Yankees fans, you aren’t alone.
Any frustrations you might have when living with the ramifications of your team’s starting pitching decision Tuesday night are warranted. But just know this, you aren’t alone.
When the Yankees chose to start rookie Deivi Garcia for an inning before bringing out the logical starter J.A. Happ for the second inning — ultimately resulting in a Game 2 loss in their best-of-five Division Series against the Rays — it wasn’t a unique mindset. Wrong? Yes. But unique? No.
I immediately harkened back to a conversation I had with pitcher Rich Hill on the Bradfo Sho podcast in 2018 after his Dodgers had lost the World Series to the Red Sox. So much focus had been placed on Dave Roberts’ decision to take Hill out after dominating for 6 1/3 innings in Game 4. But there was an even more unforgivable thought process.
It turns out the Dodgers were contemplating not starting Hill and going with an opener despite the lefty being on regular rest. As Hill described it, when he went to bed prior to that World Series’ fourth game he didn’t know what the plan was.
“The funny thing is about that Game 4 is that I wasn’t even going to start that game,” Hill said. “They were going to start a reliever. So I think that was where a lot of the confusion came in for, ‘Well, we don’t know who’s starting for the Dodgers, and we can’t set our lineup.'”
“And look for me, I’ll do whatever it takes for the team to win,” Hill explained. “That’s who I am, that’s who I have always been."
What Hill said next should resonate for Yankees fans after Tuesday night.
“I was not on board 100 percent at the time for coming out of the bullpen for the second inning as opposed to just starting the game,” said Hill. “There’s a rhythm, there’s a flow to the game that the starting pitcher gets into and I don’t know if the World Series is necessarily the time. ... And we’re not talking about the regular season, we’re talking about the World Series.”
It is no mystery behind New York's thinking when it came to starting Garcia. Tampa Bay can stack lineup like no other team, a reality New York manager (kind of) explained wasn't the be-all, end-all in the decision.
'Their roster is built to take the platoon advantage. Felt like I was going to go to J.A. pretty early and aggressively if they went with a lefty-heavy lineup, and that was the reason," Boone said. "It was a little lineup-based, but [Garcia] kind of labored a bit in that first inning. But that was the plan all along. We were going to go short with him all along, knowing we would have Deivi available [later on] in the series if need be."
And there was the example from last season when Happ followed up opener Jonathan Loaisiga in a late-season game against the Rays, in which the lefty performed well out of the bullpen (5 IP, R).
And it's not as if there hasn't been success the season using the strategy, with the Rays going 9-1 with starters pitching two innings or less this season.
But the postseason is a different animal.
Since 2015, MLB teams are 2-10 when utilizing starters one inning or fewer. The Yankees? They are 1-9 since 1950 in the postseason when seeing their starting pitcher not go more than one frame.
And the Godfathers of the strategy, Tampa Bay, has only done it once in the playoffs, a Game 4 loss to the Red Sox in the teams' 2013 Division Series.
The point is that if you have a reliable starter, you leave nothing to chance. In the postseason you are usually facing the kind of lineups that will take advantage of one bad day by any one pitcher.
Happ should have been that guy. He should have gotten the chance Hill ultimately did. This is a guy who had a solid season (3.47 ERA), with basically the same split against lefties (.204) and righties (.209).
If you've run out of pitchers, as seems to be the case with the Padres. But if you have an option, go with what you know and not what you think you know.