Yankees' last-second Opening Day pickup is quickly becoming an unsung hero

When the New York Yankees imported Ryan Yarbrough just before racing through the tape and rolling with their internal options for the Opening Day roster, it raised a few more eyebrows than a last-ditch pitching switch typically would.

After all, plenty of fans were already familiar with Yarbrough bedeviling the Yankees four times a year with the Tampa Bay Rays, even if they'd lost track of his intermediate steps (which says a lot about how irrelevant the Blue Jays became last year). At the very least, the soft-tossing lefty seemed like an enjoyable change-of-pace in a long season, with the potential to be so much more.

The Yankees saw that potential, too, prioritizing him over other last-second waiver pickups and opt-outs like Adam Ottavino (who ended up here and back and gone again anyway). They then made the exact right decision at the exact right time to end the Carlos Carrasco experiment in its tracks and move Yarbrough to the rotation and Yerry de Los Santos to the final bullpen spot.

We maintain that Carrasco was over-hated — he gave the Yankees a chance to win each one of his starts, and he's 38 and bad! Still, moving on from him after collecting six starts' worth of data was the right decision, and Yarbrough has stepped in seamlessly to give the Yankees a healthy dose of exactly the same type of stuff he used to torture them with in Tampa.

New York Yankees left-hander Ryan Yarbrough has become invaluable after just two starts filling in for Carlos Carrasco

Yarbrough's first appearance came on short notice, and he ate up four innings against a Rays team that has turned over almost entirely from his days in Tampa. His second came against a very good offense in Sacramento, in a minor-league park packed with jet streams, and it's safe to say that, even if you liked Carrasco, he would've gotten owned here. His assignment as Sunday's game evolved was different than when the contest started. Nobody knew Luis Severino was about to be his 2023 self. But, once that transpired, Yarbrough had to make the unglamorous innings look as easy as possible as the Yankees mentally prepped for the flight to Seattle. Both he — and de los Santos, excellent in three frames — did exactly that.

The Yankees still need Luis Gil to return midsummer. They still need to sink deadline resources into a playoff-tested rotation upgrade. But Yarbrough does a much more comfortable job of manning the store for the time being, and should make any version of the Yankees' playoff roster. You can't say the same for Carrasco. Kudos to Aaron Boone for a well-executed gambit, and to Brian Cashman for not letting an obvious opportunity go by in March.