Saturday, June 6, 2015

The Yankees Pitching Depth in 2016 Will Almost Be Unfair


If you ask any perennial winner in Major League Baseball in the last 10-15 years what was the key to their success I bet more times than not they will mention in some capacity the depth of the club. Over the grind that is a 162 game schedule injuries will happen, players will need days off, players will go through hot and cold streaks and sometimes the team is going to lose more than they win. That’s baseball, but the good teams always have a Plan B and a Plan C and so on to protect against these sorts of happenings and the Yankees may have more plans than they know what to do with after the 2015 season.

Under contract for the pitching staff in 2016 is Masahiro Tanaka, Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi, CC Sabathia, Ivan Nova and Adam Warren in the rotation while Andrew Miller, Dellin Betances, Justin Wilson, Chasen Shreve and Jacob Lindgren will all presumably be on the team and in the bullpen next season. Theoretically that is 11 roster spots locked up for next season with only 12 available spots leaving a spot for either a starting pitcher to move Warren back to the bullpen, a long man in the bullpen or another relief pitcher if Warren is kept in the rotation. That’s already a ton of, for lack of a better word, certainty for the 2016 Yankees when we sit here on a Saturday morning in June of 2015 isn’t it?


With all these players already on the active roster you will have a plethora of free agent signings and/or prospects vying for a limited number of spots on the team. Chase Whitley will return from Tommy John surgery sometime in the season if all goes well while Luis Severino, who was recently promoted to Triple-A, will likely be ready to crack the Yankees rotation if there’s room. Bryan Mitchell looks ready in the Scranton starting rotation and is already on the team’s 40 man roster while players like Branden Pinder and Jose Ramirez have made their debuts in the Yankees bullpen in recent seasons. The list goes on and on with less “sexy” names like Nick Goody, Joel De La Cruz,  Nick Rumbelow, Marl Montgomery, Brady Lail, Miguel Sulbaran and many others that are currently in Double-A or Triple-A currently. That’s a ton of arms capable of a ton of innings and a ton of victories that would generally get left on the field if one of the Yankees regulars went down and over 162 games that’s extremely important.

All this and we haven’t even gotten to the 2015 MLB First Year Player’s Draft yet…. Scary. 

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