How Should The New York Yankees Align Their Bullpen For The Wild Card Game?

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Mandatory Credit: Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports

The Middle Relief

When you look at the middle relief for the Yankees, it is the one aspect of this bullpen that drives fear in the fans because they have not gotten the job done and Girardi hasn’t shown much confidence in anybody outside of the big three.

For the purpose of this article, I looked at last year’s wild card roster for the Oakland A’s, which used eight pitchers, including the starter and the long man. With Tanaka, Warren, Wilson, Betances, and Miller, that leaves room for three spots in my projected bullpen. For my picks, I am going to go with James Pazos, Nick Rumbelow, and Branden Pinder.

The Yankees could use another lefty to go alongside Wilson and that spot came down to Pazos and Chasen Shreve. However, Shreve, who has made 58 appearances this season, has had an ERA of 11.12 in his last nine outings. While Pazos does not have the experience (only ten appearances), he can get the fastball up into the mid 90’s and teams are only 2-for-13 against him.

When you look at Rumbelow’s numbers, the right-hander has only given up one run against a right-handed batter this season. Plus, in 17 games, he has given up two home runs. He does have an ERA of 9.00 in his last seven outings this month, but maybe in one game, Rumbelow can return to the pitch that had a 2.84 ERA in August.

The last spot for me would go to Andrew Bailey. It was a toss-up between Bailey and Pinder, but Pinder hasn’t pitched in a game since September 21. Both pitchers struggle with their command at times and Bailey did give three runs on Wednesday, but Bailey has been used in more situations than Pinder. Either way, if New York has to depend on any of these pitchers to bail them out, they will be in big trouble.

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