Two midseason Yankees bullpen castoffs have sickeningly turned it around

The New York Yankees' bullpen is about to receive an influx of talent down the stretch, but that doesn't mean the unit hasn't seen better days.

Closer Clay Holmes remains a coin flip, speaking generously. Trade deadline acquisition Mark Leiter Jr. is scuffling in a middle relief role. Other trade deadline acquisition Enyel De Los Santos is a Chicago White Sox. While Scott Effross, Ian Hamilton, and Nick Burdi might be able to help shore things up down the stretch, it still stings to see formerly dismissed members of a very incomplete unit figuring things out elsewhere.

Not only did the Yankees bungle a chance to reinforce their 'pen beyond a shadow of a doubt at the deadline, but it seems one of their "addition by subtraction" departures has now been reborn as an additive presence on one of their chief rivals.

Caleb Ferguson's Astros career started in hilarious fashion (from a Yankee fan's perspective), but since the nightmarish Josh Smith walk-off loss he engineered, he's been mostly lights out. Ferguson hadn't allowed a run in his past seven appearances before Aug. 27 (though he's walked five), and he helped vanquish the Red Sox this month with four shutout frames in four games (two of them at Fenway Park).

Former Yankees Caleb Ferguson, Dennis Santana have been excellent with new teams (and one of them is the freaking Astros)

Ferguson still hasn't exactly proven himself to be a late-inning option you can count on in a high-leverage pressure cooker, but with Tim Hill and Tim Mayza serving as the Yankees' only bullpen lefties, all Ferguson has to do to engender regret is beat out those two fellows. Mayza will be gone when the DFA avalanche hits in a few days' time, and Hill has 22 strikeouts in 53 2/3 innings this season, which doesn't seem physically possible. Advantage, Ferguson.

Of course, his turnaround isn't even the most stunning of the summer. Ferguson cobbling together a solid three weeks in H-Town seemed reasonable when he was sent away; after all, his whiff rates were still impressive, and he'd put up six straight scoreless outings in the Bronx this year already (lowering his ERA to 4.43 on June 14 before inflating it back up to 5.84 by June 26).

But Dennis Santana figuring it out in Pittsburgh? Cursed resurgence, actually.

Remember when everyone noted Santana's not-quite-as-bad-as-they-seemed-but-still-not-great peripherals upon the occasion of his DFA, then he proceeded to allow six earned runs in an inning in his second outing with the Pirates?

That game, notably, came in Colorado, and since that moment, his slider's been sliding to the degree Matt Blake expected it to, once upon a time. An 0.66 ERA in July, followed by a 2.70 mark in August might be making him a part of the Pirates' longer-term plans (though, as every Yankee fan knows, when the leverage gets ratcheted up consistently, the progress typically gets undone a bit).

The Yankees were always destined to DFA Santana and choose between Hill and Ferguson, and clearly, they drew their lines in the sand. No one will hassle them if they're able to fill in some equally effective bullpen options down the stretch and prove that they really did have too many arms for too few roles. But, as long as the Yankees are felled by late-inning struggles, the work of Ferguson, Santana and even Michael Tonkin will continue to draw attention.

Of course, Holmes' role is the one most in question, and Ferguson/Santana/Tonkin were never coming for that throne, so ultimately, no harm, no foul, as long as a few Yankees step up in September.