Yanks Have Makings of Lockdown Bullpen
By Mike Silva ~ November 18th, 2008. Filed under: Mike Silva.
The one area that the Yankees, unlike other teams, don’t have to worry about is their bullpen. Peter Abraham of the Journal News does a great job outlining the depth of the Yankees bullpen.
Obviously having a hall of fame closer makes any bullpen an A+, but the Yankees have some real interesting options to bridge the gap to Rivera. First, they struggled from the left side in 2008. Joe Girardi didn’t even carry a lefty specialist at one point during the season. Now going into 2009 you have Damaso Marte and possibly Phil Coke. Having two lefties has almost become imperative, not a luxury, for a contending team. If you remember, the Phillies did a great job down the stretch with Scott Eyre and JC Romero.
The three big righty set up men are Bruney, Veras, and Edwar Ramirez. Each has a live arm which should make for a competitive spring to see who grabs the eighth inning. I still believe Ramirez could be an outstanding setup man if given the opportunity. His splits against both lefties and righties are outstanding. That should give him a leg up.
Finally, the big difference between the Yankees and other teams are the young arms that provide them depth. In case you need to replace someone because of performance or injury you can go to Mark Melancon, David Robertson, Jonathan Albaladejo, Chris Britton and maybe Humberto Sanchez.
This advantage not only will be the difference in many games, but it becomes a huge savings in payroll. Anytime the Yankees are given more of a financial advantage then they already have it usually spells doom for everyone else. Give credit to Brian Cashman and the scouting deparment on this one. Building a bullpen that can perform and provide depth is a dinosaur in today’s game.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Further proof that buying a bullpen doesn’t make for a good one.
Look at that Yankees pen, you don’t count the closer as being bought because that’s fair. The only MR in that bullpen that makes any chunk of change is Marte. The rest are either young kids or scrapheap pickups.
Take notes Mets fans …
November 21st, 2008 at 3:46 pm
sure makes keeping joba in the 8th as Mo’s heir apparent, pushing ramirez to the 7th, marte as a LOOGY, Coke-Robertson-Aba…Abe…Britton for the 6th and spot starts.
Sabathia-Wang-(Pettite)-(Hughes-kennedy-Wright)-(hmm…my idea falls apart here, unless Robertson-Bruney-Aceves maybe?)
oh, and also from the pile of ideas nobody else likes, can we please keep Abreu? Just put more padding on the wall…