Yankees Starter Chad Green is Key to Club’s Postseason Push

New York Yankees starting pitcher Chad Green will look to continue his string of dominant starts Saturday against the division rival Baltimore Orioles.

After an uneven start to his major league career, Yankees rookie starter Chad Green has allowed just one earned run over 12 innings pitched in his last two starts, striking out 16 and walking just one.

If you add in his excellent July 3rd start against the San Diego Padres where he allowed one run in six innings while striking out eight, it is hard not to get excited about Green’s potential down the stretch for the Yankees.

Admittedly things haven’t been all sunshine and rainbows for the 25-year-old. There have been several disaster appearances mixed in, but the overall picture is still promising. Coming into Saturday’s start, Green has a 3.66 ERA and 4.34 FIP in 39.1 big league innings, while striking out 27.6% of the batters he’s faced.

Those numbers are perfectly serviceable for a back-of-the-rotation arm, and Green has shown glimpses of being more than that. He has been absolutely lights out for Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre this season, pitching to a 1.52 ERA and 2.14 FIP while striking out 27.4% of opposing hitters.

The evaluators at MLB Pipeline note that Green’s fastball has taken on new life since the trade that brought him over to the Yankees last winter. It used to sit 90-94 and now is in the 93-95 range, occasionally touching 97. Although his secondary pitches are still a work in progress, that could be enough to bump up his ceiling somewhat.

Green has made four appearances on Carson Cistuli’s weekly “The Fringe Five: Baseball’s Most Compelling Fringe Prospects” column for FanGraphs this season, which is an attempt to identify players who are “receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.”

Cistuli points out that Green’s peripheral stats and velocity have been impressive even during some of his uglier performances, and suggests he may be underrated by the major prospect lists.

There is plenty of opportunity in the Yankees rotation going forward. If Green can establish himself as a mid-rotation workhorse type for New York, it would go a long way towards solidifying the team’s future starting pitching picture.

Next: Yanks Still Have Time for August Win-Now Moves

With Masahiro Tanaka and Luis Cessa also on point in their last few turns through the rotation, a promising nucleus of starters is emerging for the Yankees. If their offense continues to stay hot into September, they will at least manage to hang around in this race into the final days of the season.