Marcus Stroman will join the Yankees’ pitching staff as they announced their rosters for the ALCS and have expanded from an 11-man pitching staff to a 12-man group. The right-hander struggled mightily in his first year with the Yankees, pitching to a 4.31 ERA and having career worsts in terms of groundball and strikeout rates. His velocity took a sharp dive and the Yankees were unable to get him back online even after they skipped his start in the rotation twice for mechanical reasons.
In a role that will likely see him pitch only if the Yankees are in a blowout, Stroman is expected to be an innings-eater who can follow a starter who gets knocked out early. With the ALCS format taxing pitchers more than the ALDS format did, pitching depth is far more important thus New York chose to add someone who could provide multiple innings of work.
Marcus Stroman Adds a Long-Relief Option to the Yankees’ Bullpen
It was a tough end to the 2024 campaign for Marcus Stroman, who posted a 5.40 ERA over his final seven appearances and both lost his spot in the rotation and on their ALDS roster in the process. The right-hander was disappointing in his first year with the Bronx Bombers, but he’ll have a chance to help the team in low leverage by providing multiple innings of work in relief.
The right-hander did seem to improve his command down the stretch, as over the same timeframe where he posted a 5.40 ERA, he also walked just 5.3% of batters faced with a 0.27 HR/9. The problem? He still couldn’t miss bats, and hitters had a 90.1 average exit velocity against him as well. The underlying metrics do suggest he ran into poor luck down the stretch because he wasn’t allowing a lot of contact in the air and didn’t hand out free passes, but the degradation of his arsenal has made him very easy to hit.
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You could also argue that defense played a huge role in some of his meltdowns, as no pitcher had a worse team defense behind them than Marcus Stroman in terms of OAA (-16).
The Cleveland Guardians are a contact-heavy team and struggle against right-handed pitching, so Stroman is far from the worst choice they could have made to fill out their pitching staff. Aaron Boone already announced their rotation as Carlos Rodon will go in Game 1, Gerrit Cole in Game 2, Clarke Schmidt in Game 3, and Luis Gil in Game 4.
If the Yankees can actually make the plays behind Marcus Stroman, perhaps he can help them out in a multi-inning role, but the hope is that he’ll only be on the mound because the Bronx Bombers are blowing out the Guardians; not the other way around.