Yankees: Haters will despise NYY’s spot in MLB rotation rankings

The Los Angeles Dodgers spent $40+ million late in the offseason to add Trevor Bauer to a rotation that had already won the World Series the previous fall. The San Diego Padres dealt for Yu Darvish and Blake Snell, cementing themselves as the team to beat…for the NL Wild Card.

Man, all that just to sneak ahead of the New York Yankees.

Yes, the Yankees. Remember when they wrapped 2020 with a metric ton of rotation questions, pulling Deivi Garcia after one playoff inning to hand the ball to JA Happ? All while reckoning with the impending departure of Masahiro Tanaka and James Paxton?

How things have changed.

To be fair, they still have questions to answer after adding injury risks in Jameson Taillon and Corey Kluber. But MLB.com still believes in the Yanks…as the third-best rotation in all of Major League Baseball.

So, that’s third. Behind the Dodgers and Padres, and that’s it. It’s funny, mainly because neither the Dodgers nor the Padres are the Mets, unless we’re missing something? The haters are fuming.

Haters are gonna say this Yankees rotation ranking is fake.

According to MLB.com’s Anthony Castrovince, though it is tough to bank on every single one of the players behind Gerrit Cole, the projections make this ranking simpler than you may have expected:

Prior to the Dodgers’ addition of Bauer, the Yankees ranked No. 1 in FanGraphs’ starting pitching WAR projections. Of course, that begins with a 5.5 WAR projection for Gerrit Cole alone, and it’s not hard to understand why anybody would be bullish on him.…Ultimately, there’s a lot of potential here. And with one of the absolute best starters in the sport occupying approximately 20% of the rotation, there’s a pretty high floor.

Did you know the Yankees were temporarily FanGraphs’ No. 1 projected rotation for 2021? Did you?! Whether you believe in every member of the rotation or not, you’ll have to trust us that they’ve come a long way in building up depth since the beginning of the offseason, when Deivi Garcia and Clarke Schmidt were basically grandfathered into rotation spots.

Anyway, you get it. Yankees depth, Yankees upside…did you see the Mets are fifth?! Huge blow to Marcus Stroman personally.

We’ve had enough of the “Cole vs. deGrom” debate for another several centuries. It’s really quite simple, Mets fans. Yes, deGrom has a better track record. No, we don’t care. Yes, you care a lot.

But beyond the ace, and without Carlos Carrasco and Noah Syndergaard temporarily, the Mets appear to have a bunch of fourth starters. And what’s Joey Lucchesi doing here?

At first blush, seeing the Yankees rank ahead of them in an expert’s catalog felt a bit facetious.

After taking a longer look, though? One team bet on higher upside this offseason, and it’s the bunch in the Bronx. Don’t forget Luis Severino, too.

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