2 biggest Yankees bullpen problems are totally fixable, and here's what NYY should do

The New York Yankees' bullpen now owns a 3.28 ERA, good for second in the majors. All then is hunky dory, and we can end the conversation here, right? Not quite. If there's anything we've learned from this recent losing skid is that this unit is a ticking time bomb, and one that has let the club down often recently.

Who would have thought that not making any meaningful additions would lead to the kinds of issues that plagued New York last season? Brian Cashman, apparently. Back at the end of January, Cashman spoke with optimism about the bullpen, in large part due to the "addition-by-subtraction" that the departures of Luke Weaver and Devin Williams were, and in part due to his confidence in his 2025 deadline acquisitions.

“As we enter spring training, we definitely are a different bullpen right now than we were last year, because we’ve had some departures,” Cashman said via Greg Joyce of the New York Post. “But we also have some young pups pushing up the ladder, we have a Rule 5 pick we selected, we just made this addition [Chivilli]. So I think it’s a work in progress with a lot of quality choices. Some might be emerging talented players from our system, some might be more imports like [Chivilli]."

We haven't seen that. Instead, we've seen Camilo Doval continue to scuffle, David Bednar continue to give fans heart palpitations, regardless of the outcome, and the few reliable arms out there have been run out time and time again, foreshadowing danger as burnout sets in.

It's going to be a while until the Yankees can make impact moves on the trade market, but there are a couple of small tweaks they can make to prevent things from unraveling too much too soon.

The Yankees need to optimize Brent Headrick's usage and ship Camilo Doval out to stabilize the bullpen... for now

The Yankees' 4-3 meltdown on May 9, in which they wasted a brilliant Cam Schlittler performance, prominently featured both Headrick and Doval. Headrick gave up a leadoff homer to Jake Bauers in the seventh to cut the Yankees' lead to 2-1. He'd give way to Doval after getting the first out of the eighth, and Doval would promptly cough up the lead, leaving the game tied 2-2. The Yankees would go on to lose in the 10th, but not before burning through David Bednar, Fernando Cruz, and Tim Hill as well.

Headrick then had his incredible inherited runners streak snapped on May 11 against the Orioles when he allowed a three-run homer to Coby Mayo, tagging a dominant Ryan Weathers with two earned runs after his no-hit bid was snapped by Adley Rutschman to lead off the seventh. That proved to be the difference in the game.

The Yankees have been using Headrick at a ridiculous rate. He's tied with Hogan Harris of the Athletics for the most appearances in baseball with 22. The southpaw has been good, hence the heavy utilization, but with nine of his 21 2/3 innings coming in low-leverage situations, they're burning him out in situations when it isn't necessary.

After all, the Yankees have Paul Blackburn and Ryan Yarbrough, the latter of whom last pitched on May 6, to fill these low-leverage innings and give length to save the more impactful arms. In the case of Headrick, limiting him to those impact situations will help make him, and the pen as a whole, more effective.

As for Doval, he's appeared in 40 games for the Yankees dating back to last year, and owns a 5.24 ERA. He's watched his strikeout rate drop from 29.2% as a San Francisco Giant to 25.3% as a Yankee. This season, he's been even worse with a 5.74 ERA. The sample is large enough to say that we've seen enough.

The 28-year-old has some decent underlying peripherals and is under control through 2027, so there's a chance another team would take a chance on him. It's not so much about the return package, however, but instead about the same addition-by-subtraction that made losing Devin Williams and Luke Weaver attractive.

That would clear the way for an electric, but unknown arm like Yovanny Cruz to ascend. Cruz has undergone his own struggles of late, but still offers more upside than Doval.

These aren't game-changing maneuvers, but they should be enough to plug holes until Brian Cashman has a chance to work the phones and bring in some support. Hopefully, when that happens, it goes better than the last time he added three relievers at the trade deadline.

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