Alexander Wilson
The New York Yankees cannot keep pretending David Bednar alone solves the ninth inning.
That is not some panic take off one rough frame. It is a roster-construction issue, and Friday just made it a little more obvious.
Bednar got the last three outs in the Yankees’ 5-2 win over the Mets, but it was not clean. He allowed one run on two hits and a walk in the ninth, needed 21 pitches to get through the inning, and let the Mets hang around longer than they should have. In a four-run game, it did not burn them. In October, that kind of inning can absolutely swing a game.
Bednar is fine, but fine is not enough by itself
The season line is not a disaster. Bednar is sitting on 10 saves with a 3.79 ERA, 22 strikeouts, and a 1.42 WHIP over 19 innings. That is a usable closer. It is not some locked-down relief monster you build the entire back end around without a second thought.
That is the real issue here.
The Yankees need another premium closer-caliber arm, because right now Bednar is the only reliever in the bullpen who cleanly fits that label. Fernando Cruz has been useful. The middle innings have held together better than expected. But the bullpen still has a weakness rearing its ugly head, and it shows up whenever Boone has to decide who he truly trusts when the game gets tight.
There is no real one-two punch right now
That is what separates this bullpen from the truly scary ones.
If Bednar is your closer and you have another premium arm behind him, then a shaky outing like Friday is annoying, not alarming. But when Camilo Doval is carrying a 5.74 ERA with three blown saves and still does not look like a trustworthy fallback, the whole structure gets thinner fast.
That is why the Yankees may need to make a tough Doval decision, and why Brian Cashman should already be thinking about the trade market for another premium late-inning arm.
Not because Bednar stinks. He does not. The underlying metrics are strong, but the actual results have been shaky.
If Bednar is your only true closer option, then every little wobble gets magnified, and the Yankees are too good to head into the second half with that kind of bullpen fragility sitting right in front of them.
Cashman should be thinking bigger here
The Yankees do not need another middle reliever. They need another guy who can own the ninth if needed, or at the very least make the eighth and ninth feel interchangeable.
That is how you build a real one-two punch. That is how you survive playoff matchups when one guy does not have his best command that night. That is how you keep from overexposing Bednar by making him the answer to every single late-game problem.
Friday’s outing was not a catastrophe, but it was another reminder that the Yankees are still one premium reliever short of where they need to be. If Cashman is serious about making this bullpen playoff-proof, he should be looking for another closer-level arm well before the deadline chaos starts.
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