Yankees could be hurt by long layoff in playoffs
Yankees starting pitcher Clarke Schmidt looks away as the Orioles’ Anthony Santander rounds the bases on his solo home run during the sixth inning of an MLB game at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Before the playoffs, the Yankees will have to deal with the layoff.
The Yankees, who were hoping to clinch the American League East with a victory over Baltimore in the Bronx on Tuesday night, will have five days off between their regular-season finale on Sunday and their first postseason game on Oct. 5 (assuming they don’t blow the division in the final week, which seems unlikely since going into the game they had a magic number of one).
That’s five days with no game for the players, some of whom haven’t had more than one day off in a row since late March. It means a lot of sitting around, a lot of waiting, and a lot of wondering if the Yankees are going to get stale by fans who won’t have much else to worry about while other clubs compete in the wild-card series.
The good news for the Yankees in the above scenario is that banged-up players will have time to heal. Juan Soto, who bruised his left knee sliding into a concrete wall in Seattle on Thursday, comes to mind. Some other players are probably banged-up in myriad ways that the Yankees have kept under wraps from the press and public.
Pitchers, especially the starters, can always use rest at this time of the season. Luis Gil, for example, has a 2.51 ERA in 2024 when he starts with six or more days’ rest. His season ERA is 3.27.
The righthander has thrown 149 2/3 innings (minors included) in 2024 after throwing a total of four (all in the minors) in 2023. It’s incredible that Gil, a leading AL Rookie of the Year candidate, has lasted this long.
Gil, Nestor Cortes and Tuesday’s starter Clarke Schmidt are all contenders for the No. 3 starter’s job for the first round of the playoffs.
Schmidt allowed three runs in 5 1/3 innings in his fourth start since coming off the injured list on Sept. 7 and left with the Yankees trailing 3-1. The last batter he faced, Anthony Santander, clanged a solo home run off the rightfield foul pole.
Going into Tuesday, the Yankees were slated to face the winner of an Orioles-Tigers wild-card series in the five-game Division Series. Whoever the Yankees end up playing, that ALDS has a schedule wrinkle of its own that favors the Yankees’ foe.
After playing in Game 1, the teams will have a day off (thank you, Major League Baseball’s TV overlords, who don’t want four baseball playoff games going up against the mighty NFL on a Sunday). And then the usual day off between Games 2 and 3 as the series shifts to the other team’s ballpark.
Two days of rest in a four-day span is not optimal for the Yankees coming off their big layoff. But it could be a boon to their ALDS opponent and its pitching staff since that team will have just finished a wild-card series of two or three games.
Oh, well, the schedule is the schedule, whether it’s April or October, and the Yankees should be favored to beat almost anyone they play up until the World Series, if they make it that far.
The 1996 Yankees had a six-day layoff before playing Atlanta in the World Series. The Yankees got annihilated in the first two games in the Bronx, losing by a combined score of 16-1. They then won four in a row, the first three in Atlanta, to win the franchise’s first World Series title since 1978 and begin the Joe Torre/Derek Jeter dynasty.
There’s never been hard proof a long layoff hurts or helps baseball teams in the postseason. Still, you’d rather need to only win three rounds than four to be able to hoist the World Series trophy, right?
“It’s tournament baseball,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “If you can eliminate one of the steps — especially a best-of-three (series), where anything can absolutely happen — you want to shorten it as much as you can. There's no great answer. Teams have tried everything as far as staying sharp, different tactics. I don't think there's one magic answer to it or magic pill. It's still baseball, and it comes down to who's kind of in that groove when you get rolling into a series. We'll do all we can to hopefully stay as ready as possible for whatever scenario presents itself, and then go out and compete our (butts) off.”
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
