Marcus Stroman Provides Latest Sign of Optimism for Struggling Yankees Rotation

Getty Marcus Stroman

If Marcus Stroman’s performance on Sunday, August 11 against the Texas Rangers is any indication, he’s picked a good time to get back on track for the New York Yankees.

Even though it only lasted five innings, Stroman gave his finest performance since June, holding the Rangers to 1 run on 4 hits. Contrast that with his last eight starts, in which he pitched to a 6.87 ERA with 13 more hits allowed than innings pitched and opponents batting .325 against him.

With the Yankees’ rotation about to get deeper with the upcoming return of Clarke Schmidt, Stroman made his case to keep taking the ball every five days.

“I’m not someone who loses confidence regardless of a few outings,” Stroman said after the game, per The Athletic’s Brendan Kuty. “My confidence is pretty stuck there where it is, regardless of what I’m going through. I go out there with the same confidence each and every start. Sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it don’t.”

This time it did, and Yankees manager Aaron Boone was able to shed some light on why.

“He stayed out of the heart of the plate a lot more,” Boone said, according to MLB.com’s Bill Ladson. “I thought his stuff was crisp. I probably went a little long with him today because he hasn’t been anywhere near that pitch level in a while. Maybe he was a little tired out there going back out there in the sixth. But I thought he stayed away from dangerous places. He was able to put the ball in the ground.”

Stroman threw 89 pitches overall with 52 for strikes. His ground ball percentage matched his highest since June 11 (56.3%) while he gave up his lowest fly ball percentage since April 10 (12.5%).

Aaron Boone Thought Marcus Stroman Was ‘Crisper’ With His Pitches

Stroman says his confidence didn’t waver during his poor stretch, but he was working on his off days on refining his mechanics. As Boone described, it began in his legs.

“Everything athletically speaking starts from the ground up, and I think he was probably getting a little bit out of his legs,” Boone said, per Ladson. “It’s something he has worked on with a couple of bullpens that he has had. Hopefully, that translates in just being a little more crisper with his stuff and then ultimately his stuff.”

The numbers back that up. Stroman threw his fastball harder than he has in any start since May, averaging 90.3 mph, according to FanGraphs. His secondary pitches also had more movement than he’s been able to muster in the past two months. Stroman didn’t elicit as many swings and misses as he usually does, but the Rangers swung at fewer pitches both overall and in the zone than we’ve seen from a Stroman opponent in a month.

Like any pitcher, he credited his catcher, Austin Wells, with helping him recapture his command.

“I felt [Wells] was doing a great job mixing [pitches],” Stroman said. “I just felt confident, I felt I was making good pitches when I needed to, I felt I was back in my groove a little bit. Definitely good to get the win.”

The Yankees pushed back his start on Sunday, giving him nine days rest instead of the usual five. Kuty says that was to give Stroman time to work on mechanical issues the team had identified.

“I think he just felt better,” Boone said, per Kuty. “He talks a lot about his mechanics and being in tune with those, and I think probably the extra couple of days but turning those into work days too helped him to kind of fine-tune that a little bit and felt like he did a better job.”

The State of the Yankees Rotation

Schmidt’s impending return means the Yankees will have six viable starting pitchers headed into the last month of the season. Pitching depth, however, does not always equate to pitching quality.

Yankees starting pitchers have had the worst ERA in baseball since June 15 (6.00). Some of that is on Stroman, who hopes to have righted the ship. Some is also on Gerrit Cole, who has struggled to catch up to everyone else through just nine starts this year. His last two outings, however, have provided reason for hope. In back-to-back starts against Toronto and Texas, he has thrown 11 total innings, giving up 3 earned runs with 14 strikeouts and 2 walks, lowering his ERA from 5.40 to 4.70.

Meanwhile, Luis Gil appears to have recovered from his mid-season slump, pitching to a 1.93 ERA over his past five starts. He’s also blown well past his professional career high in innings pitched, however, so the Yankees may limit him down the stretch.

Like Gil, Carlos Rodon has shown signs of turning it around after a brutal midseason string of starts. He’s given up only 6 runs in his past 4 starts, striking out 31 batters over 24.1 innings.

Nestor Cortes is the only one who hasn’t broken out of his funk yet. He has a 9.26 ERA over his past five starts and his six-run outing against the Angels last week didn’t give Yankees fans much hope. At this rate, he has until the end of the month to prove he should stay in the Yankees’ rotation.