Yankees: Is Matt Blake right pitching coach for NYY?

Did the Yankees make the right move hiring inexperienced pitching coach Matt Blake?

The Yankees appeared to address all three of their major deficiencies this offseason with perfect fits who either lead their respective fields, or fit directly into the team’s ethos.

Need an ace? Gerrit Cole, lifelong Yankee fan, should fit the bill. The team gets injured a lot? Probably wise to overhaul your training staff with Eric Cressey, a trusted leader in the field of strength training.

And what about at pitching coach? Well, why not the young, analytically-driven mind behind the Cleveland Indians pitcher factory?

Matt Blake came fresh off the line as seemingly the perfect antidote to Larry Rothschild’s outdated philosophy. Yet, somehow, Blake’s pitching staff hasn’t made any sort of quantifiable leap forward (or even a small step forward), Cole’s struggled to find his footing, and the entire Yankees team is more injured than they’d ever been previously.

It’s impossible to judge any one of these maneuvers on 40 games, but thus far, not one has immediately clicked the way the team likely hoped.

There are a lot of things to blame for a strange 2020 on the mound, and we would not default to throwing Blake under the bus first before assessing the thousands of unexpected concerns this year has brought. A three-month preparedness gap between meaningful action rarely, if ever, occurs.

The optics of a pitching coach’s work are tough for most fans to reconcile. After all, all we ever really see pitching coaches do is waddle to the mound, briefly remind their pitcher that life’s still good, then retreat to the dugout with a butt tap. It all feels so feckless, like a weak little pump up speech, if the pitcher’s not performing.

Yankees fans have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes. All they see is a staff that’s struggling to hold leads, make discernible changes, and come out on top. Ultimately, losing is permeating this team’s very being. And no matter where it’s coming from, some blame is going to fall on the new voices, who’ve been unable to stop the bleeding.

All indications are that Blake, who underwent a rapid rise from the role of pitching coach at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School near Boston as recently as 2015, was born for this, and can still make a meaningful difference. Indians hurlers like Mike Clevinger, Shane Bieber, and Zach Plesac worked extensively with Blake, and former pupil Trevor Bauer had nothing but positive things to say about the hire.

For some reason, every Yankees fan who despises Blake’s current body of work seems to be on board with importing Bauer, a caustic personality, immediately. Strange that Bauer’s endorsement of Blake hasn’t held much sway in that community.

Unfortunately, this is a results-based business, and the results of Blake’s first 40 games haven’t shown any discernible improvement on any front. Adam Ottavino’s 2019 playoff struggles have not been fixed. Gerrit Cole hasn’t shaken off the rust to be his most dominant self yet. Jordan Montgomery, who hardly walked anyone in the minors, now cannot find the strike zone.

The odds are still high that Blake was the right hire for this team, or for any team. “Analytics” aren’t “messing” with these pitchers; the pitchers just aren’t executing. But fans have nothing to judge a pitching coach by other than the direct results of the staff he manages, since we’re only privy to the mound visits.

And thus far in 2020, there’ve been far too many mound visits to instill much confidence in the effectiveness of the behind-the-scenes work.

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