David Phelps vs. Adam Warren – Who Would Be A Better Starter?

The New York Yankees strengthened their bullpen on Friday afternoon when they signed left-hander Andrew Miller to a four-year, $36 million deal. Miller adds to a bullpen that was already one of the better ones in the game this past season, throwing the 11^th most innings of any ‘pen in the game. New York also added reliever Justin Wilson in the Francisco Cervelli to the Pirates trade, have a second round pick in Jacob Lindgren waiting in the wings, and still have a small chance to bring back David Robertson, if the price is right. 

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When you add up all the power arms the Yankees have in the bullpen, it creates a jumble where eventually somebody is going to be moved out, especially now that New York has a guy in Miller that has the ability to throw multiple innings at a time in big situations.

Two guys I want to talk about and that General Manager Brian Cashman talked about on Friday are David Phelps and Adam Warren. In a conference call with the media, Cashman specifically pointed out Warren and Phelps to tell them that they might need to think about switching roles for 2015.

First, let’s take a look at Phelps. The 28-year-old right-hander has more starter experience compared to Warren and has been one of those pitchers that the Yankees have switched his roles repeatedly. He has thrown 40 games as a starter with 47 games coming as a reliever. When you look at the number, Phelps’ ERA as a reliever (3.84) is 50 points lower than his starters’ ERA (4.34).

The positives on Phelps are that his number of starts have gone up in every season since 2012 as well as his average number of pitches per game, which stretched to about 94 pitches last season. He showed his potential as a starter in July of this year, when he went 2-1 with a 2.97 ERA in five starts.

According to Fangraphs, Phelps uses his fastball about 47% of the time, but the strikeouts have gone down for the righty. His K/9 innings went down last season from 7.26 in 2013 to 6.8 this past season. He has the stuff to get the job done, but could the Yankees see more upside in making Warren a starter?

As I’ve noted about Warren in the past, he ended the season on a great note out of the bullpen. In the month of September, he went 1-1 in ten relief appearances with a 1.20 ERA and had 17 strikeouts to just two walks. While Warren only has three career starts on the major league level, he does have experience as a starter from his time in the minor leagues.

From 2011-2012, Warren was a starter for AAA Scranton Wilkes-Barre. He made 53 starts in those seasons pitching to a combined 3.66 ERA. One of the fallbacks on Warren in the minors was the walk rate, which was at about three walks per nine innings.

Warren is a four-pitch guy with his average velocity going up to about 94 miles per hour. Being a reliever for the whole season also brought up about a 13% increase in the times he used his slider (20% to 33%). New York already has one pitcher with a devastating slider in Miller, so imagine two in the bullpen role.

While the 27-year-old doesn’t have the start total, he is a pitcher who is capable of throwing multiple innings and giving New York five innings a start as evidenced by the 2013 season finale in Houston. In fact, 24 of Warren’s 34 appearances were games in which he threw more than one inning.

In the end, this has to be seen as a contingency plan by the Yankees if they don’t land a big starting pitcher to help increase the amount of innings from the rotation in 2015.

If New York can’t land a Max Scherzer or a Brandon McCarthy, I would lean toward keeping Phelps in the rotation because I don’t think Warren is done progressing as a reliever. Plus, both pitchers have shown they are capable in their respective roles, whether its Phelps increasing his pitch count in games or Warren trusting his fastball to throw it with a higher velocity.