Mintz: Yankees won ALDS vs. Royals because of their pitching | Baseball Bar-B-Cast
Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman and senior MLB analyst Jake Mintz discuss how the New York Yankees sensational pitching and bullpen is what helped them close out the American League Division Series against the Kansas City Royals. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
The Yankees won the series in this game because of their pitching.
Gerrit Cole who was pretty blah in game one was sensational last night.
He leaned heavily on his fastball, throwing it more often than in any other start this season.
The slider which he used a lot in game one and it got crushed, did not throw, it just like, did not throw a slider the entire night, which is very interesting and he was great.
The Yankees scored three runs, uh, on the evening, one of the first leave one in the fifth and one of the sixth all on timely singles.
Their bullpen had literally not allowed a run and still has not allowed a run this entire postseason in four of those games, Clay Holmes and Luke Weaver shut it down in the eighth of the ninth and that was that everyone's getting got here and it, the odds are, it'll happen at some point for, for Luke Weaver and, and Clay Holmes even, of course, we've seen that over the course of the regular season, but you, you just have to give this Yankees pitching staff credit and Luke Weaver in particular, you know, emerging as, as this relief face is really something to behold, both from a personality perspective, but also from a, you know, just career trajectory perspective.
I mean, to me, the, the c recently is, is seawall just from the standpoint of like this guy was just a bad starting pitcher and now he's an amazing reliever, but Weaver had a lot longer time starting.
This is a former first round pick.
This is a guy who I just watched last year make a bunch of bad starts for the Reds.
This guy has just, just hasn't quite worked.
But as you've mentioned many times, having been around the Yankees in the last few years, they, they know what to do with these guys.
And boy, oh boy, has, he just become this incredible piece in a way that has now allowed Clay Holmes to really settle in and also have a lot of success in his non closing role.