Kahrl: Where could the Yankees’ new relief trio rank all-time?
From SABR member Christina Kahrl at ESPN.com on January 4, 2016:
It’s easy to get excited about what adding Aroldis Chapman to a New York Yankees bullpen already boasting Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances might do. Among pitchers throwing 50 or more innings in 2015, Chapman’s whiff rate of 41.7 percent ranked tops in the majors, with Miller’s 40.7 percent ranking third and Betances’ 39.5 percent ranking fourth. Put that on paper on one team, and you can already forecast gale-force winds from the seventh inning on in Nu-Yankee Stadium next year.
Coming as it does on the heels of the Kansas City Royals’ World Series win, it’s easy to characterize this as a smart compensation for where the game is today. Deep bullpens can shorten the game by effectively limiting opposing offenses to early scoring opportunities, and overpowering bullpens can effectively take control of the game without relying heavily on the defense behind them. A deep, overpowering bullpen also makes for a great way of offsetting a fragile, shallow or aging rotation — something the Yankees are only too familiar with.
So now that the Yankees have three of the best whiff artists of 2015 queued up to pitch out of their bullpen in 2016, let’s indulge ourselves with a question: If these three were to repeat their 2015 performances in 2016, where would they rank among other great bullpen trios of the past for their ability to blow batters out of the box?
Read the full article here: http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/67355/where-could-the-yankees-relief-trio-rank-all-time
Originally published: January 5, 2016. Last Updated: January 5, 2016.