The Yankees bullpen has been a consistent source of strength for this iteration of Bronx contender, and it should continue to be even with one-time rock Dellin Betances now in Flushing, per MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch. Aroldis Chapman remains one of the most feared closers in the game. He’ll be buttressed by Tommy Kahnle, Zack Britton, Adam Ottavino in the late innings, while Chad Green and Luis Cessa ought to continue in their swing roles. Of course, the biggest addition to the bullpen should be Gerrit Cole, whose length will take some pressure off a bullpen unit that’s largely been expected to carry the Yanks in recent seasons. Still, there’s some room for someone from the group of Jonathan Holder, Jonathan Loaisiga, Brooks Kriske, Michael King, Ben Heller, and Jordan Montgomery to step up and earn a role.
- The Orioles are set to have close to 66 players invited to camp this spring, and they’re not capping the number there, per MASN’s Roch Kubatko. Manager Brandon Hyde is excited about having a competitive atmosphere in his second season on the job. Baltimore has more opportunity than most camps with few set roles on their 25-man roster. For those interested in wide-open camp battles, this is the one to watch.
- Jose Alvarado is the man to watch in Rays‘ camp, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Alvarado can be a difference-maker in the Rays’ bullpen, but he’s coming off an uneven season. Elbow inflammation ended his 2019 early, but his season had derailed long prior. A strong first two months better represents what the Rays expect from Alvarado, who continued to miss bats all season long, even when his command faltered (8.1 BB/9). Alvarado certainly has the potential to be a big piece in an impressive Rays bullpen, but he’ll have to earn his place. Nick Anderson and Emilio Pagan emerged as lockdown options for Tampa, but Alvarado can and should be their primary lefty again. Topkin offers a quote from Rays’ pitching coach Kyle Snyder, who said, “He very easily could be as good as any reliever in the game (this) year. That’s the thing.”
*26 man roster
Not much has been mentioned with Clint Frazier this off-season. I would love for my Tigs to make a move. IMO, JaCoby Jones had his opportunities and it’s time to move on.
Well if there is one GM that can easily get ripped off in a trade for Frazier it is definitely Al Avila. I’m not taking anything away from Frazier’s offensive potential but we all know that Cashman still believes that Frazier is worth a top 3 prospect from a team.
Frazier has actually shown something at the Major league level, whereas most prospects have not. i think theres certainly a case to be made of a 1 for 1 swap for such a prospect in an average system.
Their outfield is filled. They resigned Gardner with a team option, Hicks and Stanton aren’t going anywhere, Judge is a lock, Wade is starting to emerge, and Tauchman looked great. I don’t think Cashman thinks Clint is a top prospect, but where does he fit in this lineup. What his value is, remains a mystery.
Regardless, JaCoby Jones should not be starting this year. The O’s just cut Wilkerson who was almost identical to Jones. DET improved on some key positions this offseason (insert joke here). It’s time to address CF. IMO, trading Frazier makes sense on both sides.
Gardner is a one year plug, Hicks is out til July for TJS, Stanton can’t stay healthy and looks DH-bound, Wade is hardly emerging, and Tauchmann has an extremely small sample size.
I’m a Yankees fan and doubt the Yankees outfield is as solid as you think.
Hicks had TJ surgery so Gardner,,Tauchman and Frazier are going to get plenty of playing time.The Yankees could be in the market for a top glove in center field.
Frazier isn’t a CF. Tigers have Jones in center and Stewart in left… Both are AAA players. Reyes did a good job last year. He will be in right. Rays might be looking to get rid of Kiermaier… he is making over 10 mil a year for the next 4 years. Rays are very deep in the outfield. Meadows, Martinez, Tsutsugo, Renfroe…
Wade is starting emerge? What are you talking about, the guy had a good TWO weeks last year. Outside of that he just isn’t a good MLB hitter.
Tauchman could easily regress to the below above hitter that he is. Cashman aint moving him because he knows that they need the OF depth and that Frazier is still young and can become something good.
Wade is younger (by months) than Frazier and has had fewer opportunities; so the same could very well be said about him becoming something good. Besides all of that, I thought Frazier played CF, my mistake.
I don’t know, Kiermaier’s age and contract might deter DET. I think they would just sign Pillar before trading for a player like Kiermaier. But, he would be an improvement!
@tigersfan81
Refusing to sell low is vastly different than asking for a top 3 prospect. Cashman is right to view Frazier as having value. I guess it depends on the team. Not all top 3 prospects are equal to another. A top 5 farm vs a bottom 5 farm are completely different
Buttressed? Did I come to the right website?
With N Anderson, D Castillo, E Pagan and J Alverado the Rays have arguably the best late inning Relief pitchers in baseball!
Yankees is pretty salty as well. Do you look at the Red Sox and just wonder what the heck happened to that pitching staff? Tampa and Oakland are great franchises….imagine what could happen if either team found their check book!
Let’s remember that the A’s and Rays don’t spend because they CHOOSE not to. There’s no reason for any team, as has been conclusively proven by many, not to have a 100M payroll; put the Rays and A’s up to that figure, and they become instantly more competitive. Imagine Cole on either team, e.g.
Sadly, Revenue Sharing has produced situations where winning doesn’t produce any more profit, but cost control does. I still think that’s in for some change with the new CBA.
Yet they still know how to win despite having low payrolls,.
Checkbook isn’t everything. Rays still got to the postseason with no money. RSox have deep pockets but we see what happened there. Other teams that have money didn’t fare well either.. Rays stand with the best of them..
No it’s still the yanks sadly but they’re getting up there if they get the same kind of production from them as they did last year
The Rays bullpen has more potential than the Yankees. But the Yankees pen is more proven.
Le’s not get too carried away with the Rays bullpen is terrific and tops in the league stuff…..”has more potential than the Yankees”????
Each and every year, bullpens rise and fall based on their pitching components either have good or not so good years…..such is the case in MLB today.
Really good bullpens, overcome those ebbs and falls and consistently produce and allow their teams to win….so if you’re saying that the Rays bullpen puts the Rays in better position to win than the Yankees….I think you would have lots of comments about that in the negative sense…..the Yankees bullpen, regardless of the individual pieces that make it up consistently puts the team in position to win…..potential is like prospects…unproven and time will tell.
Lol “Ebbs and falls”
I believe you were looking for Ebbs and Flows.
Bullpens are definitely fungible in nature but Kevin Cash has shown he’s a manger, in the Francona mold, that knows how to get the most out of a bullpen.That the Rays edge.
r/boneappletea
Spoken like a biased fan. All teams have their strength & weaknesses. EVEN THE YANKEES! OMG!
Spoken like a biased fan. All teams have their strength & weaknesses. EVEN THE YANKEES! OMG!
imo Anderson and Pagan are primed for regression. i like all 4 in general, but they certainly dont have the punch that most bullpens do, and their usage of tbe opener puts more strain on the pen.
What makes you think anderson is primed for regression? His second best k/9 in baseball?
Chad Green was terrible as an opener last year.
He was actually excellent as an opener.. Chad Green opened 15 games for the Yankees in 2019 (the team record was 11-4 in those games) and he gave up an earned run in only 3 of those 15 appearances. He had one terrible outing against Cleveland in August but otherwise was great in the role and a big part of the Yankees success last season.
Green pitched in 15 games as an opener, 19.1 IP, 8 ER allowed. One of those games was a 0.1 IP/5 ER start against Cleveland. Hardly terrible.
Good enough for a 3.77 ERA, but would be 1.42 if you take away the Cleveland disaster.
Did you actually watch any games in which he opened….I think not with that comment!
You managed to miss the backboard on a breakaway layup
re O’s: no reason not to invite anybody who has the potential to be better than an org filler to spring training plus a few of your younger players. however, i find it crazy when teams start inviting randos from the low minors simply to get a single at bat. there is a limit.
One wonders when the Orioles plan on being competitive again. We have started a new decade, so maybe they can target sometime before the 30’s?
This year becomes crucial for the O’s. They’ve had their one year of “evaluation”, and even though that concept is silly (it takes about a week and a half), they can sell it to the fanbase, which they did. But this year they need to jump up in the farm system rankings quite a bit; and to be fair, that looks more than possible.
Elias has a lot of money to work with, even with the MASN mess and the idiot contracts. He seems smart enough to realize to realize he needs to show some quick improvement.
2022 seems possible, and then we’ll see if he can eat at the big boys’ table.
I think 2022 is very realistic in terms of producing exciting baseball at Camden yards again.
If some of the decent pitching prospects work out that are now reaching AAA than 2022-2023 the orioles will start being competitive.
2019 Was first year of Elias’ Draft and Rebuild start.
If the process goes like Astros, they will lose 100plus games in 20, show improvement in 21, go .500 in 22 and compete for playoffs beginning in 23.
Playing in the AL East doesn’t make it any easier.
At least the Os have a damn plan.
Hopefully minus cheating scandals lmao.
There isn’t a better 13-man pitching staff in baseball right now. Starters are Cole, Severino, Paxton, Tanaka, Happ, Montgomery, #1 thru #6, with German coming back in June. Bullpen is anchored by Chapman, with 8th inning ‘closers’ Britton and Ottovino, and 7th inning set-ups by Green and Kahnle. That leaves only about one spot for any of Cessa, Loaisiga, Warren, Garcia, and any of the high-end arms they have moving up in the system.
If they don’t trade Happ, I could see Montgomery start the year in Triple A. They might want to have him pitch in a more controlled environment until they know how he looks post-surgery.
Astros are as good, Mets and Nats are better.
Astros rotation is not as good as NYY’s any longer. The Astros #3 is McCullers coming off TJ. We don’t even know who the #4 and 5 will be yet. I’d assume Peacock and Urquidy but we certainly don’t know. That’s not nearly as good as Paxton, Cole, Tanaka, and Severino. Even if you liked Peacock or Urquidy Better than Happ or Monty that doesn’t make up the difference for how much better the first four are in NY….. And clearly the Yankees pen is better than Houston’s.
And the OP said entire pitching staff’s. You may like the Mets or Nats rotation better than the Yankees but once you get down to a comparison of the bullpens—there’s really no Competion.
Mets have legit pitchers. If Betances is healthy and Diaz just goes from bad to good, then the Mets bullpen is a strength.
@jbigz
I completely agree.
The Yankees won 100 games last season without Severino and Cole plus they only lost Bettances from that top bull pen
Astros are in trouble,Baker can roast a bull pen with the best of them and their starting pitching is a question mark.
Don’t sleep on the Indians pitching staff ,it’s deep and has a nice variety of pitchers.Just because Kluber and Bauer are gone doesn’t mean there isn’t talent there.
The Rays are right up there with the Tribe,lots of talented arms and they both have managers that know how use a bull pen.
Betances isn’t even a loss because he didn’t pitch last year. Simply taking Cole off the Astros was huge. Taking him off the Astros and adding him on your team is a gigantic swing. I really don’t know how anyone could say their rotations are comparable any longer. The Stros had them beat easily last season but G Cole is a complete difference maker.
Anything can happen in October. But on paper the Yankees look like the best team in the sport.
The Rays current pitching staff would be top 3 in K/9, HR/9, FIP, xFIP, SIERA and K-BB%. I would put their 1-13 up against any staff in the league.
What about the idea of swapping Stanton to Colorado for Arenado? Cashman would need to add some pieces like Andujar and Frazier but there might be no room in New York for them anyway. The $$$ would work out, NY gets an elite 3B and Colorado likely gets 100+ HR each year for the foreseeable future.
One problem with that is Stanton has a no trade, and there’s no way he’s waving it to go from a WS contender to go to Colorado.
The extreme wild card on that is how badly Stanton would like to escape the boos in NY. I don’t know. I think he would still probably prefer being on a contender but I don’t know. I do know the boos bother him. He feels picked on.
That’s a good point that I had not considered. He is definitely not a fan favorite.
I was thinking he might see the opportunity to put up several seasons of 60+ bombs in the hitting paradise of Coors Field and then opt out of his contract for an even bigger payday.
They paid Cole $324 million to be a reliever?!?!?!?!
No. They paid him in part to give relief to the pen by pitching deep into games.
I know, it was just a weird way to word the article
Everyone else seemed to figure it out just fine
As did I. You, on the other hand, can’t seem to figure out sarcasm, hence the multiple question marks/exclamation points
This epitomizes the phrase, “know your audience”
Brooks Kieshnick
Old Cashman doesn’t know if he’s coming or going. Big mess there in NY concerning roster construction. Well rounded hitters, rested pen and infield defense is seriously lacking. They have enough to win a division series. Let’s face it half the AL had already waived the white flag on 2020. But the yanks don’t have enough all told to go far in the playoffs.
Solid analysis
@brucenewton
They had several key players miss a significant amount of games last year (Severino, Judge, Stanton, Andujar, Didi, Betances and others) and still won over 100 games, win every home game and lose every road game to the cheating Astros and they now add Cole to this mix and yet you call the Yanks roster a “mess” and wonder if they can seriously compete for a WS??? You’re not being real. Nothing is a guarantee but c’mon dude.
Haha, somebody is scared.
with better SP the Yankees BP will be just fine. 5 studs and a plethora of other good rotating options are more than enough. Yes betances was an awesome Yankee but he was not the reason why the Yanks dint win it all last year.
how many great relievers have the recent WS champs had???
Improved SP= Canyon of Heroes