Chance Adams is ready to go.
Coming into the season, the only non-question mark in the New York Yankees starting rotation was ace Masahiro Tanaka. Coming off of a 2016 season where he went 14-4 with a 3.07 ERA and 1.077 WHIP in a career-high 199.2 innings pitched, Tanaka was supposed to be the anchor in a rotation that included the wildly inconsistent Michael Pineda, an aging and coming off of surgery CC Sabathia, and Luis Severino, who was demoted to AAA midseason and posted a 5.83 ERA with the team. Tanaka’s predicted success was even more necessary given the team’s uncertainty over their fifth and final spot in the rotation, which was an open competition eventually won by rookie Jordan Montgomery.
Fifty-five games into the season, the Yankees sit in first place in the AL East with a 32-23 record. While the team’s offense, led by Aaron Judge, has been fantastic, the Yankees rotation had more than held their own in spite of the performance by their ace. Severino has looked like the future ace the Yankee fans got excited over in his rookie season, with a 2.90 ERA, 1.068 WHIP, and a team leading 10.0 K/9 and 4.75 K: BB ratio. While both have had their ups and downs this season, Pineda and Sabathia have delivered more often than none, with Pineda going 6-3 with a 3.76 ERA and 9.3 K/9, and Sabathia going 6-2 with a 4.12 ERA despite his diminishing velocity. At the back of the rotation, Montgomery has held his own and then some, attacking the zone to the tune of a 3.67 ERA, 8.5 K/9, and a team low 0.8 HR/9 in 56.1 innings pitched.
Which brings us to Tanaka, who outside of a complete game shutout against the Red Sox, and a thirteen-strikeout performance against the Athletics, has not looked like his old self all season. Tanaka’s struggles began on opening day against the Rays, when he was shelled for seven runs in only 2.2 innings pitched. For the season, Tanaka is 5-6 with a career-high 6.55 ERA and 1.500 WHIP, and is currently leading the AL with 48 earned runs allowed. After never walking more than 1.6 batters per nine innings in his career, Tanaka’s currently up to 2.5; the same spike can be seen in his home runs allowed per nine innings, which at it’s 2.5 would be a career high by 0.8 home runs. Looking at his game log below, it is clear that Tanaka has been the weak link in the Yankees rotation, and hasn’t had many starts where he has given the Yankees a fighting chance to escape with a win.
If anybody else on the Yankees roster was putting up similar numbers, they would have been demoted to the bullpen a long time ago, if not to the minor leagues. But since Tanaka has been the Yankees ace the past three seasons and is on the payroll for $22 million, the team appears content to let him try to work out his issues at the major league level, even if they may be related to the partially torn UCL in his pitching elbow.
By no means am I advocating for Tanaka to get the boot from the Yankees rotation permanently. But the reality is, with the Yankees in first place and fighting off the Red Sox and the Orioles, they cannot afford to let Tanaka go out and give up long ball after long ball, digging the team into holes in the process. Instead, why not let Tanaka rest for a week given his injury history, and instead turn to a huge piece in one of baseball’s deepest farm systems, right-handed starter Chance Adams.
A 22-year-old and fifth-round pick of the Yankees in the 2015 MLB Draft out of Dallas Baptist, Adams has electrified his way through the minor league system, going 23-4 with a 2.03 ERA, and 0.93 WHIP overall across all three levels. In 2015, Adams made his debut in A ball and went 3-1 with a 1.78 ERA and 0.93 WHIP in fourteen games; the next seasons saw more of the same success. In 2016, split between A Staten Island and AA Trenton, Adams went 13-1 with a 2.33 ERA and 0.90 WHIP in 24 starts, including 144 strikeouts and only 39 walks in 127.1 innings pitched.
This season is when Adams has really begun to set himself apart from the pack. Beginning the year in Trenton, he went 4-0 in six starts with a 1.03 ERA, 1.086 WHIP, 5.9 H/9 and 8.2 K/9 in six starts, showing enough to warrant being promoted to AAA Scranton/Wiles-Barre. Since his promotion, Adams has improved, even more, going 3-2 with a 2.17 ERA, 0.86 WHIP, 4.3 H/9 and 10.6 K/9 in five starts. Additionally, Adams has cut down on his walk rate from 3.9/9 innings in AA, to 3.4 in AAA.
While Adams certainly could use a little more polish with his control, with a mid-90s fastball and a complementary curveball and slider, Adams has the look and stuff of a major league starter. For the next few weeks, while I don’t think it would be wise for Adams to replace Tanaka on a permanent basis, given Tanaka’s struggles, the Yankees have very little to lose giving Adams a shot for a few starts so Tanaka can rest and fine tune his mechanics. If anything, if Adams succeeds, he could be the piece that prevents the Yankees from gutting their farm system for Gerrit Cole, Jose Quintana, or Yu Darvish, allowing them to continue to chase the AL East crown without jeopardizing their future.
