Chatelain: Yankees Rotation Has Been Good, But Not Good Enough To Overcome Team's Lousy Offense
By Ryan Chatelain
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Starting pitching was supposed to be the Yankees' downfall this season, but it has turned out to be the biggest thing saving them from disaster.
Now if only they could hit consistently.
Can we agree that any starting pitcher who allows one or no runs should reasonably expect his team to win? Can we agree allowing just two runs in a start should buy you a "W" more often than not?
I know it's not always that cut-and-dried. Sometimes both starting pitchers have great days. But for every gem a team fails to capitalize on, you figure they make up for it somewhere by snatching a victory from a worthy opposing pitcher, too.
CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka are having very strong seasons. The Bombers are 5-2 in games Ivan Nova has started. Although he's been roughed up his last couple of times out, Nathan Eovaldi recently enjoyed an impressive span of seven starts in which he went 6-0 with a 2.72 ERA. And on Sunday, Michael Pineda, who many fans were clamoring to put on a one-way bus to Scranton last month, delivered his third straight respectable outing, lowering his ERA by more than a run in the process.
But far too often, the Yankees' anemic bats have canceled out the rotation's better performances.
Sabathia has had two starts in recent weeks in which he allowed no earned runs and yet the Yankees, who are 11th in the American League in runs scored, lost. Tanaka had a start last month in Baltimore in which he allowed no runs and five hits over eight innings -- the Orioles won 1-0 in extra innings. And for all of Pineda's faults earlier in the season, he has also been beset by some bad luck, including three outings in which he allowed just two runs that ended in losses.
And that doesn't include a bevy of squandered starts with three runs allowed.
MORE: Palladino: Don't Worry, Yankees Know What They're Doing With Tanaka
Pineda wasn't exactly pristine Sunday. He found himself in a couple of jams, but escaped with minimal damage and ended up striking out eight.
When Pineda left after the sixth inning, he had allowed two runs. What did his offense give him at that point? Two hits. No runs.
Of course, the Yankees' relievers, those not named Betances, Miller and Chapman, compound the problem. Guys like Nick Goody, Chasen Shreve and Anthony Swarzak, who allowed a single and a homer to the first two batters he faced Sunday, have a way of turning a manageable deficit into an all-out hemorrhage.
Every team has relievers they tend to go to when they're losing and others they trust to protect a lead. The Yankees' A squad is baseball's best. Their B squad gives them little chance to claw back.
And that magnifies the struggles at the plate by the Yankees, who have scored two or fewer runs in 40 percent of their games (25 of 63). If Sabathia leaves a contest leading by a run instead of trailing or Pineda exits with the score tied, maybe manager Joe Girardi is signaling a different set of relievers out of the bullpen.
Just how critical have these wasted starting pitching performances been? If the Bombers could have won those aforementioned zero-earned-run starts and Pineda could have won two of those three starts in which he allowed just two runs, the Yankees -- with just modest hitting -- would have five more victories.
Despite all that has gone wrong for the Yanks -- and there has been a lot -- those five extra wins would give them a 36-27 record, which would put them a half-game behind the Red Sox for the AL East lead and in position for the second wild-card spot. (In this scenario, the Orioles and Blue Jays would have each won two fewer games.)
A popular debate these days is whether the Yankees should be sellers or buyers as the trade deadline approaches, with a growing chorus arguing this should finally be the year when the team deals some of its coveted players and stocks up for the future.
Some shook their heads last week when a report surfaced saying Yankees execs have decided to stand pat, at least for now. But when you really think about it, it's not that difficult to see where they're coming from. In fact, an argument can easily be made that they should try to acquire a big bat.
Despite an abysmal first two-plus months of the season, the Bronx Bombers are somehow just three games out of the wild card. Their starting pitching has given them a chance to win most games. Just one or two more big hits a night could make a huge difference.
And if we know one thing about the Yankees, who haven't experienced a losing campaign since 1992, they're not the sort of organization that will give up if they believe the postseason is within their reach.
Their rotation has been keeping that hope alive.
Follow Ryan on Twitter at @RyanChatelain
