New York Yankees: Breaking down their 2021 pitching staff
By Sean Basile
The New York Yankees are a team vying for a world title in 2021, but is their pitching staff good enough to finally get them over the top?
You’d be hard-pressed to definitively argue pitching has been an area of strength for the Yankees the last several years. Team ERA has progressively risen in each year since 2017 for the Bombers and above all issues, performance in the playoffs has been what has stifled World Series prospects for this storied franchise.
What the Yanks need right now is a pitching staff that can stay healthy and show up when the lights are the brightest, and even with all the quality additions made this offseason, those questions still firmly permeate the surrounding area of this team.
Injuries need to be considered first and foremost. Granted, when these guys are healthy and on their game, altogether it might be the best pitching staff in baseball. The problem is you’re relying on too many what-ifs in a situation like this, and that expectation that this Yankee staff will be tops in baseball will most likely never surpass status of a pipe dream.
We know what Luis Severino can do when he’s healthy, but he’s recovering from Tommy John surgery and the last time we saw him, it was shades of Chris Sale’s decline directly prior to his TJ necessity.
We know Corey Kluber is a two-time CY Young winner, but he’s also been out of action for basically two years with just 8 starts between 2019 and 2020 thanks to injuries.
We know Jameson Taillon has the potential to be a stud, but he’s now gone through two Tommy John surgeries.
We know Domingo German possesses the second-best spin rate among starters on this team, but his personal life has gotten in the way of him staying on the ball field.
From an availability standpoint, even though this Yankee rotation looks amazing on paper, we still cannot bank on it being fully operational at any point this season. It’s more likely we get to see all of these guys pitch this season but in sporadic patches. Will we get to see Gerrit Cole, Severino, Kluber, Taillon, and German altogether at once pitching every fifth day? As awesome as it would be to see that occur, each of their histories says it is more unlikely than likely.