The year 2018 wasn't that long ago. It really wasn't, despite how it seems. The Red Sox beat the Dodgers in the World Series that year and while it feels like an epoch has passed since that happened, the highlight reels of that matchup are in full color, not black and white.
I fixate on 2018 because after the New York Yankees agreed to acquire right-hander Jameson Taillon from the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for a middling package of four prospects on Sunday, that year has a special relevance for Bronx denizens sketching out their team's new-look rotation.
Let's say Luis Severino returns from his Tommy John surgery rehabilitation sometime in June, Corey Kluber's shoulder holds up enough that he holds down a rotation spot, Gerrit Cole keeps being Gerrit Cole, Taillon is a full go and, just for the fun of it, that New York's low-key minor league invite, righty Jhoulys Chacin, bounces back enough to win the No. 5 slot. The quintet would probably slot like this: Cole, Taillon, Kluber, Severino and Chacin.
In 2018, those five starters combined to go 83-38 (a .686 winning percentage) over 164 starts with a 3.16 ERA and 9.6 strikeouts per nine innings. They put up 94 quality starts. Together, they compiled 22.3 WAR, per baseball-reference.com. The MLB-leading WAR total for any rotation in 2018 was 22.4, by the Astros, but of course that total was bolstered by the presence of Cole.
In other words, the Yankees can sketch a 2021 rotation that based on one very recent snapshot of performance might look like baseball's best. Optimistic Yankee fans might look at such an outlook as the upside of their current hot stove strategy, knowing that those five are backed by younger starters who now won't have as much pressure to perform immediately, pitchers like Jordan Montgomery, Deivi Garcia, Michael King, Clarke Schmidt and Domingo German.
One of those younger pitchers is likely to end up as the No. 5 starter, unless Chacin really shows something in spring training, and another one will fill in for Severino until his rehab is complete, or if he isn't the same when it is. Another one might be needed if Kluber's shoulder doesn't hold up. And, well, like Severino, Taillon didn't pitch in 2020, either, because of Tommy John surgery. So we can't quite to know what to expect there, either. In other words, while the Yankees' prospective 2021 rotation might merit a degree of excitement, that optimism carries with it a strong undercurrent of questions.
That's the central dilemma about the Yankees' current rotation depth chart. If all goes well, it's not far-fetched to envision an October rotation of Cole, Taillon, Kluber and Severino who are pitching, hopefully, near their 2018 levels. That would be a title-worthy rotation. Then there is this sobering tidbit: In 2020, Taillon, Kluber and Severino threw a combined 18 pitches in big league games, all by Kluber.
In landing Taillon, the Yankees have gone all-in with an upside over risk formulation for their 2021 pitching plan. As with Kluber, some of that calculation has to be economic since, for some reason, baseball's richest team is trying to keep spending down. Taillon signed a one-year deal with Pittsburgh on Dec. 20 for $2.25 million, avoiding arbitration. He has one more season of arbitration eligibility left beyond next season, giving him two campaigns before free agency to prove that he can stay healthy and that he is still the upper-rotation stalwart that he was on the verge of becoming in 2018, his last season of full health -- and the only full season he's logged as a big leaguer.
Pirates starters of recent vintage have become sought-after trade assets, both because they are talented and because they have a habit of getting better after they leave Pittsburgh. Cole, Taillon's once and future rotation mate, is a prime example of that.
The first pick of the 2011 draft, in his last two seasons for the Bucs, Cole went 19-22 with a 4.12 ERA and 8.3 K/9. In two seasons for the Astros, he was 35-10 with a 2.68 ERA, a 13.1 K/9 and two top-five finishes in AL Cy Young balloting. He continued that run of success last season, his first with the Yankees.
Then there is Tyler Glasnow, now the No. 1 starter for the Tampa Bay Rays after this winter's machinations. He was only a fifth-round pick, but quickly rose up the prospect ranking lists in the Pittsburgh system as his fastball revved up to elite velocity. Still, he couldn't make the full leap to the bigs during his time with Pittsburgh, going 3-11 with a 5.79 ERA and a 9.7 K/9 before being dealt to the Rays along with Austin Meadows and Shane Baz in the now-infamous Chris Acher trade. Since then, Glasnow has gone 12-7 with a 3.32 ERA and 12.0 K/9, while hinting at much more to come.
Can Taillon be the latest former Pirate to make the leap from good to elite now that he's making a move from Pittsburgh to New York?
Well, first of all, there's no glaring pattern of the Yankees picking up undervalued and/or underperforming starters from other teams and ratcheting up their production. Even Cole wasn't quite as dominant after making the switch from Houston to New York. James Paxton, now a free agent, was better for the Mariners than he was for the Yankees. J.A. Happ, deep into his career, pitched like the same steady lefty he'd always been during his New York time. Sonny Gray was markedly better before and after his time with the Yankees. The same is arguably true about oft-injured Michael Pineda.
That anecdotal evidence is far from conclusive, and it's not to suggest that the Yankees falter in the analytical realm, among other things. It's just what has happened. New York's pitching coach, Matt Blake, has only the disjointed 2020 season on his Yankee resume, so we don't know how well he'll pair with Taillon, either. All of this is only to point out that, at the moment, the Yankees do not have the same track record of squeezing more out of other teams' starters as do clubs like the Astros, Rays, Twins, Giants and Reds.
To assume that Taillon will blossom in his post-Pirate career would also be to kind of assume that he didn't reach his full potential with Pittsburgh, which is debatable. While his only successful full season was 2018, it was a very good one, in which he went 14-10 with 3.20 ERA over 191 innings in his age-26 season. Whether or not that's the best Taillon has to give remains to be seen, and if it feels like it's not, it might be a residual perception attached to his status as the No. 2 pick of the 2010 draft, when he famously was picked in between Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.
Since that time, Taillon has been through a lot. He blew out his elbow in the minor leagues, undergoing what ended up being the first of two career Tommy John surgeries, and didn't pitch in a minor league game in either 2014 or 2015. He dominated at in Triple-A in 2016, forcing his way up to the Pirates, for whom he posted a fine 3.38 ERA over 18 starts as a rookie.
Taillon's second career hiccup was a terrifying one. In May of 2017, he announced that he had testicular cancer. He was back pitching just over a month later and while he was up and down that season, the fact that he was back at all and pitching competent baseball after such a scare showed that if nothing else, he was a player with elite resiliency.
That resiliency is being tested again after a second elbow operation and another missed season. The upshot of all of this for the Yankees is that while Taillon is 29, he has just 466 big-league innings on his arm, that pedigree as a one-time premium pick and a track record that while lacking in quantity has flashed more than enough quality for the Yankees to project him as high as their No. 2, behind Cole.
Taillon's surgery took place in August, 2019, so by the time the regular season begins, he'll be around 20 months removed from the procedure. The duration of Taillon's layoff doesn't guarantee that he'll hit the ground running when baseball ramps back up, but it does bode well that he will have checkd all the necessary boxes in a recovery process with which he is all too familiar.
Last summer, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review had an interesting update on Taillon's progress, in which he talked about using his rehab time to also make improvements in his mechanics. The aim was to shorten his arm action in an effort to achieve a cleaner, more repeatable delivery and to stave off the injury troubles that have always trailed him.
Taillon's willingness to adapt and improve, along with his resiliency, are traits that could help him find a new level with his new team. Cole and Glasnow both took leaps in performance aided in part by changes to their pitch mix, and that's a possible area in which Taillon might have some growth left. According to Statcast, Taillon's changeup has been a subpar offering, and while he probably needs to retain that in his arsenal to keep batters off balance, perhaps his revamped mechanics will help him find more success with that pitch.
Also, while Taillon has gradually scaled back the use of his sinker over his career, he was still throwing it about 20% of the time before he was hurt, with results that were a little up and down. It possible that he could follow Cole's path in dropping his usage of that out-of-vogue pitch even further, in favor of more curveballs -- maybe his best pitch -- and more four-seamers.
What we do know is that Taillon has more than earned a long, extended period of health and prosperity as a big league pitcher. If he gets that, it'll be under the brightest of spotlights, for a Yankees team that is starved for a World Series (not that his old team wasn't) and that, to get there, needs their newly patched together rotation to turn back the clock. But not that far -- 2018 will do just fine.
Unfortunately, while the road back to 2018 might appear to be short, all the injuries that have piled up for the Yankees' new rotation since then show even a short road can be a rough one.