Sweeny: 15 Thoughts As Yankees Open 2015
By Sweeny Murti
» More Columns
My thoughts as the Yankees open the 2015 season:
1. A-Rod looks OK. And by OK, I mean pretty good. He's shown patience and power at the plate, and he is most likely batting seventh in the order, not third or fourth. Two things I am interested to see: how he handles hard-throwing right-handers -- if he's allowed to face them at all -- and how he handles batting with Stephen Drew and Didi Gregorius protecting him in the lineup. About how he looks in the field? He looks OK. And by OK, I mean he's better as the DH.
2. Masahiro Tanaka looks OK. And by OK, I mean he's healthy enough to pitch, but how he pitches will be the issue. Tanaka is relying more on his two-seam fastball, which could induce more groundouts and lower his pitch counts, although one scout I spoke with didn't seem to think he had enough sink and movement to make it as effective as it needs to be. And several have noted that he looks a bit tentative, including Pedro Martinez. It's easy to say, as Brian Cashman noted, that Tanaka won't get through the season healthy. But if he does, what type of pitcher is he -- and is that worth $175 million?
3. The bullpen is the Yankees' biggest strength. Power arms from both the right and the left and the return of Dellin Betances, who had the most dominant season by a Yankees reliever since Mariano Rivera's breakout year of 1996. These guys come out of the bullpen throwing gas, and we've seen some teams in recent years have great success with a formula like that.
4. The bullpen is also the Yankees' biggest question mark, at least it is for me. Of the seven relievers, only Betances was on the Yanks' Opening Day roster a year ago and Esmil Rogers is the only other one that spent any time with the Yankees. That's five new relievers (Andrew Miller, David Carpenter, Justin Wilson, Chris Martin and Chasen Shreve) that Joe Girardi has to put his trust in right away. Yes they are the types of arms that great bullpens are built on. But they haven't pitched in New York yet and they don't have a closer yet either.
5. Oh, that's right. They don't have a closer yet either. Girardi has indicated he will use Betances and Miller based on matchups in the early going rather than becoming a formula manager with a closer. It is admirable to think the Yankees could be unconventional in late-game management, something I find quite intriguing actually. But it's also worth noting that this is the first time in two decades that "Who's the closer?" is a thing around here.
6. Also worth noting that for the first time in two decades that Derek Jeter is nowhere to be found. In case you hadn't heard, he retired last year. Didi Gregorius is a player the Yankees have coveted for a couple years. He is now their starting shortstop and watching him play this spring offered some glimpses of how dynamic a player he could be. He is still not a finished product offensively, but he is pretty darn spectacular on defense and fun to watch.
7. CC Sabathia believes he will have a good year. He always believes he will pitch well as long as he is healthy and he enters the season healthier than he's been in a couple years. That doesn't automatically mean he is going to have a good year. It simply means there aren't any excuses. If he doesn't pitch well it just might be the reality of all those innings and all those pitches catching up to him. Keep in mind he is six innings shy of Pedro Martinez on the all-time Innings Pitched list, and remember what he looked like at the end. The Yankees need him to be better than that. And if he is, that's another reason to think the Yankees are capable being in the 85-90 win range instead of below it.
8. That's right I said 85-90 win range. If more things go right than go wrong I think that's about where they can go, and as we saw just last year you can go a long way in October with 88 wins and a strong bullpen. On the low end, if more things go wrong than go right, I would think the Yankees are in that 78-81 win range. While it would still feel like a complete disaster, I don't think they are in the 90-loss range that defines most complete-disaster seasons.
9. Maybe this is the year Michael Pineda becomes one of the best pitchers in baseball. He's actually been that anytime he's been on a major league mound. The problem has been the frequency with which he is on a major league mound. Everyone agrees about the arsenal Pineda displays. The guy is filthy—and I don't mean in a big-goop-of-pine-tar-on-his-neck kind of filthy. He makes hitters look foolish with regularity. And now the Yankees need him to do make 30 starts instead of 13.
10. Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran don't have to have 30 HR-100 RBI seasons for the Yankees to be successful this year. But they can't have 9-40 seasons either. The Yankees need them to be reasonably healthy and sufficiently productive. The Yankees are very left-handed, which is a good thing at Yankee Stadium, but they don't have much pure lefty power which is not a good thing at Yankee Stadium. That's where the switch-hitters Teixeira and Beltran come into play. They don't have to have monster years, they just have to have good years.
11. Joe Girardi enters year two of a four-year contract. Missing the playoffs a third straight year won't necessarily get him fired depending how they get there, but his seat would certainly be warmer than it's ever been. One thing this season will bring Girardi is the opportunity to manage more. By that I mean he has a lineup that will offer him more opportunities to pinch-hit more and perhaps platoon. And as noted above he will have a bullpen that gives him the opportunity to mix and match nightly. And you guys thought that binder was thick before.
12. Don't expect to hear much from new Yankees hitting coach Jeff Pentland. At the time he was hired he was described to me as "old school" and I think it fits pretty well. Pentland isn't unfriendly, he just doesn't seem to have a lot to say. Kevin Long was much more outgoing and that's a reason why the media liked him. But that's not why we called Long a good hitting coach. We called Long a good hitting coach because that's what the players said. Anyway, Pentland has earned the respect of many others in the past, including Hall of Famer Joe Torre, who worked with Pentland in Los Angeles.
13. Hitting against the shift has become a thing the last couple years. Does Pentland replacing Long mean that Teixiera and Brian McCann will do it more often? Not likely. Both coaches have said that the players have to buy in, and in the cases of both Teixeira and McCann they are more likely to believe in what's made them successful in the past—driving the ball instead of slapping it. Already this spring Teixeira has hit several balls into the left-center field gap from the left-side. Shift all you want, the infielders aren't getting ball hit out there.
14. Here's something interesting about new assistant hitting coach Alan Cockrell. You probably heard that in addition to being a standout college baseball player, he was also the quarterback at Tennessee. In the last game of his college football career, Cockrell led the Vols over Maryland in the 1983 Citrus Bowl 30-23. It was also the last college football game for Terps quarterback Boomer Esiason (he was injured during the game and replaced by Frank Reich). Cockrell was taken in the first round of the MLB Draft the next summer, while Boomer … well, we all know his story.
15. My 15th for '15 is simply that this is season No. 15 for me on the Yankees beat for WFAN. I had a flip phone and a lot less gray hair when I started. I had no idea what a blog was and there was no such thing as Twitter. But like they say, time flies when you're having fun. Thanks to all for listening, watching, and reading over the years. I hope it's another entertaining season for us all.
Follow Sweeny Murti on Twitter @YankeesWFAN.