The Yankees added or retained three starting pitchers this offseason, and let’s see if you can figure out what they have in common:
That would be left-hander CC Sabathia and left-hander James Paxton and left-hander J.A. Happ. Hurry with your answer, because you don’t want to be, well, left out.
Brian Cashman insisted that all those pitchers are southpaws is coincidence. The presidents of baseball operations for the Red Sox (Dave Dombrowski), Cubs (Theo Epstein) and Dodgers (Andrew Friedman) each used the same word — coincidence — in text replies to describe how their teams forged rotations that lean to the left.
That was not the answer I was hoping for. I wanted to have discovered some new analytic avenue of advantage. since the clubs currently constructed to use the most lefty starting pitching next year — the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs and Dodgers — also project as four of the five or six best teams in the majors.
But the closest to a lefty inclination was Dombrowski who wrote: “It is more of coincidence, however, given a choice I would normally prefer a left-hander over the right-hander. That can change based on upon your stadium and even the teams you face most frequently.”
Yet, the Red Sox’s biggest rival (the Yankees) and another AL force (the Astros) have as strong a righty lineup composition as any club and were the only two teams that had an .800-or-better OPS vs. lefties last year.
Historically, the Yankees have wanted to have southpaw starters to counteract lefty power in their home stadium. But it has never seemed a priority of the Cashman administration, and he says it is not now even in a year when the Yanks were not only lefty-crazy in what they have acquired, but had southpaw Patrick Corbin atop their free-agent-starter wish list before he went to the Nationals.
There are plenty of lefty starters still available in free agency: Dallas Keuchel, Gio Gonzalez, Derek Holland, Francisco Liriano, Brett Anderson, Wade Miley, Martin Perez, Jaime Garcia, Drew Pomeranz and Japanese star Yusei Kikuchi, plus Clayton Richards was designated for assignment last week by the Padres, and lefties such as Texas’ Mike Minor and perhaps Arizona’s Robbie Ray could be had in trades.
So rotations are going to change between now and the regular season, but the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Cubs are currently the only teams that have on their rosters three lefties who started at least 20 games each in 2018.
The Cubs have Cole Hamels, Jon Lester, Jose Quintana and swingman Mike Montgomery from the left side. The Dodgers have Rich Hill, Clayton Kershaw and Alex Wood, plus Hyun-jin Ryu and Julio Urias. The Red Sox have David Price, Eduardo Rodriguez, Chris Sale and swingman Brian Johnson.
That foursome, plus Pomeranz and Jalen Beeks, combined to give the Red Sox 105 starts by lefties last regular season, which led the majors. The Cubs and Dodgers tied for second at 96.
The team record for starts by lefties is 127 by the 1983 Yankees. That was a period of heavy southpaw usage by the Yankees. Every season from 1980-84, the Yankees had at least three lefties make 20 starts each in a season. Ron Guidry did it in every year in some combination with Roy Fontenot, Rudy May, Tommy John, Dennis Rasmussen, Dave Righetti, Shane Rawley and Tom Underwood.
The other two occasions the Yankees managed that three-starter total is 1996 (the only time they won a championship with three lefties starting at least 20 games) with Jimmy Key, Andy Pettitte and Kenny Rogers, and 1997 when David Wells replaced Key.They have a chance to do that again this year, and though they traded a lefty, Justus Sheffield, as the key piece to get Paxton from Seattle, the Yankees have Jordan Montgomery as a potential midseason return as he rehabs after Tommy John surgery.
By their rotation configurations the Yankees and Red Sox are likely to have more games in which lefties start against each other than any other time in the long rivalry. The record is seven in 1983 when John Tudor squared off against Guidry and Righetti twice each, Bob Ojeda and Rawley started against each other twice and Ojeda and Bob Shirley once (Boston’s Bruce Hurst never even faced the Yanks that year).
So those games and, really, who wins the AL East very well come down to whose rotation within the rivalry is most right from the left.