Jake Bird continues to show Yankees what they wish they could ignore after MLB exile

"Yes, I know David Bednar has largely been a dawg, Camilo Doval has been unable to find the strike zone, and Devin Williams has the highest reliever ERA in baseball, but ... what happened to Jake Bird? Why did the Yankees get him?!" - somehow a lot of people over the past 48 hours.

Apparently, there haven't been enough MLB failures for some of you folks. You want to continue to dig below the surface to talk about the bodies the Yankees are trying to bury. I get it. I honestly get it. And, you know what? While things are going slightly better for Bird these days, after his early pinstriped flops and awful outing post-demotion ... they're still not fantastic. Worth a check-in.

Bird was acquired by the Yankees as the third trade deadline bullpen piece, a controllable asset with a nasty sweeper who required some harnessing. We questioned how much he'd help the Yankees immediately, without some necessary instruction.

So did insiders like Newsday's Erik Boland and scouts throughout the game, who thought Bird — used over and over again as a fireman in Colorado — had been run ragged by the time he got to New York.

Yankees' Jake Bird still showing poor control after demotion to Triple-A

While Bird may someday redeem himself, his time in the organization in 2025 has been impossibly bad. In his first outing as a Yankee, he surrendered a grand slam to turn a 9-4 lead in Miami into 9-8. The Yankees lost that game, thanks to the malfeasance of every single person they'd acquired the day before. Every single one. An eternal Hall of Shame loss.

Bird threw a shutout inning the next day against the Marlins, then was tossed into the fire in extra innings in Texas, surrendering a walk-off three-run bomb after Williams had blown a sliver of a save. Then he was demoted. Demoted! DEMOTED. He was actually demoted. Three games. Three games for sluggin' Roc Riggio.

His first outing at Triple-A was tough to believe and also easy to believe. One inning. Three walks. An intentional pass. Three runs. Two earned. No hits. Just great.

Since then, he's walked four more batters (better), allowed five more earned runs in nine total games, and possesses a 6.75 ERA. On the bright side, he's only allowed four total hits and sports an opponents' batting average of .129, though! So he can't be touched. But he also can't find his groove. Or the plate. Or much of anything, really.

To pretend like we're not nerve-wracked about this is impossible. The years of control already feel Scott Effross-level haunting. Maybe the Blake Lab works with him in the offseason. Or maybe his juice has already been squeezed, and all of baseball has decided they can spit on a hanger or take a sweeper otherwise.

He's never posted an ERA below 4.00 at the MLB level. If he'd reached the 50-inning mark, he'd be right behind Devin Williams' league-worst ERA (5.53 to Williams' 5.60 mark). At least Riggio has a .631 OPS with the Hartford Yard Goats — but even that doesn't make us feel good, because he still could've clearly been used as an asset in a better deal than this one.

Hopefully, no one else asks about Bird for quite a while. This hurt to write.