New York Yankees: Breaking down their 2021 pitching staff

Questions of performance also apply to the Yankees’ three horses out of the bullpen in Aroldis Chapman, Zack Britton, and Chad Green. All three are very good pitchers and we’ve known this by the eye test for years.

Chapman and Green have terrific measurements on their ball, particularly spin rate, on top of their heightened velocity. Chapman was in the 92nd percentile last year in spin while Green was in the 89th. Zack Britton is an outlier in that his spin has always been bottom ten percentile in baseball yet we know him to be one of the league’s best relievers every year because he knows how to work a hitter better than any reliever the Yankees have. Obviously, we know what they can all do when they’re on.

But this is a case where measurables could be misleading because even though guys like Chapman and Green have fantastic measurables and Britton has always been known to outperform what his lower measurables indicated, none of it really matters in the sense that all three of these guys have serious issues with command.

Britton’s mostly stems from his tendency to throw his sinker and slider lower down in the zone that may or may not get swings and misses. Lately, guys are learning not to chase on Britton as much, so we’re seeing his command continue to regress as a result. But with Chapman and Green, we see two guys who are just plain wild and rely too much on the overpowering nature of their stuff.

Chapman has walked guys like crazy from 2017-2019, and last year was the culmination of him saying to himself that he would be better off laying the ball in there and getting smoked than surrender a free base runner. The highest barrel % Chapman ever posted in his career was a 5.6 in 2015. Last year, that was just about doubled to 11.1. Yes, 11% of the time Chapman was hit last year, the batter got the barrel on him. Quite alarming if you’re a hardcore Chapman believer.

He gets away with a lot because of his velocity and last year was case and point that batters are catching up to him.

Green, on the other hand, tends to be unique from Britton and Chapman in that he’s wilder in the zone. But it would not be fair to omit the fact that he improved a whole lot last year. He still gives up a lot of hard-hit balls- barrel % was still on the lower half of the league last year.

But Green went from the 4th percentile in barrel % in 2019 to the 32nd in 2020. In exit velo, he went from the 1st percentile to the 61st. In hard hit %, he shot up from the 1st percentile to the 95th. We know Chad Green as a guy with really good stuff but who also tends to make really bad pitches that he gets hit on. However, if 2020 was a precursor, perhaps Green can emerge as the strongest weapon the Yankees have out of the bullpen. Green is still a bit of a wild card, but improvements were made last year.