After the Yankees sent Adam Ottavino to the Boston Red Sox for $ 9 million in pay cut earlier this week, many expected it to be the predecessor to another change, with a Brett Gardner meeting looking the most likely. While this may still happen, it appears that Brian Cashman’s main concern was to improve the bullpen’s back end, replacing Ottavino with former Orioles and Braves replacement Darren O’Day, with whom they signed a one-year contract with an option to team / player for 2022.
The thirteen-year-old veteran, known for his underwater action, represents a departure from the typical high-speed pitcher, as his fastball reached 88 km / h throughout his career. Despite this, he has been a high shot / low walk pitcher, with a 31.5 percent strikeout rate and 7.5 percent walk rate since 2015, both better than the league average – the first, substantially. When hitters make contact, they usually don’t hit hard either. All in all, it allowed him to maintain his success even with age.
As with all the acquisitions the Yankees made to reinforce the pitching team this winter, O’Day comes with a big risk – he only shot 21 two⁄3 innings in the past two seasons, having missed most of 2019 due to a forearm injury sustained in spring training. In addition, he threw just 20 innings in 2018, when he had surgery at the end of the season to repair a hamstring injury. That lack of mileage on his arm for the past three seasons is one of the main reasons why the Atlanta Braves declined their $ 3.5 million team option in 2021: while teams cry a lot after one season losses Smaller profits, even a cheap bullpen arm, are a luxury if you are afraid that he will lose a lot of time, no matter the profit potential.
And really, that has been the operation mode of the Yankees this winter: acquire high-level players that other teams might suspect due to injury problems. If O’Day follows the rules of his career – and in fact, there is little reason to expect him not to – then he will fit in alongside Aroldis Chapman, Chad Green and his former teammate Zack Britton for more once the Yankees are one of the best relievers in the league. Otherwise, the Yankees are only out of $ 1.75 million (although, due to the way the contract is structured, $ 2.45 million for luxury tax purposes). Injuries, not performance, have been O’Day’s Achilles heel.
More significantly, perhaps, O’Day’s price means that the Yankees, in the past three days, probably improved their bullpen while saving a few million dollars, which gives the team a little more space under its $ self-imposed limit 210 million. As such, the team still has room to make another acquisition, although with the list of forty men currently full, another negotiation is probably on the horizon.
At the end of the day, this seems like a very obvious move for the Yankees, although one that I recognize I didn’t anticipate, as I expected the team to fill the bullpen with the Shuttle Scranton. If all goes well, the Yankees have a key intermediate reliever stuck at a very reasonable rate not just for this year, but for 2022 as well. And with the question marks filling the initial rotation, a deep bullpen will almost certainly be a necessity.