In the final hours of the trade deadline, the New York Yankees acquired Enyel De Los Santos from the San Diego Padres for Brandon Lockridge. Landing a reliever with a 4.46 ERA seems a bit odd considering that they need bullpen help, but we’ve seen the Yankees turn around struggling bullpen pieces mid-season multiple times. Whether it’s Keynan Middleton, Lou Trivino, or Clay Holmes, the Yankees find a way to maximize reliever talent all the time, and they’re going to try once again to find a hidden gem.
With some interesting secondary pitches and a track record of success at the highest level before this season, can the Yankees find a way to get the most out of him?
Can Enyel De Los Santos Become a Key Part of the Yankees’ Bullpen?
Enyel De Los Santos is missing way more bats this year than he did last season, but that’s come with an enormous spike in his damage contact allowed. Batters are barreling over 13% of batted balls against the hard-throwing righty, and the biggest culprit in his arsenal is his four-seamer. With an SLG% approaching .700 this season on that pitch, he hasn’t been able to miss enough bats with it or deceive opposing hitters enough to rely upon it to set up his slider or changeup, and that also affects how those secondary pitches perform.
What also stands out is his slider, which is generating a lot less drop this season than it did last year and hasn’t been as effective as a result. This affects his four-seamer since these two pitches went from having over 10 inches of vertical separation from each other to being within seven inches of each other. His slider isn’t dropping as much as it should and his four-seamer is starting to get crushed by batters, but thankfully the Yankees are one of the best organizations at developing secondary offerings.
From a lower slot release, there are a lot of things the Yankees could do here, but the fix isn’t going to be adding some new whirly slider most likely. De Los Santos struggles more against lefties than righties, and those big loopy sweepers are salivating to opposite-handed batters since they get a better read of the horizontal break in comparison to same-handed batters. I think reworking the slider to prioritize vertical drop is immediately what comes to mind, but could we see them get even more creative?
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We’ve seen the Yankees take interesting relievers and maximize their value, even if they get off to a bit of a rocky start with New York. After claiming Michael Tonkin, he immediately blew a save against the Brewers in extra-innings but had a full-circle moment last night when he found a way to close it out with a one-run lead and a runner on second in extra-innings last night in Philadelphia. It was a game the Yankees had to win, and names like Tim Hill and Jake Cousins have come out of nowhere to provide value as well.
The Yankees are adamant about getting guys to throw their best pitch as often as possible, and perhaps the tweak they make here is to have De Los Santos throw his slider even more. Maybe he learns a sinker (his release height and pronation abilities would make it work), but based on what’s already in his arsenal that would be the fix that makes the most sense. I still think that his slider needs some tweaking because last year’s version of that pitch was a tight bullet-spinning buzzsaw, but this could be a sneaky-good upgrade for this bullpen.
He’s already racking up strikeouts, and while limiting damage contact is easier said than done, the only pitch that’s getting hammered is the four-seamer. His changeup is starting to get more traction and that could help him against left-handed batters, and we could see something similar to what Keynan Middleton did last year when he dialed back the fastball usage to around 23% down the stretch to rely more on his two excellent secondaries.
Matt Blake will have his work cut out for him, but the Yankees’ track record with pitch design and pitcher optimization speaks for itself. When you look up and down this bullpen, it’s a group of pitchers who were counted out before coming to New York, and Enyel De Los Santos will have a chance to join a growing list of career revivals in the bullpen.