Yankees Need Pitching More Than They've Ever Needed Pitching Before and There May Be No Solution

Yankees pitching has turned plenty of heads over the past week of game action.

Unfortunately, all those heads were their own, whipping around to watch home runs fly out of Target Field and Fenway Park in rapid succession.

Any casual viewer of the Yanks' road trip through Minnesota and Boston can tell that they're watching a sequence of disastrous starts, but what may not be evident at first blush is exactly how historically awful this turn through the rotation was.

"Most ever," huh? Is that good? "Most" is usually a word that connotes things that are good, I am told.

In general, 2019 hasn't been a pitching-heavy year. This Yankees-Red Sox quartet features eight total starting pitchers, all of whom sport ERAs over 4.00. The Houston Astros are the pitching class of the MLB with a rotation fronted by Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, but without Charlie Morton and Lance McCullers Jr., their back-end depth has them searching for solutions. In essence, the Yankees, with their punishing offense and consistent counter-punches, are in the best position they've been in this decade to nab a World Series berth and potential Commissioner's Trophy.

That's why their need for pitching is so dire; not because they're actively this bad, but because the window is firmly open, only teetering in one specific area before the job can be finished.

Unfortunately, therein lies the rub: are any of the pitchers available really that much of an upgrade?

Plenty of the hurlers the Yankees have prioritized in recent years have fit the mold of inconsistent and tantalizing, like Michael Pineda, Sonny Gray, and James Paxton. Masahiro Tanaka and Domingo German fit in that bucket, too. You get what you pay for: sterling starts mixed with burnt toast, all culminating in 4.00 territory. Sometimes you're stuck with five consecutive duds. Sometimes, things look a lot better one week later.

Unfortunately, the current trade market is very similar. The "cream" of the available crop featured Madison Bumgarner and Trevor Bauer a few weeks back, but Bauer's Tribe is in playoff pole position, and Bumgarner's Giants have surged to within three games of the Wild Card threshold. The new leader in the clubhouse is New York native Marcus Stroman, who's going to cost a king's ransom to acquire, and by and large relies on grounders and soft contact rather than the strikeout, a tough arsenal to project moving forward.

Beyond that trio, Matt Boyd's controllable forever, but his ability to miss bats is not. Robbie Ray can do that, but can't find the strike zone often enough to back up his whiff rate. Noah Syndergaard might as well still have hand, foot, and mouth disease; he won't be allowed anywhere near the Yankees clubhouse. Lance Lynn could come back, which would be the equivalent of an individual smack in the mouth to every single fan and paying customer.

So now, Yankee fans, in the midst of what's otherwise been a dream season, are now allowed to once again let their anger at the spendthrift front office bubble up briefly. Patrick Corbin could've been here, but the offer didn't come close. Max Scherzer and Jon Lester were available a few years back, but instead, they're leading other playoff-bound clubs. New York's historic offense can thrive without a front-line starter; after all, in these five disaster games, the team is 2-3.

However, it's looking likely that they'll have to enter the postseason banking on the best month possible from five solid, if unspectacular, lottery tickets, with a new scratch-off (or two) joining the corps next week.