But…

It was against the Orioles and he’s had some success against them—Gray is 3-0 with a 0.51 ERA in three starts at Camden Yards. So while it was nice to see Sonny Gray exit a game after six innings (instead of two) without giving up any runs, he hasn’t quite turned the corner. Not yet anyway. He’ll need to string together a few strong/quality starts against tougher teams and/or be successful at home for that to happen. Still, Wednesday night was a step in the right direction.

So what worked for Gray against the Orioles?

His curveball:

As you can see, he threw it a lot. Gray finished his outing with 90 pitches and half of them were curveballs. He also threw 39 two-seam fastballs, three four-seam fastballs, two sliders, and one changeup.

A positive for Gray was his eight strikeouts–five swinging, three called. He threw his curve for strike three five times, his two-seamer two times and he threw one four-seam fastball for strike three against Chris Davis. Gray’s had three outings with eight or more strikeouts.

The other positive for Gray was that he only gave up three hits and he didn’t surrender a run. There were no two-out, two-strike, run-scoring hits for Baltimore. He gave up two doubles and a single and the two times when Baltimore had runners in scoring position (the second inning and the sixth inning), Gray was able to work out of the jam and end the inning without any damage. This was only his second scoreless outing of the season. The other time he didn’t give up a run was in an eight-inning, two-hit masterpiece against Toronto on June 6.

As Gray told reporters last night, “It’s one start,” but it’s a start he can build upon, hopefully.

Gray’s next start will be after the All-Star break so we’ll have to wait until then to see if he’s actually turned the corner.

Photo credit: Tommy Gilligan / USA TODAY Sports

There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic, especially when you consider the depth and farm system of this team. Here are a couple of thoughts as the team braces for June.

1. Potential Trade With The St. Louis Cardinals

If you told me that the Yankees would receive poor results from Masahiro Tanaka and Sonny Gray in the first two months, I would not have predicted at .685 winning percentage. However, the poor pitching results have been mitigated by an unbelievable offense.

This unsurprisingly brings up the question of what the Yankees will do at the trade deadline. The starting pitching, even with the eventual return of Jordan Montgomery, is still a significant weakness that needs to be addressed. The Yankees have the prospects and depth to make just about any deal happen.

The Yankees should target a true difference maker, or at the very least, a young pitcher that is controllable for the foreseeable future. Jaime Garcia is not going to cut it. Madison Baumgarner and Jacob DeGrom have been the big names mentioned of late, but these players will be tough to acquire due to pure availability.

It is interesting to envision a trade with the St. Louis Cardinals though. The team is filled with starting pitchers, and they could really use infield help. What about creating a package involving one of the many Yankee infielders for Carlos Martinez or Jack Flaherty? Acquiring a player like Martinez is more of a dream, and would require the Cardinals to be out of contention. Flaherty might be more reasonable though, perhaps even more realistic than DeGrom or Baumgarner.

Flaherty is just 22-years-old, and he has been recently ranked as the number 53 prospect in all of baseball. This season, he has posted a 2.62 ERA through only 34 innings (6 starts), and he has four pitches that are average to above average. Flaherty will not overpower hitters like Baumgarner or DeGrom, but it is not hard to imagine a career like Jose Quintana. I am very high on Flaherty, and I think he could be an exciting acquisition.

2. Rookie(s) of The Month

Did you think you could read this without hearing about how great Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar have been? Torres was recently named the AL Rookie of the Month for May, and during that time, he batted .317/.374/.659 with a 1.032 OPS. He drove in 24 runs in 24 games. The 23-year-old Andujar, on the other hand, has batted an impressive .294/.317/.529 with a .830 OPS since being called up. His 26 extra base hits lead all rookies.

So let’s take a moment to remember when fans were concerned about second and third base at the beginning of the season. Remember when Torres looked rusty in spring training? All of a sudden, Neil Walker is on the bench, and Brandon Drury is in AAA, while the two rookies make the headlines at the MLB level.

Brian Cashman deserves so much credit for what’s happening. The lineup is young, cheap (by Yankee standards), and the best in baseball. Few teams are going to have as much success as the Yankees in the next five to ten years, and the rookie performances are just a microcosm of that. Cashman’s role in building this team cannot be emphasized enough. Excellent performance by the rookies, and as usual, outstanding performance by Cashman.

Photo credit: Benny Sieu / USA TODAY Sports

Hooray!

Heading into Sunday’s game against the Royals, Gray’s longest output of the season was six innings which he reached three times; April 7, April 30 and May 5. And in his last start, he pitched five innings against his former team and he gave up five runs on nine hits, including two home runs. It was pretty ugly.

On Sunday, the Yankees were looking to win their eighth series in a row, and with Gray starting, some fans were afraid the streak would end. Fortunately, Gray was masterful in his outing in Kansas City. He lasted eight innings, only gave up four hits and surrendered one run. He also struck out five and walked a batter. He was also pretty efficient this time around. He threw 92 pitches overall, 62 for strikes and his highest pitch count was 18 in his final inning of work. He had a seven-pitch fourth inning.

Gray also did a nice job of mixing his pitches and velocity.

All five of Gray’s strikeouts were swinging. He struck out Jorge Soler and Mike Moustakas in the first inning. Soler swung through an 85.3 mph curveball while Moustakas swung at a 93.9 mph fastball. Hunter Dozier was Gray’s next strikeout victim. He swung through an 84.0 mph curveball. Whitt Merrifield was next. He struck out in the fifth inning on an 85.7 slider. Gray got Soler again in the eighth inning on an 85.2 mph curveball.

Courtesy of Baseball Savant

As you can see, Gray did a nice job of mixing his pitches and he threw more fastballs than he has in previous outings.

In this next graph, you’ll see the difference in what’s he throwing now compared to April.

He’s abandoned his cutter which he wasn’t throwing very much anyway and he’s ramped up his fastball output. So what does this all mean? Who knows. Hopefully, Gray will watch this start and try to replicate it in his next start.

Data courtesy of Brooks Baseball and Baseball Savant

Now let’s get started.

1. THE INFIELD

I absolutely love the Brandon Drury trade. While he will primarily play third base, he can also play second base, first base, and left field. He also hit .267/.317/.447 (92 wRC+) in 480 big league games last year. At the end of the day, Cashman addressed the team’s biggest need by trading two mid-level prospects.

I also think it is interesting to compare Drury and Headley. They provide similar production, but Drury is cheaper, younger, and can play more positions. This move doesn’t really block Gleyber Torres, Miguel Andujar, or Tyler Wade in a significant way. If the homegrown talent is productive, then Drury will be an excellent utility player. If players need more time in the minors though, this trade provides necessary insurance. Either way, this trade seems like a big win for the present and the future.

2. THE RIVALRY

The Red Sox and Yankees will both be large powerhouses entering this season, and I could not be happier. Baseball is always more fun when these two teams are good.

Despite the J.D. Martinez acquisition, I am still picking the Yankees as the favorites to win the division. Yes, the Red Sox won the division last year and added Martinez. However, when you factor full seasons of David Robertson, Tommy Kahnle, Sonny Gray, and (hopefully) Greg Bird, along with Giancarlo Stanton and a much younger infield, the Yankees are the easy pick for me. They have upside, they have depth, and the strong farm system provides flexibility at the deadline that other teams lack.

 3. OPENING DAY STARTER

The opening day starter should be Luis Severino. I think a strong case can be made for Masahiro Tanaka, and I like Tanaka more than most. I think he is going to bounce back this year and produce numbers that are similar to his 2016 season. At the same time, I think that Severino is an important part of the Yankees’ future, and the Yankees need to give him as many “big game” opportunities as possible. Opening Day is one of these opportunities. It is an opportunity to make the big stage feel natural and routine. Additionally, Severino was the third best pitcher in the American league last year. While that may be hard for Severino to replicate this year, I think he has earned this opening day start with his performance. Give the ball to Severino.

LOOKING AHEAD

The first game of spring training is tomorrow against the Tigers at 1:05pm. The game will be aired on the YES Network, and a delayed taping will be played later on the MLB Network. It’s always nice to enjoy stress free baseball but before we know it, April will arrive, and the Yankees will begin the battle for the AL East.

There’s not much to dislike about the young right-hander. He throws 95-plus, has a vicious slider and his youth indicates that the best is certainly yet to come. There was only one hiccup in his first taste of big-league action: a problem with the long ball.

Severino struck out his fair share of hitters, got ground balls and kept his walks reasonable, but his 1.30 HR/9 was downright ugly. The balls leaving the park against the young righty caused his FIP to balloon to 4.34 and his DRA was 3.72, taking a lit bit of the shine off a 2.89 ERA.

Pitching at Yankee Stadium is no easy task, and the sample size is small, so there’s no reason to panic about Severino’s inability to keep balls out of the bleachers. However, what his gopher-itis after his promotion shows is just how different the major-league level is to the minors.

In his four-year, 320.2 inning minor-league career Severino conceded exactly eight home runs. In just under two months with the Yankees he allowed nine. He didn’t change his approach in any significant way and still had strong strikeout/ground ball numbers, but at the game’s highest level mistakes do not go unpunished. This is the location of the pitches that Severino allowed round trippers on:

Pretty much right in the middle of the plate for the most part. A little bit up, but not up enough to cause any problems for the hitter. Severino as a guy who relies more on velocity than command has been missing his spots like this for his entire professional career, he just hasn’t seen guys who can make him pay for it. In his brief stint with the Yankees he most certainly did. This is the list of hitters who hit the nine pitches shown above:

That’s one hell of a list. These nine guys hit 4.5 percent of all big-league home runs last season and have left the park a whopping 1337 times in their respective careers. In a sense it’s hard to blame Severino for letting this group take him deep.

However, at the big-league level there are always going to be elite hitters lurking around every corner. If Severino can’t locate his pitches against them consistently, they will continue to do what they do best. Just throwing hard isn’t good enough against the top guys in the sport.

Given his age and the success he’s already had there’s very little reason to believe he won’t improve significantly. Other than the fact his choice of career both relies on the integrity of his arm and is, by definition, an arm-destroying endeavor, there’s no reason to be against Severino going forward.

His home run problems are likely to abate, but his early difficulties are a reminder of just how hard it is to make the jump to the big leagues, no matter how talented you are.

Lead photo: Andy Marlin / USA Today Sports

Three and a half years later, it’s safe to say things didn’t go according to plan on either side. Montero played promisingly in 2012, hitting .260 with 15 home runs and 61 RBI’s. Since then he’s split his time between the big league club, the minors, the disabled list, and 50 games on Bud Selig’s naughty list for his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal. From the Yankees perspective the trade looked even worse as recently as last spring. Pineda missed all of 2012 and 2013 with right shoulder injuries and came into camp last year as a complete mystery. He again spent a good chunk of last year on the shelf with more shoulder injuries and serving a minor suspension for some tomfoolery (the pine tar incidents), but he managed to pitch 76 innings with a 1.89 ERA.

If each player retired on the spot today, we might call this one a draw. But as far as I’ve heard that’s not happening and the Yankees look poised to win the trade over the long haul. Michael Pineda showed a lot of promise last year and is healthy for the moment, while Jesús Montero can’t rid himself of the “AAAA” label on his bat.

Two starts into 2014 and nearing the 100-inning plateau in pinstripes, it seems like as good a time as any to evaluate Michael Pineda. We’ve seen enough from him since his shoulder injuries to get a good idea what type of pitcher he will be as a Yankee. For better or worse, he is not the same guy he was that first summer in Seattle.  So let’s take a trip down memory lane. The year: 2011, the city: Seattle, the music: fitting.

Note: the data included is from Brooks Baseball, a partner of Baseball Prospectus.

Mariner Mike: A Two-Pitch Power Arm

When he broke into the league in 2011 with the Mariners, Michael Pineda pitched like a typical 22-year-old; he relied on what had gotten him there. For Pineda specifically, this meant throwing his fastball and slider, two dominant pitches, almost 95% of the time. He rode these two pitches to a breakout first half (8-5 with a 2.58 ERA on July 4th) and an all-star nod as a rookie.

In Seattle, the four-seam fastball was Pineda’s favorite pitch.  His fastball had great velocity and great tailing movement (in to a righty).  He could throw it in any count against right-handed or left-handed hitters and the subtle, late run on the pitch prevented hitters from squaring it up. Pineda moved it up and down, in and out, ringing up strikeouts and using it to set up his other main offering, the slider.

His hard slider was filthy, especially paired with 95 mph heat at the belt. Batters were flailing all year at the pitch, and for good reason.  It too had fantastic late movement, diving at the foot of left-handed hitters and off the table for right-handed hitters. Batters whiffed at Pineda’s slider an absurd 20% of the time he threw it in 2011. The fastball and slider were his bread and butter, his pasta and marinara, his baa-gel and cream cheese.

Pineda also very occasionally used a changeup to keep hitters honest, though throwing it only 6% of the time kept them about as honest as a Bluth. And the sinkers that PITCHf/x thought it tracked may have just been wild fourseam fastballs, recording only 23 of them all year. I couldn’t locate video of either pitch back then so we’ll have to believe that at best, the changeup was a work in progress.

Relying so heavily on two pitches, no matter how great they are, is a strategy usually reserved for relief pitchers who see only a part of a lineup each game. As a rookie, teams were facing Pineda for the first time and he shoved the fastball-slider combo down their throats, but in the second half he began to struggle. Some combination of better scouting reports, a lack of a third pitch, and general fatigue caught up with Mariner Mike and his ERA jumped up one whole run the last two months of the year.

That being said, there was a lot of promise and strikeout-potential in his young arm, enough to convince the Yankees to acquire him.

2014 Yankee Mike: Less Power, More Refinement

One of the first things I noticed when I saw Pineda pitch his first game in New York last year was how different his stuff looked from what I remembered. In my mind he was a huge dude with a blazing fastball. And he was still a huge dude but the fastball had lost some of its oomph. He was being a lot more precise with his pitches and…wait…was that a cutter?

Mariner Mike reminded me of Joel Zumaya or Fernando Rodney but Yankee Mike reminded me of a much, much larger Dan Haren. Had Michael Pineda become Dan in real life? Had he changed as much as I thought?

Yes! His fastball underwent a sea change during the three years it took him to get on the mound for the Yankees. He no longer threw as hard, didn’t throw his fastball as much, lost almost all of the horizontal run, and his fastball was dropping more than it ever had. Everything about the pitch had fundamentally changed. He became more precise, throwing 3% more strikes with his fastball last year than in 2011 though he wasn’t having as much success with a falling whiff rate. Depending on the situation, Pineda will sometimes even cut his fastball now, something he couldn’t dream of doing in Seattle.

Pineda’s slider in 2014 might have been even filthier than it was back in his Seattle days. He has managed to maintain the velocity right around 85 mph and increased both the drop and sweep on the pitch. His slider is an improved weapon and last year Pineda’s catchers called the pitch nearly 35% of the time. Though the whiff percentage on the pitch has dropped a bit down to 17%, this is likely due to the smaller gap between the fastball and slider velocity.

Despite the numbers in this chart that would suggest otherwise, the changeup has been one of the biggest changes for Michael Pineda since he’s returned to the mound. Last year, before getting suspended and hurt in the middle part of 2014 his changeup was finally becoming a legitimate offering for him. While the movement is no different than it was in Seattle, his confidence in the pitch is growing and this season the trend has continued. Through two starts in 2015 the changeup has been his best pitch.  He’s now throwing changeups almost 15% of the time and getting whiffs over 25% of the time.

What Happened?

The obvious question that this analysis elicits is WTF? Why the Face?  How did Seattle Mike become Yankee Mike? Where did this big drop in velocity come from?  And the answer is pretty equally clear: his shoulder. Pineda has suffered an extraordinary amount of injuries to his pitching shoulder in his young career and is now three years removed on his only completely healthy season. A combination of a chronically injured shoulder and the normal velocity drop that happens as pitchers age is the likely culprit for that velocity drop.

More interesting to me is the change in movement on Pineda’s fastball and slider. I suspect it also relates to his shoulder issues but in a more roundabout way.

It’s pretty well known that arm angles and release points help determine the trajectory of pitches. A pitcher who throws sidearm will naturally have a lot of run on a fastball and a frisbee-like slider (see Brad Ziegler or Pat Neshek). Similarly in order to throw a perfect 12-6 curveball a pitcher needs to throw more-or-less over the top.

Michael Pineda nearly eliminated the run on his fastball, adding the ability to throw a near-cutter and added a lot of horizontal movement on his slider the same way. I suspected that this change came as a result of a more over the top motion and vertical release point. Thanks to one of the coolest features of Brooks Baseball, I was able to put my hypothesis to the test.

Since coming to the Yankees and recovering from shoulder injuries, Pineda’s release point changed quite drastically. He now throws nearly a quarter of a foot more overhead and similarly closer to the body, most likely to relieve some stress he naturally put on his shoulder from his old arm slot. This change in release point could very well explain the change in movement we’ve seen on his pitches with the Yankees.

The Outlook

Yankee Mike is a much smarter pitcher than Mariner Mike. This at-bat with Chris Davis from his start on April 13th shows he’s mixing up his offerings better and using more creativity to make up for a loss in fastball velocity. Whether his newfound refinement is an improvement on his “here try to hit this” Seattle style remains to be seen, as does his health. But it is clear that he will be a key player for the Yankees in 2015 and if he keeps improving can be the best pitcher on the team.

Hahahahaha who’s that knucklehead? What a ridiculous, ill-informed thing to do, resting the weight of your prediction on a team’s bullpen, full of guys who are literally there because they are inconsistent, so much it’s accepted that you just don’t sign bullpen guys to long-term deals so you can build a team around them, because then you end up with a Ryan Madson or Jonathan Papelbon or whatever. Look at Fernando Rodney! In 2012, he had one of the greatest seasons in the history of pitching, and now his ERA is over 15, just because.

Oh. Uh, whoops. Last night’s 7-5 Yankees loss to the Orioles was the fault of relievers David Carpenter, Justin Wilson and Chris Martin. Their collective five-run meltdown in the sixth inning was a sharp heel turn for a staff that had ranked third in bullpen ERA before Wednesday.

Bullpen meltdowns happen. But the prospect and occurrence of them is particularly concerning for the Yankees, because their starting pitching hasn’t shown the skill or longevity that led PECOTA to project it for the top cumulative WARP in the A.L. East. The Yankees, before Wednesday, had received 36.1 innings from their bullpen, which was the most of any team in the majors. Then they got three tonight, so that ranking probably won’t drop significantly.

This was a particularly bad meltdown, of five runs in an inning, blowing a lead and ultimately leading to the team’s loss. What is the precedent for this happening to teams like the Yankees, who, if they are to make the playoffs, will have to outshoot their projections on the strength of their position, particularly the bullpen? (Because from the looks of it now, the offense sure isn’t going to pull the weight.)

The 2014 Royals are the ideal for this model for success. So, I did my own little Play Index segment (minus the Play Index, which was of no use to me for my specific query) and looked for games in which their bullpen, whether it be the fault of an individual pitcher of a combined effort, gave up more than five runs in an inning.

I found three instances: Aaron Brooks gave up six runs in the ninth against the Tigers on May 3; the Royals were already losing that game. Donnie Joseph and Michael Mariot gave up six runs in the ninth on June 16; the Royals were winning 11-2 before that inning, and the pitching debacle didn’t affect the final result. Finally, Bruce Chen gave up six runs against the Twins in the top of the 10th inning on Aug. 28…and I don’t think anything needs to be said there.

That was it. Three instances, and none of them involving guys who were actually a significant part of that bullpen. No Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, Greg Holland, Jason Frasor, Aaron Crow; you know, guys who were actually a significant part of that staff, in the same way Carpenter and Martin are for the Yankees right now.

I’m not saying that the Yankees blowing a game like this is a sign of impending doom. They’ve still got Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances to hold down the back end. Betances threw a scoreless inning tonight, and while his fastball was still in the mid, rather than upper, 90s, and he was missing badly on some pitches, he got strikeouts of Chris Davis (big whoop, I know) and Manny Machado.

But, at this point, things aren’t looking peachy, either.

Photo: Getty