half of bullpen ERA. Instead:
The Yankees have the best bullpen ERA in the major leagues. They’ve pitched the 7th most innings. They have the best strikeout rate. They have an average walk rate. Ron Marinaccio, Michael King and Ian Hamilton are all top-30 relief pitchers in the majors. The Yankees bullpen has been excellent.
So why does it feel like the bullpen has been bad? One possibility is that every bullpen feels bad; we only think about them when they blow leads. The Yankees offense has been very average, so their losses are going to be close. But as reasonably astute baseball fans, I think we can feel the best bullpen ERA in the majors being pretty good. I don’t think that the bullpen vibes are just systematically biased toward negative.
Instead, I think that the problem is Clay Holmes.
While his ERA is 4.70, by no means has the Yankees closer been a disaster:
Holmes has appeared in eight games and allowed runs in two of them. However, he has allowed a ton of runs on base. Holmes has killer stuff that batters struggle to make hard contact on. At some point last season, batters just stopped swinging at anything close to the zone. His walk rate and ERA soared:
Nothing has changed since last season. He’s still allowing runs because batters aren’t swinging at pitches outside the zone. He’s still walking players. His stuff is still dirty.
I think we’re seeing the limitations of a player who relies on a plus-plus sinker. It moves too much to reliably throw for strikes. He can’t throw his slider for strikes either. Even though no one is hitting Holmes hard, he’s going to allow runs on bloops and ground balls through the infield.
The Yankees need a new closer. It’s probably too early for a trade. One of my preseason predictions was that Ron Marinaccio would supplant both Loaisiga and Holmes by the end of the season, but I didn’t expect it to happen in April. Maybe they can trade for a Liam Hendricks or David Bednar closer to the deadline, but those trades are months away right now. Holmes is the weak link on an otherwise strong team.