At some point, the Yankees having an old roster is something that we should be used to, but this isn’t going to be the year that happens. For all their big moves and big spending, the New York Yankees are old. So very old. They’re so old that they had two players over 40 years old retire and they are still one of the oldest, if not the oldest, roster in all of baseball.
The big narrative of the 2013 Yankees failures was that they had an old roster that was ravaged by injuries. Their solution to that was to get slightly younger and hope that they can avoid injuries. The problem with that strategy is that old age and injury go together like peanut butter and jelly, like macaroni and cheese, like Derek Jeter and gift baskets.
It isn’t as if the Bombers are old around the edges of the roster either. The old hits them right where it counts. Their projected Opening Day lineup is composed entirely of players 30 and over, four of which are 36 and older. That doesn’t even count the 41-year old Ichiro who figures to work into the lineup on a semi-regular basis.
Drilling even deeper, a lot of that age resides in the heart of the order. Derek Jeter should bat second and he is going to turn 40 before the All-Star break. Behind him is Carlos Beltran who turns 37 in April, followed by Mark Teixeira who will turn 34 a few days after Opening Day. There are a lot of years and a lot of recent days on the DL in that group right there.
But the lineup isn’t the only problem. Age is an issue for the rotation as well. CC Sabathia, 33, and Hiroki Kuroda, 39, front the Yankees starting pitching. Neither has the injury history of Jeter and Teixeira as both are riding long streaks of 200+ inning seasons. But both have a lot of mileage on their arms as a results.
Sabathia is the younger of the two, but is showing more signs of wear and tear. There has been a lot of hand-wringing in New York over the loss of Sabathia’s velocity, which was down to 91.1 MPH last year after being over 94 as recently as 2011. He’s shed a lot of weight this offseason to get in better shape, but reports on his velocity this spring are not encouraging.
Kuroda isn’t without worry himself. His velocity has dipped a little, but isn’t cause for major concern. What is troubling is that Kuroda got battered around in the second half of last season. Pitchers have slumps, but when that pitcher is in his late-thirties, one has to wonder if it is really a slump or just old age finally catching up.
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Ironically, the one part of the Yankees roster that isn’t entirely populated by card-carrying AARP members is probably the weakest part of their team, the bullpen. The Yankees relief corps took an obvious hit with the retirement of Mariano Rivera, but even if he was still around, this unit would have some real question marks.
The fact of the matter is that Mo is gone, which means that David Robertson will get the promotion to closer. There is little reason to believe that Robertson will be anything but excellent in that role. He should rack up plenty of saves… assuming the middle relief can actually hand him a lead.
Stepping into Robertson’s vacated setup role is Shawn Kelley, who actually had a better strikeout rate than Robertson last year, which is no small feat. The problem with Kelley is that he also had an ERA over twice as big thanks in no small part to Kelley surrendering eight homers in just 53.1 innings of work.
From the left side, the Yankees has Boone Logan as their primary lefty reliever, but he was allowed to leave for Colorado and has been replaced by 37-year old Matt Thornton. A few years ago, that would have been an impressive pick up, but Thornton is a shell of his former self with a 6.23 K/9 in 2013 as compared to the 12.02 K/9 he posted as recently in 2010. Thornton is, at best, a LOOGY now and not even that good of one.
The rest of the bullpen figures to be filled out by kids. Preston Claiborne and Adam Warren project to be the most experienced of the bunch and they have a combined 129.2 innings in the majors between them. The Yanks don’t even really have the standard crop of retread veterans in camp on non-roster invites to compete for jobs, so this is going to be a very young and inexperienced bullpen no matter who wins the final jobs.
It is staggering to think that the Yankees could spend so much money on the rest of the roster and ignore the bullpen entirely, but that is exactly what they did. That’s a decision they could come to regret rather quickly.
