Marcus Stroman tears into the Yankees again, and this time takes a direct jab at the pitching staff. However, were his comments correct?
Marcus Stroman is one of baseball’s most outspoken players who is very active on Twitter and is used to responding to many tweets directed at him. One of his most recent tweets got the attention of some fans across baseball after he critiques the Yankees’ pitching staff.
“Besides [Gerrit] Cole, there’s no current Yankee pitcher who will be anywhere in my league over the next 5-7 years. Their pitching always folds in the end. That lineup and payroll should be winning World Series’ left and right…yet they’re in a drought,” the 29-year-old New York native tweeted on Wednesday. But how accurate are Stroman’s statements?
First things first Luis Severino is in the same ballpark as Stroman, who would later tweet that he forgot all about Severino. So he can get a pass on that. But to say that the pitching always folds, in the end, has not been the most accurate of cases.
In Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS, the Yankees lost 2-1 to the Rays with the lone run being an Aaron Judge solo home run. Pitching came up big when it mattered, while the offense remained quiet.
The 2019 ALCS went to six games with the Astros, where the Yankees would lose 6-4 on a walk-off home run from Jose Altuve. The pitching staff gave up only 22 runs in six games, less than four runs per game. Yet the Yankees were only able to win two games. Once again, pitching was not the problem.
One big exception to this claim is the 2018 Yankees, who struggled against the eventual World Series-winning Boston Red Sox squad, including allowing 16 runs in just one game. The other two losses were one-run games, but pitching could have been a problem.
When the offense scores only one run in the final two games of the series, it is nearly impossible to win. That’s how the 2017 Yankees finished when they put up one run in Game 6 and were shut out in Game 7. Pitching was not the problem.
While Stroman is correct in the sense that the Yankees cannot get it done during the postseason, there are much larger problems than the pitching. The offense continues to get shut down by good pitching every postseason and the lack of situational hitting seems to be the biggest factor.
This is not Stroman’s first time taking shots at the Yankees on social media, as he took a jab at Brian Cashman last September by comparing his stats with the entire Yankees’ pitching staff after Cashman said that he believed Stroman would not be the difference-maker in the postseason.
Is this a ploy by Stroman to get the Yankees to gain interest in him? He said he is open to playing for any team, so there is a possibility he is in pinstripes next year. However, the odds look like that will not happen.