Why the Yankees have the best pitching staff in the MLB

In the regular season, a team’s starting rotation is integral to the team’s success, which is evident looking at WAR where the top 16 and 46 of the top 50 pitchers are all starters. Starters throw significantly more innings than relievers and bullpens often are too short on rest during the regular season in order to be deployed in the most effective manner.

However, in the playoffs that all changes. While you need a pitcher or two to give you a solid 6+ innings, the recent playoff trend has been to go to your bullpen early and often if there’s a critical situation in the game. This is because hitters have increasing success the more times they bat against a pitcher in a game, so having one or two-inning specialists is often the best way to get out of jams.

Since every run is critical in the postseason, managers tend to have a much shorter leash with their starters. There is no team better equipped for this than the Yankees, who landed five relievers on Bleacher Report’s top 30 reliever list, and I would argue should have six with the omission of Adam Warren. The bullpen as a whole struck out an MLB-high 29.1 percent of batters and had a 3.34 ERA, good for third best in the AL.

The pitching staff showed their effectiveness in the 2017 playoffs, when they held the Astros most powerful offense in MLB to less than two runs in four of the seven games in the ALCS, finishing with a 2.73 ERA overall in the series. Before that, they pitched to a 3.06 ERA against the Indians, and also came back from a Luis Severino implosion where he only recorded one out before leaving the Yankees in a 3-0 hole to the Twins in the AL wild-card game.

In that wild-card game, Chad Green, David Robertson, Tommy Kahnle, and Aroldis Chapman all combined to pitch 8.2 innings of one-run ball while racking up 13 strikeouts and gave their offense a chance to rally a comeback. This included Green getting out of a huge jam with runners on second and third by striking out the next two batters after Sevy was given a quick-hook.

Compare the Yankees postseason numbers to their 3.72 regular season ERA, and you can see how they can become dominant in October. Looking even deeper into the reasons for this enhanced success in the playoffs, this may be an example of the old saying, “practice makes perfect.”

Remember wondering why Aaron Judge was struggling to even make contact against the Indians in the ALDS? Part of the reason was he was attacked with an extraordinary amount of breaking pitches around the low-and-away corner. It was a noted weakness that pitchers looked to expose more often in the playoffs. According to Michael Baumann, in the regular season Judge saw around 57 percent fastballs and 31 percent breaking pitches, which mostly comprise sliders and curveballs. However, in the ALDS, Judge saw only 41 percent fastballs and 55 percent breaking pitches with 37.1 percent of these pitches landing at the low-and-away edge compared to 27.5 percent in the regular season.

It was obvious pitchers utilized the scouting reports on Judge more often, which is much easier to do in the playoffs when you have more time to game plan and have some off-days in between games to refresh your relievers that can best execute the said game plan. It was also obvious that more often in the playoffs teams employ the new analytical trend of throwing fewer fastballs and more breaking pitches due to the greater success against fastballs.

Who leads this new analytical trend? Who else but the Yankees, who threw the fewest fastballs in the league during the 2017 regular season despite having the highest average velocity. The most effective pitch against hitters last year? The slider, which the Yankees throw substantially more (over 25% of pitches) than any other team in MLB.

In other words, this Yankees pitching staff is built for playoff success through executing the same game plans that they’ve been employing all season. Pitchers such as CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka already throw mostly breaking pitches which proved vital to their postseason success.

According to ESPN.com, CC threw his slider/cutter combo over 60 percent of the time while only throwing his fastball around 23 percent of the time, knowing this was his least effective pitch that he needed to spot and sequence well in order to be effective.

Masahiro Tanaka realized this the hard way during the regular season when hitters feasted off his fastball early in the season due to mainly poor location and average velocity. However, as the season progressed he drastically reduced his fastball usage and became a much more effective pitcher, throwing his slider and splitter about 50 percent of the time while throwing his fastball under 15 percent of the time. One NL scout said about his performance in the playoffs per Jerry Crasnick of ESPN:

“He’s been like the pre-elbow-injury Tanaka for about a month now. It’s amazing to watch when pitchers execute and mix pitches how they can neutralize a lineup.”

Knowing that each strike significantly reduces the chances of a successful at-bat, Tanaka and CC pounded the strike zone pitch after pitch, forcing hitters to swing at breaking pitches they often struggled greatly against throughout the season but did not see as often. In fact, again according to ESPN, the Yankees starters threw the highest percentages of strikes than any AL team in the playoffs.

The one Yankees starter who pitched extensively in the playoffs that didn’t match his regular season success? Luis Severino, the flamethrower of the rotation who has one of the premier fastballs in all of MLB. Although his overall numbers are inflated from his disastrous wild-card game start, he still only pitched to a 3.86 ERA against the Indians and a 4.15 ERA against the Astros. A far cry from his regular season numbers.

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Just as pitchers have more time to game plan, so do hitters and thus starting pitchers who play mainly off their fastball may be more predictable than those who use a more varied pitch repertoire. In fact, Severino deviated in the postseason from what he did during his extremely successful second half of 2017.

In the last three months of the regular season, Sevy threw his fastball 49, 52, and 50 percent of the time. He pitched to a 2.28 ERA in over 86 innings during the second half. During October, he raised his fastball rate to 55.5 percent while throwing both his changeup and slider less.

Knowing that Severino’s fastball is his main pitch, batters were prepared for it and were likely happy to see it thrown so much. The Yankees and Sevy should have anticipated this and adjusted accordingly. Perhaps this is just coincidence, but a healthier dose of sliders and changeups in the postseason likely would make Severino less predictable and more effective in the playoffs.

Next: Predicting statistical leaders in 2018

This Yankees pitching staff is built to dominate in the playoffs, with starters built to execute effectively along with a stable of elite relievers capable of dominating hitters a couple of times through the order.