Yankees are Putting More  value from free agent pitching acquisition….

Despite the fact that the New York Yankees lost the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday afternoon in the home opener 3–0, they enjoyed a fantastic performance from Marcus Stroman, their 32-year-old new starting pitcher.

After rejecting Blake Snell‘s contract proposal, the Yankees quickly pivoted to Stroman several months ago, who was eager to join the Yankees and offer them a quality arm in the rotation. He signed a two-year, $37-million deal with a 2026 vesting option. His 2025 season becomes a player option with 140 innings pitched, and Stroman is already on pace after two starts.

Over 12 innings to open the season, Stroman hasn’t given up a run, collecting 7.50 strikeouts per nine, a 72.7% left-on-base rate, and a 48.5% ground ball rate. His velocity is about 1 mph less than it was in 2023, but he is still generating fantastic movement on his pitches and utilizing deception in his favor.

Stroman utilizes a sinker, cutter, slurve, and split-finger fastball. This year, his sinker has been fantastic, throwing it 38.6% of the time and producing a .091 batting average against.

However, he’s utilizing a newfound cutter far more frequently, throwing it at 36.6% compared to just 9.5% last season. It’s produced a .167 batting average with a 55.6% whiff rate and a 25% put-away rate. In fact, out of the four hits he’s given up over 12 innings, two of them have come using his four-seam fastball and slider, which he’s only thrown a combined five times this season.

The Yankees have clearly tweaked Stroman’s pitch usage, and it is paying off in dividends. At just $18.5 million per season, the Yankees are receiving tremendous value and should be excited about his upside this year.

READ MORE:

The New York Yankees knew to anticipate the worst when they found out that Jonathan Loaisiga had severely strained his forearm, and those nightmares have become reality. After being placed on the 60-day IL with a right flexor strain, the right-hander will undergo surgery that will knock him out of the next 10-12 months, which eliminates him from potentially returning during the 2024 season. After completing four scoreless innings in Houston and Arizona to open the season, the hard-throwing right-hander experienced elbow discomfort, and testing revealed serious forearm damage.

Usually, when you hear about a flexor strain and immediately see a player placed on the 60-day IL, you think of the dreaded Tommy John Surgery, and while Meredith Marakovits hasn’t detailed the exact surgery, the timeframe reported indicates it’s some form of elbow reconstruction surgery.

UPDATE: Bryan Hoch confirms that it’s an elbow surgery to reconstruct a torn UCL, as told to him by Loaisiga himself.

Losing Jonathan Loaisiga stings, as the New York Yankees were hoping to utilize him in a multi-inning relief role to place less of a strain on his arm, but he finds himself out for the year. There’s nothing one can do about a torn UCL, one day that tendon is intact, and just a pitch later you can find yourself out of baseball for over a year. Seeing that the hard-throwing right-hander is a free agent after the season, this complicates his long-term future and could spell the end of his tenure in the Bronx.

We’ve seen the Yankees steer away from paying relievers, and it’s hard to imagine that they’d pay top dollar for an arm that has constantly suffered elbow injuries over the past few seasons. Since the start of the 2023 campaign, Loaisiga has tossed just 22.2 innings, appearing in 20 games and struggling to stay on the mound. His effectiveness is unquestioned, few pitchers are masters of generating groundballs at the level that he is, but a 2.49 ERA isn’t as valuable when you’re not able to pitch enough.

It’s an unfortunate injury to one of the most talented pitchers in any bullpen, as the right-hander has always flashed excellent velocity and a deep array of pitches. Alas, this injury ends his season prematurely and puts the Yankees in an interesting position. They called up Dennis Santana to replace Loaisiga, but their bridge to the ninth inning is weakened by not having a multi-inning weapon who can keep the ball on the ground and efficiently put hitters away in high-leverage situations.

The Yankees have had a ton of trust in him since he broke out back in 2021, but this could be the nail in the coffin for his time in New York.