The Yankees and the Intersection of Two Eras in MLB History

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The New York Yankees are a team in need of a dependable starter to shore up their rotation. Why these two contact heavy pitchers might be the answer.

In light of ace Luis Severino‘s lat injury that will keep him out until July or August, the New York Yankees are apparently hesitant to sign former Cy Young Award winner and free agent, Dallas Keuchel.

According to an article by John Harper of SNY.tv, although Keuchel, the 31-year-old four-time Gold Glove Award winner and 2017 World Series champion, is still without a team weeks into the MLB regular season, he is not the Yankees’ first choice for replacing Severino in the starting rotation.

For @SNYtv. Yankees next move after Severino news? Gio looked good in Scranton, figures to get a shot. Keuchel still on hold, as Cashman seems more likely to wait and see, look toward trade for Bumgarner. https://t.co/BB2tifY08C
— John Harper (@NYNJHarper) April 10, 2019

Harper says that the Yankees are more likely to turn to a veteran pitcher already in their organization—Gio Gonzalez. Gonzalez, 33, is currently a member of the Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre RailRiders, and, as per Harper, has seen recent success with the club, posting 10 strikeouts in six runless innings against Lehigh Valley.

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Profiling Dallas Keuchel and Gio Gonzalez

Undoubtedly, Gonzalez is a good substitute for Keuchel, as evidenced by his impressive 2.13 ERA after being traded to the Brewers by the Nationals last season, albeit in only five appearances down the stretch for Milwaukee. The two pitchers share very similar career totals in terms of hits/nine innings, home runs/nine innings and WHIP. Gonzalez has an edge in the strikeout category, notching 8.7/nine innings as compared to 7.2/nine for Keuchel.

And in a division that lays claim to at least three ballparks with small measurements down the line, the most notable of which is the 314-foot short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium, home run prevention is important.

During the 2018 postseason, Dallas Keuchel’s best fastball was topping out at around 92 mph. Without the adrenaline of October, Keuchel registered the fourth-worst average fastball speed in the Majors during the regular season. Gonzalez can’t gas his cheddar up there very high either, as his fastball in his start against Lehigh Valley Tuesday only clocked in at 90 mph.

Both veterans heavily rely upon movement in their pitches to deceive batters. Keuchel likes to lean on the stuff that starts out straight before darting and diving at the last second. He utilizes the similarities in his two-seam fastball, cutter, and changeup to his advantage; all three initially look identical coming out of his hand, but all three shoot for different directions just before crossing the plate.

Gio, on the other hand, prefers the slow, sweeping hooks, making pitches “fall off the table.” For left-handed batters, he’s a headache. Gonzalez’s curve leaves his hand nearly behind a lefty batter’s head, but by the time he slings that ball across his body out of the three-quarter arm slot, opposing hitters can only helplessly stand and watch as Gonzalez drops a 75-mph paralyzer into the strike zone.

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The Benefit of Pitching to Contact

In an era of flamethrowing phenoms, tiny ballparks and more strikeouts and home runs than ever before, Keuchel and Gonzalez thrive on batters putting the ball in play. Theirs is a dying breed, that of the starter who pitches to contact. And it’s sad, really, because, in their quest to avoid overworking young hurlers and preventing Tommy John Surgeries, baseball coaches and instructors are missing a golden opportunity to accomplish that goal.

See, if pitchers just breaking into the big leagues were taught to pitch to contact from the outset, they could potentially get more longevity out of their precious pitching arms. Inviting the opposition to put the ball in play is a dangerous tightrope to walk, much more dangerous than emphasizing strikeouts because there is always the possibility that the pitcher could experience command issues and get shelled. Just like the approach of knuckleballers, every time contact pitchers take to the mound, they run the risk of having their plans blow up in their faces.

But when they are on and hitting their spots, contact pitchers work extremely quickly. On a good night, guys like Keuchel and Gonzalez can speed through innings after logging only six, seven, eight pitches. The next thing you know, they’re sitting at 75 pitches in the eighth inning with no one even warming in the bullpen.

How rare that is to see in baseball today, and how nice it would be to watch younger players bring it back. If several stars in their mid-20s built Hall-of-Fame stat sheets by getting the bulk of their outs on the ground or in the air, they could cruise to quality start after quality start by barely breaking a sweat.

This would be great for Major League Baseball and help it appeal to more people in a couple of different ways. For one, less wear-and-tear on arms would mean fewer injuries to big-name pitchers. Having the stars of your sport on the field as opposed to in the trainer’s room is always better for optics.

Another Benefit

Secondly, more guys pitching to contact would mean more balls put in play, meaning more action on the diamond.

One of the main criticisms of the game of baseball today is that it’s too slow and boring. Well, if an abundance of pitchers take to the big leagues who average far less than a strikeout every inning like Keuchel especially and Gonzalez to a lesser degree, the children and teenagers of America will be more likely to take notice and stick around to watch another inning or two.

An increase in shortstops diving into the hole to turn would-be singles into groundouts, first basemen stretching the length of their bodies to somehow perfectly scoop errant throws and center fielders leaping up onto walls and bringing back seemingly certain home runs would be appreciated by both newcomers and diehard fans alike.

So where does this leave Gonzalez and Keuchel?

Well, unfortunately, MLB in its current state is not the most conducive to their style of pitching. The Yankees would ideally prefer the exact opposite of these two and the brand of pitching I’ve just advocated. In their ballpark, in the American League, home of the designated hitter, a strikeout pitcher would be New York’s safest option.

Someone who gets outs by forcing players to fly out would have problems at Yankee Stadium, where that short porch causes folks to hold their breath every time a left-handed batter hits a ball off the end of his bat sky-high down the right field line.

With strikeout pitchers, no breath-holding is required, because in those few instances in which batters hit their pitches in the air, they’re probably not coming back.

That’s why it would make sense for the Yankees to insert one of their rising stars into the rotation, someone like Domingo German, Jonathan Loaisiga or Luis Cessa, whom John Harper listed as possible candidates for the job. And surely, no one could fault New York for rolling out one of these youngsters every five days.

The Intersection of Two Eras in MLB

If the Yankees are feeling daring, are feeling dangerous, as one Baker Mayfield would say, they should look into giving the gig to Gonzalez or Keuchel. Gonzalez would be easier to plug in than Keuchel, simply due to the fact that he’s been pitching in live games for weeks now, while Keuchel hasn’t been a part of a Major League organization since last season.

More from Call to the Pen

And for some reason, New York has chosen to approach the notion of signing Keuchel with an uncharacteristically high amount of frugality. The Yankees are one of the wealthiest franchises in professional sports history; they can definitely afford to throw a former Cy Young Award winner a few extra million bucks.

In the battle of power vs. finesse in the art of pitching today, power has knocked finesse down for the count. But don’t write finesse off just yet. Just like fashion trends that come back into style, pitching to contact will one day return with a vengeance. And when it does, we can all sit back and enjoy watching the extra web gems and bang-bang plays that we’re missing right now to instead suffer through the normalization of batters striking out 200 or even 300 times per season.

But until then, fans of mesmerizing defensive plays on the diamond will have to make do by tuning in to see the remaining holdovers from the last era of small ball in Major League Baseball baffle up-and-comers swinging for the fences on every pitch. Veterans with dying arms finding ways to outsmart overzealous physical freaks 10 and 15 years their junior will always be entertaining.

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Let’s just hope the Yankees give Gonzalez and/or Keuchel the chance to do just that.

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