You don’t have to be a baseball lifer to recognize the ramifications of a team losing four-fifths of its projected starting rotation to injury even before the All-Star break.
But you also don’t have to spend 24/7 around a ballpark to know that in losing the present-day version of CC Sabathia, Ivan Nova and Michael Pineda in addition to Masahiro Tanaka, the Yankees haven’t exactly been deprived of sending David Cone, David Wells and Orlando Hernandez to the mound every fifth day.
Maybe down the road the lack of pedigree in the rotation will become a significant impediment in the hunt for a playoff spot. Maybe a staff with a handful of starters who would have seemed more at home in split-squad games in March in Tampa than in pennant-chase baseball in July and August in The Bronx will eventually undermine the Yankees.
But not yet. And not this weekend, which concluded with Sunday’s 3-2 victory at the Stadium over the Reds that completed a three-game sweep in which the Yankees were gifted with quality starts from first David Phelps, then Brandon McCarthy and finally Hiroki Kuroda, who combined to surrender a sum of three earned runs in 19 innings of work.
“To be honest, our guys have been doing it all year,” said Brian McCann, who brought home Jacoby Ellsbury from third base with the winning run in the bottom of the ninth when his pop fly into shallow right fell among three befuddled Cincinnati fielders. “Our pitchers have been consistent all season long.”
Whether the originals or the replacements, the starters other than Tanaka have not been dominant. But they have been respectable. They have given the Yankees a chance to at least remain part of the postseason conversation in a season during which mystique and aura appear only on the scoreboard video screens and on designated plaque days.
The Yankees have gotten essentially middle-of-the-road work from the rotation overall, the starters tied for the seventh-best ERA in the AL (3.92) and the 11th-most innings in the league. But it’s been better lately, noticeably better, with their starters having surrendered three earned runs or fewer in each of the last eight games, compiling a 1.99 ERA over that span.
That would be from the firm of Kuroda, McCarthy, Phelps, Shane Greene and Chase Whitley, and in the eight games since Tanaka’s last start in Cleveland on July 8.
“These guys have the ability to step up; they do,” Joe Girardi said after the victory gave his team a three-game winning streak for the first time in a month. “They have to understand that if they make their pitches, they’re going to get people out.
“I’ve said that for us to make noise, we have to get distance out of them.”
Kuroda, who was touched for one unearned run in 6 ²/₃ innings before yielding to Dellin Betances, was masterful in limiting the Reds to three hits, mixing his sinker, slider and splitter effectively throughout. At 39, he is the lone man standing from the original starting five.
“I’ve thought about that more than once, that the last guy standing is the oldest,” Girardi said. “It’s partly [due to] how he conditions himself. It’s also partly genetic.”
A year ago, Kuroda faded down the stretch, going 0-6 with 6.56 ERA over his final eight starts. Girardi has responded by, if not babying Kuroda, then by monitoring him closely. Of course he has. That’s called managing.
“You have to be cautious, but maybe we can push him a little more,” Girardi said. “If he’d been overworked and not pitching as well, people would want to know why, and it [would be] because he’s overworked. It’s a fine line.”
Kuroda has thrown 123 innings, 20th-most in the league, after throwing 201 innings last season and a career-high 219 two years ago.
“How I am used is up to the manager,” Kuroda said. “You can’t replace any of my teammates, but when you go to the mound, you have to make sure you give your team a chance to win.
“Injuries or not, I take pride in taking responsibility.”
In 2005, original rotation members Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright and Kevin Brown all went down with injuries.
So after a spell did Chien-Ming Wang. The Yankees traded for Shawn Chacon and promoted Aaron Small, who responded by going a combined 17-3 and helping lead the team to the AL East title even though only Randy Johnson and Mike Mussina were healthy enough to make 30 starts.
This isn’t then, when the Yankees bludgeoned their way to the postseason. But it does prove that it can be done, and that a team can overcome.