New York Yankees: Winners and losers from the first week of May
By Sean Dyer
Loser: The Bullpen
The reason the Yankees’ starters didn’t pick up a lot of wins and New York needed to mount late-inning comebacks is that the bullpen was shaky over the last week.
The usually unhittable Chad Green gave up a pair of hits, including a home run, in one of his outings against the Astros, allowing all three of his inherited runners to score as well as giving up two runs of his own. He followed that up with two dominant innings against the Cleveland Indians, but the blown save against Houston was un-Green-like.
Chasen Shreve was surprisingly as unhittable as Green, giving up just one earned run in his first 12 innings of the season. Then on Friday, everything blew up for Shreve against the Indians. Coming on the start the eighth innings in an unfamiliar role, Shreve was unable to record an out before surrendering three hits, a walk, and four earned runs. The lefty also bounced back with a scoreless inning on Sunday, but the damage was done for the week.
Dellin Betances started this past week off strong with two scoreless appearances. It marked seven straight outings for the setup man without giving up an earned run. Betances came in on Sunday to pitch a one-two-three seventh, including two strikeouts. Aaron Boone then sent him back out there for the eighth inning and the wheels fell off. Betances gave up three straight singles before getting pulled and by the time the inning was over, all three of Dellin’s runners had come in to score.
David Robertson has been dominant this season, outside of a grand slam given up to Justin Smoak way back on April 1. Even this week, two of his three appearances were vintage Robertson. However, on Friday, D-Rob contributed to blowing CC Sabathia’s win by not being able to get out of Shreve’s mess and giving up a game-tying two-run home run to Jose Ramirez.
Aroldis Chapman has been downright nasty this season with seven saves and a 1.80 ERA. However, he blew his first save of the season on Friday, as he allowed to tying run to cross on a wild pitch. Chapman did strike out the side and ended up picking up the win when Miguel Andujar walked it off for the Yanks.
It was really one bad outing for each of these relievers this week, and for most of them, it was their first bad outing of the season. However, with all the shaky appearances coming in the same week, the New York Yankees’ bullpen is considered a loser.